I am fully aware that even though our marriage was short—less than a decade—it was a success, and what’s more at the point that Sean died…we had finally figured out what life was really all about. We had made it through the years of having children. We renovated a house together. Moved twice. We lost a child together. We grew tighter and stronger through starting small businesses, getting advanced degrees, and battling cancer. We were such a unified front that we just knew how much sweeter love and life were going to be for us when Sean recovered because up until the end—August 1, 2019, we were under the impression that he’d do a stem cell transplant to eradicate the new cancer rapidly proliferating in his body. He died on August 5.
While I have met a lot of genuinely wonderful people, and while I know there are some damn good men out there—men who are willing to face social isolation by saying the quiet part out loud and calling out those who are hurting women, those who are publicly holding men who serve as bastions of misogyny and patriarchal entitlement accountable for the affronts against women—I have yet to meet another man quite like Sean. I’ve seen Sean-like traits in a few people…JP and B and D, but ultimately, they’ve all in some way treated me like an option, and I am a lot of things, but optional is not one of them. I’m not convenient, and I’m not small. I’m also not a ball-buster. I’m a partner.
My gender has nothing to do with my essence, with my soul, and my womanhood is just a gift from the universe (hashtag goddess vibes). Sean’s masculinity was the same way, but as I’ve said in the past, we both had a premium blend of masculine and feminine dualities that we had no problem sharing and showing. Yeah, we had to learn how to communicate. The time in our marriage where we suffered the most was when we failed to communicate because even though I’m good at being direct I wasn’t so great at identifying my feelings. I was also insecure, and I embodied a lot of the shame-inducing qualities of insecurity, but I tried to be careful about not letting them invade my marriage. These were just internalizations that I kept to myself.
Like, the, “What if he’s cheating on me?” Any insecure person has that thought, and while Sean was solid as a rock, and I trusted him completely, that nasty thought would worm its way into my head. However, we became so incredibly tight as a unit and were so respectful to one another and our marriage that by the time he passed away, it never crossed my mind if the exhole would cheat on me whether it be by constantly keeping one in the wings and always chatting up someone else on his socials or actually physically cheating on me or using porn or OnlyFans. I would not be surprised by anyone or anything at this point.
And let me clarify something—I do not care if you suffer a porn addiction, although, that was the gateway for one of my friend’s husbands who was a full blown sex addict before he was out of his 20s and would compulsively cheat on her. She knew about it, and it was just easier to avoid it because dealing with it would’ve meant, well, dealing with it.
But having done my own dance with addiction I can say for free that we don’t change our behaviors unless we want to, and until a person deals with the underlying cause of it, they’re going to either continue the behavior or transfer it to something else that fulfills the role that the addiction was fulfilling.
Most people get addicted to and use porn because they’re desperate for real intimacy and connection, and since men are programmed by the system to only feel safe indulging physical intimacy, basically, they end up becoming wankers. No offense. But let me circle back—I don’t have anything against use of sexual materials in a relationship if it’s consensual. But I would’ve felt disrespected. As Susan said in the show Coupling when they discovered a copy of Lesbian Spank Inferno in Steve’s (her boyfriend’s) video collection in the VCR (yes, this was a show from the ‘90s, and it’s hilarious), Susan makes the analogy that she prides herself on her cooking and that if he felt the need to nip off for a snack between meals, she’d appreciate he not advertise it.
In other words—she felt disrespected. I’m realistic. We all are entitled to private lives and privacy, and I will never know if Sean did or didn’t use materials like that, though, the way he was socialized into learning about sex and things like that and his outspokenness against pornography especially because of how abusive that industry is toward women, I think it made him angry at how exposure can create addiction and how much very healthy good old fashioned Catholic guilt Sean felt around that. He was a very sincere and authentic person.
But I digress.
If you read any of the satire on here from 2017 and such, you might get a sense that I wasn’t happy. I was very happy. I was just tired and making babies and having a bit of humor about it. Sean read all of my satire, and he laughed with me. Like in “Elephant Doctor”—that really happened…I mean not the threesome part…that was a joke, and also, I’ve never had a threesome. Again…I digress. So how did we get there?
As I watch people trying and flailing to find someone—because everyone I know wants connection, but so few people really know how to show up.
