My Story: Work, Marriage and After!

 My Story: Work, Marriage and After!

By Gary L. Clendenon (c) 2020

Growing up in a dysfunctional SDA family and System (See Footnote 1), I learned the following things:

1. I had to be perfect to get into Heaven. Anything less than perfect was not good enough.

2. Negative thoughts and emotions were not to be allowed as they were Sinful.

3. My job as a Christian was to Love and be Nice to everyone I met, and if possible save all from Hell.

Over time, I developed and perfected a facade which I used to interact with other humans. It was a GOOD facade. I got awards for it and even fooled myself. (See Footnote 2)

Underneath the facade was a boatload of shame for all the sinning I had done in my life, a HUGE amount of fear that I would be discovered and exposed for the fraud that I really was, and a body and mind completely filled with the OVERWHELMING stress of trying to keep the facade going, trying to be perfect, and shoving down and burying all negative thoughts and emotions completely.

I managed this facade well through my high school and college days and took it into my Marriage and first job as a Teacher. The completely foreign job of being a “Man” and a “Husband” AND the task of PERFECTLY managing 120 students and my Coworkers and a Boss all day was COMPLETELY OVERWHELMING to my system. I didn’t know this at the time or understand it at all. I had heard the first year of teaching was the hardest, so I stubbornly pushed through that year—hoping things would get better.

I was completely in over my head. Because of how I was trained growing up, with the three “Life Commandments” I had learned, what was I to do? There was one other factor: GOD had called me to this job and had promised His help to get me through it.

For years I gave ALL of myself to my job, even grading papers over vacations. I never allowed the Truth of what was going on inside of me out—even to myself. And rather than admit the job was too much for me, I slaved on. I was not a workaholic, but more of a perfectionist. I knew no other way.

Needless to say, this took a huge hit on my marriage. When I got home every night from work, I was utterly and completely exhausted. I had nothing left for a relationship with my wife. And because of my pact to never say anything bad, and my fear of being exposed as a fraud of a man, I remained silent about what was going on inside of me—much of what I was ALSO hiding from myself!!

Unfortunately, my wife, who naturally had her own dysfunctional beliefs to deal with, had to try and figure out on her own what was going on inside of me. Over time, she tried out all possible scenarios in her head—including that I was having an affair—and finally settled on the one that fit her “Growing Up” beliefs born out of her woundedness: “She was a failure as a wife, I didn’t love her, and I was going to leave her—the same way her Father had left her.” Believing this to be true, she gave up and turned away from me. (See Footnote 3)

None of these beliefs were true, but our “Growing Up” beliefs are very powerful and completely influence our adult lives. She was not a failure as a wife. I did love her—as best as my broken and dysfunctional life would allow. I would have never left her. I was in it for the long haul. But, since I was unable to give her what was in me, she was forced to create her own version of our story.

When she turned away from me, I was saddened, of course, but as John Gray teaches in Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus, we men show our respect for another person’s journey by allowing them to go in their cave and work through their own problems until they figure them out. Being a good man, then, I respected my wife’s turning away from me as her need for some “Cave Time”. (I now know that this is the opposite of what I would have ideally done!)

So, there we were at night in bed. Me desperately needing and wanting me wife emotionally and physically, but turning away out of respect for her. And her, desperately desiring her husband emotionally and physically but turning away because of what she had come to believe about me and us—though completely false! Two people in the same bed, both desperate for the same things, but separated from each other by invisible walls of complete misunderstandings and miss-beliefs!!

Does it get any sadder than that? Well, yes, it does. Those misunderstandings and miss-beliefs continued on and grew into a complete separation, then a most devastating and pain-filled divorce. Then, for me, 20 years of loneliness and regret as a single man.

Here’s what I learned:

1. It was a poor choice for me to become a Teacher. It was the complete wrong occupation for a “Highly Sensitive Introvert”.

2. It was a poor choice for me to not rip off my facade of “The Nice Guy” and become real. (I later learned this in a Treatment Center for Codependency.)

3. If I had put my marriage and wife first instead of my job, I would probably still be married today.

4. I understand now why “Nice guys finish last.”

5. Men and Women come into a marriage with their own unresolved childhood baggage and beliefs. They are essentially two children attempting to live “Adult” lives.

6. Marriage is a gift that allows us to find out about our miss-beliefs about life and relationships and work through them, ideally, in a loving environment.

7. The best thing one can do for one’s marriage is to become aware of one’s own baggage and miss-beliefs and work on growing themselves up into reality. Working on the other person’s “issues” only sets the marriage back and further behind.

8. Men and Women do life differently, as best pointed out by John Gray’s works regarding Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus. Understanding these differences can save and even enhance ones marriage.

9. When we don’t share our story with another, they will create a story that will most often be far worse than whatever we are hiding inside.

10. Wisdom from Shrek: “Better out than in, I always say!” corresponds nicely with the saying “You’re only as sick as the secrets you keep.” (I was one sick puppy. :( )

11. Most people are not completely who we think they are. It takes a lot of work to truly get to know someone. We have to journey through their facades and masks to find the person hiding within.

12. Many of us don’t know who we truly are. Again, it takes work to find ourselves.

13. There are numerous tools out there to bring us into alignment with who we are and were meant to be: books, seminars, workshops, counselors, therapists. We can ask GOD to guide our Healing and “Growing Up” journey, and He will—as He has promised.

FOOTNOTES:

1. I am not bashing my family or my church (The SDA Church) here.  No family or organization is immune from dysfunction (Remember the Bible says our sins go to the 3rd and 4th generations (See Deuteronomy 5:9). 

2. For a musical version of this fooling story, I wrote a song.  Go Here to see/hear it.

3. This is my version and understanding of my wife’s story. You would need to check with her for her version. ;)