When I Left Him (and more)

Eye-Opening Moments are real-life stories of adversity, encounters, and perspectives intertwined. In this episode you will hear about When I Left Him & From Patience to Impatience.

Website: https://inspiremereads.com
Books: https://amazon.com/author/emily-kay-tan.2021_

Chapters

• 0:21 Introduction
• 1:01 When I Left Him
• 10:40 From Patience to Impatience
• 18:51 Key Takeaways

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode #204 of Eye-Opening Moments where you’ll hear stories of adversity, encounters, and perspectives intertwined. They are moments that can lift your spirits, give you some food for thought, or move you. For the introspective mind that likes to reflect, discover, and find solutions or meaning in a complex life, this is for you. I’m your host Emily Kay Tan. In this episode, you will hear about When I Left Him & From Patience to Impatience.

When I Left Him

He once screamed and lectured me for eight straight hours. He sometimes yelled at me for two hours before he had his fill. He reprimanded me for not knowing how to change the oil, check the air pressure, or do light car maintenance work. He shamed me for not being handy in remodeling the house. He degraded me for my Master’s degree. He demeaned me for the salary I earned. I got into a car accident, and he hollered so loud at me that office workers in the building across the street from the scene of the accident called the police; the police officer asked me if I was okay from the accident, and my husband didn’t. My husband thought he could treat me any way he pleased because I was his wife. He thought he owned me. Wasn’t all that enough to leave him?

He was an engineer, and I was a teacher. He earned ten thousand dollars more money annually than I did. I didn’t know that a simple fact like that would enormously impact our relationship. I didn’t realize how much it dictated his attitude and perceptions to affect our relationship until I married him. Because he earned more than me, he thought he earned the right to control me or be the boss of me. When it was payday for me, he hurriedly asked for my paycheck so he could deposit it in our joint account. He’d give me twenty dollars in cash to use as I pleased. He said he’d use the money in our joint account to pay for everything we needed, so I didn’t need much cash. I thought it was accurate, but I didn’t know it was a way for him to control me. I endured.

He went to bed at 10 pm. It meant that I had to go to sleep at the same time as him; he demanded it. On the weekends, he would wake up at around 7 or 8 am and demand that I get up at the same time. Why did I have to go to sleep and get up at the same time as he did? If I wanted a snack, we would have to eat it together. It was as if I couldn’t do anything I wanted when I was at home. Forget about having any alone time to refresh or meditate. Was that more control? I had no room to breathe; I suffocated.

I had the occasional shopping spree and bought a summer dress. I showed my dear Hubby but was met with anger that I did not ask permission to buy it. I invited a friend to see my new home after work since she was curious about it, and I had just married. I shared about it with him over dinner, and he screamed at me for not asking permission first. He said it was his house since he bought it, so I needed to ask permission. I had been an independent career woman before I met him. I didn’t know I needed to ask permission to buy anything or invite friends over. Was that another way to exert control over me or to say who the boss in the family was? I didn’t know he was the boss because he earned more money than me. I didn’t know one of us had to be the boss. What a naïve newlywed I was. I didn’t know getting married meant that I would lose all my freedom; I was dying inside.

When he wanted to go out with his friends, I had no problem with it, but if I didn’t go with him, he wouldn’t go. When I wanted to go out with my gal pals, he would say I was “playing” instead of doing more house chores or making more money. I didn’t know that it was yet another way to try to control me by needing to know where I was at every moment. He needed to see where I was if I was not at work. I tolerated.

He exerted his power by screaming at me for hours at the slightest thing that did not please him, such as turning off the light to shine a flashlight to see if I wiped the kitchen table clean enough. If there was the slightest shadow of a smear, he said I didn’t clean the table clean enough. When I unknowingly put a smudge on a door knob from the dye that came off of wrapping paper I used to wrap a present for his brother’s housewarming gift, he screamed the daylights out of me. When I broke my toothbrush and attempted to use super glue to glue it back, I got an invisible drop on the counter. Hubby came into the bathroom to see it, gave me a lecture, and screamed at my stupidity for not lining the sink counter with a paper towel or something before doing what I did. I thought myself stupid even to try to glue a broken toothbrush handle, but I did it as I could hear in my head that he would tell me I was careless and wasteful, so I tried to put the toothbrush back together. I shuddered in pain in recalling his two-hour rampages. I trembled.

