How I gave up on my marriage. Without actually leaving.

The story of a woman quietly quitting her marriage -- without it actually ending.

Like many others in my generation, I was handed full control over my parent’s emotions when I was a child. Even though I saw Dad every other weekend, once my brother Al was a born, a desire sprouted in me to keep him safe at all costs.

My dad had once been my best friend. Spending weekends with him made me excited because I knew we would have an adventure every time. I didn’t know he was secretly battling with alcoholism behind the scenes and I never actually saw him pick up a bottle.

By the time he was going through his second divorce, my step mom, Tracy, Dad must have hit his point of no return. That moment for an alcoholic when life gets so low you stop even attempting to put the bottle down.

I say this because from my outside perspective, he started to go insane.

He would hover over a calendar in the kitchen, trying to mark down any slight parenting mishap he seemed to find in Tracy’s parenting. Even at the age of 10, I could tell he was kind of reaching.

We picked up my brother from his mom’s house, and once we entered Dad’s apartment, he headed directly toward the calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen…

No jacket.

He scribbled on today’s date — in the middle of May — on a warm spring day.

Somewhere in his mind he would make up a truth about my step mom and would then berate or ignore my bother until he admitted this (most likely false) truth. He would then punish my brother for the lie he had told when he originally denied any accusation.

My brother was a toddler.

So, I got good at emotional dancing and manipulation.

I tell people, I mastered the art of dangling keys in front of my dad in order to distract his anger from escalating and aiming at my brother.

When Dad’s frustration would begin to build, alarm bells went off inside my stomach, and I would tell a joke, or point out something funny. He would laugh.

I’d ask a question to redirect his focus so we could change the subject. It worked.

Later in life I would learn this was called fawning. Some people freeze. Some people fight. Some people fawn. They distract, they make friends, and use that as a tool for manage a dangerous situation.

These little methods of mine worked nearly every time. Unfortunately the memories of them not working have stayed with me more and probably still require a little bit of therapy to get outta here.

This is why, after seven years of marriage, I still implementing these same techniques on my husband. And this is exactly when I knew I needed to stop.