Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

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Her second husband was the one she classified as controlling. And I only have a general sense of it in that he basically set the agenda around what she "could and could not do." If you want my take on it, it was (and is still) all about appearances. From fashion to the appearance of one's house and/or car.

I would say that while that was and is important to the both of them, she didn't like being "controlled" in that manner. It included other aspects about where and when to appear and how to appear. What car to drive. What kind of house to live in and where. That continues to this day although she ignores him when he has told her what she ought to do or expressed an opinion she did not share.

As I have mentioned, she wants to be "in charge" and will find a way to do that (even though she might complain about it). This house is a perfect example of it. In the room I am sitting in right now, there is one picture one floor clock, and maybe one floor lamp that I would claim as "mine." The chair I'm sitting in is a replacement for a previous recliner that I gave my son to take to Boston with him (so is it mine or not?). And except for the CD player and DVD player recorder that were given to me as gifts, nothing else in this room is really mine.

That is true in every room of this house except the bedroom I call my office and the formal living room.

That's pretty much the way the whole house has gone. We've sold or given away most of the furniture that I had coming into this marriage and replaced it. Almost all of initial furniture we bought for this house (that I played a large role in selcting) has been replaced. Much of the furniture that has replaced our original stuff has come from her mother's, stuff that she has grown up with. And while it looks very nice (not objectionable) there is very little in this house that I could eventually walk away with and claim as mine. I think that in her second marriage, a similar situation might have existed for her in terms of what her husband would let her have.

Now, I'm sure that I'll hear that I could have said no, or if I objected I should have said something. But this is and was a gradual process.

Let me give a real simple example in terms of the way control occurred for her. When we first met in 1986, our children finally met each other for the first time six weeks after she and I had first met. We were at my house and I was making spaghetti for all of us when I realized that I had eother forgotten or run out of something. The grocery store was close (you could walk to it if you were willing to take the 10 minute walk) and I asked her to go to the store and purchase whatever it was that I needed.

Well, this came as a shock to her and she expressed this on the spot...I want her to go to the store? It wasn't that she objected, it was that her second husband would not "let her" go to the store.

There was something else there as well. Her first husband "went to the store" and never came back. Instead, he went and started living with some teenage girl just a couple of years younger than they were (they were both in their early 20's). Beyond that, and the fact that she continued to sleep with him during her second marriage (retaliation? unresolved love?), I don't know much about the circumstances of his leaving, though if he left because he had "enough" of her, I certainly would understand the reaction.