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The lightbulb moment.
Nov. 13th, 2012 08:17 pmSo, every once in a while, I check out shrink4men.com. Something I see time and again is a guy chiming in on the ‘comments’ section, saying things like “My wife/girlfriend screams at me, spits at me, throws things at me, slaps me, breaks my stuff, (etc etc) should I get out?”…the answer, of course, being, “effing DUH, dude,” but then hindsight and memory kick in and I realize that it’s not always that simple; there are kids involved, there’s property, there’s pets, not to mention it was a long slippery slope from the first day they fell in love to the night she kept him up all night crying and screaming at him and finally to the day she started slapping him around and stomping on his iphone. And he still loves her. And he thinks if he just finds the perfect thing to do/say/be, she won't do it again and she will love him again the way she did during the great times when they first got together.
It seems so insane, but there’s such a gradual progression to that point of insanity, you literally do not notice, or you have somehow managed to hone your powers of denial to apply a thick coat of “it’s not so bad”…
Here’s where the light bulb went off for me. You know that old saying about how “if someone doesn’t treat the waiter nice, s/he’s not a nice person”? In my relationship with fungus_finger, I came to finally see that my ex was much nicer and more considerate to waitstaff than he was to me or my family.
And then there came a realization that if I was just meeting this man today, and this was our first date, there is NO WAY in HELL that I would tolerate being treated the way he had gradually come to treat me. I would have no place in my life, ATALL, PERIOD, for such a rude, slovenly stranger. So why the heck was I putting up with being treated that way by someone with whom I’d chosen to make a lifetime commitment and I thought had made a similar commitment to me??? Did I really want to spend the rest of my life being ignored, belittled, verbally assaulted, physically intimidated, picking up his messes, paying his bills, surrounded by his garbage, cooking and cleaning and functioning as not much more than a human Fleshlight? NO. And not just NO, but HELL FUCKING NO!
Sometimes all it takes is a fresh look at something to finally see it for what it is. Would you accept the way your partner treats you if they were a stranger on the street or a person on a first date? Would you feel comfortable if a dear friend was being treated the way your SO treats you? If the answer is no, it may be time to make a plan, get safe, and get that person GONE from your life.
It seems so insane, but there’s such a gradual progression to that point of insanity, you literally do not notice, or you have somehow managed to hone your powers of denial to apply a thick coat of “it’s not so bad”…
Here’s where the light bulb went off for me. You know that old saying about how “if someone doesn’t treat the waiter nice, s/he’s not a nice person”? In my relationship with fungus_finger, I came to finally see that my ex was much nicer and more considerate to waitstaff than he was to me or my family.
And then there came a realization that if I was just meeting this man today, and this was our first date, there is NO WAY in HELL that I would tolerate being treated the way he had gradually come to treat me. I would have no place in my life, ATALL, PERIOD, for such a rude, slovenly stranger. So why the heck was I putting up with being treated that way by someone with whom I’d chosen to make a lifetime commitment and I thought had made a similar commitment to me??? Did I really want to spend the rest of my life being ignored, belittled, verbally assaulted, physically intimidated, picking up his messes, paying his bills, surrounded by his garbage, cooking and cleaning and functioning as not much more than a human Fleshlight? NO. And not just NO, but HELL FUCKING NO!
Sometimes all it takes is a fresh look at something to finally see it for what it is. Would you accept the way your partner treats you if they were a stranger on the street or a person on a first date? Would you feel comfortable if a dear friend was being treated the way your SO treats you? If the answer is no, it may be time to make a plan, get safe, and get that person GONE from your life.
