In the early years of our marriage, we quarreled a lot that I wondered if there are seeds of marriage woes that lie dormant in us; quiescent germs on wait for the downpour of adversities; benign embryos that would grow into a monster once nurtured by human frailty. In search for clues and enlightenment, I revisited the days of my engagement and early days of marriage. I pored over numerous letters written in the past to recapture how Pat and I felt and acted then. There are things that are better appreciated at hindsight.
True enough, the early signs were there to discern by an objective and resolute mind. I counted the seeds of possessiveness, jealousy, insecurity, insensitivity, mistrust and immaturity. Any of these attributes is an invitation to trouble; a combination is a recipe for disaster.
I plead guilty for insensitivity as manifested by my forgetfulness and tactlessness. My wife could stand accused for possessiveness, jealousy, insecurity and mistrust. Both of us are palpable of puerility. My wife would certainly disagree with me, which could lead to serious trouble. She would say that I am a partial, polluted source and I would not disagree with that, if only to buy peace or to appease, a proposition that could spark another trouble. We are passionate people. Getting into a fight is a propensity of passionate couples. I am sure of this as far as we are concerned. Unfortunately, marital confrontation is one art we have not mastered or made unnecessary. Back then, it is a work in process with no end in sight.
Flight is a convenient coping mechanism. I switch my ears off when Pat continues complaining and nagging. I go out of the house to put an end to altercations or to extricate myself from contentious issues. In Dangcagan, Bukidnon, I left my wife without notice. I hid my motorcycle at the residence of my friend and took the first bus. One week later, Pat followed me to my hometown, saddled by two kids and one infant. It took them two days to reach me. My anger and hurts vanished at the sight of her worried and tired face and vowed not to repeat the vanishing act. A promise I found convenient to renege; only Pat was no longer saddled with kids in my later flights. Some of my flights had the blessings of our grownup children. Fed up of our frequent quarrels, they thought physical separation could give us space and quite to mull things over.
I suspect that the root cause of our marital problem is lack of communication, but our attempts to communicate could easily end up in trouble, so we avoid talking about our problems to avoid troubles. So, our troubles continued. We can understand, could be understood by other people but between us, we are genius in talking but idiot in communication. An incurable gravedigger, Pat would resurrect past events, grudges and hurts. Her litany would push me to the limits of my patience. She gets mad if I don’t listen, so I listen and I get mad. Soon our raised voices would escalate into a full-blown word war as we trade bullets of accusations, grievances and recriminations.
Here comes the paradox. While we are wanting in face-to-face and verbal communication, we are good in long distance and written communication. The letters we wrote when I was out for my 6-month training in Los Baños and during my 3-month training in Tokyo, Japan, painted a picture of two people in love. Couples who cared and yearned for each other. Our numerous letters articulated our most intimate feelings which otherwise we could not be expressed verbally. With cell phones, we are more comfortable in texting than in calling.
My short temper led to many of our quarrels and my quickness to forgive and to forget only made it worst. Pat’s short temper led to many of our quarrels and her inability to quickly forgive and to forget only made it worst. She would become a deaf-mute for days and would hardly leave the bed. She would refuse to eat the food I offered. I presumed she gulped water and took quick meals when I was not around but I have not caught her red handed.
Our worst fights were caused by her insecurity and jealousy, which were apparent even before we were married.
“Jealousy”, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “is the most radical, primeval and naked form of admiration – admiration in war paint, so to speak”.
Nonhuman beings were not exempted from the brushes of Pat’s war paint. She chopped the eggplants at the backyard of our rented house in Kapatagan, complaining that I was giving more attention to the vegetable than her. She was pregnant with our second child. She complained that the pigs at our backyard in Valencia were given first attention when I arrived from office. She was not pregnant, having passed the age of fertility. The pigs were left unharmed, though.
Our quarrels were held at bay when we were busy with childrearing and the schooling of our children. Except for our over protectiveness and rigidity, we did well in our parenting.
Pat and I had an epiphany in 2015. That we had had enough of petty quarrels. , Our marriage had a complete turn-around in December that year. After 45 years of “rocky” marriage, we decided to bury the past, to practice humility, to be more charitable with each other; and committed ourselves to henceforth “live happily and peacefully”. Personally, I considered it a miracle and an answered prayer. With God’s grace, it will come to pass and by then we can proudly say to our children and grandchildren, that we had, “run the race”, exorcised our “demons” and overcome our difficulties.
