Breaking the Silence

In the past year my husband and I had many MANY arguments, heated discussions and fights. Days of silence and pretences would be broken with violent words flying across the room. Mostly it was hashing and rehashing of the same things that had already been said. We would shout, I would cry, tones were raised. As if screaming it any louder would make us hear better.

But it seemed to me like my husband never really heard me. Maybe he heard but he didn’t listen. Maybe he listened but he didn’t internalize, maybe he internalized but he didn’t understand, and he most definitely didn’t want to agree or admit defeat, take on the blame, the responsibility, or the guilt. So I kept repeating everything over and over again. But words were unnecessary, meaningless, and damaging. They came flying back as a boomerang straight at me, crashing in painfully, piercing me, and tearing me back down.

I talked about how ever since I graduated from University and got a job, he didn’t feel I needed him. As if my intelligence was in the way of his pride and my financial independence strained him. I tried to explain that wanting someone was better than needing them. I tried to show him the error of his ways. I pointed out how he only surrounded himself with weak people, less intelligent or savvy so that he could feel 10 feet tall, and they could praise him.

I talked about how he always defended the other woman and stuck up for her instead of me, his wife. How he was falling for her tortured soul act when she was making it look like she was the poor victim in all of this and I was the villain out to terrorize her and ruin her life.

I talked about the pain I felt when his entire family dropped me in a second, hanging up my picture so they could tear me down, so prematurely, uninviting me to family events so as not to ruin the atmosphere, or telling me they only wanted to talk about good things. Good things? What good things did I have to talk about when my life was crumbling down before my very eyes?!

I talked about how she would end up breaking the entire family, and how he had ruined what could have been the best relationship ever. I talked about my feelings; the lack of trust, the countless lies that were spoken only to be broken, the deceit. I spoke of my love and how it felt like everything I wanted to give was everything he couldn’t take. I talked, I cried, and I hopelessly prayed and wished for everything to return to normal.

Eventually my tears dried up and there was nothing left to say; only silence remained. So in the end I decided to just let the SILENCE speak for itself…

Chronicles of the Monsters In-Law: Mommy Dearest

The fact that a woman carries a child for 9 months in her womb entitles her with the label mommy. But it says nothing about what kind of mom she really is.

I know most people have problems with their in-laws, so you wouldn’t expect me to say anything good about mine. But this wasn’t my case. I never had any problems with my mother-in-law, or how she treated me. We had our moments of fun. But I always resented how she treated the men in her life especially my husband. At times I blame her for who he has become today. After all how can you become a stable man, if you had an unstable childhood? How can you become loving, if you were never taught to love? How can you become trusting, if your role model always lied?

Mommy dearest never read a single book to her children, or sang them a lullaby. She didn’t sit with them to do their homework, or teach them the morals of life.

Her love for my husband’s brother, her “baby”, was always evident and caused unhealthy jealousy and rivalry between the two brothers. While she paid for one to get his driver’s license she did not pay for the other. While she let one stay at home till the age of 25 (when he was ready to leave), she kicked out the other at the age of 17 despite his rent payments. While she treated one like a baby who always needed support and compassion, she treated the other like a street-dog who could manage on his own.

This witch, narcissistic and full of self-love, used everyone around her for her own benefit. She could spend money on herself and her own indulgences, but let her son starve because he had his own money. Selfish and egoistic, she put herself and her hobbies (one of which included having affairs) first and foremost even before her kids. She had an affair on the father with their mutual friend, an affair which split up the family once he found out. And then she had an affair on the affair. This was an affair that lasted for years and years and was subsidized by none other than her partner himself. She would take his hard-earned cash and spend it on a trip for herself to some “so-called” family member on the other side of the world; anything to please herself and get away from her daily chores. But when her partner decided he too was entitled to have an affair of his own, she went crazy and forced him to marry her for financial security.

This man, now her current husband is a dull man. Not sexy, not funny, not interesting. His biggest mistake was having an affair with mommy dearest while she was still married.  So when her husband left her, he was stuck with her and with her two difficult sons. I don’t know how he was at the time, but I can see how through the years he became frustrated with his life. He had wanted children of his own, but she didn’t want more than the two she already had. He wanted a woman who would participate in supporting the household income, something she never got around to but only managed to spend. He compromised on a woman who cleaned the home…but once a week with her 9 cats and lots of junk and clatter meant that it never really looked or smelled clean.

