My husband is a very smart guy. We’re both intelligent, but I think in many areas he has more potential and ability than I do. And for years, I let that cause me to doubt m own perceptions, thoughts, feelings, etc. I thought, “Well, he’s such a smart guy, and I could be remembering that incorrectly, so...”
If I had feelings about something, I let his opinions about my feelings cause me to doubt the validity of my feelings. Of my experience.
And for so long, I let the disparity (of who he was during the hyperfocus stage of our relationship vs the guy he’s been for almost 20 years) confuse and cloud things more. I thought that who he was during the hyperfocus stage was who he was. But this guy, the guy I’ve experienced every day for 20 years, THIS GUY is who he is.
FINALLY, though I’m clearly slow to see things, I’m realizing that I do know a lot of things. I’m starting to trust my gut on things and stop believing him, thinking that I’m the one who is forgetting.
Because I’m not!! I’m finally putting the pieces together. Duh, if I was the one with the problem, then how did I manage to run our entire life, raise the kids, keep all the bits from flying off in the chaos???
I’m seeing that I wasn’t wrong to have feelings. I wasn’t being needy or clingy. My thinking isn’t irrational. It’s that he sees the world in black and white. And since his opinion must be the right one, clearly everyone else (especially the wife) is wrong or misguided or stupid. He will accuse others of not having an open mind, when in reality, it’s that they disagreed with him.
I’m tired of being corrected with an all-knowing voice, and internally backing off thinking I must be wrong, only to find out he was wrong again, AND that I was actually the one who had it right. I have no interest in becoming what he is, which would create a fight, naturally. (Oh, how he hates being disagreed with!! I’m sometimes not even able to disagree peacefully. It infuriates him. I think he wants a “yes” man.) No, instead, I’m going to start believing and trusting my own intellect more. Trust my gut more. Not let him use his “smarts” to distort things for me anymore. I’m going to keep my balanced view that I don’t know everything and that I can be wrong and sometimes am wrong. But I will stop discounting my feelings, my intuition, my capabilities in the face of his differing ones.
And if he doesn’t like being wrong when he is (as long as I’m polite and kind), then that IS truly HIS problem.
I could have written this.....
Submitted by rosey22 on
We have been married 27 years and I have always been wrong, have spent my life not understanding why I was always wrong, every single time. Finally, I am seeing the light, seeing things for what they are. He is not the person I married, like you said, that was his ultra-focused phase and it was amazing. That guy is mostly gone. It's like being married to a child, we are both intelligent, but he doesn't see that he is wrong, uncaring, selfish, etc... Things are starting to change as I have come to the realization that I am right, I can think for myself and make decisions. I love him, but am very frustrated by his lack of motivation to do anything for me. So, I have been trying to dig myself out of this hole!
It's like...
Submitted by Brindle on
I think of this him, this years-later him, that is so hard to live with and hardly resembles that hyper-focus guy as like a second husband. The first him is gone. Now I'm with fella number two.
Perfectly said..
Submitted by Goldilox73 on
I just saw this post. I’ve been saying for YEARS that my H is like Jekyl and Hyde. I married Jekyl, but ended up with Hyde. When he’s angry, Jekyl goes away—completely. That loving, attentive, respectful guy I married literally leaves the building and is replaced by an ugly person who yells, is mean, and has to be RIGHT about everything. It is strangely comforting to know others have had this experience of marrying guy A but living with guy B.