Meet the in laws

To understand Matt and his issues with control, I think that it is very important that you understand his family.

Matt was the oldest of Tony and Joanne’s two children; sister Patty, was seven years younger.

My in-laws had a rocky start to their marriage. Hell, before the wedding it was rocky. Joanne’s parents were not especially fond of Tony, but, not wanting to lose their daughter, (hmmmm, sound familiar) they planned the wedding for friends and family alike to come and wish the couple well.

A Catholic service to be followed by a lavish reception.

This was not to happen as planned. Tony convinced Joanne to run away and elope, two weeks before the wedding. Needless to say, that did not make the family happy, considering that not only had the invitations gone out, the reception was booked and paid for.

Luckily for my in-laws, when they came back from their sudden trip to the altar, they agreed to marry again in the church and the reception was still a go.

Unfortunately, feelings were hurt and lines drawn; the stage was now set for a power play between Tony and Joanne’s father.

Tony won.

This chain of events would ultimately break Matt’s grandfather’s heart. His only daughter, in his opinion, had married a bum.

It took the birth of Matthew to soften Joanne’s father into speaking to his daughter again. Matt was his grandfather’s pride and joy. He called him Mickey and that was all it took to bring the family together again. I am not saying that they liked Tony any better, but at least they were talking again.

The bigger problem came when Joanne and Tony packed up Matt and moved to California for a job offer that Tony had. If the family had decided to make amends with Tony, it wouldn’t last.

When Matt’s parents relocated to the west coast, and Tony acquired his first girlfriend, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the family back East was not going to be happy once their daughter let them know what was going on.
It was during this time period that Matt’s Uncle Bob, Joanne’s little brother went to visit during the summer for a month.

That was the plan. Bobby would fly out and spend four weeks with his sister, nephew, and brother-in-law.

After three weeks Tony told Joanne to send him home. It seems that Bobby was seeing more than Tony wanted him to see. I guess screaming and verbally bashing your wife is ok in front of your toddler child but not your teenage nephew.

Well, Bobby got home and told his parents what was going on in California, and they immediately called Joanne and begged her to come home with their beloved Mickey.
Her dad vowed to have the marriage annulled, and pleaded with her to leave Tony and move back East.

It seemed to be the smart thing to do. Not only was her husband cheating on her but making her life miserable.

Isn’t hindsight great? I can look at this situation and say to myself, Jesus, why didn’t she leave? When I myself put up with much worse and didn’t leave. I just don’t know why women, and some men for that matter, don’t leave when the trouble first starts. Are we so desperate for the fairy tale ending? Are we afraid that we have failed? What is it that keeps us with these men?

I don’t think there is one answer for this question. It is complex and so personal that it can never really be defined. But wouldn’t it be great if we could see into the future and know if the man we loved was going to change for the better or was really just a big asshole, never to get any better.

Regardless of whom he saw or what Tony did, Joanne would not leave her husband. She loved him and that was that. This is beginning to sound like a pattern with us women. With all our brains, we can be just plain stupid when it comes to men. I hope that evolution can play a part in correcting that in the next million years.
Anyway, after about two years, they moved back east and things settled into as normal a life as can be expected.

It is when Matt got to be in his teens that I think most of the problems started that would carry with Matt until, well, today.

How does a son react when his dad tells him he has a girlfriend on the side? How does a young man in his early teens deal with the fact that his mother knows about this woman, about all the women in her husband’s past and is now dealing with a son who is starting to explore the finer sex for himself?

Because of all of this, and more, my in-laws were not very happy people. Joanne was so bitter, I don’t know if she ever really forgave Tony for the way he had treated her so much of their married life, or for his infidelity. When he finally did realize almost too late what he had done, he tried very hard to make amends.

Can you ever truly be forgiven for spending almost your entire married life unfaithful, harsh and mean? Can people really change when faced with what they have done to the one person they should have loved the most?

I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I do know that my father in law tried up until he died to make things right with the wife that he had for so long taken for granted.

On one of Joanne’s birthdays, Tony made reservations for all of us to have dinner at a very up-scale restaurant in East Orange, NJ. This is about an hour away from our home, so Tony reserved a limo for us, hoping to impress Joanne.

