Escaping Codependency

I began putting his alarm clock on the coffee table when he fell asleep on the couch rather than lug his half asleep body to bed before I retired for the night.

That's from a recent piece on this site called Codependence. The process of leaving behind my inherently codependent heternormative relationship started years before I decided it was important he get up on time but this didn't have to involve me being his overworked bitch while he was extremely unappreciative.

When we got involved in our teens, we were both gamers. We got married, he joined the Army and I turned up unexpectedly pregnant.

He continued gaming. I mostly stopped because I wanted to be a good mom and get an education and have a career someday. 

I made the conscious decision that there's only so many hours in the day and continuing this time-intensive hobby wasn't going to lead to the life I wanted. I still sometimes played if enough people didn't show up to game with him and then I would win round one, blindsiding the fool who didn't think the little wifey was a serious gamer and then for round two they actually treated me like a threat or serious competitor. 

In Germany, his gaming buddies were all single soldiers who were thrilled to be able to go to someone's home and get away from the barracks. I cooked Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner for them but couldn't afford to feed them every week.

So after the first Saturday gaming session where they lived off chips and snacks, I encouraged them to stop at the commissary on the way and buy hotdogs or something and cook for themselves. We had words at some point because I was feeling disrespected and they straightened up after that.

As a woman, I couldn't be invited to the going-away party at the barracks when their tour of duty ended, but every single one of these guys came to say a tearful goodbye to me personally before leaving.

Our next duty station was Fort Riley, Kansas. We bought a house in Manhattan, Kansas.

Manhattan is a thirty-minute drive from Fort Riley, but has a large university. Instead of gaming with single soldiers living in the barracks in a foreign country thrilled to have the opportunity to cook hotdogs and eat potato chips while gaming in our home, my husband was gaming with overentitled university students.

On Friday night, hubby would vacuum and pick up the house to impress his disrespectful, unappreciative loser troglodyte so-called "friends," one of whom we eventually learned had been dishonorably discharged from basic training and another of whom got pregnant with baby number three by baby-daddy number three while we knew her.

Every single week that he was home, after hubby and his "friends" thoroughly trashed my home all weekend, I spent two to three days cleaning up the mess they all made. 

Then to add insult to injury, hubby would insist he was some enlightened new age man because he vacuumed once a week while I rolled my eyes behind his back and didn't bother to try to explain to him that my house would be cleaner for less work on my part if he didn't do ANY housework while also not inviting these jackasses to our home all weekend every weekend.

He was gone half the year every single year we were in Kansas, so for the first time in our marriage, I had a meaningful basis of comparison. If he was gone two weeks straight, I could clean up the first week and then my house stayed picked up until his return, in spite of my health problems and our special needs kids.

He would come back from somewhere and within 30 minutes, the entire house was completely trashed and as long as he was home, no amount of work was enough for me to keep up. I had nightmares in Kansas about him being an abusive husband inviting people over to help him heap abuse on me.

When we went to our next duty station, without explaining why, I announced he would no longer be gaming at our house anymore. He was welcome to pursue his hobby, but do it elsewhere. 

But me working to defend myself from their SHIT started before we moved away. I began taking college classes and studying on weekends instead of catering to hubby and his "friends." 

This led to a big, big fight the neighbors probably heard where I told him I should drop out rather than fail my classes because I couldn't focus while trying to study because they were too loud. After that, he made them be quieter, so I continued my studies.

At some point, hubby came home from the field having had like two hours of sleep and he fell asleep across three chairs while trying to clean up to impress his "friends." When they showed up, rather than waking him, I lied and told them he wasn't there.

I don't lie well because I don't do it often. Being scum of the earth, they tried to insist I let them in because they obviously didn't believe me. 

So three young men all bigger than me tried to force the screen door rather than take "no" for an answer. My hand dropped towards the umbrella nearby preparing to physically defend myself with violence and call the cops in the face of a potential home invasion. 

They ultimately left without entering. After that, I would get home from grocery shopping on Sunday and within 30 minutes they were all "MY! Look at the time!" and fled the premises.

I think I began putting the clock on the coffee table in Southern California. We were at NTC, the National Training Center, and it was like an hour's drive to the nearest mall.

I initially made going shopping in town with him and the kids a family outing. Then he was a jackass to our kids on one of these trips.

After that, I stopped bothering him and went to town with the kids alone, began leaving the clock on the coffee table, got my own bank account in town "So I can cash checks while shopping," finished my AA and enrolled in a Bachelor's degree program and began trying like HELL to figure out how to viably LEAVE in spite of special needs kids, health problems and nearly ZERO work experience. 

I made sure to emphasize what was in it for him: "You work long hours. It's a long drive. I don't want to impose." 

I began going to the computer store without him for the same reason -- as a convenience to him -- and learning enough to do some of my own tech support. 

If your relationship is codependent for any reason, there's probably a thousand little things you do based on assumptions you make that you can probably stop doing without a fight if you just change your mind.