Blame. It's what's for dinner.

It's My Fault.

I made him marry me.  He did not want marriage, but I insisted that if I was going to move 3,000 miles from everything and everyone I knew just to be with him, I needed to be married.  I never got a proposal, never heard the words "marry me", and maybe that's the way most proposals go and we just don't know it.  What he said was "I don't need to be married to move back to Seattle."  I prevailed.  Honestly, what was I thinking?
Girls: Never Make Him Marry You - By: Me.

I stopped having sex with him: and he stopped having sex with me.  He wasn't very nice to me, and sorry, but that's sort of a precursor to sexual relations.  I lost all desire for sex after the birth of our second child.  Colicky, attached, refusing the bottle, nursing all night- it was heaven, it was hell.  I don't know if my husband felt helpless or jealous, but he started to shut down.  He would never, ever do anything to pull me up.  No encouragement, no niceties, nothing.  This child needed my attention so much more than our first child did. I just didn't have the energy to fluff my husband.
 
I got fat: (I have probably 20 pounds more on my bones than I did when we married).  I did have two children, but, so have many other women (particularly those who taunt me from the covers of magazines), and while I am always told I am not fat, I feel fat.

I have had more family problems than anyone I know.  My father was an alcoholic, and upon his death, my family of origin spun out of control.  I essentially have been disowned by my narcissistic mother, most likely due to the fact that she could not control me.  My siblings live within 2 miles of her, and regularly report meals and subsequent bowel movements, as is required.  All of this has been observed with some curiosity by my husband's Northern European family.  His family is of the extremely uptight, no speak'ums ilk.  As they watched me go through the drama that is the fused Italian family, I think they judged me just a little.  It could, of course, just be that they felt unable to relate to my anguish, thus unable to comfort me, but truthfully, I feel as though they think I brought a little crazy into their world.

Two of my best friends died within 5 years of each other, my closest BFF just two years ago.  Both were tortured to death by modern medicine under the guise of cancer treatment.  Each of their deaths left me traumatized and depressed.  I fear new attachments because of the loss I may have to face down the road.



It's His Fault.

He never truly wanted me.  He's often said that he never saw himself married or with children, yet married with children he is.  I got pregnant only eight months into the marriage.  An abortion just didn't seem like a viable option anymore.  I had an abortion in the late '70's, and felt that the circumstances were different this time.  We hadn't even discussed children, and here I was pregnant.  I will lay blame for that further down this page, my point being:  he started to feel trapped early on...

He could never work for anyone.  He was surly (a highly gifted artist, but surly), and after a few hard years, his own business began to grow, and he could support the household.  We were never without money worries.  Our needs grew exponentially as our family grew, and it took a huge toll on our marriage.   "When money goes, love flies out the window"; that's an Italian saying I'd heard throughout my childhood.  Our double-income-no-kids days in Hoboken became memories as the realities of adulthood crept up.  We had friends that had taken jobs that promised growth, both artistically and financially, jobs with benefits.  He refused to work for anyone.  That was fine for the early years, but now I wish he had been able to bend just a little.  The great recession took all of our wealth.  Our financial worth is nil, we've sold our home and lived on the proceeds for three years waiting for the economy to recover.  If he had been able to share his gift with an appropriate employer, maybe we could have weathered the storm.

He's not capable of growth or change.  As I try to find the lessons in this stressful time,  he continues to dig in, vacillating between denial and grief.  Yes, losing the house and being forced to leave Seattle (we couldn't afford to pay the rent on our studio any longer) were great losses, but we're not on the street.  We've made a decent life here in this valley, but, he refuses to see any beauty or good that has come from this change in fortune.  He is stuck, and I don't feel like un-sticking him this time.

It's the Cervical Cap's Fault.

The cervical cap was new (from Europe!) in 1988.  I had heard good things about it, and we were tired of using condoms.  I was fit for one at our local women's clinic, with the doctor fitting me declaring it to be such a good fit, I wouldn't even need to use spermicide with it!
It was expensive, at the time.  I don't recall the amount, but it was a lot, for us.  I got pregnant the first time we used it.  I know because I had left the cap in place overnight as was recommended, and when I removed it, a sluice of pale pink fluid splashed onto the white tile floor.  The products of conception.  He had murmured that the cap was "worth every penny" during sex that night. 

It's Our Fault

We should have kept our marriage and our business separate.  Instead, we are entwined in all kinds of weird ways. I had a career of sorts in New York, and found Seattle to be so foreign, I had a hard time fitting in. I sought a new profession, and worked at it until our second child was born.  He acts as though I've never had a job since we married, but that's not true.  
The business grew at such a rate in the 90's, we really should have hired a bookkeeper, but, we didn't. I do the bookkeeping, and I do it badly.
I don't enjoy it, it's a huge source of aggravation.  He feels that I have no idea what he does all day, but he's wrong.  I know how hard he works, how he endures the physical difficulty of his work.  I worry about the day when he can no longer do it.  I worry that he'll get hurt.  I also worry about taxes, bills, filings, children, dogs, cats and dinner.  We are up each others butts from morning til night, and we don't even like each other.

We should have noticed the signs and sought help if we wanted to stay together.  Now I know that we didn't because staying together was not the end game; getting through parenthood was.  Admirable to some, idiotic to others, staying together for the children was what we did.  As I reflect, the only thing I think we had in common was our humor, and I don't find him funny anymore.