Ernie: Part 4

I don’t remember how long Ernie and I were dating when I started being mean to him. And I definitely didn’t think of it as being mean at first. I just always found a way to blame him for everything.

Poor man.

22-year-old me was not easy. I was difficult. And I was more difficult with Ernie than I ever was with any other man. I’d never been more difficult with anyone.

All he wanted to do was make me happy and he hardly ever could. I complained, I blamed, I yelled. I threw hissy fits.

This continued until we moved in together. Why did the man stay with me?

I asked him and he says he always knew I was going through something and would work my way out of it. I think the poor man is just one of those guys that gets goofy around women. He makes too many excuses for me. I don’t think men can stand to be in love with somebody who is just an asshole. Not the way that women can.

This awful portion of out relationship happened early on and lasted about a year.

I made him cry once. I yelled at him until he started crying and then it hit me: I’m doing to him what Joe did to me. I was pushing him around and being mean just because I could. Just because he was the sort of person who would put up with it.

After that, I started trying to bite my tongue more. I started doing this thing where I would say, “I’m so angry right now. I’m gonna be mean. Please leave me alone.” And he did.

I was in a bookstore with him once and in the non-fiction section I happened upon a book about emotionally abusive partners. I opened it up and read a great deal. ‘This is me,’ I thought. ‘I’m the abusive partner they’re describing. I’m creating a toxic relationship and putting him through something awful.’ So much of what the book described was exactly how I behaved with Ernie. I had to stop. I had to. I told myself I couldn’t stay with him if I couldn’t stop.

I talked to Ernie about what I’d read. ‘I’m emotionally abusive,’ I told him. ‘I verbally abuse you. I need to stop.’

‘You aren’t abusive,’ he argued. ‘Although, I would like it if you were nicer sometimes.’

So I started working much harder on managing my emotions. I would still get really angry and want to fly off the handle, but I made myself walk away. I didn’t want to do to Ernie what Joe had done to me. I remembered how through everything bad with Joe, I had always thought back on the very beginning of our relationship, how sweet he’d been at first. I thought, ‘this is what it must be like for Ernie. He’s remembering our first date, kissing in the train station and the way I was so shy, and how we talked about books. He’s remembering that and waiting for it to get good like that again.’

I had to make it good for him again. He was a really good man. He was so good to me. He still is. I tried very very hard to manage my emotions better and be better for him.

2019- 2020, I took Ernie for granted again. I didn’t go back to yelling or any of the awful stuff that I did ten years ago. I’m not the same person and neither is he. Ernie REALLY knows how to manage me now and he isn’t the sort of person who would put up with that anymore. But I did take him for granted. I drifted away from him and he drifted away from me, and we were just off doing our own things, for what felt like a very long time. And then there was this catalyst and we talked about separating. He was the one to say he wanted to reconcile. I fought it hard. Because this poor man doesn’t need any more headaches from me. Since we’d had such a big (what felt like) final blowout, it seemed like a good time to finally cut the poor guy loose. This whole thing coincided with him getting a job offer for a MUCH more lucrative position in his field. This was a major step up in his career. It was a life-changing difference in income. “You make very good money now,” I told him. “You could easily find another woman who will be a lot less trouble.” And he just cried and held me and said, “you’re the one I want. Always. Stop it. You’re mine.”

Ernie is a good man. Ernie has put up with way more bullshit than any human being on the planet should have to. The man’s bullshit quota has been filled and then some.

I am going to try very very hard to give the guy no future bullshit. None. He’s had enough and he’s been really patient and nice about it.

Let me tell you a little about how Ernie learned to deal with the angry version of myself I was in my early 20s. So, like I said, I did a lot of work to keep my disregulated emotions in check. Remember I said that when I met Ernie I wasn’t feeling angry or sad anymore, just stressed? Well….that didn’t last long. In fact, it’s like the second I was out of my grandparents’ house and living in this studio apartment with Ernie, this fucking emotional bomb went off. BAM! And Ernie had to deal with a lot of the fallout. I’d been mostly just stressed and scared all the time with my grandparents. Then I was safe and loved and I had Ernie, a man who tried to give me everything I wanted and treated me like I was so special and precious. Did I react like a normal human being and just enjoy this? Of course not. That would make too much sense. No, I flew off the handle and had one emotional episode after another. So, once I realized how horrible I was being to Ernie, I set out to change things. And, so did he.

Progress is never perfectly linear. You’re doing fine and then you relapse.

When I relapsed and flew off the handle at him, Ernie started doing this like putting his foot down thing.

He wasn’t mean. He would just very seriously tell me that I was done and then refuse to engage with me further.

I couldn’t believe it the first time he did it.

Or the second time.

But by the third time that he was like, “You’re done” I was like “Oh…okay, I guess I am.”

And afterwards he was ready to hug me and act like nothing happened. He just told me I was done and then I was and then we were okay.

This became a thing in our relationship and it still is even today. He has a putting his foot down voice. When he puts it on, I’m done.

He doesn’t do it very often. Especially since I don’t yell at him anymore. I’m proud to say I haven’t yelled at him in years. I haven’t had that kind of energy with him since I was 24. Not even a little. I get irritated and we have disagreements. But I don’t raise my voice at him. I’m so so happy we aren’t like that anymore.

So since I don’t yell or act like an unhinged asshole anymore, there isn’t a lot that brings out the putting his foot down voice.

One thing that brought it out was when I wanted to use 4chan to research for a book I was writing (that book has since been scrapped.)

“You’re not using 4chan.”

“Ernie, I’m doing research-“

“No, you’re not. You’re done.”

“Wait but listen-“

“Jen, I’ll block it from the network, along with all the other weird places you lurk. If you make me go through the trouble of blocking sites from the network, I’ll really go to work.”

“Oh my god, Ernie-“

“We’re done. End of discussion.”

And I was like, well…okay, I guess we are done. I guess that is the end of the discussion.

This probably all sounds pretty weird. Like I said, he doesn’t do it often. I’m only retarded enough to warrant the putting his foot down voice maybe a few times a year. Mostly he leaves me alone to do whatever I feel like.

Also, I sort of need that. I have moments where I really start spinning around like a top and then Ernie is there to just firmly tell me to knock it off. Then I do knock it off. And he never makes me feel bad about whatever it was.

My family used to be so angry at me when I’d spin around like a top. They talked to me like I was a bad person or something was wrong with me.

Not Ernie. He never makes me feel like something is wrong with me.

He’s also just not afraid to tell me when a behavior is unacceptable to him. I like that he does that now. I like always feeling like there’s somebody else with me who will check me when I get too wild, and do it without making me feel like I’m awful.

He’s great.

So, with me working hard on managing my anger, and Ernie starting to put his foot down the times I failed, we moved through that rocky period of our relationship.

We passed the ten year mark in 2020. We’re now in year 11 together.

Year ten was almost as bad as year one, only in a different way. No screaming or mean-ness, just two people living in the same house but not connecting at all. Just me feeling like it was time to throw in the towel and really trying to get him to feel the same way.

Year 11 though?

It’s like we finally hit our stride. Things are so good with us right now. They have never been this good.

And I’m going to try so so hard to never have such a bad year again. I want to be so much better for him.