Hello,

I have spent most of my life thinking of myself as a smart, capable woman.

So for a long time, one sentence has followed me around. I should have known better.

This week I read an article by a writer I subscribe to, Shadows of Control, called “I Chose Him. But I Didn’t Choose the Way He Treated Me.” It put a different question beside that sentence. Not “why didn’t I know?” but “what did I actually know at the time, and what was hidden from me?” She also offers a companion guide to her paid subscribers. Her work is worth following. [LINK TO HER ARTICLE]

What I felt first was relief. Her guide gave me a way to name what I did without drowning in shame. It felt like someone understood what happened.

Then, right behind the relief, a second thought. Is this too easy? Does it let me off the hook?

I don’t know yet. I’m going to keep both.

Here is what I can tell you.

When we married, he said we should build our life together. One bank account. Everything in one pot. I don’t remember the conversation. I’ve tried. What I remember is the sentence he said all the time, in every version: we are married, and we do everything together.

Who argues with that? It sounded like love. It sounded like a man who was all in.

And here is what I believed about him. He told me he was an elite military man. That he had worn a badge. That he had been hand-picked for a mission you’ve seen on the news. That people respected him wherever he went. I believed every word.

Nearly all of it was a lie.

I wasn’t careless with the information I had. I was handed a stack of it, built for me, and almost none of it was real. When a man shows you that kind of record, doubting him doesn’t feel smart. It feels insulting.

So agreeing to combine our money didn’t feel like a leap of faith with a stranger. As far as I knew, it was a sensible step with a man who had been tested by life.

I would love to tell you that settles it. It doesn’t, entirely. A part of me still says I went along too easily. That I should have questioned it more. I’m not going to talk that part of me out of the room.

But I notice something about the question “why didn’t I check?” It assumes I had a reason to.

I needed a break while writing this, and Jaycee provided one.

She was lying next to me, quietly working on her bully stick, not a care in the world. Then my neighbor’s chickens wandered out into the neighborhood.

She went from calm to wild in about a second. Barking. Running. Chasing every one of them, while the chickens crowed and flapped and carried on, trying to get away from her.

I laughed out loud. It was exactly what I needed.

More next Sunday. I’m still looking for the why.