Mark Nepo wrote that conflict is an unavoidable part of life. This struck me as an important thing to know early on in life. I didn't know it. Obviously I have conflicts aplenty with Jack (my ex) now, so it might strike you as weird that when we were st…
Mark Nepo wrote that conflict is an unavoidable part of life. This struck me as an important thing to know early on in life. I didn't know it. Obviously I have conflicts aplenty with Jack (my ex) now, so it might strike you as weird that when we were still together we seemed to have very few or none. Looking back, I can see that we disagreed about many important things but at the time it felt friction free. Jack always seemed to be in complete agreement with me about everything, although I would have found it difficult or impossible to articulate Jack's perspectives on things if asked. As time went on Jack slowly manipulated me into doing things I disagreed with, or that weren't good for me or my daughter, but it was done without any outward conflict.
That we had no overt conflicts should have been a red flag because conflict is inevitable, and the fact that in eight years we did not discuss our differences in any meaningful way should have been a big tip off. In fact, Jack was lying to me about how he really felt about me, my needs, and my viewpoints, as well as about who he was, what he wanted, his values, and his intentions. And I was so busy being accommodating and getting along and making myself small, I didn't notice that he was slowly corrupting me and destroying me.
In hindsight, I believe Jack used the appearance of lack of conflict to subtly push me around. Whenever conflict threatened to arise, Jack was able to use it as a pressure point. I would feel compelled to immediately fix things no matter how inconvenient or effortful or even damaging it was for me. I didn't realize I was being manipulated. But in fact I had no concrete reason to think that Jack liked or didn't like certain things because he didn't come out and say anything: he implied, he made things difficult for me, and he otherwise tilted narratives or events in his favor, leaving me in the dark.
I had no idea that I was in a war with Jack over my soul. He sidled up to me, pretended to be my friend and robbed me blind, with me none the wiser about what he was stealing or why I had so little left over to give the other people in my life. I wish I had known that a lack of overt conflict in a relationship could be a truly bad thing. I guess I know it now.
"You grow up learning that if a man puts his hands on a woman she needs to get the hell out of there, but you can live your entire adult life in a relationship where your partner twists your mind into knots to bend you to his will without recognizing what's happening."
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