The Tyranny of Togetherness

Before I did any reading about control and verbal abuse, I came up with a term for one pattern in this relationship: the tyranny of togetherness. In this pattern, my partner often expresses unhappiness with my desire or need to do some “fun” activities alone.

One example is my former habit of taking exercise in the pre-dawn hours. This is something I started doing in high school, when I was active in bicycle racing and would do hill-climb training rides before school. I continued with the morning rides until my mid-30s, when I switched to morning hikes after a serious bicycle accident. I was doing morning hikes and walks and bike rides on a nearly daily basis for decades, up until the start of this current relationship.

We now live adjacent to a near-wilderness with dozens of trails, but when I express a desire to walk these trails, she objects strongly, saying she’s (a) bored with the familiar trails and (b) wants to walk some new trails with me somewhere else, which inevitably requires a drive in the car.

I get a similar unhappy reaction when I talk about doing other things that I would find enjoyable but about which she is only lukewarm (e.g., classical music concerts). This unhappiness seems to be saying: “It’s not right for you to do things on your own. We should be doing as many things together as possible. That’s the sign of a good relationship.”

On the other hand, she enjoys doing a number of outdoor activities that I have tried, but failed, to like. I encourage her to do these activities with friends or on her own, which she does, sometimes unhappily. I can understand the desire to share something fun with a partner, but I feel pressured by her unhappiness, and this pressure is strictly one-way. It’s another example of what I think of as a double standard in this relationship.

The result is that for nearly ten years I have abandoned my daily pre-dawn walks to avoid upsetting her. But in the last month, I’ve experimented with bringing back those walks. At first I did them in dark of the pre-dawn hours before she woke up. I’d go out for a half hour or forty five minutes, and most of the time she would still be asleep when I got back, so there was no unpleasant reaction. Now that the dawn is about as early as it gets in the year, I’m less likely to get away with doing the walks without her noticing, so I’ve gotten bolder with saying: “I’m going out for a short walk, back soon”, to see what the reaction will be.

So far it’s not been too bad. I still sometimes get the “Maybe I should come along too” reaction, but I’m trying hard not to cave in. I hope this experiment in re-establishing some independence will work in the long term. It seems to be working now because she seems secure and happy with our relationship. I’m not so sure it will work during those tense periods that I call her “hypercritical mode”. We shall see.