The Good in the Bad Marriage (and more)

Eye-Opening Moments are real-life stories of adversity, encounters, and perspectives intertwined. In this episode you will hear about The Good in the Bad Marriage & From Adversity to Abundance.

Website: https://inspiremereads.com
Books: https://amazon.com/author/emily-kay-tan.2021_

Chapters

• 0:21 Introduction
• 1:02 The Good in the Bad Marriage
• 13:47 From Adversity to Abundance
• 20:59 Key Takeaways

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode #173 of Eye-Opening Moments where you’ll hear stories of adversity, encounters, and perspectives intertwined. They are moments that can lift your spirits, give you some food for thought, or move you. For the introspective mind that likes to reflect, discover, and find solutions or meaning in a complex life, this is for you. I’m your host Emily Kay Tan.  In this episode, you will hear about The Good in the Bad Marriage & From Adversity to Abundance.

The Good in The Bad Marriage
I once wrote about an insignificant marriage; I called it such because I married someone I was not madly in love with. I found many negative things to say about my ex and beat myself up countless times for enduring the minefield and walking on eggshells for seven years. It was hard to find where all the positives were in the overbearing sea of darkness. I even vowed that there would not be another story written about him because, like our beautiful wedding photo album, it was something I just wanted to dump in the garbage can. Strangely, one day, after many years, I thought of the positives and recalled them. You might say they were great because many marriages wish they had it; many have broken for lack of it.

Anson was a gentleman; he was kind and generous when I first met him. He wined and dined me. Anson showered me with thoughtful gifts, opened doors, and pulled chairs out for me. After only three months of dating, he bought me a five-hundred-dollar mountain bike. This was thirty years ago. I was more than thrilled and impressed with his generosity. We had dinners at steakhouses where a steak cost over a hundred dollars. I couldn't understand how a steak could cost that much, but it was delicious, and I couldn't even finish it in one sitting. Again, it happened over thirty years ago. You might think there is nothing special about what he did, but for me, it was. I never had a boyfriend who wined and dined me like him. He wasn't rich, but he gave generously.

Anson and I planned weekends together, and we usually did things I wanted to do. He granted my wishes and made me feel like a princess. Anson was reliable and followed through on our plans. I could count on his words. I wanted someone dependable and stable. Anson was wonderful during the six months we were dating. I called him Mr. Wonderful!

We were soon engaged, and everything started going downhill. Anson's mother claimed that he had not informed her of our engagement and that she was angry. Because she was displeased, we reluctantly delayed our wedding plans. 

During the one-year engagement, many red flags popped up. Anson's mother was kind to me until Anson and I got engaged. I began to think Anson was not far from the apron strings, and that angered me. Independent me always made my decisions, and it looked like Anson was not making his own. Big red flag, I thought.

When we began renovating the house he bought many years ago because we would live in it, I discovered something about Anson that I had never seen. He was anal and controlling. He was an extreme perfectionist. I say extreme because he was more of a perfectionist than me. Despite the red flags, I decided to go through with the wedding since I had already sent out invitations. I told myself that no marriage was perfect and hoped for a miracle.

The day we got married, my mother-in-law welcomed me into the family and treated me with the kindness I experienced with Anson before we married. I had three people treating me like a princess: My in-laws and Anson. The miracle I was hoping for happened!

Shortly after marriage, however, my life with Anson took a turn for the worse. It was beyond my imagination. It was as if the real him, a monster, revealed himself after marriage. He was so kind before we married. How could he turn into such a monster afterward? 

I discovered Anson's explosive temper over the minor things he disagreed with or thought were not perfect enough. When I spilled a drop of invisible superglue on the bathroom sink, he hollered at me for two hours. When I got wrapping paper to wrap a present for his brother, the dye of the paper got on my hand and onto a glass doorknob, so he yelled at me for two hours. When I invited a friend over to see our newly renovated house, he screamed at me for nearly two hours because he said I did not ask permission to invite anyone to our home. I never knew what could trigger Anson to begin his rampage, so I felt like I was walking on eggshells. Then I realized I was walking in a minefield. If I stepped on the wrong spot, and I didn't know where that spot would be, his temper would blow me into smithereens. 

The painful burning sensations would continue to linger long after the screams. That was because, aside from Anson's lectures about how wrong I was or how imperfect I was in whatever I did, he demeaned me. He said, "How did you get a Master's degree? How could you be a teacher when you don't know everything?" He believed I should solve all his problems and have all the answers to his questions because I was a teacher and held a graduate degree. According to Anson, I should have all the answers with my credentials. Since I didn't, he belched at my inability to satisfy him with answers. It hurt.