First of all, if you’re the kind of person who believes genuinely that men are supposed to lead and women are supposed to follow or that the man is supposed to always have the last word, please know that you will never find what Sean and I had. If you ever start a thought with “as the man”, you will never have what Sean and I had. And if you’re a woman who wants princess treatment, you will never know dream girl goddess treatment. I was that man’s queen. He treated me like the lotto win he’d been dreaming of his entire life. He knew from the minute he saw me that he liked me. We were destined to meet, but we were not necessarily destined to make it.
I have been paying a lot of attention to relationships. The universe has given me a balance of a blessing then a lesson in relationships. I have had four serious relationships including my marriage. I’ve had some side quests that had the potential to be relationships (hashtag a tale of two Pisces…actually three…thricies?) but that never manifested beyond the super fun and intense love bombing stage (how can one be so burned by a fish?) and the ones that are the healthiest are also the ones that don’t bring that kind of intensity. Yes, there’s attraction and connection, but it’s a more stable vibration. They’re communicating consistently, respecting boundaries, making plans, reading the room, etc.
Sean and I were mutually interested in one another, and guys—this shouldn’t have to be stated, but I’m going state it…just because you’re interested in a woman that doesn’t mean you have access to her or a right to her if she’s not interested in you. This kind of entitlement—the thing that enabled things like the Epstein files to exist—is why men are trapped in a loneliness epidemic—they did it to themselves. This means that you’re not allowed to touch or label her as being more significant than a friend if it’s not mutual and consensual. I can’t tell you how many times a man has put his hands on me without my consent or invitation—or without it being mutual. I am sick and tired of having to speak up about it. So, first, we were successful because we had mutual interest in one another and mutual respect for one another.
Second…Sean and I were authentic. You can say and do all of the things a woman says that she wants a man to say and do, but she can tell when it’s authentic. Maybe in the past we couldn’t discern as well, but I can discern pretty damn quickly what’s authentic and what isn’t. It’s when you slip up that I catch it. The first time you get disappointed or I set a boundary, I notice it. I notice in how you respond, and that tells me everything I want to know. B—the one who I spent time with and who I genuinely adored was the most emotionally mature about this. If he had any ire toward my needing to cancel plans or set a boundary with him, he never showed it.
Other than the fact that he totally blew me off for my birthday and didn’t even bother sending a text after I told him that I was catching real feelings and didn’t want to hurt myself more than I already had two days prior…that may have come as a surprise for him, but I was not able to juggle the emotions of having a really hot FWB situation with the emotional intimacy that came from our discourse and overall comparability.
But that silent treatment and pettiness also spoke for itself. I have no hard feelings because he is a much younger guy…which was why he insisted it wouldn’t work for him, so he’s still got some growing to do, but his actions also showed me that I was right to end things. And even though I’ll always love him unconditionally and say that he deserves everything he wants in this life and truly pray he gets it, there’s no real way to be “just friends” with B. We’re way too similar. Way too passionate. Way too AuDHD. And allow me to say that regardless of the circumstances of how he made his way into my life, he was real, and what we had felt way too real. I’ll add that given our near year-long history we’d been writing together, the silent treatment and the rudeness about my birthday could have been something that we could’ve overcome—I wouldn’t end a relationship because of that if we’d been actually in one, but will I end a friendship over that kind of intentional hurt? Yes. Because maybe he wasn’t trying to hurt me, but he did, and maybe he was just thinking of his own feelings so much so that I and mine weren’t a consideration.
Sean also had his own insecurities, and there was a time early in our marriage where his feelings completely negated my own. And I know there had to be times I was thoughtless, but we learned because if you truly love someone, nothing hurts your heart more than knowing that you’ve hurt them. I feel terrible when I hurt someone’s feelings, when they bring it my attention.
And the thing is—men, women have had to learn how to be more empathetic and imagine “if I was him, how would I feel” because men have been systemically conditioned away from feeling or articulating what they’re feeling. I’m not saying you don’t feel, but you don’t practice feeling how your words or actions might make another person feel, and if you say you wouldn’t feel this way or that, then know that’s a sign that you have low self-worth because if you cared about yourself you would allow the hurt feelings you have to show because you would know you’re worthy of having those feelings validated. You’re worthy of being seen and heard, and you’re worthy of being respected enough insofar that if another person says, “That behavior hurt my feelings,” you address it without taking it personally.
