“I just don’t understand it,” she laments to her friends around the table at Starbucks, her hands warmed by the third cappucino of the morning. “He was so different when we were dating. But now…now it’s like I just don’t even know him anymore, you know?”
They all nod their head in collective, mournful agreement, for they, too, have given that same, sad cry at some point.
“I mean, what happened to the man I married?!”
The question lingers, grows, takes root, becoming a more and more compelling voice inside her head until one day, in the heat of the moment of some argument or disagreement, she says those same words, out loud, to him.
“What happened to the man I married?! You were so this. You were so passionate about that. You had such dreams, You were going to do this, and that, and the other thing. What happened? What happened to you?”
What happened to him?
Nothing. And at the same time, everything.
It started with a little chip here, a little chisel there, sanding a little here, buffing a little there, day after day, week after week, comment after comment, until one day you look across the table in dismay at what you’ve unknowingly created, and that question pops unbidden into your mind.
Month after month, year after year he tried to give you exactly what and who you said you wanted. Only for you to turn around and ask him, “What happened to the man I married?“
What happened, you ask?
It’s simple, really. He wasn’t allowed to be the man you married.
Because you married the picture you had in your head of who that man was, or who you’d decided he was, or how you’d decided he would or should or could be. But, you know, maybe, with a little, um, help.
Whether or not it had anything to do with the reality of who he actually was? Well, that’s beside the point.
You were just trying to help. You wanted to help him grow, to mature, to be more practical, to be more dependable, to be more reliable, to just be…more. More, different, better.
Different. You need to be different. Different than you are. Different than you were when I met you, when I fell in love with you, when I decided to marry you.
Be different. Change. Not a lot, of course. No, just a little. Just this one bit, this one little bit, that’s all. Well, and this little bit here. Yeah, if you’d just start doing that one thing a little more, and uh, this other thing a little less, then everything will be perfect.
What happened to the man you married?
You told him you didn’t want him. You told him it wasn’t okay to be who he is, to want the things he wants, to love the things he loves. That bit by bit, piece by piece you wanted to upgrade him, improve him, replace him with a better copy.
You told that man to leave. You told him he wasn’t good enough. And eventually…he started to listen. Eventually, he started to believe you.
Because after a while it just became easier for him to believe that he WAS the problem. That if only he could change, change enough, in the right directions, and in the right amounts, THEN, then you’d finally be happy. Then maybe you’d put the hammer and the chisel away, drop the grinding wheel and Dremel tool, box up the sandpaper and files and mallets, and then maybe, finally, there would be peace.
But that’s not how it goes, does it?
The nips and the tucks and lifts and tightens never really stop. It’s like the movie star beyond their prime who takes plastic surgery to disturbing extremes, until the next time you see them on the screen they are nearly unrecognizable; a strange, glossy, frozen-faced facsimile of what they once were.
It’s corrosive. The steady drip of frustrated, disappointed little digs, little messages that all communicate, “You’re not good enough. The way you are isn’t acceptable and needs to be changed. It’s for your own good. I’m only trying to help.”
You’ve told him time and time again in subtle, non-verbal and verbal ways to be different. And so he tried, and he tried, and he tried to give you exactly what you said you wanted. Only for you to one day suddenly realize that what you said you wanted…isn’t what you really wanted at all.
And now you pine for that version of him that he was before.
Before you started telling him to change it.
Well, be careful what you ask for, ladies, because you just might get it.
But watch out for the day that he starts to miss that version of himself even more than you say you do.
Because then he’ll go wherever he has to go, and do whatever he has to do to get that man back, and he will guard that man with a renewed sense of strength behind walls he will never let you pierce again.
At which point that Man That You Married really will be gone, because he will have found someone else, someone special, someone amazing, someone who will forever more love him, for him, Just. The. Way. He. Is.
For he will have found…Himself.
