Wedding Bells

In spite of everything I still wanted to get married.  For one thing, I felt like we were already married emotionally, that it just hadn’t been formalized.  For another, Loïc was clearly insecure about the relationship, afraid that I would leave.  He was worried that marriage would end in divorce, since “Americans get divorced easily,”  (They don’t actually get divorced more frequently than the French.)  and I was from a broken home.  That insecurity produced negative behaviors which drove me crazy  and which indeed disappeared after the wedding.  More importantly, there was still the question of getting papers.  I couldn’t ignore the fact that I couldn’t earn the money to leave him unless we got married.  And even more importantly than that, was the feeling that I had to marry him--it was imperative.  My mother wanted me to marry him and I felt that I had to obey her desire.  There may have also been something deeper in my psyche that contributed to feeling like marrying him was imperative.  Finally, quite simply, I loved him.  How you can love someone who’s violent, who’s in the process of destroying your self-esteem and identity, is something that I can’t explain.

After Loïc agreed to a wedding date, and the plans were underway, things got particularly bad between us.  I can’t really remember what all got bad.  The violence perhaps?  I know our sex life was almost dead, and that I was despairing of rescuing it.  That was a big issue for me and I wanted to talk about it, and other issues such as finances, which I felt needed to be resolved before the wedding, but Loïc kept putting off talking or taking any actions to resolve the problems.  I was still convinced that if we could talk through our problems and seek outside help where necessary, we could work through them.  Everything that is but the violence, I knew talking wouldn’t put an end to the violence.  Loïc kept making phone calls to family members about flights and the wedding plans, and continued to do so even after I threatened to call everyone and say the wedding was off if we didn’t start working through our problems.  I didn’t know how to get through to him other than to leave, but couldn’t get myself to do so.

I found a friend who was both willing and able to help me talk through and think through the violence and the other issues in the relationship.  He was highly intelligent, empathic, and familiar with psychology.  We spent hours a day talking as I struggled to come to terms with what was going on, and to make a decision.  It was like going through really intensive psychotherapy.  Finally I made the decision to leave.  I couldn't have left if I'd been totally isolated. Now I understand why Loïc isolated me. It was so difficult for me to leave that as horribly cruel as it was, the only way I could think to do so was to pack up everything and go without warning.  I couldn’t have left if he’d been able to insist face to face that I stay.  So he got home to find the apartment half-empty, with a note, but no phone number to reach me.  

I went to stay with a new found friend in a small studio.  She was terribly generous, but clearly I couldn’t stay long.  We shared her bed, and my boxes took up practically half of the room.  I called my mother for help, telling her in detail of the violence, but she said she couldn’t help me.  Not only did she not help me financially, she didn’t discuss it with me, make suggestions or ask questions, which is surprising for a therapist.  Then I called my father who offered to send what he’d planned to spend on the wedding.  It was enough to get a flight home, but not enough to ship my belongings.  Also, I was torn up, I’d adapted to French culture and become accustomed to my life in Paris, I wasn’t mentally ready to return to the US, and worse yet was clueless as to what I would do or where I would be able to stay if I returned--returning would mean facing great difficulties.  The money my father sent wouldn’t go far.  I had to find work, but there was still the same old problem of not having a work permit.  To make matters worse, the truth was I wasn’t well enough to work, as I was really suffering from bipolar disorder for which I had no treatment since it still hadn’t been diagnosed.  I tried anyway, covering practically the entire city with English teaching ads hoping to find some private students under the table with no luck.  The money my father had sent ran out.  I was missing Loïc, but honestly don’t think I would’ve returned at that point if I’d had the means to be independent.

I returned, agreed not to leave again, and we got married on the originally planned date.  I was in such a state of nerves, my stomach was in bad shape before the wedding--I chugged down antacid by the bottle.  The wedding was tearing up my emotions.  I’ll never forget how horrible I felt at the wedding, because while I felt that I had to marry him, that I had no choice, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stay forever in the marriage, that I would be leaving him.  So the marriage began with a fundamental betrayal.  I also felt quite sad seeing the emotion he was experiencing and wishing that I could share it.  It was my wedding day but I was not filled with joy.  Until the very last moment, there was another man whom I wished would save me.  Not that I felt that I couldn’t live without a man, I just didn’t feel I could get out by myself.

I don’t regret the marriage.  It was an important part of my life, one that I’m glad to have lived, in spite of everything.  I appreciate the time I got to spend with Loïc, the good things we shared.  What was good was good enough that I would’ve liked it to last a lifetime.  Does that mean I’m still in the denial phase of bereavement? Or will I be able to take my rose colored glasses off, balance out the good and the bad, and still not regret it? It may seem like I've taken the rose colored glasses off since I'm writing about it but the problem is there's a difference between talking through a trauma and processing through it, and I think I need to find more ways to process through it.