Getting to know other people and what makes them tick helps as well. That way, you’re not constantly projecting yourself onto others. I have a pretty thick skin, but yes—B, ignoring my birthday when you said you “wouldn’t miss it for the world” hurt my feelings. And I feel sure that my losing my shit after overwhelm from being cyberstalked and…well, you know the details (quit plagiarizing my life, dudes) hurt his, and I am deeply sorry for that. I had to work hard on taking more accountability for my reactive abuse to what I can only assure you is a batshit crazy ungodly level of stress that thankfully as of Easter—I am absolved of. It’s a story.
So, behavior two is that we genuinely cared about one another’s feelings, and we validated them. When this doesn’t happen, it feels like neglect and abandonment. I know a few guys who clearly were with people who only thought of their own feelings. There are plenty of women out there just like men who do not know how to consider anyone’s feelings but their own, and this is evident because they project themselves onto others. Yes, I have done this. The level of esteem you have for yourself shows in whether or not you’re genuinely listening to how another person feels and accepting that even though you’d feel differently (or think you would) or if you’re assuming that they feel all of the same things that you must feel…if you consider their feelings at all.
The guy I mentioned earlier—D—his marriage sounded like he was with the kind of person who didn’t care about his feelings at all. He was incredibly sweet and very, very smart, and I couldn’t believe someone would treat him the way that they did, but having spent two years (and 12 days) in the field researching the contaminants in the dating pool I can definitely say our Ph levels are way off. Getting in touch with your feelings, listening to what other people say they feel and validating those feelings without taking things personally, and actually practicing empathy (and yes, it’s okay to imagine how you’d feel in someone else’s shoes, but don’t assume that’s what they feel—just let that help you start a conversation) are game-changers for any relationship.
The third thing is that we communicated, and we didn’t have secrets from each other. A lot of the safety in our relationship was created because we were so open with each other. We communicated. And because we had so much mutual respect, I understood when Sean wasn’t able to tell me classified things when he was on his deployment to Kandahar. I appreciate that he didn’t tell me how dangerous his base was until after he got home. I didn’t need to know about things like lockdowns and threats of attack while I was an ocean away.
We could talk about anything—even uncomfortable things. I’ve found that the men that I meet and get to know and have gotten to know have mostly been pretty open and good at communication.
Another healthy trait we both possessed is that neither of us played the victim, and neither of us were prone to being self-pitying. Both of those qualities are so important for a mature relationship, and I’ll say from experience—you will never have a relationship like Sean and I had if you play the victim role, do self-pity, or make everything about you (in reality—it’s never about you when it’s other people’s behaviors or words…the only things about you are your behaviors and words).
We were also mature enough not to go tit for tat. We had the maturity to not see the relationship as a pendulum where one person makes a “deposit” or another takes a “withdrawal”. It’s a relationship—not a bank account. I am not just doing kind things for you with the expectation you’ll reward me later nor am I doing kind things to you to make up for a time where I was unkind. It’s not tit for tat. We did what we did for one another out of love, not the expectation of reciprocity and not as a deposit to an imaginary emotional account. If you do that, it means you keep score. Sean and I were on the same team, so who TF would I be keeping score against? Not my partner. We were either both winners or both losers. We chose to be winners.
Oh, toss in that we knew how to apologize. Sean and I could use our words to say we were sorry. Our actions reflected it. We didn’t apologize with toys—such as when the cretinous ex purchased his adult daughter a giant plushy at Disney World to apologize for being a boorish dickhole and making her cry. Again. And the way we said “sorry” wasn’t just a cursory grunt such as with the ex-hole. They were specific and detailed in regard to what we had done or failed to do. We matured into that, but if you’re an adult past the age of 29, then you should have had enough experience to understand that’s how that works.
We took accountability, and we knew how to hold one another accountable without being controlling. Again, it wasn’t always perfect, but our willingness to communicate and our ability to confront challenges together made such a difference in our marriage.
We also held each other in high esteem. We genuinely respected one another. We were vibrating on the same frequency. We were uplifting to one another, and we supported each other’s dreams. We showed this in how we worked to never allow a figment of jealousy into the marriage. Yes, we both had our insecurities, but we also respected one another and the marriage. We didn’t text or hang out with other men or women without the other. Once we got married, if I had to text a dude, I’d loop Sean in—the only exception to that were my two lifelong male friends—only ever friends—who were grandfathered in as friends, and part of that was because Sean wasn’t friends with them as intimately as I was…and he had a couple of high school friends who were women who he had the same deal with. Likewise if I had to text a married guy, I’d message his wife.