When I met him he was nice, a bit flirty for an older man. But when I did not give my full attention to him; he quickly became disgruntled and would no longer speak to me unless I spoke to him.  Suddenly he refused to speak English and only made my incentive to speak to him even less.

As a man he is quite moody. If he was a woman I would say he has PMS all year round. One day in a great humorous mood, and the next so angry and recluse you could not even say hello to him without feeling you may have said something wrong. If this is how he always was, there is no wonder that the children never treated him as a father and the four of them never became what I would call a family.

Chronicles of the Monsters In-Law: Brotherly Love

I don’t know if there was something about that year when my husband’s brother was born, maybe something in the water or in the air, but it seems men born in this city in that year are a bit off. Don’t get me wrong, they are all nice enough, but very insecure and weak, sexually inexperienced, and just a bit odd to say the least.

So when he finally met a girl at 30+, he seemed to rush everything, and totally fell head over heels. Of-course having never been with a girl before, or in love for that matter, he fell hard. So when she dumped him after only 3 dates he crashed rock bottom.

I’m not really sure what happened there (it was always a bit of a strange and secretive story) …but I do remember the nights he came over to talk until the light of dawn, the countless times he got drunk and fell asleep on our couch, the vast amount of kilos he shed, and the many tears he cried for her.

And then a few months later, out of the blue she was back into his life, and within two weeks she moved in with him…and things just fast forwarded from there; new car, new bed, new joined bank account, and within 3 months….a new baby on the way.

To be quite honest, after so many years of rivalry, harsh blows and degrading insults, secretly I always thought he did it just to spite my husband, and prove that he was better. To attest that he was not gay (as my husband had so many times teased him) and that he too could find love. It felt as though he just needed to show that he could be first. He had married first and would give his parents their first grandchild. He had won the race!

But when he didn’t want to go for a second child immediately (cause I don’t think he had planned on the first one either, and anyway we hadn’t even had our first, so no need to hurry), rumors have it that his wife slept around with at least 15 different men while he was at work…until one day he got a phone call for an anonymous raging lover who said: “sorry mate, your wife is pregnant. It’s not from me, but I also know it’s not from you”.

I guess you can see how that screws up a person (not that he wasn’t just a little bit screwed up to begin with) and well at that point he realized that not only was the second child definitely not his but maybe even the first child wasn’t either. Nevertheless the idiot did not initiate a divorce but with his hand forced the divorce went quite quick as he  agreed to give everything and was left with nothing but a huge debt, a large alimony sum to pay, and a broken heart. And since until today he is still in love with his first wife, he never did do a DNA test for that child. Maybe it’s his way of still having a bond to her.

It was only 3 months after the divorce was finalized, though still depressed and broken-hearted the idiot just like a puppet was manipulated to take in a new girl into his life. One which not unlike the first would lie and deceive, use and abuse him at her disposal, chew him up and spit him out.

Uninvited

Whenever you break up with someone, you don’t just break up with one person. You break up with their family their friends and their dog.  It’s inevitable, sad and annoying. Now not only have you lost your other half, you lost lots of other pieces of you as well.

So now I have an ex-husband, ex-friends, and an ex-life I need to get over. OK, I lost a cat rather than a dog, and I can’t say it’s such a big loss to lose my husband’s family. But still for 10 years they were my “in-laws”.

After all when it comes to choosing sides, my friends and family chose mine, so its logical that out of loyalty, his friends and family would choose his (even though he screwed up). I mean no one can really stay neutral in such a breakup as this. It’s like saying you’re pro Palestine but also pro-Israel. That just doesn’t work.

Suddenly you are no longer invited to family events. On your birthday you no longer get phonecalls and cards, and the Christmas cards this year never arrived (must still be lost in the mail)…I have to say that since I wasn’t the one who had an affair; I never really got evil looks from his friends or family. But I remember the wound I felt in my heart when before we even officially decided to divorce, I was sitting at his mother’s house and noticed that she had already taken my picture off the wall. The Bitch! And I remember the twist of the knife when his father decided not to invite me to a family gathering. I had been officially uninvited. I felt rejected and alienated. I no longer had a family to rely on.

I knew then that from that moment on I was no longer welcome. I would no longer host family events, would no longer bake cakes, or buy birthday presents. I was no longer part of his family, or his life. The “we” that once was had become an “I”!