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omaewokorosuThe first time I questioned whether I was "up to snuff" as a marital partner was when Egg read me the riot act about a driveway to a house I held no stake in nor any ownership of.
Hands on her hips as we came down the stairs to head out for work, Egg said, "I guess I'll have to call the guy to get the driveway extended because you don't wanna do it."
I said nothing. Raised an eyebrow inquisitively.
"You know, I expected you to put the call in because Ren was supposed to do it, but she can't do it now because of everything, so I expected you to step up and do it for her. You know, that's part of being a good spouse, doing things for your wife when she can't do them or can't get to them."
My mother-in-law was gone for maybe a week or so at this point in time, my wife was grieving for her mom, I was grieving for how short a time I'd had with my mother-in-law before things were cut short prematurely. The last thing either of us were thinking about was a fucking driveway. But Egg just expected us to both be over it and everything back to business as usual, because that's how she operated, so therefore everyone else must operate that same way. If they don't, they're "not normal".
"So I'll just do it so that it'll get done, but I expect you to be out there telling the guy where to extend it out to. I'm doing this for you."
No one asked her to even extend the driveway, considering there were plenty of places to park that weren't on the street when the on-street parking ban was in effect. She took it upon herself to do this. She made it out like we were being ungrateful, that we were trying to take advantage. How can we be either of those things when we never once asked her to do, well, any of it?
(Because Egg thinks the world owes her.)
We continued to say nothing, looked at the time, and left because now we were running late.
We had a short work shift that day, and I spent the entire time questioning if I was as bad a partner as Egg was making us out to be. It continued when we got home, where I ended up questioning Aleks.
"Am I really that bad a spouse?"
"No, not at all. You are doing everything you're supposed to - you're there for Ren as she grieves and figures out what this 'new normal' looks like and how much it sucks. Your concern is for her, your priorities are all in the right place. If you were concerned about the stupid driveway, or some other trivial thing, over her, then you'd be a pretty bad partner. Egg is wrong."
Even getting that reassurance didn't feel like enough. Getting similar reassurance from Ren didn't feel like enough. Maybe they were missing something, or overlooking some horrible flaw in my person. Clearly I must've been this absolutely awful person who was so undeserving of anything, really.
Ren said to not worry about the driveway. So I didn't worry about the driveway.
Ren said that Egg should be the one doing something about the driveway, since this is her house and property, not ours. I agreed. I told Egg I didn't care about the driveway and whether it got done or not. She didn't like that. She expected me to just lay down and say "yes ma'am". Instead I chose my wife.
Her "competition".
If I had to choose between Egg and Ren, I would choose Ren every single time. Because she is the love of my life. That's how marriage works. It's like Egg thought that she was included in our marital aspect, which she most certainly was not.
*
The second (and last) time I questioned if I was "up to snuff" as a marital partner, resulted in a major breakdown in the front seat of my wife's car after a major snow event.
I say "major" but we honestly didn't get that much snow - for the northeast anyway. It was maybe four, no more than five, inches of snow on the ground, and by the time I was due in at work, it had already begun melting. There wasn't much to shovel, but it was enough that you had to bust one out and spend a couple of minutes clearing the walkway.
On this particular morning, my wife was going to drive me into work because there was a lot of slush and a lot of patches of ice. My wife is from upstate New York by Lake Ontario, where they not only get regular winter snow, but lake effect as well. She's used to driving in snow, sleet, ice - you name it, she's driven in it. I also come from a place that gets snow, though not much ice, so I know how to drive in less than ideal snow conditions, but my wife is a lot better. Plus she offered. She told me to get ready for work whilst she went outside and shovelled and cleared her car off. I said okay and started my morning pre-work routine.
I could hear Egg and Ren exchanging some words and Ren being reassuring, saying that she could handle shovelling just fine, and that if she needed me to come out, she would get me.
I finished getting dressed and when my "head out" alarm went off, I geared myself up and started down the stairs. Where Egg was waiting at the bottom, an angry look on her wraith-like face.
(The following exchange is a summation, the actual dialogue was a lot worse.)
"Why aren't you out there helping her?"
I stopped halfway down the stairs. "Because I was getting ready for work and she said she didn't need my help."
