Life: Played for an Audience [from Twisted Straight]

Shortly after our honeymoon, Jason and I moved to St. Louis. We were thrilled to be moving away from the cornfields of Iowa and back to a city. We also enjoyed moving again because it gave us the chance to spend a bunch of time together exploring and discovering our new town. Jason was enormously supportive of my career, encouraging our moves to new places so that I could pursue increasingly better opportunities. It never occurred to me that every time we moved Jason might have been trying to get further away from his past. I saw the moves as the building blocks of our future.

Professional success was almost as important to me as my marriage. I have always been a very successful person, the "star" among my family and friends. I've achieved (or over-achieved) every goal I set for myself. Most people would say that I rarely make mistakes - especially in judgment. Consistent with that image, I was determined to have the perfect marriage. In many ways, especially from the outside, Jason and I did have the perfect marriage. We were best friends. We liked the same things. We could talk and talk and talk without ever becoming bored or running out of topics to discuss. We admired and respected each other's talents, and we were each other's biggest supporters. But relationship perfection is rarely as it seems. Even with all that we had together, deep inside our marriage, in the part we didn't discuss with anyone - even each other - there was a weak link that was starting to fatigue.

Jason and I were soul mates who found each other through the fog of insecurity and trepidation left over from our childhoods. We had weakness in common, and that is such a strong bond when accepted unconditionally. We built a life on the strength of that bond, ignoring that we might be forcing the puzzle pieces together even though they weren't a perfect fit.

Because of the pressures around him - real or perceived - he turned away from the life he was meant to lead. Walking the "should" path relieved the external pressure Jason felt; unfortunately, it only increased his internal pressure. The repression of his true self pushed ugly personality traits to the surface. In loving Jason "for better or worse," I turned a blind eye to his dysfunctional behaviors in order to focus on the security he gave me: the long awaited chance for happily ever after. Somehow I had found my way into my second co-dependent relationship. I was so happy to be a part of Jason's life that I downplayed his subtle denigration of me and ignored his passive aggressiveness. I excused his quick temper, seeing it as a reasonable extension of the constant drama he infused into his life. And if I dared to express any upset about his behavior, he immediately classified even the smallest criticism as disloyalty. It took me a long time to realize that the loyalty Jason demanded required me to marginalize my own needs and my loyalty to myself. His negative behavior was a mask he wore to hide a problem he was terrified to reveal.

Even as I started to realize that things with Jason were not perfect, one of the things I held on to was his propensity for public affection. It was my understanding, from my limited personal experience and from my impression of society at large, that many men were resistant to showing affection in front of others. Jason wasn't. He was eager to hold my hand. Comfortable giving me kisses and hugs in front of strangers, family or friends. In fact, his affection was most blatant in front of his family. I loved him for that; I basked in the attention. His behavior in that area made up for a lot of his shortcomings in showing private affection. Not being a naturally outgoing person, I actually found myself looking forward to dinners with other people or visits with family, because I knew I would get much more of Jason's affection during those social encounters.

I recognized much later that his public affection was all part of the show. Although Jason didn't use his theatre-major training to perform professionally, acting was deftly integrated into his everyday life. He was very, possibly most, comfortable when he was "performing." His stage took many forms. Sometimes it was making smart-ass comments to people who pissed him off in public venues. Sometimes it was speaking a little too loudly about a cool trip he had taken, ensuring others took notice. The first place I experienced his "act" was in the form of his public affection for me. It turned out it was mostly for show. Some of our happiest moments, and some of my most miserable, were played out in front of an audience.

[This is an excerpt from an unpublished autobiographical memoir titled: Twisted Straight - copyright, Genevieve Aron 2004]