Fall, 2019. Alex and I start our senior years at different schools but we still work together. I spend all of my time either at school or driving to school, then working every weekend. The responsibilities I had really kept me afloat even though they were too much to handle at once. I was never at school when I didn’t have class so my friends who lived on and around campus never really saw me again. (Accidental run-ins on campus where I would have to explain myself and where I’ve been this whole time kept me anxiously walking fast, straight from my car to class.) I had such little free time (nights after classes or work) that I had no choice but to dedicate all of it to this relationship I wanted to nurture and grow.
Neither Alex nor I had ever gotten this far in such a concrete way before with another human. We were really learning a lot through each other. We’re pushing one another’s limits and fighting a lot, but we’re having good fights. Fights that lead to growth, not to resentment. He tells me he loves me and that anchors me in, even though I was still thinking we could break up any day. We were on different pages from the start.
Some fights had lasting repercussions throughout the remainder of our relationship, but I’m only able to identify this retroactively. (Hindsight is 20/20.) One of our fights, just a few weeks after our classes had started, was a luminescent red flag I pretended not to have seen. But, its significance is emphasized by how vivid the memory is.
Holding very offensive, bigoted, every-type-of-phobic signs, protestors on my campus made a lot of students, including myself, angry. The next day, the same protestors plagued Alex’s campus. Alex was angry too, but it was because students were disrespecting these radical protestors and, as a result, their right to protest was being violated. Alex, at this point, politically identified as somewhere between a moderate and a libertarian (which I have come to learn can be used as a veil for rampant conservatism). So naturally, Alex was extremely passionate about the Constitution (comparably to the Bible, but we’ll get to that later).
It disgusted me that Alex wasn’t upset about any of the hurtful or explicitly racist slander on the protestors’ signs. But then I realized why. Alex wasn’t a part of any of the communities that the signs had been degrading. Meanwhile, I belonged to several. Of course it didn’t bother him; he had no reason to be offended. This weighed on me heavily as I didn’t think we’d already be facing issues and tough conversations like this. The type of conversations that make your idealistic dream implode, so it almost feels better, and safer, to avoid these topics altogether.
That same night, I stopped replying to Alex’s texts. His “hot take” on this issue made me fume, and I wanted to put it aside to enjoy my night. I was going out to a restaurant with my friend Al who I hadn’t seen all summer. I was excited to tell her about my new relationship because she had not seen me settle down once in our eight years of friendship. If you’re spending time with your friends, your focus shouldn’t be on your phone. So, when Alex keeps texting me even though he knows I’m busy, I put my phone away. I don’t want our argument to shit on mine and Al’s time.
My friend from work, who knows Alex, calls me, panicking. Alex, completely distraught, was pressuring her to extract more details out of me to know for sure if him and I were over. He was panicking and jumping to conclusions without talking to me, and this was affecting more people than just him and I. She didn’t know what to tell him because she had no idea what was going on. It was ridiculous he was harassing one of my friends so late, while I was trying to spend time with another. I was frustrated he put my friend in the middle of it all, willing to make things at work instantly complicated. Meanwhile, I cared about these repercussions. I had to calm him down for the rest of the night through a phone screen, ruining my time with Al.
You have to remember that we were in the beginning stages of our relationship, so it was normal for us to fight this much (at least we thought so). If anything, our fighting highlighted our determination. We proved just how much we were willing to work on and confront our issues…right? Another confrontation happened not a month later.
Remember how I said I spent the first couple of months of our relationship thinking Alex wasn’t over his ex? This came to a head on my favorite day of the year: Halloween. My friends and I were going to a nearby bar and I begged Alex to come with us. Alex knew how much Halloween meant to me, but he insisted on not joining us. He told me he had very bad memories of the bar we were going to, all involving his ex.
I was baffled he wouldn’t come with me and my friends because of that. These were new people and we could make new memories, at least I always thought we could. His avoidance of the place made me doubt if he was over his ex. He talked about her so much. And how long would we avoid this place? Was there a list somewhere of blacklisted places he had been to with his ex?
Building up since our first date, my courage finally allowed me to ask Alex if he was really over his ex. Alex immediately became angry. He rashly replied that he never gave me a reason to distrust him and that he didn’t deserve this. We fought for the next few hours over text. Eventually, I apologize. I told him I understood why he didn’t want to come (I didn’t) and told him I was sorry for assuming he wasn’t over his ex. I never brought it up again. I did this a lot.
If Alex accused me of something, I completely surrendered. I would accept blame and do anything to remedy the situation. I never questioned him; I allowed his deflections to convince me I was in the wrong every single time. Scared of losing this person I was already attached to, I never considered exactly how much I apologized.
We really do accept the love we think we deserve. I learned love can take the form of gas, filling the container it’s in. I was always running on empty. I didn’t realize that I was willing to accept such a small amount because I had absolutely no expectations. I didn’t know what love was supposed to look like. And any ideas of how I wanted our love to look like was still always negotiable for me because I didn’t want to give Alex a reason to leave. I became attached to the idea of us because we were exploring all of this new territory together, hand-in-hand. But, by November, we had reached a breaking point.
We were heading to an early Thanksgiving dinner, but something had been bothering me all day. I told Alex he couldn’t slam things or yell at me. I completely froze when he did, simultaneously feeling a burning urge from within to run away or walk out. I tried to explain to him the reason why. I told him about my past experiences and how it absolutely terrifies me. Alex apologized for what I went through, but told me he wasn’t like that and would never hurt me.
I explained to Alex that that wasn’t the point. He could say anything but I didn’t actually have a guarantee that one of these moments wouldn’t escalate to something physical. I told him I was working on it, but sounds like that, sounds that presented a possible but immediate physical threat to my safety, made me cringe and freeze up out of complete fear. My body goes in crisis mode and I shut down. (It’s called PTSD.) Alex said it was unhealthy for me to tell him to stop expressing his emotions. But, I wasn’t doing that. I was just trying to get him to express it in a healthier way, one that wouldn’t make me scared of him, but we disagreed on what healthy meant.
I tried another approach. I explained that although I’m angry and my initial impulse is to physically lash out, as is a primitive reaction, I have trained myself to not act upon it. (I think this may be called restraint.) I wasn’t being any less true to myself or my emotions. I still acknowledged my anger whenever I felt it. I still expressed it too, but in different ways. I just didn’t want to cause harm to another human being, nor did I want to smash or break things around someone because I know what that would do: scare them.
Alex was insistent to justify why my fear was invalid, that this is the difference between men and women. Men must express their emotions through physical acts, whereas women, according to Alex, didn’t feel compelled to. Women can restrain themselves physically, but men just can’t. It’s in their nature; it’s just what guys do and I would never understand.
I know what it’s like to be frightened. Alex knew I did. And yet, this meant absolutely nothing to him. Parked outside and ready to go in, I don’t know how to look at Alex let alone sit next to him and act happy around him and his friends when I’m hurting by his responses and lack of empathy. So I tell him it’s best if goes in without me. He doesn’t fight me on it. Once I have my thoughts composed, I text him. Because he doesn’t respect what I have to beg and plead for him to understand, I (try to) break up with him.
We make up later that same night, but the issue was never actually resolved. He said he’d try not to lash out, verbally or physically, but he couldn’t promise that he would be able to restrain himself. This was just something I had to accept. Hey, at least he was trying. (Anything can look like progress if you want it badly enough to.) Again, this was something I thought that came with the territory. Love, as I was beginning to learn, was compromise and this is what compromise looked like. I didn’t realize that if the one boundary I set is rejected and completely invalidated, that’s a red fucking flag.
