in which I use several idiomatic expressions

I’ve become the thing that I hate – the passive-aggressive over-sharing blogger. Trevor once said “I don’t care what you write, I understand sometimes you just need to vent” – and I took him at his word. But he’s had time (and many posts) over which to reconsider, and I don’t blame him for feeling differently now. We’re not always very good at talking to each other when there’s a problem, at just being direct – and I think that’s something we both recognize and have tried to improve on, but my blogging has given me an up-until-now safe space in which to express things I didn’t want to say directly to him. That has never been the point or the goal of my blog at all, but that is ultimately what it has become for me.

What I originally intended to do was to write about my personal experience of being married, specifically my experience of marriage as a woman and as a feminist. I meant to write generally then give specific examples from my own experience and also back up a lot of what I was writing with other feminist texts and resources. But I ended up skinny on the texts and resources and heavy on the personal experience, with not a lot of balance on the side of objectivity or distance from the subject, and with a healthy dose of occasional melodrama. This is not what I wanted, and I’m paying the price for it.

Through this blog, I have somewhat unintentionally invited people to make judgments about my and Trevor’s life together. It would be very naive of me to think people wouldn’t make any judgments. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t, to a certain extent, want people to make (some of) those judgments.

A lot of my writing has been about learning to live with and be married to Trevor, and a lot of it  has basically been venting, and I would expect that people reading what I’ve written might think or say “yea, she’s right, that was kind of an asshole-y thing of him to do” or whatever – one of the more self-serving points of having a blog is that you expect your audience to be full of a lot of people who generally agree with you about whatever you’ve written.

Hand in hand with that, I would also expect there are going to be people who disagree with me. What I didn’t expect was that I would resent them so much, or feel so much anger toward them. I resent their half-invited intrusion into my life, as ridiculous as that sounds. I put it up on the internet for all to see, yes, but I’ve since come to the conclusion that that was a mistake.

Almost every time I’ve posted something, I or Trevor have gotten some kind of “wow, that’s shitty of you/her to post that about Trevor/you” response. We can disagree all day long about whether or not I deserve that criticism – certainly I feel that I have deserved it on certain occasions, regarding posts in which I have been particularly vent-y or harsh – but it’s a moot point. Whether I deserve it or not, voicing it removes the focus from the content or point or even quality of my writing to something else entirely.

I know this is an internet thing. I mean, people read blogs and websites and miss the point A LOT. They don’t just miss the point, they intentionally, willfully miss the point. They make a comment about how big the woman’s breasts are in the picture accompanying the article about the objectification of women, or how fat that guy is in the picture accompanying the post about body-image issues. And then they read my blog and say “Wow, what a bitch. I can’t believe she put all that bad stuff about him online” while then completely blocking out ALL THAT BAD STUFF ABOUT HIM or the argument I was making for doing things differently.

I don’t want you to think I’m missing the point, too. I know a lot of the reason these people are mad at me or think I’m awful is not just because of what I said, but also because I said it on such an incredibly public forum. If I wrote about how much I love and appreciate my husband all the time, and never said anything bad about him, I don’t really think how public it is would be an issue – but somehow being truthful about my experience learning and growing in our relationship, and writing about the very real problems I’ve grappled with around integrating my marriage into my feminism and vice-versa, because these things necessarily include criticisms of my husband and of our relationship (and, I would note, myself), this makes me irresponsible or a bad person or cruel or pick-your-adjective.

In terms of what I feel is happening to me, the phrase “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” comes to mind, which isn’t so bad. But the phrase “sit down and shut up” comes to mind, too, and that’s pissing me off. I feel like this is ultimately because I’m not being “nice”. I’m saying not-so-nice truths, and I’m not really prettying them up in any way, and I think there’s the expectation that a good wife either wouldn’t say these things, or would at least shine ‘em up a little – to be fair, there’s an expectation that any good partner of either gender would do these things for one another. I understand where this comes from, and do (of course) on some level agree, but on another level I feel like I’m being asked to censor myself, and as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, I don’t much like censoring myself.

I can get pissed off at some of you for your opinions, but, again, whether or not you are or I am right or justified is a moot point. You know how people say, “get out of the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat?”  I put Trevor and myself in this situation and I take full responsibility for that. But I don’t want to participate in this anymore, so I’m leaving. I’m getting out of the kitchen, although it’s not just the heat that’s bothering me.

One more phrase applies here, the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. I understand why I’m getting flack for writing “bad things” about Trevor, but ultimately that’s not the deciding factor in my stopping writing these things (although it did motivate me further). I guess this is all going to sound like I’m just pissed off that people think I’m a bad wife or bad partner, but this is about something much bigger, but also much simpler, than that: upon reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that I wouldn’t want him writing stuff about me online like some of the stuff I’ve written about him either.

But I’ve really enjoyed this last year or so of writing, which has been more consistent for me than anything for many years previous (as inconsistent as it still was). And I don’t want to stop doing THAT. I may reformat this blog, which I’ve talked about doing before, but more likely I will just start a new one elsewhere, and when I do I will let you know. Suffice it to say, it might not be quite as personal, at least not in the same sense. Thanks to everyone who has been reading, I really appreciate it, and I hope you will continue to follow whatever else I end up doing from here on out in terms of my writing.

See you on the flip side!