Start small. Baby steps. Easy into it.
That’s the advice everyone gives, whether they are telling someone to start something up or end something. So, since that advice seems to be pretty common, I’ll go ahead and use it. But as a starting point:
My marriage is not perfect.
For the last two years, we have been fighting a lot. Things only got really nasty in the last year. I’m not sure how things are going to turn out. I honestly don’t want to be with anyone else, and I love my husband dearly, but I am breaking the cycle that my family and friends and life in general have thrown at me.
I refuse to let people blame me for things that are not my fault. I will not put up with constantly being a scapegoat for the things that go wrong with their life. I know that we all snap sometimes, or take things out on others, but when that happens, apologize. Likewise, be mature enough to realize the real cause of what is upsetting you. All my life I have let others put me down when the problem was not me. I probably always will, to an extent But when it gets to the point where I am crying and cringing trying not to upset you, fuck that. I’m so damn sick of that.
I haven’t told but maybe one person this story, and I’ve never shared my thoughts on it. But there was about a month long period where I was not allowed to change the station in the car. We left it on one station and neither of us were able to change it, so that it would be fair. That’s not the bad part. It’s fair enough.
But what prompted it was because I was listening to a song, and turned it up two notches because I really liked it. He promptly turned it down three. When I said why, he said “I will always turn it down one more than you turned it up”. I wanted to smack him so much. That is the sign of an abuser. And I will NOT be controlled like that. That is something that my brothers, my mother, hell, even some of the friends I’ve had would do. That is UNACCEPTABLE.
And if that causes me to lose my husband, then so be it.
And if he and I work it out, then we will be so much stronger because of it.
I told him I hold him to a high standard than my family, and therefore it hurts more when he fails.
I am a damned good woman. And I only deserve to be happy with my equal, a damned good man. And if that happens to be my husband, then I would be the happiest person in the world.
I don’t know what 2011 holds in store for me. I don’t know what changes–good or bad–the year of the Dragon will bring. But I am going to have no regrets, and I will do right by my children.
