A Slow Descent

The breakup of my marriage with Lee was not sudden or abruptly explosive. It’s not as though I caught him cheating with another woman. We didn’t go financially bankrupt. Lee was not in trouble with the law, nor was he ever physically abusive. The marriage did not end because of some catastrophic, catalytic event.

My relationship with Lee fell apart like a poorly built sandcastle, one grain of sand at a time.

The first sign of trouble came three weeks after we were married. One day Lee came home from work sullen and silent, stubbornly refusing to talk when I asked him what was wrong. I offered a reassuring hug, which he promptly rejected. Lee grew more agitated the more I tried to draw him out.  In short, I was completely shut out from Lee’s little world.

This was the first time I ever saw Lee look at me with contempt, and the effect was utterly devastating. At first I thought it was me. Perhaps I had inadvertently done or said something hurtful or offensive. Hours passed as I tried to figure it out on my own. I even tried asking Lee, but all he did was glare and keep his silence.

Lee’s cold-shoulder silent treatment lasted for 3 days.

I reached my emotional breaking point on the third day, in the middle of our church service. The sermon ended and I burst into a loud cacophony of tearful apologies.

“I don’t know what I did to make you angry, but I’m sorry. If you’ll just tell me what I did wrong, I’ll try to change. Please stop punishing me. It hurts too much.”

Perhaps Lee felt compassion for me, or maybe he was just embarrassed because we were still in a public place. Either way, the spell was lifted and Lee magically began speaking again. He explained away his behavior, said he’d been angry with himself over something and didn’t want to worry me. Looking back I suppose we should have had a long conversation about what had happened. I was so relieved when it was over that I chose to let it go.

I don’t mean to make Lee sound disturbed or unstable. I’m not perfect either, and I certainly have my own share of emotional idiosyncrasies. I simply tell this story because Lee’s silent treatments became a frequent occurrence in the two years we were married.

Lee did not like to acknowledge problems in our relationship. If I brought up problems or tried to discuss issues in our marriage, I was inevitably punished with the silent treatment.

The silence felt like tiny shards of glass lodged deep into the core of my spirit. With the silence came demoralizing shame, and feelings of intense inadequacy. In marriage I handed the most vulnerable parts of myself to Lee, trusting he would handle them gently. The silence hurt me on a profoundly intimate level because it was the intentional exploitation of my deepest needs. Relationships require attention and love to survive. Lee’s silence, for me, was the cold withdrawal of both. Rejection of the highest kind.

Eventually the silence would break me. Eventually my lips would erupt with desperate pleas and frantic apologies.

I’m sorry I tried to talk about our problems. I’m sorry that I said things aren’t 100% perfect between us. You were right, I was wrong. Please love me again.

I learned that back-peddling was the fastest way to get Lee talking again, never mind the fact that giving in for the sake of peace made me feel helpless and small.

I wish I could tell you that things gradually improved.

Instead, the multitude of issues in our marriage festered like a boil because Lee refused to talk about them. Lee played computer games 8+ hours per day and we did not have quality time as a couple. We did not work on daily tasks together as a team. We didn’t do much of anything together, to be honest. The intimacy and trust between us died down to ashes, and soon we lived more like roommates than lovers.

Lee’s rising ambivalence toward the LDS church was the final spike that drove us apart. Perhaps Lee was always spiritually indifferent and I never saw it, or maybe he developed apathetic attitudes towards the church after we were married. I will really never know.

I won’t tell you the specific things he did (and didn’t do) with regards to the LDS faith, because Lee’s religious life is between him and God. Here is what I can tell you: the day Lee expressed his true feelings about spirituality and the LDS church was the day I fully realized that an error had been made.

I was finally able to admit that marrying Lee was a huge, terrible mistake.

I wanted a relationship firmly rooted in a mutual love for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I wanted my children to have a father who could provide spiritual leadership and guidance. I wanted a marriage that would grow deep and strong. I imagined striving for eternal life with my eternal companion.

I realized too late that Lee did not share any of these goals. Depression settled over me like an oppressive cloud. I gained a considerable amount of weight. I cut my hair. I also started to experience a strange physical pain in my chest area, dull at first and then sharp and insistent. It came and went regularly, intense and frightening, almost as though my body was aware of my marital troubles.

Some days I thought the pain was just a physical manifestation of my hushed resentment towards Lee. Other days I was slightly more optimistic. I met twice with my church Bishop, hoping he might have some words of wisdom for me. Even with all its crushing disappointments, I still did not want my marriage to fail.

Here is what I learned: it takes TWO people to make a marriage and it takes TWO people to save it. I was not able to keep the train from crashing on my own.

Believe me, I tried.