"Do you know how hard it is to shovel snow? By yourself? As one person? You should be out there helping her, but instead you're in here doing God knows what! Always trying to get out of doing anything after it snows! You're a horrible spouse!"
Which isn't true. Most of the time I'm the one shovelling the snow and salting the walkway so no one slips on ice and ends up injured. I say nothing and continue the rest of the way down.
"When you get home, you'll have to shovel whatever snow is left, and you will have to do it by yourself, no help from anyone. Okay?!"
I said nothing and slip out the door.
I made it off the porch before I started sobbing.
Maybe I am bad.
I shouldn't have her do anything for me anymore.
She shouldn't take me to work today. I can take myself. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll skid out and die.
I went through the snow in the yard, which was almost up to my knees thanks to snow drift, sobbing hysterically, all of these awful thoughts going through my head. Ren was in the driveway clearing off her car and heard me before she saw me.
"What's wrong?"
"Go inside. I can drive myself to work. I'll clean the cars off."
"Babe, it's fine, I don't mind. Besides, your car is in front of mine, so you'd have to move mine to get it out anyway."
"Let me go myself."
"Babe. No. Go sit in the car and get warmed up, okay? I'll finish clearing the rest of the car, and then we can talk."
"No--"
"Babe. Go sit in the car."
So I did sit in the car. I don't think I bothered to buckle myself in as music softly played from my wife's phone over the car's Bluetooth. I watched her clear off the windscreen and brush whatever snow was leftover on the door windows. She went into the trunk and grabbed a bottle of seltzer and handed it to me. I had calmed down some but I was still sobbing - just not hysterically. She went to the driver's side and slipped into the seat before turning to me.
"Tell me what happened."
So I did.
Ren, annoyed, "I told her I didn't need your help and I could handle it just fine on my own! If I needed your help I would've texted you, but I was fine, and you had to get ready for work."
I'd drank a decent chunk of that seltzer by the time we'd set off. I called it my Emotional Support Seltzer and brought it into work with me, stashed in my bag. Because of the weather, work was pretty slow, so we did nothing but go-backs for the four hours we were there, where there were maybe a handful of customers. It gave us time to think.
Too much time to think.
Instead of having her leave work to come get me I'll just walk home.
"That would be suicide," D told me. "Especially with the roads the way they are, there ain't even a shoulder to walk on."
That's okay.
"No it ain't."
I'd be doing her a favour. She can find someone better than me at doing everything.
"Oh my god, Ru."
As Ren told me, when she returned back to the house, Egg smugly announced, "I yelled at them for not helping you."
Ren, even more annoyed, "I told you I didn't need any help and was able to handle it myself."
My wife picked me up later and told me what went down between her and Egg, which wasn't much of anything except the above exchange; it made my blood boil though, knowing that Egg was gloating about her verbal abuse. Which didn't surprise me, honestly. I was used to it - Egg was like this when I was younger too, talking about how I shouldn't have been born and she regretted having kids after her eldest. When we got back I headed back inside, where Egg was pretending nothing had happened that morning. We ignored her as we grabbed a shovel. Ren tried to help, but we told her no, "we have to do this alone."
"I still have time before I need to get back to work--"
"No."
(Ren told me Egg said, after we went outside to shovel, "They must still be mad at me." Ren, who was getting a shovel of her own to help us out whether we wanted it or not, said, "Yeah, I can't blame them!")
So Ren helped me shovel. Even though I could handle it myself. She helped. Which made me feel worse, because even though I could handle it myself just fine, she still gave a hand. Something I could've done. I could've gotten dressed faster, or said fuck it and threw on whatever so I could help her out with something before going back and changing into my work clothes. I could've done something, even though she said I didn't need to, and should focus on getting dressed instead. I still felt awful. This was supposed to be my penance, after all.
I threw salt down, though the walkway was clear without a sign of ice. Just in case.
We went inside again, put everything away, and were ready to go upstairs.
Egg, in the living room doorway, the look she always used to guilt trip on her face. Her "crocodile tears" look.
"Are you still mad at me?"
I didn't answer. I thought it was pretty fucking obvious that I was still mad at her - I was fucking pissed in fact!
