Sick To Death of Each Other
We finally admitted it today, but it doesn’t mean what you think it does
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It’s been a long time coming. After months of fighting and bickering, after all the nagging and name calling, we finally admitted that we are tired of each other and sick of trying to pretend.
We’d just scored a bag of McDonalds, which seems to be the only outside food available to us in the lockdown, and I was looking for a place to park in the mall parking lot. The kids were chattering happily in the back of the car. The wife and I were anticipating the calories, so for once, we weren’t arguing.
Out of the blue, she says, “You know, I am pretty sick of you.” There was no malice behind the words, just the plain truth spoken in a quiet moment of contemplation.
“Yeah, I can’t stand you either.” The ease with which I said it surprised me, and instead of sparking a fight, we just thought about what we had said.
From the backseat, my daughter says, “You guys are rude!” And we all laughed. Things had been so tense lately, and it felt good letting a little steam escape.
It’s no secret that my wife and I are going through a rough patch. She has been nagging and raging at me for months now, partly from the pressure of the pandemic, and partly because of how I am, I admit. But, I am to the point now where instead of accepting the punishment quietly, I fight back. We aren’t affectionate to one another, we don’t kiss, and If I didn’t reach out a caress her arm or hold her hand it the car, we would never touch.
October 18th, 2021 marks our tenth year of marriage. Our courtship was a little different from the normal. We met in March of 2011 on an internet dating site and I was smitten immediately. I hadn’t met a single person in my life who I had ever become so close to in such a short period of time.
We video-chatted every day, and within a few weeks I had told her I loved her, and a few weeks after that I asked her to marry me. In my defense, I had been lonely and mentally ill for a long time, and was unused to getting so much attention.
I loved the way it felt to be important to someone else.
She said she loved me too, but I knew the score. I was 18 years her senior and weighed 3 times what she did. I knew she needed me and wanted me, and I was willing to accept that in place of love because I felt, given time, she would come to love me in the way I wanted.
By the time July 2011 rolled around, I had decided I would uproot my life and move to the Philippines. I spent the next few months pairing down my life until I only had a few suitcases left. Nothing was going to stop me from going to the Philippines, not even the death of my brother a week before I was to leave in September 2011.
But, I still went because in the conversations with my brother before he died, he made it clear he liked the person I had become because of Flora, and he would have wanted me to go no matter what.
So I did with a heavy heart.
I left the only home I had ever known to be with a woman who may or may not ever love me. I left because I I had gotten to know the person Flora was and knew she would never hurt me.
I was right.
Even though she had no clue how to deal with my mental illness and what to do with a man who spent so much time sick in bed, she put up with my moods and darkness, my suicidal ideation and the realization that her new husband talked to the voices that spoke to him in the dark.
But, she was no angel either, She was quick to anger, and often took it out on me. As we would find out over the years, she had an anxiety disorder she had been hiding from everyone, and her anxiety surfaced as malice towards me because we spent literally ever waking moment together.
And during those early years, even though times were tough, I think she started to love me a little as well. It may not have been the Pretty in Pink/John Hughes type of love I wanted, but it was love, and I embraced it with all my heart.
She nagged incessantly, because she was stretched thin and wanted help. But the combination of my worsening mental state, her nagging, and our fighting caused me to try to kill myself. But three handfuls of pills couldn’t even kill the most stubborn man on earth, and she was left with the realization that she didn’t want to lose me, but she would never trust me again.
The attempt was the start of improvement for me, but for her, it saw the worsening of her anxiety and a whole slew of mixed feelings about me.
The other thing that was a sticking point for her was that I was and will always be a dilettante, and I was constantly chasing one dream or another. My dreams would take me back across the ocean for months as a time, leaving her to figure out life on her own.
It was always a business, or a website, or some scheme that would make me rich. And now, all these years later, when I do need to go back to the States for valid reasons, she only remembers the sting of being left behind to her own devices.
She is afraid I will leave her for good, even though that is the last thing on my mind.
So there is a lot mixed up between us, but also a lot we have been honest about and talked out over the years. She told me how she couldn’t trust me after the attempt, and even though it wasn’t about her, how much it affected her.
She told me of all the years wanting to go America, and I would leave her here in the Philippines with promises to being her over. It never happened because of money and how I was constantly changing my mind.
She is now to the point that she doesn’t ask or want anything from me, and doesn’t expect anything, even though I think she still wants to move to the US.
I hope to give her that wish soon.
It’s been ten years of promises and poverty, of expectations not been met and hurt feelings.
It has been at times abusive.
But above it all, at least from my side, there has always been love. Despite all the anger and hurt feelings I can truly say I love her more than anyone in the world. There is no one else I want to wake up next to, and no one else I would rather spend my days with.
I am attracted to her in a way that some may call obsessive, even though I am not affectionate and almost asexual in my desires. She is the mother to my children, and the only person who has ben there for me every day for the past ten years.
Despite the anger and nagging, there is no one I want to spend my days with.
She has told me as much about how she feels for me. She has grown to love me too over the years and care for me in a way that she reserves for only me. As much as she nags, she only wants goof things for us and our relationship.
At least that is what I believe and she gives me no reason to doubt her.
So, when we both honestly admit that we are sick of one another, it must mean that it’s over for us, right?
Not at all.
I see us being together for the rest of our lives, and as we work out some of the issues like poverty and disappointment, our relationship will only get better. The one thing we do have going for us is honestly, and the fact that we can tell each other, “Hey, I love you, but I am fucking sick of your face!” and still want to spend our future together says a lot.
Neither one of us wants someone else or another relationship. There is only one woman I am attracted to, and she has always said that if she did want to get involved with someone else, I would be the first to know. And truthfully, if she did want someone else, I could still see her being an important part of my life.
I love her and she loves me, but we have gotten to the point where we need to take a break. We need to add enough space so that we can both see that there is a bond underneath everything that our marriage rests on.
I don’t want anyone else, and in my future, I see her there right beside me, in good and bad.
So we are taking a break from one another, but we will probably still Zoom every day when I talk to my children. And I may be on the other side of the world, but my thoughts will not be far from them.
We may be sick of each other now, but we have the rest of our lives together to figure that out.
Wish us luck.
