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The Word That Ended My Marriage
It’s a word that, for some reason, many cishet men still feel entitled to use
“Bitch.”
He didn’t just say it, he snarled it. His contempt was as hot as his breath on my face. This was the third time my husband had called me bitch — not even a bitch, just bitch — and I swore it would be the last.
The first time, I was shaken. I eventually reasoned my way out of the initial shock, passing it off as a one-time thing. After all, over 15 years of marriage and five years of dating, my husband had never previously called me this word.
It was everything that had been going on, I rationalized — the trauma therapy that was dredging up long-buried pain, layered on top of an emotionally demanding job, layered on top of the emerging complexities of parenting preteens.
The rage was nothing new. True, it was becoming hotter and more frequent, but I’d been introduced to his rage early on. Even in our first few months of dating, I’d felt the cold pinpricks of fear on the back of my neck, looking at this man I thought I knew and suddenly did not know. Even though his rage and I had gotten better acquainted over the last 20 years, I still felt the same sense of disorientation when he unleashed it, the same fear of this stranger who was abruptly and unaccountably standing before me. This stranger who could be capable of anything.
This stranger had often puffed up his chest and gotten in my face, made a point of reminding me that he was taller, with broader shoulders and thicker arms. But this stranger had never called me bitch before.
He is lost in his past, I told myself. His rage is not really for me. He is working through complex trauma. Things will get worse before they get better.
Things didn’t get better. The second time he called me bitch, I told him that it couldn’t happen again. He knew full well how much I hated the word. He knew full well that our children had heard him say it, knew full well there was nothing okay about modeling this behavior, knew full well he was capable of not saying it.
The third time he called me bitch, I asked for a separation. It was the final straw.
