God, I can’t stand the thought of living at home with my dad anymore. He’s such a narcissist and overbearing, and I’m twenty-three. I don’t know why I hate his personality, really, since I’ve known him my whole life as my dad.
What was normal to me as a child isn’t okay with me now, and I’m not sure it ever will be. Not that it ever was.
Summer Break
Instead of going home, I ask my sister if I can stay with her, and I do. I figured I’d be home just for the summer and then head back up to college. She has a small apartment, but since it’s always just been her and me, we get along as well as most closely aged siblings. We do manage to have fun even when we have our tiffs. I’ll get a job waiting tables and make a little money to have when I’m at school.
The Beginning
Once I had started working and settled into a routine, I met this guy at work. He seemed okay, and I was lonely, so I agreed to go out with him. It was entertaining enough that we went on a few more dates and then kept seeing each other.
In hindsight, I’m not sure why. He wasn’t my type at all and had little education to speak of. We didn’t have much in common.
Introduction
Be that as it may, there we were, a few weeks into this relationship, when I decided to pay my mom a visit. I told her I had a guy I was seeing and that I’d like to bring him over. She was fine with it, so I introduced him to her.
She didn’t seem very happy to see me, which was weird since I hadn’t seen her in a few months. I managed to overlook it and made pleasant conversation anyway. I missed her all the time we were apart.
All in all, it was a nice visit. She engaged my boyfriend in conversation, and he was fairly adept at answering the parents’ questions. I felt it was going well.
Kiss Off
A couple of hours later, as we prepared to leave, my boyfriend went to the car so I could have a minute alone with Mom to say goodbye. I gave her a big hug and was about to say goodbye when she said something that shocked me.
Mom let me hug her, then told me not to bring that man into her house again. I was floored.
My mom was never the type to make judgments or say shocking things like this, but she did, and it unnerved me. I looked into her eyes and asked why. She only replied that he was not for me and that I should think about it.
She never explained why she said that to me that day, and I will never know what she thought she knew or understood about someone from a couple of hours’ visit.
In some small way, I was a little angry that she would judge him without knowing him. She never did that, nor did she insert herself into our decisions.
I put it out of my head and went about my days for the next couple of weeks. I continued to see my boyfriend and was getting used to him. I kind of liked how he made me feel.
Stubborn Rebellion
The day came when my dad met this man, too. I don’t know what possessed me to introduce my dad to him, but then again, isn’t that what you do when you’re dating and getting serious?
This visit turned out just as I expected. My dad disliked him from the start. Dad was cold and indifferent, and he didn’t even try to hide his disdain. In fact, he barely spoke to the man I had been dating for a couple of months. It was a brief visit, to say the least.
A few more weeks passed, and I was preparing to head back to the university when news of murders on or near our campus broke. The girl who had been killed lived in the apartment complex next to mine, and all I could think was that it could have been me.
I did the only thing I believed I could do: take a semester off and not return to school. I’d go back in the winter session.
Bad Decisions
It turns out that was the worst decision of my life, yet it was by far not the worst.
I had not planned to stay home for a semester, so I had some things to accomplish. I needed to get to my apartment, put all my belongings in storage, and find a place to live during this hiatus.
I could not stay with my sister long term. Her place was just a one-bedroom, and while it was fine for a short stint, it was not large enough for two sisters to share. I looked into apartment rentals, but they required yearly leases and large deposits. I was beginning to get frustrated when my boyfriend suggested I stay with him and his roommate. It was a good suggestion, and since the last thing I wanted to do was go home to dad, I took him up on it.
Downfall
From this point forward, my life was a disaster. Money and communication issues, along with differences in drive, were part of the daily realities of living with a man who had little prospect of a good future, and I was blind to it all.
On one such occasion, when I needed help from my dad, he said he would help me, but only if I left “that guy.” If I did, he would help me. Dad’s help always came with a deal. After that, I didn’t ask again.
We toughed it out, and eventually one of his family members helped us. Crisis averted. Time and time again, we would have close calls like this, and time and time again, his family would help. Mine would not. Well, we would show my family!
My significant other and I continued to live together for months. Thoughts of college left my mind entirely, and I had no plans to return. This made my family increasingly angry, as you can imagine.
I thought I was in love, and that was the perspective I came from. My mom, dad, and even my sister began to hate my man with a passion. It made me stand my ground even more. I knew what was best for me. This was my life, so I would make my own choices.
From Bad to Worse
Well, the day came when my partner and I decided to get married. Yes, “decided” was the right word because there was no formal proposal. It felt like the next step, and we went full steam ahead.
I went to let my family know what we were up to, and once again I was shocked by their reaction. I was alone. My sister told me she didn’t like my boyfriend much and thought I was making a bad choice.
My dad, on the other hand, absolutely forbade me from marrying him. Forbade. As if he had a say in what I did as an adult. He sure didn’t!
Obstinance Wins
I did what anyone would do in this situation. I doubled down. I defiantly and purposefully did what they didn’t want me to do to prove I could make better decisions for myself than they could. That kind of thing never goes wrong, right? Right.
I married this man. The wedding was nice enough, but we had no honeymoon. It was okay, though, because the honeymoon ended shortly after we exchanged vows.
Blinders Off
My now-husband changed. He was lazy. How did I not see that before? He was a slob who wanted to be taken care of, almost like a child. He was aggressive and often brutal, and he would not take no for an answer.
My husband was an idiot, not intelligent in any way, and I found I had very little to talk to him about. We were not the same. I sucked it up and ignored the signs of what this man was from the start.
For six years, I endured his treatment. I endured his beer-guzzling, pot-smoking friends. I endured him. He grew increasingly uninterested in working and eventually stopped altogether. He claimed he had “hurt his back” and could no longer work.
And here I was, now working two jobs to pay the bills. Oh, and I dismissed it, thinking the marriage was a partnership where two people support each other through thick and thin. The problem was, it was always either thick or thin.
Thick in the heat of calamity, and thin, wearing on my every nerve and emotion. His constant, pushy, and aggressive need for intimacy, fueled and perpetuated by his love of porn, kept getting worse.
It reached the point where I hated being with him at all in that way. But I am stubborn to a fault, and I dug in again.
It all came to a head one day during a heated argument about his needs and his laziness, when he raised his hand to hit me. That was it. I was done.
Running Away
I packed my bags one day, left for Colorado, and didn’t look back. I had endured six long years of abuse and incompatibility, dumbing myself down for a man who was definitely not the one for me. I did it all to prove to my family that I was right about my resolve. I had wasted six years, left school, and been through hell because I refused to accept the counsel of others who could see what I could not.
It’s the forest-for-the-trees adage. I could not see it while I was in the midst of it because I hated my dad or mom telling me what to do.
Hindsight
Twenty years later, I would come to realize I had been in denial that anyone could know better than I did what was good for me. I should have listened, or at the very least considered it. I didn’t, and that little bit of stubborn defiance cost me time and self-worth.
Published on Medium, 2026
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