Twelve months ago today, I moved out of the condo I shared with my wife and my daughter. I did this because my wife requested it of me. The reasons behind the request are still unclear; at the time I was told that I was causing or exacerbating my wife’s high blood pressure – though no elaboration was given as to how I was doing this – and also that the amount of “clutter” my presence generates was bad for her mental health.
It’s no secret that I tend to assume I’m the bad guy. This is likely due in part to my overabundance of empathy, the levels of which my therapist has categorized as “toxic”. I feel obliged to at least try to understand others’ points of view, and given how I see myself, it is rarely difficult for me to consider the possibility that I am at fault when there’s a conflict. This is especially true if the conflict is with someone I trust or whose well-being matters to me.
I believe that the two reasons I was given were untrue. Make no mistake, this is not meant to be an indictment of my wife, nor am I even suggesting malice on her part. I definitely believe that at the time, her reasons for asking me to leave were genuine, if only in her mind. But while I accepted them at face value I was at least somewhat skeptical, and a year later I am fully skeptical, if not altogether doubtful.
I don’t generate clutter. Sure, I own a lot of things, and when I still lived at the condo I owned more than I do now. I’m talking books, Lego sets, geeky T-shirts, and other such frivolity. But my possessions have always had a place, whether tucked away in a bookcase, hanging on a rod in my closet, or on display in a dedicated space commensurate with the awesomeness of the item being displayed. I do not leave my possessions strewn about the house, and have not done so since I was a young child who’d dump out his toybox and play for awhile before losing interest and moving onto something else. But for as long as I can remember, I’ve always been very good about cleaning up after myself. Even in that way-too-small condo, I always ensured that my belongings were in their place when not in use. That’s OCD for you, I guess.
I suppose what really made me question my existence – something I’m still struggling to recover from – was the assertion that I was having a negative effect on my wife’s physical health, i.e. causing her high blood pressure. The effects of this assertion on my psyche were severe; it didn’t turn my world upside-down so much as it rent said world unto atoms. It was probably not unlike Luke Skywalker hearing for the first time that Darth Vader is his father, but far more upsetting. How could I have allowed myself to cause my wife physical distress? How clumsy and stupid must I have been to inadvertently harm her in any way? I gave her everything I had. Causing harm was the last thing I ever wanted to do.
At the risk of publicizing something I should hold close to the vest, it isn’t hard to make me believe that I am bad for people. After all, most of the friends, partners, and family members who I’ve enjoyed having in my life have bailed, or at best remain at a distance. As far as I can tell the distance is never predicated by some manner of social faux pas, major transgression, or clash. No, it’s more like the novelty of me wears off. At this point it simply feels like the circle of life, an inevitability that shouldn’t sting so badly because I’m accustomed to it happening.
The thing is – and I guess I should acknowledge that my own personal barometer for what is good and what is bad may differ from that of the average human – I am not bad for people. I truly believe that. On the contrary, I give every relationship as much of myself as is healthy. I have certainly given more, typically, than I get back, and that’s okay. As I’ve said elsewhere on this blog, I do so because I want to bank as much good will with my loved ones as I can so that they’ll stick around. It’s also because I want people to know how much they mean to me; I know how it feels to be unsure of one’s value to others.
When I was nineteen or twenty, I accompanied a woman I was dating to an appointment with her therapist. At the time it seemed strange to me that someone close to my age would see a therapist; it was the mid-1990s and mental health wasn’t talked about as openly as it is today. She didn’t ask me to come with her because of issues specific to our relationship; it was just that her appointment was on a night when we were both off of work and school, and rather than cut short our evening together, she figured I could just go with her.
I didn’t really contribute to the session, nor did I retain much of what was said that evening. However, I distinctly remember her telling the therapist, “He just makes me angry”, and I remember feeling reflexively indignant. At that point I believe I requested elaboration, because I wasn’t sure of anything as much as I was sure that I generally didn’t do things that made people angry. As is still the case thirty years later, I was loyal to the people I cared about, and I prided myself on being a thoughtful and generous boyfriend.
I believed then, as I do now, that I lift people up. I certainly try to, anyway. I support them, and I encourage them to do things that are difficult, scary, or otherwise outside of their comfort zone. And to be fair, that therapy session was around thirty years ago. I wasn’t as mature then as I am now. And while I was better at relationships than most guys I knew, I definitely wasn’t the stellar romantic partner I would eventually become. And sure, I might have been clumsy with other people’s feelings once in awhile, but when that happened I always apologized sincerely, made amends, and learned from the experience.
That being said, it had become evident that most people angered this woman I was dating. Her mother made her angry by telling anyone who’d listen (including my parents) that the only reason she ever got pregnant was so she would have reason to leave her childhood home. Her stepfather made her angry by being a restrictive hardass, and presumably by replacing her biological father as well. The high school friend her parents allowed to live with them after graduation and who she said she considered her sister made her angry by being a woman and therefore competition.
So I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me when she said it. Maybe I should have considered it the delusional or deflective statement of someone with mental health issues I couldn’t begin to comprehend. But even taking into account my initial indignation over the remark, I wasn’t capable of disregarding what I’d been told. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that I was causing harm. Simply put, I cared too much to disregard it.
Back to the present. I believe I was manipulated by my wife into leaving. I was told that we would be separated for four or five months, and I immediately focused on March and April of 2025 as the likely point when I would be able to return home. Being forcibly removed from the life I knew was difficult and painful, but giving the situation a potential end date made things feel less insurmountable.
In reality, however, I believe that she wanted me to leave permanently, but couldn’t find the courage to say so. My wife has always been avoidant when it comes to communication, and while I’m sure I could point to specific elements of her upbringing that may have caused her to be, it isn’t my story to tell. Instead, I’ll simply surmise that when she asked me to leave she said whatever she thought would get me out the door. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help but put two and two together when she asked me soon after to begin clearing out all of my belongings.
