Dear Reader,
Last Sunday, I sold the chairs. The brown leather ones from West Elm that X and I bought on Offer Up a month after we got married. We needed something to fill up the empty living room. It seemed like a good deal. The chairs appeared to be worth more than their listing price, and fit well with the mid-century modern vibe we were going for. The only problem is we had to drive all the way to Marin (forty minutes away) to get them and we didn’t have a big enough car to do the job. It was my genius idea to rent a U-Haul truck. However, I didn’t realize until much later that we would have to pick up and drop off the truck at the same location— which was close to the seller’s home, but far from ours.
We made the purchase on a Sunday afternoon, after a morning spent luxuriating in newlywed bliss. When we got to the seller’s house, she appeared to be a busy (wealthy) mother preparing to move to a bigger house and eager to get rid of the chairs that she had grown tired of. She offered us a two-for-one deal, and we gleefully said yes! Our joy was short-lived when we began the drive home and ran into heavy traffic on the Richmond bridge. It was a hot day and the frustration from sitting in endless traffic only intensified my hangriness, but there was no time for lunch. We had to drop off the chairs, and then drive back over the bridge to return the truck before 5pm. It took us two more drives across the crowded bridge and a few more hours to get home.
Later with the mess of the trip behind us, I realized the living room looked a lot smaller with the chairs there. I hadn’t measured the dimensions of the chairs before making the purchase and realized they were bigger than I had wanted. I think I made a comment like “one day I think I’ll sell these chairs, and buy ones that are more compact.”
This bothered X. He didn’t like the idea that our time, energy, and money had been spent on something that was potentially short-lived. We then started arguing about finances. I was annoyed by his annoyance, and shut down the conversation before it got too heated.
That moment, and others like it, made it onto a long list of grievances X held against me. Those grievances eroded love and brewed resentment and contempt.
Months after the divorce, I decided it was time to ditch the chairs.
After a few weeks of haggling with non-committal Facebook marketplace buyers, I found one that stuck and agreed to pay my asking price.
As my friend and I carried the huge chairs down the stairs, I sized up the couple standing outside my apartment waiting to purchase them. They were friendly and easy going. The woman wore jeans and a flannel long sleeve shirt. The man wore dark navy pants and a corduroy zip-up jacket.
I noticed the man’s wedding ring as he pulled out his phone to send the Venmo transfer. They were married. Happily, it seemed. They fit together like a puzzle piece. Because of that factoid, when the woman asked me why I was selling the chairs, I didn’t have the nerve to tell her “I'm getting divorced.” I just said “I wanted a change” and left it at that.
I wished them luck, said “mashaAllah” in my head, and walked away as they drove off into the sunset with their new chairs. I went back upstairs to stare at the empty spot in the living room where the chairs once stood. I was right, I thought. The space looked bigger without the chairs. They weren’t the right fit.
The Four Horsemen
Do you know about the four horsemen? It wasn’t until the end of my marriage that I discovered a few of them had entered my home and invaded my marriage. John Gottman, a renowned marriage researcher and therapist, says there are four “horsemen” or warning signs that indicate trouble in a marriage. The horsemen are: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
Criticism occurs when someone attacks their partner’s character. This can result in your partner feeling rejected, assaulted and hurt. Sometimes it involves one partner keeping track of all their partner’s mistakes and not saying anything so they can avoid conflict. But the anger and frustration just bottles up and morphs into resentment.
Contempt is the second horseman which goes a step beyond criticism. It involves one partner treating the other with disrespect, ridicule, eye-rolling or name calling.
Defensiveness can show up in a relationship when one partner feels unjustly accused, and looks for excuses to justify their actions so that their partner backs off.
The last horseman, stonewalling, occurs when one partner withdraws, shuts down, and simply stops responding to their partner. People who stonewall can make evasive maneuvers such as tuning out, turning away, or acting busy.
Gottman says these aberrations cause a marriage to fracture and upon discovery must be addressed and evicted.
Ways to Address the Four Horsemen
When we hit a rough patch, I read Gottman's The Seven Principles of a Successful Marriage. I identified the times when I had become emotionally flooded during hard moments and stonewalled. I immensely apologized for those moments. However, I don’t think either of us realized X had let Contempt enter our marriage. Instead of confronting me when he was unhappy, he allowed things that bothered him to fester.
I wish we had been able to identify the horsemen sooner and gotten help. I wish we could have worked together to save our marriage. I wish there was commitment on both sides to do so.
If you’re married, or plan to be married, look out for these horsemen. Read the books. Do the homework. And seek help from a professional counselor. May Allah protect all the couples in wedded bliss.
Love,
ND