Liars

by Sarah Manguso

The money felt like dress-up. It was a costume. I didn’t need it, but it was good to have.

The trouble with getting engaged is that the second you mention it to some people, they start screaming at you that if you haven’t already registered for gifts and planned your honeymoon, you’re mentally ill.

Then he said, I get to not talk about money if I don’t want to, and I said, We aren’t ready to get married.

Loyal, just for coming home to eat food and enjoy a clean and well-run house that a woman maintained just so a father could do whatever he wanted inside and outside of it.

Tonight I learned why my mother always squealed and shrank away when my father tried to touch her: She was a fortress. And inside that fortress was rage, and in the center of that rage was the pain of the insult of being treated like a stupid maid. My fortress is the same, with smaller hips, surrounded by a corona of migraine.

Since I can’t control my personal life, my professional life, and my financial life right now, when I also lose control of my social calendar, it feels like the last straw.

But being pregnant and materially dependent on my husband felt dangerous. Even using the word husband felt unsafe.

Instead of saying that to your exhausted wife, you should be thanking me for all the things I do for you, the baby, this family, and this house every day that you take absolutely for granted.

Why are you so angry? My husband frequently asked me why I was so much angrier than other women. It always made me smile. I was exactly as angry as every other woman I knew. It wasn’t that we’d been born angry; we’d become women and ended up angry.

Soon I was doing everything, and John accused me of trying to control everything, but his accusation, though correct, failed to acknowledge the reason it was happening.

It wasn’t happiness; it was the temporary cessation of pain. But I wouldn’t know that for another seven years.

I’m isolating myself because it’s exhausting to pretend my marriage is fine.

You don’t get to call me a bitch and walk out of the room. I am not going to tolerate that anymore. I’m going to be hurt and ashamed that I’m married to someone who would do that, and it’s going to splash back onto you. This is no way to live. I don’t want us to talk to each other like this anymore. I want to take full accountability for my part in it, and I want you to help me with that. And I want you to take full accountability for your part in it, and I want you to let me help you with that. And if we have to apologize to each other every fucking day from now on, then that’s what we’ll do. Because I will not live with us talking to each other like this anymore.

John didn’t just need to win the fight; he needed me to agree that it was my responsibility never to say anything that might make him feel as if he’d ever done anything wrong. Feeling that he’d done something wrong really threatened his sense of entitlement.

But qualified women aren’t likable; likable women aren’t qualified. The only way to get the job is to be ten times better than the best man and likable, which means willing to absorb any amount of misogyny in any form from anyone with a smile on your face, forever.

If you marry a man or have children you will automatically be perceived as not committed enough to the job, while married men with children will be perceived as even more committed, with the assumption that their wives will manage all domestic responsibilities, including child-rearing.

When I was young I’d sworn I’d never marry. I’d understood, back then, that commitment was a trap that closed off otherwise accessible exit routes. Then I had therapy for ten years and learned that commitment was a gift, the ability to give your heart to another. To forsake all others.

Inflicting abuse isn’t the hard part. Controlling the narrative is the main job.

I began to understand what a story is. It’s a manipulation. It’s a way of containing unmanageable chaos.

A wedding vow is a mind game. You have to guess whether the person currently on his best behavior will someday value your physical, emotional, and financial health above the convenience of being able to just break the contract.

This guessing game can’t be done with any degree of success. It’s not even a guessing game. It’s a coin toss. You’re basing a lifelong plan on the behavior of a person who might change, or change back, to someone else.

A husband might be nothing but a bottomless pit of entitlement. You can throw all your love and energy and attention down into it, and the hole will never fill.

Betrayal is primitive and elemental, and deep in the memory of my body an old, animal knowledge had stirred to life.

Calling a woman crazy is a man’s last resort when he’s failed to control her.