"Don't be mad at me." Cue the "tears" (there never are any), the lip quiver. "Please don't be mad at me."
"Why shouldn't I be mad at you? After everything you said this morning?"
"Please don't be mad at me..." She acted like I hadn't said anything. She clearly wasn't listening, not unless it was something she wanted to hear, anyway. I moved to go upstairs, and she stepped forward.
"Come on and give me a hug."
No. I don't really like being touched. I shook my head.
"Come on, please?"
"No."
She kept coming forward. I backed away from her and said, "Don't touch me."
"Don't be like that." She had me practically backed up into a corner. My wife could only look on, helpless.
"Don't. touch me."
That didn't dissuade her. Feeling threatened, I ended up switching, and Aleks came out.
"Don't. Touch me." His deep, booming voice finally got the message across, especially since he adopted a defensive stance. She stopped her advance and backed away.
"Okay, okay...I won't touch you." She moved in front of the stairs to get to the second floor. Aleks approached, and she didn't move.
"Let me go upstairs."
Nothing at first.
Aleks, more authoritative, "Let me get upstairs."
Egg finally moved out of the way; Ren and Aleks proceeded to go upstairs.
There was never any apology from Egg about the things that she said.
Later on that day when we saw her, Aleks told her in no uncertain terms to keep her nose out of our marriage and to stop meddling "or else there will be consequences."
To which Egg responded, "Okay. I know--I should know better than to try and impose myself between you and Ren. You're right. I'll butt out." With a chuckle, "I forget that you're an adult and you're married."
We were 31 years old. This was February 2024. Ren and I got married December of 2021. How could someone forget that?
Someone who didn't see us as an adult could.
Someone who didn't acknowledge our marriage could.
How old did she think we were? I couldn't say.
Seeing how she treated us, she thought we were young, like 9 or 10 years old.
Infantilisation is a common thing that narcissists do when it comes to their kids.
It was this incident that made Ren go, "I've had enough!" and start looking at places we could move out to. Areas like the Southern Tier, the Finger Lakes region, literally anywhere that wasn't where we were and was also closer to where her family was.
This was the beginning of the end, or rather, the beginning of a new, much darker nightmare.
Hands on her hips as we came down the stairs to head out for work, Egg said, "I guess I'll have to call the guy to get the driveway extended because you don't wanna do it."
I said nothing. Raised an eyebrow inquisitively.
"You know, I expected you to put the call in because Ren was supposed to do it, but she can't do it now because of everything, so I expected you to step up and do it for her. You know, that's part of being a good spouse, doing things for your wife when she can't do them or can't get to them."
My mother-in-law was gone for maybe a week or so at this point in time, my wife was grieving for her mom, I was grieving for how short a time I'd had with my mother-in-law before things were cut short prematurely. The last thing either of us were thinking about was a fucking driveway. But Egg just expected us to both be over it and everything back to business as usual, because that's how she operated, so therefore everyone else must operate that same way. If they don't, they're "not normal".
"So I'll just do it so that it'll get done, but I expect you to be out there telling the guy where to extend it out to. I'm doing this for you."
No one asked her to even extend the driveway, considering there were plenty of places to park that weren't on the street when the on-street parking ban was in effect. She took it upon herself to do this. She made it out like we were being ungrateful, that we were trying to take advantage. How can we be either of those things when we never once asked her to do, well, any of it?
(Because Egg thinks the world owes her.)
We continued to say nothing, looked at the time, and left because now we were running late.
We had a short work shift that day, and I spent the entire time questioning if I was as bad a partner as Egg was making us out to be. It continued when we got home, where I ended up questioning Aleks.
"Am I really that bad a spouse?"
"No, not at all. You are doing everything you're supposed to - you're there for Ren as she grieves and figures out what this 'new normal' looks like and how much it sucks. Your concern is for her, your priorities are all in the right place. If you were concerned about the stupid driveway, or some other trivial thing, over her, then you'd be a pretty bad partner. Egg is wrong."
Even getting that reassurance didn't feel like enough. Getting similar reassurance from Ren didn't feel like enough. Maybe they were missing something, or overlooking some horrible flaw in my person. Clearly I must've been this absolutely awful person who was so undeserving of anything, really.
