Wednesday, September 11, 2024

The Ways I Felt Exploited By Him

In two months time, it will be two years since we separated. If I look back and think of an adjective to sum up the way he made me feel during the majority of our relationship, I'd choose the word "exploited."

I've already written about the huge impact that internalised mysoginy has on men like ours. They've spent their lives trying to fit in with a patriachal society, they willingly absorb all it stands for and become the epitome of patriachy themselves, feeling accepted as a respectable, upstanding male chauvinist, particularly if they are also white and of middle-class. 

Our men become easily moulded by the old fashioned, mysoginistic views of their own fathers who they place on pedestals. The very men who saw women as mere domestic appliances. Yet, they are swept along easily by a modern, economy-driven society (due to their own practical and materialistic values) which happily forces women back into work and away from their children long before it's time. Who do women think they are to think that they're exempt from contributing financially? There is no value in care work, only work of financial gain. The care work goes purposely unnoticed. She must complete such dismal, unappealing, non-valuable work on the side, quietly and invisibly.

For many of us, we're expected to do everything and to do it without complaint. We ought to work like we don't have children with a home to run and run a home and raise children like we don't work. But also, we must never expect love and affection in return- afterall, it's a wasted commodity to men like ours. It's sad for me to admit it, but I think that some love, affection and appreciation would have softened the continuous, monotonous blow of modern marriage or cohabitation. Without a bit of love glitter to cover the turd, all women like us (Cassandras) are left with is a pointless, useless turd of a relationship and piles and piles of thankless tasks. 

He exploited me in so many ways.

From my first sickly pregnancy and me not being able to work easily, him telling me, "it's the job of your employer to get as much work out of you as she can; of course she's pissed off with you." It told me everything I needed to know about him right then. I realised at that very moment that I'd always remember him telling me that. It was an insight of what was to come and I think my subconscious warned me so.

The fact that I was pregnant in the first place was the result of him "forgetting" to withdraw having previously agreed that we would use this method temporarily. Once I was pregnant, I was supposed to ignore the fact as the side effects of our unplanned, yet reckless pregnancy inconvenienced him and his life. He was however conscious of how he came across to the outside world and persuaded me to move in with him long before I was ready to:
"Let me look after you..."
"You can't be pregnant with my baby and not live with me..."
So I gave my landlord a month's notice and off I went, to live at his house where he made very little room for me and my things for months, despite my pleas. All to save his reputation as everyone's favourite helpful handyman and now family man.

My freedom was exploited after our baby was born, she seemingly belonged to his family and I was the mere vessel for birthing her. I was expected to spend my maternity leave with his mother, which I declined repeatedly through desperation rather than assertiveness. I was a nobody. My wants, needs, my wellbeing my desires were all unworthy of importance, everything that made me who I was, faded away. My sadness fell on deaf ears, it was easier for him to label me as "intolerant" than it was for him to question his own family. I was just the complaining woman he lived with now, but as far as the outside world could see, I was much more.  As soon as it was too late for me to easily leave, he seemed comfortable into trapping me into his world of selfish comfort whilst I suffered. I just needed to stop being so negative he would say. My lovely, helpful, kind Peter was delivering a nightmare.

I lost my income, my career prospects and friends whilst his life continued as normal. He exploited this by demeaning any financial decisions I wanted to make- it wasn't my money afterall. He was the earner. I was exploited by motherhood, because he allowed me to be. My vulnerabilities were always used to benefit him. 

When breastfeeding our second child, he once said "just because you can't go out without the baby, doesn't mean I can't!" This was in defence of his social life when I needed his support at home with a toddler and a baby. He gladly exploited the fact that our baby needed my body in order to survive and he capitalised on his hobbies and free time more than ever. I was his childcare because I had to be, what did it have to do with him? This is despite me and the baby relying on him to do a bottle feed each evening to give me a break during the first three months, but he'd just drop the responsibility mindlessly, he couldn't understand why he should be bound to one feed a day, even when I was bound to so many. 

We talked about marriage during my first pregnancy, he said he wanted to marry after her birth. As it turns out, it's been easier to separate whilst unmarried, but my rights as a mere cohabiting partner in Britain are dreadful. Whilst his pension has blossomed, mine has dwindled due to part-time working whilst the children were little. Had we have been married I'd have been entitled to a chunk of his pension and to more equity of the family home. He knowingly exploited my vulnerabilities yet again when I communicated my concerns for my stability and he found every excuse he could for us not to marry post children. He was however, happy to have a second child with me.

To defend his lack of engagement with mundane domestic work such as cleaning he'd say "it's more important to you than it is to me, so why should I have to do it?" Cleaning was a choice he argued- my choice. He felt the same about cooking. He would argue that he would have been happy to eat cereal for dinner, so why should he have to share the cooking? Although Peter did contribute domestically, he resented it and blamed me for him having to share these tasks and he'd quietly seethe and sulk. He was mentally disengaged, so I needed him to contribute practically, the mental strain of parenthood was all consuming for me and non-existent for him.

I was expected to push down who I was as a person; he made it clear that I was too colourful, too opinionated, too outspoken and he'd correct me in public, humiliate me and gaslight me. I think this form of exploitation hurt the most, the way he exploited the essence of who I was to bolster his own ego.

And then, I was persistently giving. 
Washing, cooking, cleaning, decluttering, form filling, worrying whilst also trying to earn a living. He valued none of it, labelling domestic work optional in his own mind. I know he felt exploited by my expectations for him to contribute to the family life which we had created together.

I wouldn't have minded as much if he'd given some love in return, but it was always withheld when I'd pointed out his shortcomings, or cried or shouted for more support. Shining a light on his misgivings never caused him to look inward, he only hated me more. 

As time went on it became clearer that he had absolutely no desire for a relationship with me at all. I was only there to make his life easier, more comfortable. A live-in housekeeper and nanny. 

Love has always been my love language: talking love, giving love, showing love, receiving love. Practical tasks in my opinion have little to do with love at all despite what the books say. I realised that if I didn't want to drown any further, I needed to begin speaking his language. So when the children were a little older, that's what I did. I used him for DIY and childcare and cooking and other practical tasks whilst mapping out a life away from him. Yoga in the evenings, womens meet-up groups, dancing at weekends, I found friendships again. I started going out more than him.

One day he said to me when I told him that I had yet another commitment and needed him to stay at home with the children: "I feel used."

It's funny how the tables turn. 
He's now living with his parents and the only thing I need from him now are his financial contributions towards the family home which the children and I have remained in. He has no domestic responsibilities anymore, reduced childcare (the children stay with him twice a week), no more living with a nag like me, his household investment taken care of by myself each day. He lives where his loyalties have always lay: with his parents. He now has everything he ever really wanted, yet it causes him discomfort, and although I know he will never realise that he caused it, I find some comfort in the knowledge that he instigated it all. 

"I'm not happy with this situation" he has said to me. And I say "really? when you got everything you really wanted in the end?"

I imagine he'll be painting himself to be the poor homeless victim now, paying for a home that he's not living in. His male friends shaking their heads at the injustices that such a nice guy like Peter has been left with. I can easily imagine them saying amongst themselves, "Poor Peter, exploited by the woman he loved."

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