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When we were courting, he was a gentleman. Handsome, adored by his friends, with hobbies and interests. He was charismatic, well-spoken, and driven. He said that the things he liked about me were my intelligence, ambition, strength, creativity... my combat boots... When we first got together, I had short hair and often wore a tie, a dress shirt, and pinstriped pants to work. We were sharing a house with friends.
Then, we moved in together. We got a television, and then a computer. He got a hobby table to paint miniatures, and to sit the computer on. When I got a computer, it sat on the floor for a long time, and I never had a place to do any of my art. I didn't really see it at the time.
We got married. He became dissatisfied with our friends and uninterested in going to do anything. His social life shrank to a biweekly roleplaying game session that rotated houses, and a weekly Warhammer game in our apartment. I would go out on the night when he had his Warhammer friends over, mostly because they were big guys who filled up the whole living room, and go to an open mic night at a local coffeehouse. That's when I first started to see a problem - if I wasn't home by the time he was done with his game, it was a big deal every time. He'd yell about 'I didn't know where you were' when I was going to the same place every week. He'd yell about it not being a real marriage if I got home after he had gone to bed. I got a pager so that he could call if he was wondering where I was on my regular Tuesday night out, but he never called it. Not once. I was supposed to call him and check in.
He was unhappy with my housekeeping. I am not a pig, but I don't clean as often as he liked. If something would go undone that he wanted done, he'd rant about it - and rant about how I didn't do it because it was a typical female thing to do. I tried to explain that I grew up in a house with a mother who had OCD and cleaned compulsively, and that sometimes my sister and I would spend hours cleaning the same room. We'd never know when we were done. She'd come in and inspect, and if something was wrong, she'd say 'Keep cleaning' but would refuse to say what it was that was wrong. Since she was a compulsive, what was wrong would often be something a normal person wouldn't see, like dust on a baseboard behind a bed, or a piece of rice stuck to the underside of a kitchen counter. Because of that, I suggested that it would be better for me to have a list of what needed done when and by whom. He refused. I was supposed to just know what he wanted done and how. My explanation got thrown back at me as an excuse, and added to the "you just don't want to do that because it's what women do" ammunition pile.
He'd watch over my shoulder when I cooked, too, criticizing when I did things differently from how he would have done them. Once, he was watching me make ice in an ice cube tray, and I got mad about that. Like I can't make ice?
He got in a car wreck. I found a safe used car, and brought him in to the auction house to see the car. I had my checkbook out, ready to pay for the car. Once he came in, the dealer wouldn't talk to me or look at me. I was pissed about that. Also, I had to insist on having my name on the title. I was paying for it, after all, out of my own money. We kept our money separate still at that point. That came back to me for years about how I insisted on having my name on his car because I had some kind of feminist chip on my shoulder.
I thought there really was something horribly wrong with me. I thought I was cheating this man out of a wife. He'd ignore me for days, plugged into EverQuest or the TV. Occasionally, we'd go to movies, or to one of a very limited set of restaurants. He'd talk to me about EQ, which I didn't play. He'd get angry if it was time to sit on the couch in front of the TV and I didn't get up from what I was doing to sit next to him. More than once, he yelled about talking during a TV show. Once, much later, he threw a fit because my friends and I were laughing out loud at a comedy.
It just kept getting worse. It was like a slow drip that never seems like much at one time, but over time, washes all the dirt out from under a pavement.
He started rewriting reality. I'd ask him to go to a nightclub, and he'd say "I'm not the sort of person who goes to nightclubs" or "The only reason to go to a nightclub is to pick up girls, and I already have one." We used to go to nightclubs together, so wtf? I got sick of the constant nitpicking over my appearance, and grew my hair. I tried to be femme to make things peaceful. I gave it hell.
