LITMIR.BIZ

      Looking back at my history of failed relationships, I realized that I’ve always been able to remember them in a way where I come off as the wronged-party—the good one. I had my justifications: a peeping Tom neighbor, a relative’s roaming hands, hundreds of attempts to conquer me sexually with few attempts to know me. A male boss, no, there were more than one, made lascivious advances and punished my family-supporting career when I spoiled their fun.

      Attention from husbands and boyfriends changed into a desire to possess and control me. That kind of love didn’t satisfy; instead, it smothered me until I couldn’t stand the burden of their overbearing company or until they moved on to another conquest. Eventually, I came to understand how I helped to establish those ill-fated relationships by deferring to those men. I let the volume in their voices overpower my inner voice, so that I couldn’t even recognize my own thoughts. I thought that this was how a woman found love and security.

      Historically, men have been the ones who fought for power, money, and resources. Perhaps I thought, long ago, that a man might grab some of those resources for me.

      Between and after those ill-fated relationships, I’d put myself through college, bought my own home, and advanced from nurses’ aide to director of a home health care agency. I gained professional skills that carried me beyond the parental advice I’d received that “Only ugly girls need college.” I came to see that aggression steeped in egocentricity was hard to admire and impossible to live with—perhaps as difficult to weather as my passive-aggressive bouts of compliance followed by angry revolt. Once I’d been purged of most of my coquettish impulses (not only because I’d gotten smarter, but also because I just couldn’t rely on youthful beauty because I was aging), Paul asked me out. He was a kind man—a doctor who practiced in the inner city. I had respected him for years before we began our five-year courtship. Only when I was sure that I didn’t need a man, when I owned my independence, was I able to bring a whole person to a marriage. That sounds so obvious, but I don’t think I’m the only woman who didn’t understand her own abilities while very young and attractive and while her esteem was fed by the men who were happy to pay to possess their prize. It was easy to imagine that those men who competed to care for me and who showed off their cars and muscles and wallets could offer me security. Instead of sharing power, I submitted to support roles where my voice and talents were silenced and bound. When my relationships weren’t built on the shoulders of two strong people, they crumbled.

      Paul and I do jockey for control of our lives within our marriage. I never played the demure dependent with him, so I didn’t feed his inherent tendency to dominate. And certainly, he is a man without a lot of the insecurities that create a need to subjugate another. He would, however, assume an excessive share of power in our relationship if I let him. We don’t live our lives with our heads jutting from an evenly spaced yoke; everything is not equal. I hoped that DJ’s witness to our respectful juggling of power would serve his future relationships.

      Paul often offers suggestions about how I should do things. I do listen. Then, I consider my needs, his needs, and the family’s needs. This list can not be permanently ordered; sometimes I come first; sometimes my needs come last. This is my choice. But he does not govern me anymore than I govern him. Once I placed my own needs as a priority in the relationship, I found a marriage that lasted, and our son knew a childhood with an intact family—a gift we hadn’t given Paul’s previous children nor mine.

      Paul used to say he’d like to go with me on nature hikes, canoe rides, and camping trips. He asked me to wait for him, but accommodating his work and on-call schedule usually meant the outing never happened. I resented his job while I waited and imagined the trilliums on the forest floor, cranes nesting in the marsh, barn swallows swooping and flashing their iridescent feathers in streaks of sunlight, and morning frost settling on cedars. Once I started as a den leader for Cub scouts (about the time DJ became old enough to easily travel to undeveloped settings), I began a pattern of taking DJ to natural places. I learned to let Paul know he was welcome and then to pack up a backpack and DJ and go.