A Dirty Little Secret...

Things improved with Peter after he supported me in erecting boundaries with his mother. I still look back and wonder why I stayed throughout that first year, when he was gaslighting me and condoning his mother's overbearing behaviour. I think that I was so exhausted that I had no energy to leave him and it's amazing how you can be living a totally different life than the life people believe you're living. If only someone had realised that I needed rescuing and helped me get out, but nobody could have known the intricacies of our lives like we did. 

On the face(book) of it, we were all smiles, our baby was beautiful and thriving, we went on plenty of days out (Peter likes to be busy) and we all looked well. 

People would tell me how lucky I was to be with a man like Peter:

"If I was your age again, I'd have definitely married a Peter."

"He adores you."

"He's such a family man."

"He's changed so much since being with you; you've made him a man- a gentleman!"

"He'd do anything for anyone."

"He's got a heart of gold." 

I believed that I was the bad guy for a long time; constantly thinking negatively of Peter when everyone else thought he was great! What I didn't realise was that Peter was great (towards everyone else), at home, he was able to be himself. He wasn't horrible to me, he didn't shout at me, he didn't control me outwardly, he just treated me with apathy, disinterest and took my energy, my thoughts and my needs all greatly, massively for granted. It was demoralising. I felt like a mere possession, a cleaner and a live-in nanny to his child.

I suspect that Peter also has ADHD and when I returned to work from maternity leave, I found myself unable to share a car with him to and from work. In his anxiety about going to work/thinking about work, he used to do what his mother did and talk at me all the way there. I never have been a morning person and always enjoyed collecting my thoughts on the way to work pre-Peter, but he was the opposite. Every thought needed a forum and sometimes there were streams of monotonous questions... 

"Who do you think wrote this song...?"

"What year do you think this song was released...?"

"What work have you got on today...?"

"What are you going to have for lunch..?"

And lots of "time" questions.

"What time is your meeting?"

"What time is your mum visiting?"

"What time is your fitness class?"

Our drive to work was 15-20 minutes long and one morning, I counted 17 questions. All before 8am. 

And it was this nervousness coming out of him as he fidgeted in his seat whilst driving erratically through windy country lanes. I used to arrive at work exhausted and sit silently working for the first hour or two. Being around Peter in the mornings always lowered my mood.

When I told a few people at work about Peter's incessant talking, nobody believed me, not quiet Peter. She's got it wrong. 

I spoke to my counsellor about it at the time, as I needed counselling to enable me to be with Peter, I always have. She told me to stop car sharing with him. Take both cars to work. Can you imagine the looks from our work colleagues when we started arriving to work in separate cars? But I was learning to give space to my needs and learning that other people's opinions just didn't matter. The social group we had been part of in the beginning had outed me by this point anyway. There was nothing to lose. 

When I spend long periods of time in Peter's company, like on holidays, I often come home a shadow of my usual self. I usually feel a sense of shame at having told Peter off, like a child, for not parenting safely, for leaving all the organisation to me, for doing things I've asked him not do, over and over again. 

I find myself unable to connect with others, knowing I'm not being my authentic self when I speak of our family unit and my relationship with Peter. I use the collective pronoun "we" during exchanges about family plans and ambitions, knowing full well that really, he's just a tag along. People assume that we share a bed, have sex, that we're intimately involved with each other and yet the relationship I have with Peter is not much different than the one he has with his sister.

But then friends will see Peter being a practical, hands on parent, they hear that he vacuums our house every weekend, gives the children breakfast before school,  that he can cook and even clean the bathroom. And because often, the bar is low where men are concerned, Peter really is "practically perfect" and yet, he is not mentally, actively involved in our lives at all. He is following years of routine which I've laid out before him, like his manager. 

Nobody would think that I have to reason with him the way we reason with our children, that I've learned to communicate every single miniscule expectation, that sometimes, I even wonder if he's changed his underwear or brushed his teeth. Most people don't know that we don't say "I love you."

If I find forums for verbalising my struggles online, people like me are often referred to as "ableist," the neurotypical partner does not deserve a voice. Our struggles are gaslighted away. We learn to dig our troubles deeper, we feel shame at our ableist thinking, for not being more understanding, for not meeting his needs better.

 Most people don't realise that the reason we're together is because not to be, would mean leaving him with our children for prolonged periods of time and I am scared for their health, safety and wellbeing based on his previous actions, or neglect. 

But when he's "so hands on" to the outside world, it seems the truth, my truth has to be kept inside, like a secret, because who'd believe me?