We moved into a rented house with two friends for a year to save some money to buy a condo. He got laid off, and was out of work for several months. I think it was about six months. During that time, he complained about having roommates, about shoes in the living room, about "mess" and "noise". I was so far pushed down that it never occurred to me that while he was complaining about the roommates, it was the roommates who were paying rent and grocery and utility expenses, and that without them we'd both be much worse off. The same roommates who were leaving shoes in "his" living room were helping to make it possible for him to have any living room at all. The other things I took for granted at the time was his control over the money. We had a joint account by that time, but even during times when he wasn't putting anything in the joint account, he had full veto power over any spending. Why, of course that makes sense, doesn't it?
During that time, I got sick, but had to keep working as much as I could. My ankle blew out on me and I often limped or had trouble walking up the few stairs in our townhouse. He would roll his eyes at me when I would limp, and was utterly disgusted by that. Hestarted criticizing me for everything. When I'd break from the femme persona I tried to put on, dressing up and going out to karaoke with the roommates (he would never go), he was disgusted by that, too. The low point was when he criticized how I held a cigarette. A cigarette! "You hold a cigarette like a guy." I could neither walk nor sit nor even have a smoke without feeling self-conscious. Oh, and my being sick was in my head, and my ankle pain, too. Some of our mutual friends stopped coming over because they were so uncomfortable with how he was acting toward me. When I told him that other people could see how awful he was being toward me, he told me "they're your friends, they'll say anything you want them to."
He had this habit of taking off his wedding ring during arguments. After the third or fourth time, I told him that if he did that again, it was over between us. After we'd moved back into the city, into a *gorgeous*, huge, brand new, rented apartment with a view (that he could never have gotten on his own, we got it based on my income and my credit), he got even worse. Everything had to be his way. All the time. If we were out to see a movie, he'd outpace me on the sidewalk and not notice. He'd just walk off and expect to be followed.
Finally, one night, we were out with friends. I think we'd been to a movie, one of the few social activities left to us, as long as he chose the movie. He walked off down the street, and nobody followed him. He was angry about that. He'd been looking for a taxi, but nobody other than him had seen any cabs in that direction. We'd seen cabs in a different direction. He walked off again, and I headed for where I'd seen taxis. Seeing him act in his imperious I-am-the-natural-ruler-of-all-things way with my friends flipped a switch that him acting that way to me didn't. I said to my friends, "if you've ever been my friends, now is the time, follow me now." They did. We ended up walking a long way, getting a snack, riding home in a cab to an irate husband. He started going for his rings, and I walked out. I wanted a coffee. I wanted to think. I wanted a divorce.
We agreed to separate for a year and try to work things out. There were a list of things we were both going to do. He halfassed one of them and really didn't do what he was supposed to do. Not much of a surprise. We kept seeing each other twice a week for that year, and I was still falling for the same crap. I'd come over to his apartment and cook dinner, we'd watch TV, and I'd feel grateful that he gave me the pleasure of his company.
When the year was over, I started my gender transition. There was no reason not to do it any more. We still saw each other after that, and sometimes, he was physically affectionate. At other times, he'd be cold. Sometimes, he'd act "supportive" which really just meant tolerating me or not embarrassing himself in front of a friend. Other times, he'd be outright cruel. I never knew which I would get, and I felt hopeful and grateful when I would get a goodnight kiss instead of a wave.
It wasn't until I said "no more biweekly visits" that I really got my head clear, and could fully understand just how abnormal that relationship had been. In the end, he explained to me that my gender issues were the only problem we'd ever had in our marriage, that he'd been depressed because of it from the start but also that he'd been surprised by it, that he started playing EverQuest to get away from it. It made me want to cry and laugh at the same time - you can't be simultaneously surprised by something in year 5 and have known about it since year 0. It was obvious crazy logic, and it wasn't going to work this time.
I think it will take a long time to heal the damage done by this man. I have self-doubt that I didn't have before. I find myself double, triple, quadruple thinking words and actions as if to avoid arguments or insults from him, and he's living across the country without contact now. The biggest thing I have to get over is thinking that if I am not perfect, normal, fascinating, healthy, attractive, well-dressed and highly successful, I don't have the right to feel bad about not being treated well.
That was a much longer post than I'd intended to make, but it feels good to tell the entire story to a public forum. Yep, there it is. That's Sepp's story.
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