When we first started dating I would freeze when he’d pull out his phone to take a picture. What was happening? “Why are you doing that?”
“Because you look adorable and I want to remember this!”
I thought it was weird. I couldn’t smile, or even function, I felt sick. I didn’t know what was happening. I asked my therapist about it.
“Why does he want to take pictures of me?”
“Because you’re adorable and he wants to remember the date.”
My throat starts to tighten. “But what is he going to do with it?”
“I don’t know, look at it and remember how cute you are, probably. Did Dave not take pictures of you?”
No. He did not. He hated pictures. If I were to try to take a picture of us together, it would be met with scowling or he would run away from me, sometimes mooning or a middle finger for the camera. If he caught me taking a selfie, he made fun of me. Mocking my face and pretending and miming me, calling me vain. The only time photos were allowed was on family outings, and then only a few. I was allowed to take pictures of the kids, but not us. Never him. The only pictures of me for decades are the ones I snuck of myself when he wasn’t looking or I was alone.
Now the man I’m dating wants to take my picture and it triggers a physical reaction. My stomach hurts and my hands shake. He doesn’t understand. He wants to know why.
I don’t want him to know. I feel like I have so much to apologize for. Because I stayed in a marriage to someone who made me feel like I was invisible, like I was disappearing, like I wasn’t a person anymore. Someone who could be so casually cruel to me on a daily basis and yet I tolerated it. I thought that’s just what love felt like. It felt like backhanded insults and never voicing your needs, let alone your boundaries. I feel embarrassed that I stayed, that I was married at all.
I spiral trying to lay it all in a straight line in my head. It’s not my fault that I felt that I had to stay, that he was in danger, and it was terrifying to leave. That if I had succeeded and left earlier, he might have died earlier. It’s not my fault that I fell in love with him in the first place. I was 20 and a brand-new adult in a new city with no support system. It’s not my fault I couldn’t see how much harm he would cause, how much I was bending myself into shape for him, trying to be the perfect wife for him. It’s not my fault I was married to someone who abused me, someone I was afraid of.
I don’t have to offer any explanations for my wounds, I do the deep dives in therapy. We work through each trigger as I learn it. Photos. Sex on my period, making a restaurant reservation. Dating is a minefield as it is, but mine feels particularly explosive when having my date order and pay for my drink at a crowded venue can bring me to tears. That was something my husband could not do. I feel overwhelmed with gratitude that I never have to hold his hand through another meltdown in public, while simultaneously furious that I let myself be his emotional bubble wrap for 18 years of my life.