He questioned how I could be a teacher and get a Master’s degree when I could not always answer all his questions when he needed knowledge or solutions to his problems. Since I was a teacher, he expected me to have the answers to everything he needed to know. When I didn’t, he belittled me for my degree and career. I worked hard for those achievements; his words put a piercing nail into my heart that I could not pull out. I bled.

I cooked and cleaned the whole house and did all household chores inside our home. I did the recordkeeping of expenses and kept paperwork organized. He washed the cars, mowed the lawn, and watered the fruit trees; he did the outdoor tasks. He complained that I didn’t help him, so I needed to help him mow the lawn, wash the cars, and water the fruit trees on top of all my household chores. I couldn’t do enough or be good enough for him. I can hear my friends screaming at me if they knew. They knew I was clean and organized and kept my home that way. So, for Hubby to complain about me was abominable. I cringed.

Why did I stay? Why didn’t I leave? I had a habit of tolerating and enduring many things for far too long, so I stayed for seven years. I thought my ability to tolerate and endure were examples of my strength, but it wasn’t because I endured too much mental anguish and only inflicted the pain upon myself by tolerating it.

If I left him, it meant failure to me. It meant I failed in my marriage, and I could not accept the failure. I had a never-give-up attitude. I had to keep finding new ways to improve the situation. I had to make it work. I asked his brother for help by talking to him in hopes of understanding my hubby’s explosive temper and controlling ways. I wondered what to do about it. His brother only told me he wouldn’t be surprised if I divorced his brother because he was too anal. His parents witnessed my hubby’s rage and anal ways and only told me to call them to stay at their place until my hubby cooled off. I asked a male friend to take a trip with us, hoping he could give me another perspective and find a way to deal with my hubby so we could live in harmony. He had no answers for me. 

I could never figure out what would trigger the explosions, so I lived in a minefield. I wondered how to live the rest of my life in such misery. I didn’t know how to make it better. I refused to give up. I had to find a way. I needed a miracle.

I remembered where I once found a miracle. It was in the Landmark Forum, a personal development course. I decided to take another course in the program. I thought it would help me find the solution to my marital woes. It didn’t give me any new ideas to deal with my problem. Instead, it woke me up. It got me present to my pain and unhappiness. It reminded me that the power was in my hands. I couldn’t accept failure, and my refusal to leave the marriage made me suffer. I discovered I made myself suffer. I didn’t know that I made myself suffer. Never mind what my husband did, I was responsible for my joy or pain.

Sudden realizations woke me and released me from the chains I had strapped onto myself. As if I freed myself from prison, I found the courage to leave my husband. Reclaiming my power, I smiled and stepped forward to freedom and happiness, a choice I granted myself.

From Patience to Impatience

"You are impatient!" said Everett. I was offended and angry at his comment. Everett was a man I befriended for only a few months but talked to twice a week. In my defense, I said if I were not patient, I could not have been an elementary school teacher for over twenty years. He insisted, and I got more angry. Knowing that he was perceptive, I gave it a little thought, but I was upset that he said what I thought was untrue. "I may be impatient with myself, but I have done many things to show my enormous patience," I protested. A few years later, when I started practicing Qi Gong, I realized the enormity of my impatience. Most of the time, it is with me. Still, I discovered something in my blind spot, but it was in plain view of Everett. Like a car's rearview or side mirror, sometimes you can't see your blind spots, but others not in your physical position can see it for you.

"Emily, you are so patient!" Many colleagues told me I was patient multiple times over the years. It is necessary in my teaching profession, so I never thought much of such comments. I tried to think why my co-workers said so because I thought they must also be patient, and I was no different. I could only think that I would help students until they grasped basic concepts satisfactorily. I would help them during recess or after school until they did better. Perhaps that was why my colleagues said I was patient, but I call that dedication and high expectations for excellence.

"Emily, you are so patient!" my friends said about me in relationships. Keith and Devin were two noncommittal boyfriends. The two relationships lasted over nine years. Perhaps it was the length that made my friends think I was patiently waiting for proposals, but they had long proposed to me, and I was the one who said, "Not now." Maybe my seeming patience with them was patience for the one who felt right to marry.