It’s worth mentioning that I was struggling with my mental health in the weeks leading up to my wife’s request. I’d been full of anxiety ahead of the 2024 presidential election, and it got worse following the election itself. I’d also been dealing with several unrelated matters in my personal life, as well as a dwindling sense of purpose related to my professional life and my overall worth. (The move forced me to cancel a couple promising job interviews.) In fact, my wife actually proposed that I leave perhaps a week before I actually did; I was waiting for an anti-anxiety medication my psychiatrist prescribed and couldn’t very well pick up and leave if it was being delivered to the condo. (My current home is a several-hour drive from my old one, so I couldn’t simply swing by and pick it up once it arrived.)
In order to take the anti-anxiety medication I was forced to reduce my daily dosage of Wellbutrin, which compounded my already considerable depression. I was adjusting to life in a small space that wasn’t solely mine, in an area I couldn’t bear to consider home, separated from everything that was familiar to me. In addition, I was trying to accept what my life now was, struggling to find a way back to some semblance of normalcy, and desperate to make sense of it all. While dealing with all of that, I had to give up one-third of the pharmaceutical lifeline I relied on. If it wasn’t for my daughter – the only person who needed me and who I absolutely couldn’t let down – I suppose I might not have made it through the winter.
Ultimately I can’t fault my wife. She had to do what she thought would be best for her. I believe that she has high blood pressure, but there’s no way I’m the primary cause of it. If I had to guess, I’d say that a demanding profession and the politics related thereto, the challenges of raising a high-functioning teenager, eagerness to please a very large extended family, and the inability to confront and deal with stressors are as much to blame as I am, or perhaps moreso. I’m sorry I was the most expedient target, because having spent considerable time around my wife and child since the separation, I’m sure the household stress was more manageable when I was there.
For awhile, I wondered what it must say about me that my wife came to the conclusion that managing the household and raising a child day-to-day on her own is a better option than having me there to help with the cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing. What kind of a monster must I be if getting rid of me is worth her having to bear all of that herself? It caused me much self-recrimination until somebody put it in perspective for me:
“No, man. That’s probably not even true. Life is hard, she threw a tantrum and now she is dealing with the consequences.”
It was a nice thing to be told, and while it’s probably not 100% accurate, I think there’s some truth to it. At any rate, it helped me to see that it wasn’t as simple as “me = abuser, she = victim”, which is just another example of the kind of extremes my brain likes to take me to.
More than likely, my wife simply fell out of love. It happens to people all the time. Feelings degrade over the years for any of a number of reasons. You stop putting forth as much effort as you used to, either because the other person isn’t worth it, or because you just don’t have the energy for them anymore. Essentially, you do the bare minimum until you think of a way out. As someone in a support group I attend suggested, my wife “quiet quit”. And while that makes total sense to me, why the bullshit about clutter? Why not just be straight with me?
While my wife is still willing to vent to me about her job, commiserate with me about raising a teenager, or even talk politics with me, she is never going to discuss with me the state of our marriage and/or what led us to the place we are currently in. With the caveat that I don’t know the actual answer to the question of why she couldn’t just tell me the truth from the beginning, allow me to speculate. One possibility is that the notion that she fell out of love with me hasn’t even occurred to her. Another possibility is that she simply lacks the ability to speak candidly about such matters.
We’ve all got our faults; earlier this year I posted a twelve-installment analysis of my own and why I have them. If my wife has a fault – and in the interest of diplomacy I’m not saying that she does – it’s probably her avoidant nature. I’ve found myself wondering how much time passed between when she decided she wanted me to move out, and when she finally gathered up the nerve to ask me to. Given how hard it is for her to actually express what she wants, I suspect she’d been quiet quitting for months, if not years.
More than a few people have asked me why I left. I’ve got rights; even though the condo is not mine (it was purchased by my wife before we met and is therefore considered separate property), I had no legal compulsion to acquiesce to an unreasonable demand and move out. Sure, I could have dug my heels in and refused – this is my home too, and anyway, you made a vow to take me in sickness and in health and after everything I’ve done for our family yada yada yada – but ultimately what would this have gained me? It certainly wouldn’t have eased the tension between us. And I don’t think it would have been a happy home had I insisted on staying despite it being made clear to me that I wasn’t wanted there. That isn’t a healthy environment for either of us, and certainly not for our daughter.
I was raised to always step up and do the right thing. If you make a promise, you keep it. If you get somebody pregnant, you take responsibility and help raise the kid. If you tell someone you’re going to be somewhere at a certain time, you make sure you follow through. If you damage somebody else’s property, you apologize, replace it, and be more careful in the future. If somebody is counting on you, you don’t fail them. I’m sure there have been times when I’ve fallen short, but I’ve always tried. I’ve always done my best. Unless it was physically impossible I’ve always stepped up for the good of all concerned.
When my daughter was born and I had to abandon every aspect of my identity including my four-bedroom house and my successful small business in order to be a stay-at-home parent, I stepped up. Making that change was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life, but I did it. It was what my family required of me.
When my wife broke her wrist in a fall and all domestic responsibilities fell to me for several months, I stepped up. I did all the cooking, housecleaning, and laundry. I drove my wife to work and picked her up, something that took approximately three and a half hours every single weekday. It was what she needed.
When my wife asked me to move out, I stepped up. It broke me for awhile, both to lose the woman I loved and to acknowledge that she probably hadn’t loved me back for a long time. But I did it in good faith because I truly believed my absence would make my wife whole. I loved her, and I couldn’t imagine hurting her any worse than I was told I already had.
I wish I was as quick to protect myself.