My husband told me a week ago in response to my announced surprise that every dollar I’d put in my wallet at the start of the pandemic was still there, that he wasn’t going to disagree with me any more. Huh? I had to think about this one. He, my husband, has always thought that I spent too much money. But wasn’t I saying that I hadn’t spent any money, or had spent far less than I would normally have spent in the last eight months?
He went on to say that he wasn’t going to disagree about what we watched on television, or whether I had the couch reupholstered. I scratched my head. Huh, again. Then I remembered a strange conversation I’d had with my mother in the parking lot of a discount shopping mall in suburban Washington D.C perhaps 30 years ago.
She said she thought she needed a therapist. This was the last thing I expected to hear from my mother — the most intentionally unself-aware woman I have ever met. “Why?” I queried in dumbfounded surprise.
She said “Your father won’t fight with me any more. And I don’t think he loves me if he won’t fight with me.”
“Ah,” I said. I understood. My brothers and I had called my parents the Bickersons for as long as I’d been alive. I would shorten our family visits, and later my solo visits as an adult just to limit my exposure to their disagreements — about almost everything. It was, for certain, the way they “got along.”
So, for whatever reason, and I suspect age and five heart attacks here, my dad had run out of gas in the fighting department. My mom, on the other hand, had so gotten into this groove for so many years (he died a year after they celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary), that to NOT fight meant that dad didn’t care about her.
Even after his announcement, and his resolve or lack of energy, she would try to start their old way of interaction. I can remember my dad’s last hospitalization, when I arrived in Baltimore at University Hospital, my mom stood up when I entered the room and said she needed to get back to her life, and she left us. She was mean. But I think I now understand why and it makes me enormously sad.
She couldn’t change the way she had been with him, and she’d had plenty of reasons along the way to be mad at him. He smoked too much. He drank too much. He got fired after very publicly telling his boss off. He was a good man who had his share of bad behavior. And when my father would engage with her in their constant bickering, he was engaged with her and she liked that part.
I had a rush of empathy when I realized that my own husband’s announcement had somewhat the same effect as my father’s announcement had. I don’t think we fight constantly as they did, but we have had our share of battles. My daughter thinks my relationship with my husband is very much like that of my mom and dad. If so, I’ve at least partly internalized the “if he cares he’ll fight” message.
My mom wanted my dad to show that he loved her. She believed in that love when he’d fight with her. I understand that now in a way I didn’t at all when I was 45 and we had the parking lot discussion.
I don’t want to fight with my husband. But I do want to know that he loves me. Time to try some new things.
