The Signs
Confessions of a bad wife
I spent a lot of, last year lying in bed, paralyzed by fear looking at the signs in our bedroom. Above the door was a metal picture of a couple who looked to be from an advertisement in 1950, which read, “If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.” The one above the closet, also metal, had a picture of an antique-looking motorcycle that read, “I’d rather wear out than rust away.” And the one that I saw every day when I rolled out of bed was a wooden sign that someone had painted, “For your dreams to come true, you have to wake up.”
My husband was the purchaser of all the signs. He could not go anywhere without purchasing something and would always come home with random bags of stuff. He would leave his bags around the house, but he would never do anything with the things he purchased. Being the good wife I wanted to be, tried to be, suffered to be, I had put the metal signs up in our bedroom several years earlier. They reminded me of him and what I thought I loved about him. He never responded or even noticed the fact that I put them up.
The wooden sign he had put up. It had shown up after I returned from a weekend away. I felt special when he put it up, and it seemed like he was trying to show me he cared. Contemplating divorcing him, the sign felt like an instruction or an insult, wrapped in fear.
“I like that you don’t sleep the day away,” he told me when we first dated. For a man that generally got up at four am, sleeping in meant staying in bed past seven. He told me multiple stories of women he had broken up with because they wanted to sleep till noon on the weekends.
I got up quickly and early for most of our marriage, but I got tired. I wanted to sleep in once in a while. He would get anxious when I did or when I would take a nap during the day.
“Please just let me sleep.”
“But you don’t understand, I am the one that pays if you don’t sleep well tonight,” he said with a general sound of concern. I would get up because I understood that I was so hard to handle. A good wife needed to ensure I didn’t disturb my sleep because it would disturb him.
In a move that was a long time coming and also a complete surprise to me, he informed me via a text message that he was no longer coming home, so I had multiple weekends in which I just slept. In between sleep, I would stare at and re-read the signs. I was contemplating what a lousy wife I was and now had a husband who wouldn’t come home again.
I had been far too disagreeable and attempted to make him compromise and understand my perspective. On one of his last weekends at home, we argued about the type of detergent he was using. His clothing smelled so bad that I had a headache the entire time he was home.
“Can you not use that detergent the next time”
“Yeah. I can try. But you have no idea how big of a deal that is to ask.”
“Okay. If it's hard not to use scented detergent, I can just wash all your clothing as soon as you get home.”
“I flabbergasted that you even asked. You always try to make the environment suit you. It makes me not want to come home.”
“I am sorry I asked. It has made it hard for me to be next to you. Would you rather I not tell you?” I asked, trying to get back on the track of the good wife.
“No. I’d rather you not be so sensitive to something small.”
I had also pushed him too much. I had tried to make him take care of his health and mine. One of our biggest fights had been over an STD test. Historically, I had been the keeper of the testing because he was fearful of getting in trouble at work. Now that he was retired, I asked him to get tested.
He didn’t want to make a doctor's appointment and made me do the labor of figuring out how to get tested at home. I purposely sent him a link to the kit that didn’t require a blood sample. He ordered a kit that did. When I handed him the cup to pee in, I joked, “I bet your pee is 100% mountain dew.”
“Fuck you,” he said when he took the cup from me. We usually could joke, but not when I was being a bad wife.
I tried to help him with the blood collection part of the test, but his fingers did not bleed easily. I attempted to squeeze one of his fingers to help it bleed better, and he almost backhanded me. He paused for a second, threw away the blood testing part of the test, and walked out of the house.
The next day, I asked him if I should send in the kit, hypothesizing that they would probably test his pee and saliva without the blood.
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care about your health? What about your girlfriend's health?”
“I don’t see a need.”
The fight over the std test might have gone by without issue, but I had to push it too far by worrying about his teeth. His bosses were no longer telling him when to see a dentist, and I thought I would be helpful by getting him in with one.
“Do you want me to make you a dental appointment for the next time you are home?”
“Why would you do that?”
“I thought it might be helpful.”
“No, you are trying to control me. I don’t need you to control me,” he said and then hung up. This was our last phone call before; he informed me that he would only communicate with me via text messages.
He didn’t see himself as someone that needed any preventive maintenance. He would rather literally wear out his body than attempt to prevent any disease. I had done wrong by trying to make him take care of himself.
I spent months staring at the signs and contemplating how bad of a wife I had been, but I woke up, took down the signs, and filed for divorce.
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