I worked hard to get my degrees and credentials as I paid for my own college and graduate school tuition. He attacked my accomplishments. Disrespected and degraded with each temper tantrum, I loved him less and less. I told him so, but he would not stop the screams until he had two hours of proclaiming his self-righteousness. I realized his self-righteousness was more important than our love and marriage because he wouldn't stop even when I begged him to stop the hollering. 

Though rattled and shattered into pieces, I glued one piece after another to bring myself together and find the courage to divorce him. I skydived, moved abroad, paid my way to college, claimed financial independence at seventeen, and the most courageous thing I ever did was to divorce Anson. I was already emotionally abused by my family; I was not going to continue to be emotionally abused by my husband. I divorced him and never wanted to look back. My wedding photographer and the beautiful photo album I bought were over four thousand dollars (thirty years ago). I wanted to throw it away, but it was like throwing money away. After twenty years, however, it finally went to the dumpster. The lousy marriage wreaked an odor that smelled like trash; I didn't want to revisit it. 

It has taken many years to acknowledge the many good things in a bad marriage. With heaps of bad vibes, finding them among the piles of horrible experiences was hard. But it was a needed trip to begin the healing process.

As I removed the layers of pain and suffering, I remembered some fine things deep below. Many couples have fought over money and even divorced because of money. Anson and I did not fight about money. We had similar values and handled money in the same fashion. We spent carefully, counted our pennies, splurged on things we really wanted occasionally, and ensured basic needs were covered. He checked the balance of our joint accounts, and I recorded all our expenses, as I had the habit of doing since I was seventeen. He was happy with this habit of mine. Money was never an issue between us. Even in divorce, it was quick to divide assets as I kept clear records of expenditures. And we agreed to split properties fifty-fifty with no arguments about it. My friends couldn't believe how agreeable we were in money matters, but we were. I am thankful we had this positive aspect to our marriage and divorce.

Anson also believed in sharing chores. Since I cooked most of the time, he volunteered to do the dishes and appeared happy to do it every time. I told him I preferred washing dishes to cooking, but he could not cook, so I cooked, and he washed. While that may be a small detail, it is a daily chore that cannot be ignored and appreciated!

While I recorded expenses, Anson checked our bank balances. While I cleaned my bathroom, he cleaned his bathroom, and he agreed to take turns cleaning our third bathroom. When he threw dirty clothes in the laundry machine, I took them out to fold and iron. We washed the cars and mowed the lawn together. Little negotiation and much agreement related to household duties easily took place.

Though we were not poor, Anson clipped coupons, made shopping lists with me, and sequenced the most efficient way to do our errands to save on gas. We shopped together, and I appreciated his desire for efficiency, which I liked, too. Our values were once more aligned.

Whenever I needed something, which was not often, Anson would drop whatever he did to attend to my needs. It was summertime when I was busy making new homemade posters for a new bunch of students. Anson looked over and said he had a machine at work that could do a fancy job. Instead of me doing it manually, he could help me with the machine he had at work. I was happy and thought he was kind to help me do something that had nothing to do with us or our home. Anson made me feel special. I was not always happy to stop whatever I was doing to answer his beck and call. But he was for me; I needed to learn this from him.

Whenever his parents called to go out for dinner, I was happy for the family outing because I was the black sheep in my family. I felt like I belonged in Anson's family and was most grateful for a mother-in-law who was more like a mother to me than the biological one I had. Whenever my in-laws went to Hong Kong, they always came back bearing many gifts for us, including silk and leather coats and dozens of underwear and pajamas. My family never bought me much, even when I was a kid. I was lucky if Mom bought me something once a year for my birthday, and I think she only did it because Grandma Sandy asked her to send me something. My mother-in-law spoiled me, and I was tickled to marry into this family.

Buried deep in a bad marriage were some good things. Remembering them helps relieve the pain endured. Recalling them helps soothe a hurt soul. Thinking back on the positive stuff assists in the healing process. Healing is crucial to moving forward with a more positive outlook, creating more positive relationship behavior and attitudes.

Though the journey was painful, remembering all the terrible things and finding difficulty locating the positives were essential to recovery from suffering. Remembering the good reminds me that there was good, and it feels good to remember it. Mustering the courage to recall the good and the bad brings forth freedom. It is freedom from pain and freedom to soar. 

Though once lost in a black hole, I found the light. Feeling balanced, I shifted and comforted my soul to know that my bad marriage was also good.

