lie no. 41 | 05.13.20
Yesterday I attended a virtual writing workshop—led by the very same psychologist as the one in upstate New York last year.
A sample prompt: “What’s one true thing you know for sure?”
My response: “Marriage is hard.”
That was my one true thing. It was a bit confusing, to be honest, as we are in a really good place at the moment. Luckily I still had six and a half minutes left to dig in a bit.
“No one hands you a manual at your wedding, there are no basic operating instructions. For many of us, it comes before we’ve realized we’ve been following a set of instructions for our own lives that we played no part in writing, that we don’t yet know we can edit them, or throw out completely and begin again.”
I noticed my mind wander back to the day I got back from upstate New York last spring. Matt hadn’t caught up yet, he didn’t yet understand I’d been in group therapy all weekend. He still thought I’d been at a writing workshop, whatever that looked like in his mind.
So, in hindsight only of course, he wasn’t ready for what followed when he asked me how it went. He wasn’t quite ready for me to whip out my notebook and tell him all about the psychology of relationships—with ourselves and others. He wasn’t ready to learn about the Four Horsemen of the Relationship Apocalypse—criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling—that I’d spent the weekend learning. He wasn’t ready for the quadrant matrix of criticism I made and was about to drop on him.
Just as I wasn’t ready to notice the notation I myself had written under said matrix as I practically whipped out a PowerPoint presentation on how to fix our relationship: “this is all equally important in our relationships with ourselves.”
And just like that the pendulum of my marriage swung back toward a bad place. Here’s something I wrote last May:
“I’ve always thought of marriage as this third person. Marriage: The threesome everyone fantasizes about, but no one ever really knows what they’re signing up for.
“Sometimes you both wish your third wheel would disappear. Sometimes you both wonder what you ever did without it.
“Once married, we’re no longer making decisions for ourselves alone. We have to consider how it affects us, how it affects our partner and how it affects the marriage.
“No one talks about this. Or maybe I never listened.
“People always ask newlyweds if it feels different after you get married. And when people ask, you laugh and say of course not, especially if you already lived together. Acting as if it’s not slightly disappointing when it doesn’t feel different. Threesomes rarely deliver. Like waking up on your thirtieth birthday, disappointed to realize that best decade of your life you’ve been hearing about doesn’t follow the same calendar as you.
“What we should say when asked this, but never do, is that it’s fucking weird having this new, third person in your life, in your relationship. Of course you wanted it—one of you literally asked for it and the other said yes.
“Sometimes all you want is for it to be just the two of you again. But we never say that, because it’s not what people want to hear.”
Over lunch with Matt after my workshop yesterday—one of my favorite luxuries of this new reality—I warned him I was writing about marriage.
“Oh boy,” he said, followed by, “woah,” when I read him the following from my notes last year.
“If Sammy [our dog] wasn’t well, we’d both become hyper observant of her every move, every breath. We’d cancel plans. We’d make her our top priority. So why, when that other roommate of ours, Marriage, isn’t well, do we avoid eye contact, walk on egg shells so as not to disturb her in the hallway? Why do we make plans to avoid seeing Marriage that way? Why do we think if we ignore it, whatever is ailing Marriage, it will take care of itself?”
(His only request was that I use this photo.)
The difference between paradox and paradise is only a few letters so I also reminded him of why I’d gone into that weekend in upstate New York feeling so light, lighter than I’d felt in months.
The washing machine.
Last spring, after getting our dryer serviced several times over the course of a couple weeks, our washing machine decided to call it quits with no warning. The day the new one was to be installed the delivery men showed up and told us we were on our own with the installation, something about the liability of a stacked washer/dryer.
Matt and I looked at each other, then down at then washing machine in our living room, with an intensity I’ll never forget. I think we both knew there was more on the line—this was just the kind of thing that could break us, could end disastrously, for both our home and our marriage.
Or, it could save us. Helluva plot twist that would be! Fast forward several hours and one trip to the hardware store later, we did it. We installed a motherfucking washing machine. And we’d done it together, alone.
We—which is to say I—desperately needed the reminder we were on the same team. A weight lifted and we both felt it. We told our friends what we’d done. I‘m sure I even awkwardly told a few strangers. I didn’t care. I still take pride in it every time I throw a load in that washer. Doing laundry is like giving a high five to Marriage now.
Six months earlier I’d made a pile of laundry into a metaphor for our marriage. Now here I was doing it with the actual washing machine.
I fell in love with Matt all over again that day last spring. There was even a dance party afterward in our living room. A new first dance, if you will.
But that week after I got back from the workshop, I put our relationship through a real spin cycle. Then I left.
Like, I literally left and went to a hotel. It had little to do with proving something to Matt, I understand now. It had everything to do with proving something to me—I could leave at any time of my own free will if I wanted.
I texted a dear friend the next afternoon as I made my way back home. I didn’t want her to fix it. I didn’t want her to offer advice. I didn’t want her to tell me I was doing the right thing. I simply needed there to be a record of what I’d done.
I needed proof I could later look at to know I had it in me to not abandon myself. I can admit now it wasn’t the perfect experiment. But at the time, it was the proof I needed.
That weekend, Matt and I co-write “Lies We’ve Told Our Therapist.” Writing had become my coping mechanism so I figured it could help Marriage, too.
Miraculously, it did.
For a couple weeks.
In mid May I texted Matt on my way home (on foot) from an amazing meeting.
“I got it!! Contract ✅ Kickoff ✅!”
“Amazing!! About to get my haircut! Let’s celebrate tonight!” he replied.
“Perfect! I’m nearby so we can grab a celebratory drink next door.”
We’d had this haircut-cocktail date before.
But then he replied.
“Just a heads up, some work stuff is blowing up so I might have to be on my phone a little bit.”
I walked right past the place he was getting his hair cut. I only wanted thirty minutes, half an hour, of celebration. I wanted half an hour in the whole lot of the 24 of them to celebrate.
On the flip side, I was insanely grateful to him for being straight with me in advance, for sparing me by preparing me. Here I was simultaneously glad as hell and mad as hell he’d been honest. This was a very new space for me. This whole dichotomy. I kept walking.
I ended up getting to spend a couple hours on the phone that night with a girlfriend as we shared a virtual glass of wine.
On my walk home I was simultaneously disappointed and enormously proud of me and Matt. It felt like real progress. He knew I’d get frustrated if we went to celebrate and he’d been unable to be present. But I was still disappointed he couldn’t take a beat to choose me over work.
On my walk back home, my mother texted me.
“Want to go to Cambodia with me and Habitat in October?”
“Yup,” I replied without a thought.
This was normally the kind of thing I’d run by Matt first. But at that moment I had no desire.
When I got home that night I couldn’t wait to tell him I was going to Asia for the month of October.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “I’ve just guaranteed the Nats go to the World Series.”
Those—THOSE!—were my fighting words on May 14, 2019. The Nationals were the 4th worst team in Major League Baseball.
On May 23, 2019, Matt and I celebrated my new client and business milestone—I was pacing at 94% to all of 2018’s revenue. The next day, the Nats turned around a 19-31 season. Coincidentally, so did our relationship.