Ren said to not worry about the driveway. So I didn't worry about the driveway.
Ren said that Egg should be the one doing something about the driveway, since this is her house and property, not ours. I agreed. I told Egg I didn't care about the driveway and whether it got done or not. She didn't like that. She expected me to just lay down and say "yes ma'am". Instead I chose my wife.
Her "competition".
If I had to choose between Egg and Ren, I would choose Ren every single time. Because she is the love of my life. That's how marriage works. It's like Egg thought that she was included in our marital aspect, which she most certainly was not.
*
The second (and last) time I questioned if I was "up to snuff" as a marital partner, resulted in a major breakdown in the front seat of my wife's car after a major snow event.
I say "major" but we honestly didn't get that much snow - for the northeast anyway. It was maybe four, no more than five, inches of snow on the ground, and by the time I was due in at work, it had already begun melting. There wasn't much to shovel, but it was enough that you had to bust one out and spend a couple of minutes clearing the walkway.
On this particular morning, my wife was going to drive me into work because there was a lot of slush and a lot of patches of ice. My wife is from upstate New York by Lake Ontario, where they not only get regular winter snow, but lake effect as well. She's used to driving in snow, sleet, ice - you name it, she's driven in it. I also come from a place that gets snow, though not much ice, so I know how to drive in less than ideal snow conditions, but my wife is a lot better. Plus she offered. She told me to get ready for work whilst she went outside and shovelled and cleared her car off. I said okay and started my morning pre-work routine.
I could hear Egg and Ren exchanging some words and Ren being reassuring, saying that she could handle shovelling just fine, and that if she needed me to come out, she would get me.
I finished getting dressed and when my "head out" alarm went off, I geared myself up and started down the stairs. Where Egg was waiting at the bottom, an angry look on her wraith-like face.
(The following exchange is a summation, the actual dialogue was a lot worse.)
"Why aren't you out there helping her?"
I stopped halfway down the stairs. "Because I was getting ready for work and she said she didn't need my help."
"Do you know how hard it is to shovel snow? By yourself? As one person? You should be out there helping her, but instead you're in here doing God knows what! Always trying to get out of doing anything after it snows! You're a horrible spouse!"
Which isn't true. Most of the time I'm the one shovelling the snow and salting the walkway so no one slips on ice and ends up injured. I say nothing and continue the rest of the way down.
"When you get home, you'll have to shovel whatever snow is left, and you will have to do it by yourself, no help from anyone. Okay?!"
I said nothing and slip out the door.
I made it off the porch before I started sobbing.
Maybe I am bad.
I shouldn't have her do anything for me anymore.
She shouldn't take me to work today. I can take myself. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll skid out and die.
I went through the snow in the yard, which was almost up to my knees thanks to snow drift, sobbing hysterically, all of these awful thoughts going through my head. Ren was in the driveway clearing off her car and heard me before she saw me.
"What's wrong?"
"Go inside. I can drive myself to work. I'll clean the cars off."
"Babe, it's fine, I don't mind. Besides, your car is in front of mine, so you'd have to move mine to get it out anyway."
"Let me go myself."
"Babe. No. Go sit in the car and get warmed up, okay? I'll finish clearing the rest of the car, and then we can talk."
"No--"
"Babe. Go sit in the car."
So I did sit in the car. I don't think I bothered to buckle myself in as music softly played from my wife's phone over the car's Bluetooth. I watched her clear off the windscreen and brush whatever snow was leftover on the door windows. She went into the trunk and grabbed a bottle of seltzer and handed it to me. I had calmed down some but I was still sobbing - just not hysterically. She went to the driver's side and slipped into the seat before turning to me.
"Tell me what happened."
So I did.
Ren, annoyed, "I told her I didn't need your help and I could handle it just fine on my own! If I needed your help I would've texted you, but I was fine, and you had to get ready for work."
I'd drank a decent chunk of that seltzer by the time we'd set off. I called it my Emotional Support Seltzer and brought it into work with me, stashed in my bag. Because of the weather, work was pretty slow, so we did nothing but go-backs for the four hours we were there, where there were maybe a handful of customers. It gave us time to think.