When the stretch pulled up to their home, we were all so excited to see Joanne’s reaction and surprise. Well we could not have foreseen what was to come. She was livid, and the entire ride up to The Manor, she either sat in cold silence, or berated Tony for being so stupid as to think that she would actually enjoy acting like a snob in a limo and going to such a restaurant.

Dinner was no better. This is an absolutely beautiful restaurant with fantastic food and service, but it was the most uncomfortable, tense evening that I have ever attended.

Poor Tony, for all of his wrong-doings during their marriage, he tried so hard to make up for his sins. I wonder why she stayed with him, knowing that she would never forgive him. She did love him though. After she died, Matt found an unfinished letter that she was writing to her children, telling them how lonely she was since Tony had died and letting them know how much she had loved him.

As a result of all that had happened in their past, no one was ever good enough for Matt. And for that matter, Matt was never good enough either.

Now, his sister was another story, although they did a number on her too. Patty never took the blame for anything in her life. If something went wrong, it was someone else’s fault; never hers, ever.

This was a young lady who was the most self-absorbed human being I have ever known. If it didn’t affect her in a positive way, she either didn’t give a shit or she hated it and would do anything she could do to thwart it.

She spent her lifetime doing anything and everything she could to make everyone around her miserable.


She tormented her parents, used everyone that she knew and pushed away any good friend that she ever had, and she did have some very good friends during her lifetime.

Even good friends have to take a step back sometimes and decide when the relationship has become more of a burden than that of true friendship. Every person close to her had to finally, at one point or another sever their ties with her.
Her need for attention was all but encompassed her life.

She was a diabetic who bragged when her sugar was over 400; reviled in the thought of her next hospital stay. She loved that she had so many ailments at such a young age. It was the only thing she ever wanted to talk about.

Pity.

In the end she got what she always wanted, to be sicker than anyone else; she died suddenly at the age of 39.

I realize that I sound harsh. The simple fact is that we are what we are in life, and death does not by definition turn us into Saints. Patty was a hurtful and hateful person who manipulated and intimidated her parents and that in of itself had such an impact on Matt. For that, I don’t think I will ever forgiver her, even after death.

How sad it is that when a young woman dies, and only a handful of people mourned her.

After her death I cried for a young life that was lost prematurely, but not for the person that she was. The only real sadness was for her young daughter and husband.

Matt has never cried over the loss of his sister; to him, she had died years before.

She came in and out of our lives only when she was in trouble or needed something. One of her disappearances lasted almost two years and ended only when her first husband left her for another woman and she needed Matt’s help.

I am not a psychologist by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe with all my heart that for most of Matt’s life he has been a tortured soul whose only wish was to be happy, loved and needed.

It took Matt most of our married life to realize that the demons of his family’s past and his inability to rid his mind of them were taking away any chance he had at being the man I knew he was deep down.

We had that in common at least, it took me just as long to realize that if things didn’t change, I would once again be faced with a decision that I did not want to make.

Don’t’ get me wrong, Matt had some shining moment throughout the years; thus, proving that I was right all along about the man I knew he was. The man buried so deep within himself that he didn’t even know he had a choice and a chance of healing and ridding himself of the baggage that he carried around his whole life.

My declaration that the marriage would end unless we did something about his inner turmoil only worked because I was serious. It was not an idle threat; I meant it.

So now I’m going to give away our ending.

The road to healing has been long and painful at times; but worth it. It’s unfortunate but necessary that you rehash and dredge up things that you never wanted to face again before you can truly find peace.

Purge and move on.

Matt and I are at a place now that we should have been all along. And inasmuch as my heart hurts for all the wasted years, I need to stay focused and look to the future, our future.

It’s never too late to get it right and I am so thankful that I decided to trust my instincts (which have been wrong so many times before) and stay with the one person I believe was put on this earth just for me.

We are soul mates and we won the long-fought war.

His inner wounds are healing and he found his smile.

I’m hoping that it won’t be too much longer before he can even smile when he looks in the mirror.

I hope it’s soon; he has such a sweet smile.