When words always fail

During a session with my therapist this week, she explained to me that Peter appears to be stuck in his own convictions. She said that this is the reason that my words always seem to fail with him and that they will likely always fail. 

Any ideas, issues or opinions which challenge Peter's stringent beliefs will be cast aside, mocked, ridiculed or completely ignored. This presents like arrogance. Perhaps it is arrogance, ignorance or possibly both. Maybe simply, a fear of being wrong. 

I will always be stuck where conversations with Peter are concerned because he is in my life forever. We have had disagreements over the welfare of the children this week and he would not listen to, empathise or take my concerns seriously. I can never walk away properly because we have children together and it feels I have a lifetime ahead of me of being unheard and ignored for the sake of blind, pig ignorance. 

I strongly believe that love is an action, a choice to commit, to listen, to empathise even if you can't understand or feel something yourself. Love is a decision to always be there and to always be on your side. Despite the mind blindness of men like Peter, I can't help thinking that a commitment of love could have been made if they had wanted to make it. These men were betraying us from the moment they made a choice to shut down on us. Once married, or where there are children involved and you are as good as married, a decision has been made to stand together as a team and to work through the inevitable challenges of life together. Turning on the other spouse as opposed to supporting them is not a marriage or a partnership. The moment a decision is made not to support the other one, we're as good as divorced. And if they emotionally divorce us so easily, then why do they hold on to us? 

I think we are commodities, possessions and little more to these men eventually. Innate mysoginy runs deep. This week, Peter sent me a link to a website about "high conflict personality disorder" to view in light of myself. I could see some elements of myself within the description so I asked my therapist what she thought having seen her for the last five years. She told me that this is the sort of thing that mysoginistic men send to women who dare to speak up about injustices or concerns. We are labelled "high conflict."

Until Peter met me, he was mostly left alone to do as he pleased. He has had very little expectation placed upon him; he has been sheltered from responsibility. And then I arrived with all of my demands for him to contribute fairly and equally to the mental, practical and emotional load of family life and I am "high conflict." He sees me challenge the childrens' school if they put them in a class separate to their friends and I am "high conflict." Or when I ask the neighbours to turn down their music on a weekday evening when it is keeping the children awake I am "high conflict." When I dare to raise a discrepancy at work, there I am being "high conflict" again, all whilst Peter sits back and allows life to wash over him as he floats along idly toying with his special interests. When men do challenge injustice are they portrayed as "high conflict" or dramatic? No, because we live in a world where males are privileged. Take a man like ours who don't challenge the status quo because it suits them and us women are always at a heavy disadvantage.

Words will always be lost where there are challenges, emotions or problems which drive them because these men did not marry us to be partners and equals, they married us to soak up all of life's challenges for them so that they can then turn around and blame us for attracting all the drama. These men are lazy and they strategise it. We are supposed to support their laziness and unwillingness to engage assertively with day to day life. It's not that they aren't capable of hearing us, they just choose not to, because our words don't support their selfish ends. 

Anyone who is living this type of existance with a man and is considering divorce ought to know that their husband already divorced them a long time ago. 

My therapist is correct. My words will always fail on Peter, because I symbolise little more than drama, hard work, challenges and problems. He is deflecting before I even open my mouth. In so many ways and areas of my life, words are my power and my passion and if they strip the power of our words away from us, are we left with any power at all?