A wedding video came to my husband's computer and he wanted me to watch it. I immediately had an emotional reaction to it, I did not want to see it. Seeing couples happy on their wedding day makes me remember my wedding and following honeymoon and there wasn't anything happy about it.
During the wedding ceremony my MEM's mother was hanging on to his arm for most of it. She is blind and rather than have someone else help her, she wanted to hang on to my husband, her man. This was supposed to be his and my day. It became more a day for her and him. In just about every picture she is next to him, at our luncheon his brother praised her and her devotion to him in the loud speaker, nobody said anything about me.
Once we left our luncheon to get to our honeymoon, things started to deteriorate. The further we went, the weirder my MEM was. He stopped talking to me completely. He didn't respond to anything I said. I became invisible for him. Once we got to the motel we would spend our first night in, he was frantic. He sat down trying to figure out the TV so he could watch football. I took a bath and went to bed. He had no interest in talking to me or even acknowledging me. Our honeymoon was a nightmare.
The only time to touch was to be intimate and then discard me again. I was flesh for him to satisfy his needs but I wasn't treated as a human being.
Our second night we camped out of the way in the mountains. I asked him to rub my back. He said no, he wasn't attracted to me and felt like I was one of his roommates and he did not want to touch me. I was devastated. I went to the car and cried wondering what it would take to get an annulment. I thought maybe I could have my own room in our rental house and just be a roommate. I thought I loved him but I could not explain what was happening. Once I got back to the tent he wanted to be intimate but never made an effort to show that he understood how deeply he had hurt me. He never did acknowledge the deep wounds left by his dysfunctional dealing with emotions. We spent our honeymoons mostly as strangers. I was totally overwhelmed with grief that I couldn't think what I should do. I was also a foreigner and had just learned that having married I couldn't leave the country without having my paperwork done or I couldn't return easily. I was still finishing up my degree at a University and did not want to be stuck in my homeland without having gotten my degree when I was so close, only one Semester left.
On the way home, surprise surprise, we drove a detour to stop at my MEM's mothers. He needed to assure himself that she was OK. He didn't care one bit if I was OK, only his mother's well being concerned him.
Our honeymoon set the pattern for years. His mother was most important. I came after her and his sisters. When I accidentally got pregnant while using birth control, the fury I received was overwhelming. My MEM felt trapped, he was not committed to me or our family, he was committed to his mother and having a child would bond him to me much more than he was comfortable with. I am sad to say I was relieved when the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. I was still debating to end our few days of marriage right then. What kept me in it is probably my idiotic believe that I could help him feel loved, help him be more himself without blindly following mother's orders, help him be happy. A believe that I could help when in reality nobody helped me and nobody would know just how terrible and lonely the life of a spouse of a MEM is. Somehow I thought a commitment should never be broken so I committed for life, he never committed, he already was committed to his mother. Over the years I often heard from my MEM that I should leave and find another guy if I think there is something wrong with him and his family because I would find out that nobody will ever make me happy. That's the twisted mind of a MEM. Push the person, who is trying to be close to you, away because only mom can be close.
No I don't want to see weddings of happy couples. I am envies that I never got to experience that. I am jealous of them for having a commitment for each other, a honey moon full of love and devotion, I envy the bride for her husband wanting to be with her, I envy the brides whose in-laws embrace her fully and she feels like she is a part of the family, I wish I could look at wedding pictures and honeymoon pictures of my wedding and honeymoon and not feel sad and angry at what I lost. With a MEM I will never have any of it and I can't ever get back to have the wedding of my dreams, the honeymoon of my dreams, and the foundation of love and devotion to one another from the beginning.