We Don’t Make Love, We Fight Constantly
“We haven’t made love in six months, we fight all the time, and Jerome has made it quite clear that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” says Lucy, 35, a mother of a 5-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old stepson, her husband’s child from his previous marriage.
That’s been the pattern.
“Jerome didn’t ask how I felt about moving into his mother’s huge house, either,” she continues. “Well, his mother and I don’t get along - she criticizes everything I do and the way I do it. It hasn’t been easy for me to live with someone who always thinks she knows best.”
More than anything Lucy wishes she had some privacy with her own family, but whenever she tries to talk to her husband about it, he dismisses her comments and implies that she’s being unkind to his “poor sick old mother.”
Still, Lucy shoulders most of the blame for the unraveling of her seven-year marriage. “I know I get crazy sometimes,” she concedes. “It’s PMS. Every month, about one week before I get my period, I’m edgy and frantic.”
Before she can stop herself, Lucy is yelling at everyone.
Though her doctor has suggested a daily vitamin supplement, Lucy shrugged off his advice.
“How can I think about me when I’m totally overwhelmed doing everything for everybody?” she says. “I work full time - no, make that more than full time, since my boss at the motor vehicle bureau is always asking me to stay late.” Her job, coupled with her responsibilities to her family, frequently made Lucy feel like she’s free-falling.
The feeling isn’t new. Lucy has always been the rock her divorced mother and younger sister Denise leaned on - and continue to.
When faced with other people’s demands on her time, she’s tongue-tied. Pulled in several directions, she feels sure of only one thing: “I married a kind, loving man,” Lucy says sadly, “but I’m losing him.”
Said Jerome: “I love Lucy, but I don’t like her.”
He resents the way she snaps at him or the children; makes mountains out of molehills; expects him to keep his life in neat little piles; or that she can’t seem to get along with his mother.
“But this is the first time I’ve heard that Lucy objected to moving in with my mother,” Jerome says. “Mother had a large house, she’s elderly, and it made sense for us to live together. I assumed she agreed. I think Lucy is wrong to feel the way she does.”
But most of all, Jerome says, he can’t stand living with a woman who, more often than not, seems like a whirling dervish. “She’s sweet one day and a witch the next,” he says. “I don’t want to be near her when she’s like that.” And until she changes, Jerome says, he’s checking out of the marriage.
Keeping An Anger Journal
“Lucy knows she suffers from PMS,” notes the counselor Evelyn Moschetta, D.S.W., a marriage therapist in Huntington, N.Y. “Her anxieties and flaring temper worsen during the week preceding the onset of her period. This, coupled with the increasing anger she feels toward everyone in her life, pushes her buried rage to the boiling point, and she explodes unpredictably.”
But it’s unfair and unreasonable for Lucy and Jerome to pin their marital difficulties on her medical problems. “That’s like saying, ‘The devil made me do it,”’ adds Moschetta. What’s more, such all-inclusive thinking lets Jerome completely off the hook. If this marriage is going to be saved, they both need to take responsibility for improving the communication between them. But at the same time, Lucy has to recognize when she’s justifiably angry and gain the confidence to express herself in the moment, instead of pushing her feelings aside and allowing resentments to pile up.
Like many people, Lucy is aware of her problem but feels unable to do anything about it. Another consultation with her gynecologist gave her a medical game plan she promised to follow: He prescribed a diuretic and an antidepressant, which alleviated her symptoms, and also advised her to cut back on caffeine, chocolate and highly salty foods. However, she still needs a game plan for getting a handle on her anger. Once she began to keep an anger journal, she finally felt in charge of her life.
If you often feel pulled by invisible strings, keeping a journal can help you decipher the patterns your anger takes. You will be better able to make choices about when, where and to whom you express your feelings so you don’t sabotage important relationships in your life.