"Emily, you are so patient!" said my business partners. "If I were you, I would have quit long ago if I didn't make any money," they said. I quit my teaching career to go into business, and I made nothing in the first year. In the following three years, I made little, which wasn't enough to cover my daily expenses. It wasn't until year five that I began to make a five-digit monthly income. Many thought I was patient to last that long with little income and wait for the day I could hit the jackpot. What looked like patience was my determination to succeed or refusal to accept failure.

Even as a kid, my friends told me I was patient. They said they would have run away long ago if they were miserable like me with my home life. I refused to endanger myself and possibly ruin a bright future, so I tolerated and endured it. They called it patience, but I called it looking out for my future. 

Others may say they all require some patience, but maybe patience includes determination, tenacity, tolerance, resilience, focus, diligence, and endurance. If so, then I am patient. I only thought I was because many said so, but along came Everett, who said I was not!

What Everett said stuck in my mind. A few years later, I was reminded of what Everett said when I started practicing Qi Gong as one of my exercises for a healthier me. I chose Qi Gong because I thought it was the easiest form of exercise since I haven't exercised for years. Physically, it did seem easy. However, I quickly found it to test my patience. It was not aerobic exercise, which can quickly get your heartbeat pounding and pumping. It was slow movements that worked on the internal body parts and breathing. The slowness of the movements tested my patience. I wanted to hurry and get it done, but hurrying would not help me reap the benefits. The slowness annoyed me, and I wondered why I wanted to do it faster. 

I understand that I am a type-A person and want to get things done as soon as possible. I know that I hate others taking things slowly or doing things slowly. I am goal-oriented and like to get things done as soon as possible. What is wrong with that? Doing the movements was easy, but doing them slowly was what challenged me each time. Qi Gong tested my patience; it was challenging for me to slow down, and moving slowly was not easy for me.

As I did the slow movements, I felt myself battling with myself to try to complete the routine. Each routine I did was less than half an hour, yet it irritated and annoyed me that I wanted to stop before it was over. It seemed like it was not the right kind of exercise for me. Perhaps I needed to do aerobics, which is faster, but I would huff and puff. I wasn't fit enough to do it. I decided to stick with Qi Gong; the more I did it, the easier it got. I could finish a routine without irritation but still wanted to move faster. Each time I did the routine, I confronted my impatience. I faced my need to hurry and my resistance to taking things slowly. I didn't enjoy facing myself and wanted to quit. But I pressed on because I knew it was producing results for me mentally and physically, and I was determined to be on track to a healthier me.

Each day that I practiced Qi Gong, it reminded me to slow down and notice where my body parts ached or where they had no problem moving. The slow movements forced me to pay better attention to my body and feel each bone or muscle move. The slow motions brought a soothing calmness. The movements provided a way to actively push out negative energy and gather positive energy toward me. The motivation to do it at least five times a week was knowing the results it would produce each time.

Qi Gong provides me the time to calm my mind, push out negativity, and pull in positivity. It makes me pay better attention to my body, joints, muscles, and bones. And the results? I feel rejuvenated. I walk faster. Before starting Qi Gong, I walked sluggishly with worn-out muscles and creaking bones. I am amazed at how quickly my body can change from walking slowly with effort to walking faster with ease. I am often worn out from work or stressed, but since I started Qi Gong, I have felt more alert and perky. Besides the physical benefits of Qi Gong, the mental and emotional benefits are astounding.

When I started practicing Qi Gong, I realized how impatient I was; I always wanted to do more and faster. Moving slowly "taught" me to slow down, be more patient, feel, and experience instead of hurrying to do many things. I may be patient in doing many things, but I was also very impatient in doing other things. Most importantly, Qi Gong reminds me to "stop and smell the roses," think about what goes on in my mind, and take care of my body so I can enjoy life more. Isn't that what matters most?

Key Takeaways

Though initially ashamed of getting a divorce, I put my happiness first and acknowledged my courage.

Though I thought I was patient, my friend Everett and the practice of Qi Gong exercises taught me that I have yet to learn more patience.

Next week, you will hear two real-life stories called Never Meant to Be & Why Know Regrets of the Dying. If you enjoyed this episode of Eye-Opening Moments, please text someone and ask them what they think about this podcast, or go to www.inspiremereads.com and leave a message. Thank you for listening!