From Adversity to Abundance
It incubated silently for over ten years. I couldn’t see it; it was invisible to me, and I forgot the random thoughts about it because they had escaped me so quickly. Though I gave little thought to it, I had created my little crumbs to provide me with clues, but I didn’t recognize the hints I gave myself. When I lost my way and stopped loving my long and successful career, I searched for sparks or some static electricity that would ignite a fuse to drive me away from my adversities and throw me into the arms of abundance. I never imagined that when I signed up for that first class, it was the beginning of me discovering a passion I never knew I had and, more importantly, finding meaning in a life I thought was meaningless because it was full of misery.

How did a middle-aged driven woman like me get lost like a teenager who didn’t know her direction in life anymore? How did I become disillusioned with a career I loved so much? I sat down to hear a short lecture and then heard one story after another. The tremors from within rattled me, the emotional waves shuddered me, and the incidents of my past surfaced to meet and link to the stories of strangers sharing their personal experiences. 

Too soon, it was time to go. Each time I drove home from my writing class, thoughts of things from the distant past flooded my mind, nearly drowning me. It was amazing that I escaped any car accidents. I was eager to get home to continue thinking to bring clarity to the foggy past. The instructor gave the most mind-tingling assignments, such as topics called The Goodbye, The Triumph, and The Meeting. Immersed in thought, I thought, which goodbye would I call the goodbye? Which triumph would be considered the triumph? And which meeting would be called the significant meeting? Before discovering the answers, I quaked with excitement to begin writing about what I didn’t know what I was going to write about!

Sitting at my new desk in my new apartment in a new city, ready for a new beginning, I wrote my first words after over ten years of incubation. Like a strange flower that wouldn’t grow and bloom for over ten long years, it suddenly happened. Seeming to have a mind of its own, my fingers tapped out words and sentences before I even knew what I was going to write. Seemingly thrust onto a path where I did not know where it would lead me, I moved and tapped away to tell my stories. With little pauses here and there, I would still be lost or in a fog, but then, like a streak of lightning, an eye-opening moment would hit me. 

I remembered the goodbyes of two ex-boyfriends, which I thought were significant, but like a car that came out of nowhere in my blind spot, I discovered all the goodbyes at the airport with my mother flashed from my memory bank to tell me that I didn’t turn around after saying goodbye to boyfriends because my mom never turned around to say goodbye to little five to ten-year-old me. Tears flooded out of the stoic me uncontrollably. This middle-aged woman never cried a whole pint like that. The goodbyes with my mom were those at the airport, where she never turned around to bid me farewell and continued to leave me in the care of my grandmother.

I remembered the big triumph when I went to Grandma’s funeral, and my relatives did not inform or invite me. The victory was keeping my head held high to pay my respects to the grandmother who raised me and smile and hug my parents despite their coldness to this daughter they tossed out at age five. Opening my heart and hugging the parents who didn’t love me was a more significant achievement than funding my own education and working full-time while getting my Master’s degree.

I recalled the meeting. Though I knew I was on a trip to Bhutan, the land of happiness, and knew it would be unique, I never imagined my encounter with the tour guide would change some of my perspectives and bring me the kind of peace and happiness I had never experienced. The result of this meeting was most unexpected. He was a tour guide who did not talk much; that was strange in and of itself. Most of the time, he only spoke when I asked questions. He demanded nothing of me. He accepted however I wanted to be or whatever I wanted to do. He expected nothing of me and showed no judgment. His odd behavior put me at ease, bringing me to be only in the present and be myself. It was strange to demand nothing of myself and learn to accept anything as is. Indeed, it was this encounter or this meeting that changed my philosophy about life.

The five-year-old who never got the love she desperately wanted from her parents grew up to have a big enough heart to hug them anyway. The triumph was sheer joy. The Bhutanese tour guide, a stranger who had few words for me for seven days, changed my perspectives on life, which would help me enjoy more peace and happiness.

While writing my stories of adversity, the eye-opening moments brought relief and comfort to heal gaping wounds. Still, how could adversity be a good thing? As former first lady Michelle Obama said, “You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it’s important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages.” I have become wiser from adversity and developed courage by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity. My writing journey has undoubtedly transformed my life, which was full of adversity, into one filled with abundance and meaning.

Key Takeaways
Though I had a bad marriage, there were also good parts to it.

Though adversity brought many challenges, it helped me to develop courage, sharpen my skills, problem-solve creatively, and strengthen my character.

Next week, you will hear two real-life stories called Two Surprising Lessons Learned & From Dreading to Welcoming. If you enjoyed this episode of Eye-Opening Moments, please text someone and ask them what they think about this podcast, or go to www.inspiremereads.com and leave a message. Thank you for listening!