A Woman's Survival Guide to Difficult Men: Six Months to Life

Chapter 2: Six Months to Life

Six years later, it’s a warm August night in 2018 and Aimee Mann is due to go on in ten minutes. The stands are filling up. Dean and I are squished into our seats in the middle of a row at The Greek Theatre, a romantic, outdoor amphitheater framed by billowy trees and mountains in the distance. Dean, now my husband, seems off in the distance as well.

Photo by Caleb George on Unsplash

“You seem detached,” I say.

“I am.”

We’re attempting date night, but our affection has been buckling under the crush of reality lately.

At six-feet-four with warm blue eyes and a close-trimmed beard, Dean is unassumingly sexy. He dresses like he stepped out of a Sundance catalog. Just the right amount of chest hair shows at the top of his plaid shirt, which he’s paired with upscale Levi’s and Blundstone boots. On the wrist of his tattooed arm is a ropy Tibetan bracelet. On the other is a pile of silver and turquoise. His big, warm hands deliver everything they promise. Tonight, he wears his favorite black wool baseball cap that says “SOC” – Society of Cameramen. This is the man I’ve slept beside for six and a half years, the man I spent my whole life imagining and finally found in the flesh. Yet tonight, I may as well be miles away, too.

Remove the actual responsibility that comes with being a grown-up – money, kids, work – and Dean and I are terrific playmates. He’s wonderful on vacation, full of adventure and curiosity. He carries my bags, opens doors. We make love in hotel rooms, and the sex is always hotter than at home. Whenever our emotions get tangled up in Los Angeles, we hit the road. The desert dries out all those wet, thick emotions, and we’re purified. Then, when we head home, our tension mounts again in perfect proportion to traffic on the 405.

We haven’t been able to escape lately. Our schedules haven’t allowed it. So we’re forced to confront facts and feelings. We sit in awkward silence at The Greek, as the sun casts a pinkish glow on the horizon.

“Are we going to be OK?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

My eyes well up. I feel trapped in the middle of our completely full row. The show hasn’t started yet. I push past a dozen kneecaps to get to the bathroom so I can let my tears out in private. I also want to text Grace, who has been my coach/friend/intuitive for as long as I can remember.

As soon as the stall door shuts behind me, my whole torso heaves with sadness. Sitting on the toilet crying and pretending to pee, I reach for my phone.

“Feeling really sad these days,” I text Grace, “like Dean and I are divesting from this relationship. Is it me? Or him? Or is it simultaneous? Wonder how much of this I’ve created. We seem so separate right now and I’m wondering if that’s OK, or do we fight for this. So confused.”

I give it a minute or two for her to respond before returning to my seat.

“What does Grace have to say?” Dean asks. I claim not to know what he’s talking about.

Aimee Mann starts crooning her sad songs, opening for a considerably more optimistic Jason Isbell. Her songs make me feel even more depressed. Dean can feel my sadness and see it in my glistening eyes. He puts his hand on my back, which makes me feel sadder. Once Aimee’s set is over, I steal a glance at my phone. Grace responded.

“It’s not one or the other. You are both party to this. He will hold onto his position and you to yours. On one hand, you have made concessions, let things go, or kept quiet to keep the peace. He, on the other hand, it’s always the same, his fear and insecurity running its course every time it gets the best of him. Then his issues with spending, etc. The question is the same! What do you want?”

Grace, a name that fits her perfectly, has talked me off more ledges than I can count. She deserves a freaking medal for all the hours she’s spent coaching me through crazy. We met fifteen years ago when I went to her for a psychic reading. Now she charges by the minute to yank me out of the sticky corners of my life. We’ve become friends, attended each other’s weddings. She came out as gay only a few years ago and finally met her life partner at the age of 61. I like to think she learned all the “what not to do’s” in a relationship from dealing with me.

“I don’t feel safe with you emotionally,” he says. “You seem angry and curt. You don’t seem to respect me at all.”

Bullshit, I want to say, but I don’t. He’s probably right. There’s no suppressing the truth any longer. It escapes my lips like water gushing from a hydrant.

“The strain of keeping us all afloat financially is getting to me,” I say. “I’m starting to resent it.”

“There, you finally said it. It’s a relief to hear you say it.”

