The specific incidence which lead to my revelations, was remembering, how at weddings my husband would get drunk and become the life of the party. Which was fine. He was funny and never hurtful or nasty, per se. I laughed at his antics too, and even my uptight family cut him too much slack because he was so entertaining. But all his free-spirited frat boy shenanigans came at an enormous price to me. I had to carry the mental load. I got the gifts, pressed suits, cleaned up, was designated driver, and worst of all, the straight man, the schlimazel. An invidious role, which props up the charming drunk with her own shoulders. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes.
When we had children, it was so much worse. I'd drive home with him singing drunkenly the entire way. By the time we arrived he was sobering up and starting to get cranky. One time, he got out of the car, fell in our kiddie pool and screamed at me for putting it there. He went in, crashed for four hours, while I did all the parenting, cleanup, supper, bedtime ritual, etc. The designated drunk gets a free pass for sure, with us trauma first responders.
And it wasn't just weddings where I had to drive home that were the problem. Some receptions were held at hotels. And that was so much worse. He'd leave me alone in hotels rooms to continue partying. I was always exhausted and in a lot of pain from back trouble. So I would head to bed at around midnight, and he'd promise to be "right up." I would be tired but unable to sleep in a strange place. He'd stagger in a 4 am and I'd be livid, mostly from weariness and grief at being ditched, AGAIN.
This wasn't routine behavior in our lives. If it had I think I'd have divorced him. It was just a kind of letting his hair down at social functions. But he was in no fit condition to "adult" or parent. What alarms me now is that I just anticipated and accommodated it. So he expected that weddings would be his time to howl. And I ended up doing all the childcare, navigating, being the designated adult. What also alarmed and now angers me, is that I never once had the opportunity to let my hair down. AT MY OWN FAMILY functions! He was the designated wasted frat boy and I was bitch keeping everything going.
I shouldered the adult mental load so he could act irresponsibly. One time, it was a wedding reception he had refused to attend and I took our four kids alone. The youngest was only four. It was an overnighter at a hotel in our town and he should have attended but wouldn't. I called and invited him again so we could have a nice overnight together. Not, interestingly so I could have the help I needed. I never asked for that but should have. Another boundary/need fallen to the fawn response.
He arrived and immediately was the life of the party. It was all about him. Everyone loved how much fun he was. One person just sent him a Facebook friend request 25 years later, on the strength of that one time. Meanwhile I who could have really used a night off from being the designated adult, continued to carry that mental load alone. I made sure the kids ate, had their sleeping arrangements, toothbrushes etc. I tucked the little one in, snuggled up with her and cried myself to sleep taking care not to wake her.
While he whooped it up downstairs. He even let our teen sons get drunk with him. And they had a great time, I can't deny that. Though I felt intense guilt for somehow allowing it. I can't really formulate now how I did. But the shame remains. I think they also felt they had to stand by dad because he was incapable of adult behavior. It wasn't that he was precisely dangerous. But more risk-taking than he should have been. And let's be honest, when drunk, say what you will about it being an inclusive fun thing, it's all about the drunk maintaining that drunk experience.
Again, he staggered up at God knows when, and I'd not in fact, cried myself to sleep. Only into a series of trauma nightmares. Just recently we talked about it for the first time in 25 years and his response was that he should not have "let me go" to that function. And I heard and saw what has been the problem here all along. Starting with the should not have let me.
So first let me just say that I know my husband and as control freaky mansplain-y as that sounded, I don't think he meant it as bad as it sounded. At least he better not have. What he meant was that he should have been more encouraging to help me avoid toxic situations' which that particular wedding was. It was my stepmother's family and she, my dad and her lot have been very nasty, condescending, demanding, controlling and shaming of me. I went out of good old guilt.
But that was not to problem, as I identified. When he said that, I pointed out, "no what you should have done was to take over the adulting and give me a much-needed break so that I could relax and enjoy an adult event. I didn't need another adult baby in my life to babysit. I needed to have some drinks and unwind. And if I had too much, well, we were all safely contained in a hotel. You should have entertained the kids at an adults-only event for once, instead of being the evening's Foster Brooks entertainment for everyone."
I added, that it wasn't entirely his being selfish, though that was part. It was my faulty people pleaser trauma responses telling me to let everyone walk all over me, do what they wanted and leave me to pick up the pieces, AGAIN. And that was indoctrinated in me by my narcissistic parents. He wasn't responsible for that but he was responsible for knowingly triggering my people pleaser trauma response by acting so irresponsibly. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
His shame trauma response at first, tried to shush me. He knows and is very remorseful about his past indiscretions. And they are just that. He struggles to recall without shame so intense that he just wants to silence it. And me, sometimes. Which of course triggers my people pleaser trauma response into shamed silence. But I did something different this time. I didn't let it go. I wrote this post, for the first time in 44 years, delineating how his selfish, immature behavior felt to me.
And I shared it with him. He said how he's felt so ashamed of these immature behaviors, and I said that what I needed was for him to tell me when he does. He says he confesses it in our Catholic sacrament of reconciliation. Which, if I'm honest, does me absolutely no good if it is not confessed to me who was the injured party. Even him confessing to me after I've brought it up, how, does me no good. Confessing after being confronted, is not true repentance. It's just getting caught and being unable to deny the accusation. If I am truly sorry, I acknowledge it immediately to the person I hurt, without waiting for them, someday to maybe bring it up. And if they don't, just keeping quiet.
Him pre-emptively admitting the error of his ways helps me validate that the problem isn't me just being too sensitive, as my narcissistic parents always said. It helps me learn to acknowledge frustration and not bury it till it boils over. It is impossible, by the way, to bury, of absorb endless amounts of toxicity. It will burst at some point so the trick is to not let it build to the explosive level.
This has been the case with toxic narcissistic parents, all my life. None of my four parents ever admitted a single thing they did wrong. They always found a way to blame me. I will blog more on this in another post. Suffice it to say, for now, that this blame-shifting kept me confused, frustrated and ashamed. So I don't even see problems like this, let alone express them, till decades later, if ever. I was glad to have gotten that flash of clarity in the situation. And it helped me see countless other situations where my fawning people pleaser trauma response to carry the entire mental load, has gotten me into great pain.
Just a note before concluding. I was going to delete the entire post after discussing with my husband and coming to some resolution. He completely articulated what was wrong with it all and I could see real contrition. And I have seen real change toward more consistent mature adulting over the years. So I wanted to protect his privacy. But I chose to publish, at his insistence, I might add. Because we both agreed that you all, my dear friends, may need to hear our experiences to heal some issues in your life, family or origin or relationships.
When I have shared my fawning and people pleaser trauma responses and the weird things they make me do, the reaction is resounding agreement. Heads nod so hard it sets off sonar waves! Because anyone with childhood trauma from narcissistic abuse, GETS IT. If you have dealt with anything like this in your life, feel free to comment about it below. What mental load are you carrying that isn't yours to carry? Your stories help us all.