Too much time to think.
Instead of having her leave work to come get me I'll just walk home.
"That would be suicide," D told me. "Especially with the roads the way they are, there ain't even a shoulder to walk on."
That's okay.
"No it ain't."
I'd be doing her a favour. She can find someone better than me at doing everything.
"Oh my god, Ru."
As Ren told me, when she returned back to the house, Egg smugly announced, "I yelled at them for not helping you."
Ren, even more annoyed, "I told you I didn't need any help and was able to handle it myself."
My wife picked me up later and told me what went down between her and Egg, which wasn't much of anything except the above exchange; it made my blood boil though, knowing that Egg was gloating about her verbal abuse. Which didn't surprise me, honestly. I was used to it - Egg was like this when I was younger too, talking about how I shouldn't have been born and she regretted having kids after her eldest. When we got back I headed back inside, where Egg was pretending nothing had happened that morning. We ignored her as we grabbed a shovel. Ren tried to help, but we told her no, "we have to do this alone."
"I still have time before I need to get back to work--"
"No."
(Ren told me Egg said, after we went outside to shovel, "They must still be mad at me." Ren, who was getting a shovel of her own to help us out whether we wanted it or not, said, "Yeah, I can't blame them!")
So Ren helped me shovel. Even though I could handle it myself. She helped. Which made me feel worse, because even though I could handle it myself just fine, she still gave a hand. Something I could've done. I could've gotten dressed faster, or said fuck it and threw on whatever so I could help her out with something before going back and changing into my work clothes. I could've done something, even though she said I didn't need to, and should focus on getting dressed instead. I still felt awful. This was supposed to be my penance, after all.
I threw salt down, though the walkway was clear without a sign of ice. Just in case.
We went inside again, put everything away, and were ready to go upstairs.
Egg, in the living room doorway, the look she always used to guilt trip on her face. Her "crocodile tears" look.
"Are you still mad at me?"
I didn't answer. I thought it was pretty fucking obvious that I was still mad at her - I was fucking pissed in fact!
"Don't be mad at me." Cue the "tears" (there never are any), the lip quiver. "Please don't be mad at me."
"Why shouldn't I be mad at you? After everything you said this morning?"
"Please don't be mad at me..." She acted like I hadn't said anything. She clearly wasn't listening, not unless it was something she wanted to hear, anyway. I moved to go upstairs, and she stepped forward.
"Come on and give me a hug."
No. I don't really like being touched. I shook my head.
"Come on, please?"
"No."
She kept coming forward. I backed away from her and said, "Don't touch me."
"Don't be like that." She had me practically backed up into a corner. My wife could only look on, helpless.
"Don't. touch me."
That didn't dissuade her. Feeling threatened, I ended up switching, and Aleks came out.
"Don't. Touch me." His deep, booming voice finally got the message across, especially since he adopted a defensive stance. She stopped her advance and backed away.
"Okay, okay...I won't touch you." She moved in front of the stairs to get to the second floor. Aleks approached, and she didn't move.
"Let me go upstairs."
Nothing at first.
Aleks, more authoritative, "Let me get upstairs."
Egg finally moved out of the way; Ren and Aleks proceeded to go upstairs.
There was never any apology from Egg about the things that she said.
Later on that day when we saw her, Aleks told her in no uncertain terms to keep her nose out of our marriage and to stop meddling "or else there will be consequences."
To which Egg responded, "Okay. I know--I should know better than to try and impose myself between you and Ren. You're right. I'll butt out." With a chuckle, "I forget that you're an adult and you're married."
We were 31 years old. This was February 2024. Ren and I got married December of 2021. How could someone forget that?
Someone who didn't see us as an adult could.
Someone who didn't acknowledge our marriage could.
How old did she think we were? I couldn't say.
Seeing how she treated us, she thought we were young, like 9 or 10 years old.
Infantilisation is a common thing that narcissists do when it comes to their kids.
It was this incident that made Ren go, "I've had enough!" and start looking at places we could move out to. Areas like the Southern Tier, the Finger Lakes region, literally anywhere that wasn't where we were and was also closer to where her family was.
This was the beginning of the end, or rather, the beginning of a new, much darker nightmare.