It’s a relief for me to say it out loud, too.

“I haven’t always felt that way,” I say, “but yes, right now I do.”

Up until now, I’ve approached this marriage as a partnership. We’d take turns carrying each other. It’s been six and a half years, though, and aside from a few long-term stints, his career still has not survived the move to Los Angeles from New York.

“You’d think getting sober would make me more appealing,” he says. “But my career is worse than ever now that I stopped drinking. I know you thought you were hitching your wagon to a prize horse. Turns out I’m a lame mule.”

I still believe in Dean. I just think his insecurity issues permeate every area of his life, and people can smell it. It started when he was six, he said, when his parents divorced and cloudy skies eclipsed his sunny childhood.

“I’ve been working on my insecurities my whole life,” he says.

“I know. We’re all insecure in our own way. It’s just… it’s deep with you.” Always feeling judged, worried what other people think to an extreme degree.

“It doesn’t help when you constantly criticize me and assume the worst,” he says.

The sun is setting and we should be swooning in this romantic setting. Instead we’re determining the fate of our marriage. The last time we went to couples counseling, the therapist suggested we each go to individual counseling for a while and then come back together. We haven’t gotten around to it.

“Maybe we should do that and give it six months, then reassess where we’re at,” he says.

I agree. “Six months from now happens to be our seven-year anniversary.”

“Huh,” he says. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Seven years is the longest either of us has been in a relationship. We’ve always joked about “the seven-year itch,” and now it is upon us.

Relieved to have a plan, Dean takes my hand. Midway through Jason Isbell’s “If We Were Vampires,” we kiss passionately for the first time in weeks. If unburdening your heart doesn’t blow a relationship to smithereens, it can be really sexy.

The next morning, Dean sits in our sunroom on a beige recliner, the same one on which I used to rock my baby daughter. He looks at me sadly as I kiss him on the way out the door, rushing to get my daughter to her dance class.

I text him from the ballet school, “What’s wrong?”

He texts back:

“If the universe wanted to provide, it would have a long time ago. I am constantly teased that things will change and I understand it’s not sustainable for a relationship. I also understand that the problem isn’t a mutual love, but a mutual issue with the financial status quo. You’ve been very kind and maybe we can get some things settled over these next six months.”

He goes on:

“I don’t feel like I have much left in me to keep trying. I don’t make a decent living. I can’t support myself much less my family. I don’t know what the future holds for me but I can’t imagine it’s very nice. Do know that I love you and I appreciate you and everything you’ve done. If we do split up please let people we know that it wasn’t about love.”

I sigh at the phone and hold it to my mouth to dictate a message back while pacing the parking lot and trying to reconcile the age-old myth of the man who’s supposed to take care of the woman with the reality of who Dean actually is.

“Sweetie, I need you to resist talking about breaking up. No point giving ourselves six months if we are going to jump right to a conclusion. The issue for me isn’t about how much money you make. It’s more about your compulsive spending habits and resistance to financial planning of any kind.”

Dean stopped drinking without any kind of therapy or twelve-step program. I’m no therapist, but it’s apparent even to me that he’s replaced alcohol with buying stuff. It gives him a similar dopamine effect. The alcohol is gone but the addict is not.

“I know I am fifty-percent responsible as well, and I will do my own unwinding about what I’m bringing to this relationship that gets in the way,” I say.

Life has ruffled the plume and tarnished the armor of my white knight. I projected so much onto him, given to me by the overarching culture, my parents’ generation and all the magazines and Disney movies I grew up with. Of course he’s buckling under the weight of my fairytale expectations.

The next day, I text Grace to fill her in on what’s happening and ask her advice.

“The best thing for you to do now is to continue working on your book. There are things you are discovering about yourself within the writing of your book. There is an aliveness you are recalling, a part of you that had gone by the wayside. And subtle things that you will uncover as you pour yourself onto the pages. This is a powerful time for you.”

I know Dean is not the problem; I am. In all of the relationships that I have entertained and endured, have I learned anything at all? Or do I continue to carry the same cultural and personal baggage to each one, like that old ripped duffel bag I once owned and refused to part with?

I know that in order to move forward, I need to look back.

**This is a work of fiction, loosely based on true events and written in the style of a memoir. Names and details have been changed.