Glee-ful: Affirmation and Pursuit

 

Okay, so as I wrote here and here, I’ve realized that when I got married, I abandoned most of my own interests and tastes in favor of those of my wife in order to feel like I had truly “bought into” my heterosexual marriage.  There were some after-effects of child abuse in the mix as well, but the bottom line is that I substituted a false persona for my real identity.

Having made that discovery and come to some understanding of how this substitution had come to pass, my next item of business was to start working on removing the false persona and re-discovering my true identity.   To do this, I felt that one of the first things I needed to start doing is to actually affirm and embrace my own interests and, if necessary, to separate myself from my wife in so doing.

I should probably explain that my wife has always seemed very confident in her own skin, and this is something I’ve frankly resented over the years.  And because I was not confident in my own skin, I always felt inferior to her.  I was afraid to embrace my own interests because that would separate me from her and would possibly subject myself to “gay analysis” by her (since she has known since before our marriage that I was and am attracted to men).

And because of this inferiority complex, I also felt very vulnerable:  I felt like she would make fun of me or treat me as somehow inferior for, e.g., listening to classical music instead of rock, or watching a movie she thinks is “weird,” or reading a book that she has no interest in.

After I wrote the foregoing, I had an epiphany of sorts, experiencing a significant insight into my own childhood and past.  I can clearly see now that I behaved in much the same way when I was a child: I hid my true interests because I was afraid of ridicule from my parents (mainly my father) and my older brothers.  (Hence, one of the reasons that I have suffered from a fragmented and repressed identity for most of my life.)

One of the most traumatic emotional experiences I can recall from my childhood was when I was in 4^th grade.  My brother and I each had bulletin boards that we hung in our shared room.  There was a period of time when I enjoyed decorating my bulletin board with seasonal themes like the teachers did at my school.  I would go to the local office supply store and purchase construction paper and cut-out items, such as pictures of cats and pumpkins for October, or Pilgrims and a turkey for November, etc.  I would come up with a design in my head, create a background out of construction paper and then proceed to put the rest of the items up to complete my design.

I recall that it was January, because I can picture in my memory a frozen skating pond on my bulletin board.  My dad said something at dinner one night about my bulletin board.  I can’t recall what exactly he said, but I know that the message was that creating these bulletin boards was kind of a sissy thing to do.  What I can recall very clearly is going up to my room, and while crying and sobbing uncontrollably, ripping everything off my bulletin board and tearing it into tiny pieces.  I never again designed and created a bulletin board.  I had learned my lesson ...

So, getting back to my wife, I can now see how I have been repeating the same pattern with her, afraid to express my true interests for fear of ridicule.  (How pathetic is that?!)  The pattern in our marriage in this regard has always been:

• I defer to her interests, and
• I don’t express or pursue any of my interests, because
• She is not interested in anything I am interested in, and therefore
• If I pursue my own interests (alone), I will possibly subject myself to ridicule and/or “gay analysis” and also create “space” between her and me, and
• This has pretty much never happened before in our marriage.

A therapist I’ve seen recently has explained to me that, any time a long-standing pattern in a marriage is disrupted, it can and usually does cause some problems.  But I won’t go into that.

Suffice it to say that, for me, to actively pursue my own interests for the first time in our married life is a pretty big deal.  To do so means overcoming fear of ridicule and fear of creating space in what has been (I’m being honest) a pretty codependent relationship (at least from my side of the street – again, just being honest.)

(Parenthetically, I am reminded of something that I was told some years ago by a counselor, an extraordinary man with incredible insights.  After a couple of sessions, he remarked, almost off-handedly, that I had never allowed myself to have passions, let alone act upon them.  I have often pondered that comment, which has grown in meaning and increasingly resonated with me over the years.)

Sooooooooo …. ALL that being said, I took a small step Tuesday night:  I went into our bedroom and watched Glee on TV for the very first time.  I almost felt like I was watching an R-rated film – not because of Glee’s content, but because I was actually nervous about it, afraid of the disapproving look on my wife’s face if she were to come in and ask what I was watching. (Glee wouldn’t be her cup of herbal tea, and it would be fertile ground for “gay analysis.”)  And I had actually recently heard a Mormon kid refer to the show as being “bad” and “inappropriate.”

You know what?  I loved it!  Now I understand why it is so popular – at least with some people.  And I wanted to share this experience on my blog.  Because even though it is just such a small thing, it is one of the steps I have taken and am taking to affirm and pursue my genuine interests, on my way to becoming a real person instead of a cardboard cutout.

So, I’m “Glee-ful” today … because I loved the show and the music and because I’m full of the other meaning of “glee”, i.e., delight.  I am delighted (“greatly pleased”) that this insignificant little thing has made me feel more alive to life and to who I am.  Gee!  I feel like … like … singing in the rain!