More On Balance
I wanted to say more about balance in this relationship, especially when tensions are high and I’m on the receiving end of a continual string of verbal zingers. These are the times when many things seem out of balance.
One of the classic signs of a verbally abusive relationship is that the person receiving the abuse does most, if not all, of the apologizing. I would say that in my current relationship, I’m doing about 99% of the apologizing. Even after the book-throwing incident, the closest I got to an apology was this, two months later: “We both acted badly that night.” I have never heard anything like, “I’m sorry I threatened you, and yelled at you, and damaged your books, and called you names, and prevented you from sleeping for hours on end.”
Another imbalance in those bad times (and even in better times) is related to affection. In the aftermath of that incident, I was feeling pretty shaky and traumatized, and I was desperate from some reassurance. So I tried to reconnect with some affection to gain that reassurance: simple things like hugs and gentle touches (not sex – more on that later). But I received pretty much nothing in return for months. I felt lonely and rejected, on top of the trauma.
Another imbalance in this relationship is related to control, and is present not just when things are going badly. I find that in this relationship, my life is controlled to a much greater detail than I’ve ever experienced in the past. I see this especially in areas like food, time away from home, rules about household management, and so forth:
My food preferences are often criticized: she will maintain that she’s not criticizing, but will comment pointedly on them. The result is that I often go for months without some of my favorite foods. We’re talking about things like bulk peanuts, not junk food.
My time away from home is closely observed. I spend about two hours a week in a neighboring town doing volunteer work, and if I’m even an hour late I’ll get comments about how worried she was about me. I don’t think this is truly worry about my safety; it sounds more like worry about my freedom from her control. The result is that I don’t spend any time with friends on my own any more; I pretty much have no local friends now that I can talk to about personal matters; and don’t I even use the telephone to talk to friends. Email is about the only form of communication I have left that isn’t monitored. The other side of this imbalance is that she spends hours on the phone talking to friends, or visiting them, or having friends come to visit.
The rules about how I’m supposed to live in this house are numerous and often confusing or contradictory. I try to remember them all, but sometimes I make mistakes or forget the rules, and this often results in angry words, usually along the lines of “you don’t listen to me!”. About the only “rule” I have instituted is one about not being disturbed when I’m practicing the piano. But she often waits for pauses in the music (as, for example, when I’m writing something down or thinking) so that she can interrupt me. So this isn’t really a rule. The result is that I feel more like a guest (and sometimes an unwelcome one) in this house rather than an equal partner and co-owner.
Speaking of the house, looking at the square footage each person has as their own space is another sign of imbalance. My personal area is about 150 square feet, much of which is occupied by a large grand piano, and some of which is a hallway that I can’t use. By comparison, she uses the entire upstairs and a good chunk of the downstairs for her projects – in total, probably about four times the area of my own space. Even in our bedroom closet, which has open shelves and no dividers, her items take up about 3/4 of the available space, and I find my own space is being squeezed down even smaller. All this is, in itself, is not a problem, since I need less space in general. What I find hard is having the way I use my very small space criticized. Because I have little room to store my personal effects and projects, I have taken to storing these things in boxes under the piano. But she has repeatedly expressed annoyance at the seeing those boxes there. The result is that I have had to move most of those boxes to the basement or a storage building, leaving the space under the piano nearly empty. The irony is that most of what is under the piano now is some of her own project material.
I don’t mean to sound petty in recounting all of these details. I want readers to understand that looking at relationship imbalances can be a good way to judge the quality of that relationship.