Because here’s the thing—you will not always have the easiest roads with your spouse or partner. You will not always get along, and you will hurt each other’s feelings. Accept that will happen, but you absolutely will fuck the entire thing up if your first response is to run to the nearest DM or text message for validation. Running from discomfort by seeking validation for your hurt feelings rather than addressing with curiosity why this thing hurt my feelings and why is that the way I feel and on and on until you get to the root of it. You play the “what do I need to fix this” game.
The way you play is thus—okay, my feelings were hurt because someone I thought genuinely loved me and cared about me ignored my birthday. What do I need to fix it? I need to be shown up for. What does that look like? A hug and quality time. And I am fully aware that it hurts my feelings because it hurts to be one-sided on a relationship. It hurts to realize that while you were being completely authentic, there’s a possibility that they weren’t because—at least for me—I’d hopefully never let hurt feelings stop me from being there for a friend when it’s something special to them…especially if I know how they’ve been mishandled by so many people. Again, I don’t think it was intentional…B never gave me “malice” vibes…just sweet, wounded, sincere, underestimated, and painstakingly kind and helpful. He was like a puppy…eager to please and delight. And he is a delight, and I hope he knows that.
But I digress…the other thing is that a healthy relationship will take its time to develop. It’s a marathon…not a sprint. So, if someone’s trying to sprint with you and get things on lock really quickly chances are they’re going to fall into the category of “emotionally immature”, and patterns will repeat.
Speaking of emotions…we weren’t inclined to be slaves to them. Yes, we felt our feelings, and we were in touch with our emotions, but we were not emotionally reactive. We didn’t suddenly start pivoting or getting regretful or resentful if something upset us emotionally. We communicated our feelings and emotions, and when we sensed strain in the relationship, we both stopped and tended to it. Usually what was missing was attention. The pricklier we’d get during a tense time—usually where we were both just so busy, the best solution was a date night or a weekend away. Time with just us together. That always fixed us right up. So…attention. We paid real attention to the relationship as if it were its own entity because it kind of was. Our relationship was the combination of us, and that was a living, breathing entity that needed our care to thrive. We mutually invested.
Speaking of investments, we invested a lot of time into choosing each other. Sean and I took our time to really get together, and I say time is the most valuable currency there is…it’s the only one that matters, so for example I invested a lot with B, and I’ve invested a lot with JP. Sean and I took our time to say I love you…even though I was happily only dating him. We took our time. In fact, it makes me think of JP who I’ve been friends with for almost two years now, and while we don’t agree on everything, he’s probably the manliest of the people I’ve met since becoming single chic. Okay, definitely…he and the other Sicilian have that silent strength and smoldering presence that’s so grounding to be around.
Why is he so grounding? Because he has exceptional boundaries. He’s efficient. He takes care of business. He knows how to enjoy himself. He’s disciplined. He’s measured. He’s very intelligent. He seems to genuinely respect me. It’s a really nice friendship that has slowly developed into something that feels authentic. I don’t know how he’d be in a relationship, but I’ll give him due credit for consistency, and I do not find consistency boring. I find it stabilizing.
The last thing is one of the first things I mentioned…balance. Basically our marriage had what I would describe as JP’s stability, maturity, and consistency alongside the emotional intimacy, creativity, and vulnerability that I experienced with B and D. Lovely.
Those are the things I’m thankful we figured out, and those are the things that I truly feel gave us the marriage that we had. We had mutual respect. Equality. Gratitude. Accountability. Communication. Egolessness. We knew neither of us presided over the other, and we had autonomy and full authority within our marriage. We communicated about things we wanted to do—like spend money and make big purchases—out of sheer respect. It wasn’t control…it was a joint bank account and essentially our money is our money.
And while adultier me does not necessarily plan to ever do a joint account again, I have still always approached money in a relationship was being a shared asset for mutual things, and beyond that, I feel every person should do what they feel is best. But we were never asking each other for permission…we were making a sound decision together. We weren’t indecisive…we were meticulous.