I Suckered Myself into Saying Yes to Marriage

When “popping the question” is dropping the net

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The first time he asked me to marry him, I said No. My instinctive answer was the right one. My gut said no, and my mouth said no. So why on earth did I change it?

My childhood made me easy to manipulate. No blame or shame on parents who had their own problems they couldn’t climb out of, but when a kid grows up feeling unloved by those who are supposed to love you, you’re about as mouldable as playdough. Offer us what appears to be love, and like puppies learning to beg for scraps, we’ll do anything to acquire it. A sure way to poison a stray; put the toxin in food.

I don’t recall the first ask, the one I said no to. But I remember its aftermath. He wasn’t pleased. Remember how he asked, after the birth of our premature son, the fire rescue question: “If there was a fire, and you could only save one of us, which one would you save?” I’ve just realised that the ‘silent treatment’ he dished out after I gave him the “wrong” answer wasn’t the first time he’d used that particular weapon.

Weapon? It’s not the gun, the knife, the belt, the fist that my friends had to bear. He preferred the covert; the minimal necessary force. But he had the right tactic for me. Silence is a powerful weapon against someone who feels unlovable. A weight of wordless disapproval you can’t even argue with. Silence isolates you even while they’re with you. If you’re lonely alone, it feels like company would solve it. But here is “company” not solving it. Here is “company” ramming home that you are unworthy of attention. And the early-crushed person will do anything to alleviate that pressure.

And in this situation, there was an extra sauce that came with that meaty silence: guilt. You have hurt this man’s feelings. Look at him being hurt. Feel him being hurt, vibrating silently with hurt beside you on the bus from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi.

Because we were in Thailand. This is a critical detail. We had only been dating six months. I had taken this “proper job” (where I met him) to save up for a round-the-world ticket, so I’d have more interesting things to write about than just being broke, on the dole, in a Brighton bedsit.  In the “getting to know you” process, I talked about the plan I’d made: the shortlist of countries I was going to visit, which included Thailand. He’d stayed there for weeks at a time when he was a schoolchild and claimed to know the language; his father, who was a diplomat, had served there for several years. Let’s go together, he said! And suddenly we’d booked flights, and a month off work.

Predators isolate their prey. Watch the wildlife programs. They look for the vulnerable ones and cut them off from the herd. My first husband was textbook in separating me from my (frankly limited) support systems or second opinions, and not just in moving us out to the Sussex countryside once we were married. He “popped the question” on the other side of the world.

If it feels like an ambush, it is. But I was unaware. I was mired in guilt. And in the silence, I began to sink into self-doubt.

Why did I say No? Because I’m not in love with him. I love him like a friend. I’m not ‘in love’. But then where has ‘in love’ ever got me? Heartbreak. And don’t they say that friendship’s the best foundation for marriage?

In this foreign place where you know no one else and where no one speaks English except the one who's not talking to you, there’s plenty of time for long conversations with yourself. Over three days of silence, I tortured myself into changing my mind. And now we were on the bus to the place that would break me. Kanchanaburi. The bridge on the River Kwai.

He was a fan of war films. The stiff upper lip, the quiet heroism, the Brits forever noble and on top. From the outset, he had wanted to go to the famous bridge. To go to the graveyards. Acres and acres of death.

That death place did something to me. After a day of touring the cemeteries, and looking at photos of emaciated prisoners of war in the museum, we walked through the unlit streets from our hotel to a floating restaurant. Romantic candles, the romantic glint of water, but all around me, palpable, the dead. The souls of the dead felt like some kind of soup. I imagined them flowing all around me, in the river. The dead from the war, hanging around like a mist. Which got me thinking about my brother, Peter.

Was a crippled sex life the real reason I’d said no? D was impotent because of testicular cancer. What if Peter had survived his cancer and been scarred by it? Been left with some physical disability. And what if the woman he loved had rejected him because of it. What would I think of her? I’d think her an absolute bitch. I didn’t want to be that bitch.

This was the job I did on myself without D lifting a finger. Just isolating me in a foreign country and sulking. Incredibly easy. And now, in this dead romantic, romantically deadly place, he’d started talking to me again, and I was relieved. Grateful. But still, I was desperate to undo the damage. I could feel his wounding, see it in his face. We are trained, we women, not to be unkind. And I really didn’t want to be That bitch.

I began to urge him mentally, Ask me, ask me! Ask me the question again, I'll say YES! You’ll be happy with me again. Ask me the question!

Through reading my face and my tone, he read my thoughts. On that candle-lit floating restaurant, he asked me a second time. And I said yes.

If it feels like an ambush, it is. Once you’ve been through this, you know.

Those public asks, the ones where he gets a whole restaurant involved, a whole TV studio audience, a whole stadium? They give me the shivers. I watch her face. Out of the blue, with no prior discussion? Wrong person? Too soon? You hope it’s okay, and none of those things, because she can’t say no. How many of the publicly ambushed folk say no? What level of courage would that take, what grade of steel?

To be put in the spotlight in public is another kind of isolation. To bear the whole weight of audience expectation, an audience drunk on the romantic guff we are sold about marriage, willing your Yes. As if they’ve never heard of red flags. As if they’re oblivious to the fact that, even in a “progressive” place like England, 1 in 4 women will suffer domestic abuse. How do you withstand that kind of pressure? How do you stand up for the No that is pressing inside you, when it will make you the cause of his public humiliation, and invite a whole stadium of disappointment or disapproval. They ask in these places to make refusal impossible. It’s not romantic. It’s coercion. Red, red flag, red as a rose on fire.

That fire, though, when you’ve walked all the way through it? When you’ve waded through the ashes it left of your previous life? You thank it. Thank it for burning away your uncertainty. For reducing your childhood traumas to fairytales. For cindering your submission, for melting your insecurity, for vaporising every false idea you ever held about yourself. The whole experience, including survival, reduces you to your ore. You escape the fire, you give yourself oxygen, you temper yourself, and you find you are forged into steel. That is when you thank the fire you walked through.

You say, You know what? It turns out I needed that. I needed you to show me who I really am by treating me as the opposite. You find your voice. You put on the soundtrack to the rest of your life. You turn to the people coming along the path just behind you and say Come this way.

You choose to become a blazing beacon of light.

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Post-it-notes

This week I have

• Taken a meeting with two producers

• Had to deal with a lot of stress and extra legal communication because the lawyers for the other side in my defamation case have lodged a Statement in Open Court different to the one we agreed. You can support me here, if you feel inclined.

• Booked a silent retreat for next year.

Over to you

1. Have you experienced a marriage proposal that felt like an ambush?

2. How often have you been coerced or manipulated into saying Yes?

3. Have you discovered the gift of No yet?

4. Will you join me in spreading the word about coercive control?

P.S. If you are actively looking to find your voice in writing about your experiences, you might benefit from this Paid Subscriber bonus. If you haven’t the cash (and lord knows, abusive relationships break you financially, too), sharing any Writing a Better World post can get you up to 6 months of free access to the paid member tier if other people subscribe as a result of your sharing.