This is not my first engagement (cue scary music).
I am really struggling with what details to include in this post, because now it feels like so long ago, and after a long journey I finally feel recovered enough from the whole experience that it is hard to want to throw myself back into it. But again, I strongly feel that broken engagements should be talked about.
When he proposed, I was 20 and a junior in college; he was 28 and a very charismatic person. We had been dating since I turned 18, right at the start of my freshman year of college, but we had known each other for many years at that point. We already had an unequal power relationship going into our dating relationship. At the tender age of 18 I just didn't understand why this was weird, because we liked each other, in fact we loved each other, and he started to talk about marrying me within the first month of our dating relationship (he was 26 when we started dating, the age I am now... which is sort of strange to think about). He gave the first ultimatum that I can remember (you are acting like X, I can't be with someone who is X) within the first six months of our relationship. I tried so hard to be what he wanted me to be. He was anxious to settle down and have a family, that was the most important thing to him in his future, and I thought that was what I wanted too. We planned to get married right after I graduated in August.
But as many of you know, things change from when you are 18. I had always been a great student. I love to learn and I love school (major nerd alert). Despite that, I never had set-in-stone career aspirations, and I had never contemplated graduate school. That all changed when I found a major I really loved and felt passionate about, and realized graduate school could be a real possibility for me.
It suddenly occurred to me that there may be more things I wanted to do in life besides, or at least before, being a stay-at-home mom. This didn't sit well with him, and he (as he often did) sparked an argument (he liked to call them 'debates') that he twisted and circled back into his own agenda, eventually getting me to agree that I could go to graduate school (for a Master's only), but I would also be having babies and holding down a part time job. This situation was the norm for me in that relationship, and I had learned to just keep quiet because that was the only way to keep the peace.
I still vividly remember the first time I truly realized how unhappy I was. We were having dinner with my parents (at a restaurant he chose of course) and he was talking to them about who knows what (he dominated conversations and made me feel really stupid and invalid, so I didn't participate much), and all of a sudden I realized I was miserable. I couldn't put my finger on why. Everything should have been great - a nice evening with my parents, engaged, getting ready for my senior year of college - but I couldn't feel anything but unhappy.
He badgered me the entire summer before my senior year of school to get another job (because going to school full time including a 1+ hour commute both ways and a demanding coaching job weren't enough). He would be so upset when he got home from work if he felt that I didn't do enough during the day (none of the housework I did counted of course), and I finally found a hosting job at a chain restaurant just a month before I went back to school. In an incredibly ironic turn, that job and the people I met there were what finally gave me the push to leave that terrible relationship.
So you aren't stuck with a completely picture free post, enjoy a baby Melanie on the left during Archaeology Activities Day my freshman year of college! (I enjoy what I do, but anthropology/archaeology is what really speaks to my heart) / personal photo
To keep this manageable, Part 2 coming soon...
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