Expectations
One of the issues I’ve been thinking about in my intimate relationships, and in particular this last one, is the role expectation plays in success or failure.
My expectations were pretty basic I thought. I wanted a partner. Someone who could help to support our household. Someone who would plan for our future with me. Someone who felt that contributing to our marriage and household was important. Someone that I could share my dreams and hopes with. A simple life. And in the beginning, Jay seemed interested in all of those things. He was working. Although he was a slob in the house, he liked working out in the yard. Almost as soon as we bought our house, Jay quit his job. I excused that for awhile, knowing that we had renovations and lots of work to do around the house. I imagined that once we were settled he’d get on track with working and earning again. I was mistaken.
While I definitely understand that relationships are not always 50/50, what happens when the balance and support gets so out of alignment that one person pulls the majority of the heavy weight? For years? Financially, emotionally, physically — what role does expectation play in affecting this balance? And when one partner is mentally ill, or an alcoholic, should our expectations be changed or lowered?
I wanted to support Jay’s dreams. And I did. But as I look back, he never once asked me what my dreams were. I was so focused on ‘helping’ him, that I never stopped to see that it wasn’t reciprocal in any way.
Jay was often thoughtful about the littlest things — he liked to cook and made dinner often; liked to bring home treats for me; he was a great conversationalist with a wicked sense of humor; never questioned if I wanted to buy something… Sweet right? He loved plants and flowers and music and we often spent hours at the garden center or discovering new music together. Looking back, all of these little gestures were his way of trying to appease my growing dissatisfaction with the balance (or lack of) in our relationship.
Jay knew that my worry about our financial situation, which became especially high during the last year, meant that I basically wasn’t going to spend on anything except the essentials, so he did it instead. With the last of our money… thinking that I would see the sweet side of it rather than the idiocy of spending what little we had left on things that didn’t matter much to our basic survival. I mean, the electric bill is late. The internet is going to be shut off (and I needed it to continue working). Those things were definitely more important to our survival than little bags of sweets, that expensive piece of fish, or a new rose bush for the garden! Jay had a child-like need for approval of these little gestures; in his eyes, he was being the good guy, so how could I get mad with him?
Yet, on the other hand, when I broke my back jet-skiing in Thailand last year (on a work retreat), and spent three months in a full metal back brace, I still had to work full time due to our financial circumstances. What was Jay’s contribution? He went to our shop and played video games or watched porn all day while drinking. In our shop. With customers/friends coming in. Madness. He could’ve been working on social media; cleaning the shop; putting inventory on sale; or even crafting things that we could sell. I offered to go to the shop as soon as he could find a remote job; that way he could focus on bringing money in, and I could be at the relatively quiet shop. He was not interested in the least.
My last expectations for continuing my marriage with Jay came to a head near the end and were two-fold: address the alcoholism, and find a paying job. My thinking was that if he addressed the first, the second would follow. Alcoholism, combined with his sociopathy, eventually and gradually robbed Jay of almost every good thing I ever saw in him. Our relationship was actually doomed from the beginning, and I was too naive to understand this. And he certainly was not going to admit that he would only stay until the money was gone, and that instead of supporting me and our relationship for once, he would find someone else to support him. He left me questioning whether or not he had ever loved me… which I now know is typical in relationships with people who have ASPD.
Today, three months after the ‘official’ end of our relationship, I’m reaching some understanding that my expectations were not unreasonable; his were. Jay expected me to continue supporting him no matter how horrible his behavior was — he expected me to keep looking the other way while he drank himself to death. He expected me to keep believing that he was just ‘complicated’ instead of the user that he really was. He expected me to keep on loving him, even as I was losing my love for myself and my life. I’m dealing with resolving the shame I feel over allowing him to treat me the way he did. I’m working on forgiveness most of all. He is a broken human being with his own path; the fact that we were together for so long is a reflection of the lack of value I put on myself and MY needs as a human being.
The fact that I survived this amazes me and is a true testament to my strength; 6 months ago, I literally felt like I was dying, and more than once thought about just ending it all. As I look back, the intensity of these feelings shock me. Logically, our relationship had not been good for quite some time; emotionally, I felt like I couldn’t survive without him. Emotionally, my expectations for our relationship and for him were in direct conflict with who he really was. Understanding that has been devastatingly sad. I’m sad for him and his next victim, as this has been the cycle of Jay’s life, and he has no interest in changing that cycle.
