It was Valentine’s Day last weekend. That great day of love. Over the last few years I’ve wished for the whole day to just pass me by and for me to be oblivious to its mere existence. And that’s happened, for the most part.
There’s no discussion of it in this house, there’s obviously no celebration of it. But a different, unconnected anniversary happened this weekend that brought Valentine’s Day into my perspective again and I feel retraumatised by my Last Valentine’s Day.
So, five years ago in January was when I sat down with my ex-husband and first brought up separation and divorce. I count that day in January as the day we were officially separated but because I refused to go to couples therapy with him, I did allow for him to ‘try’ I guess. I didn’t say I’d be into it but I told him that I would be aware of his attempts to repair our relationship. I just wish that I’d put in some boundaries in at the time for what that would look like.
Because Valentine’s Day five years ago was a day I’d like to forget in its entirety. My ex arranged for the boys to be at their grandmother’s house that evening. I was a bit nervous when I heard that with my first thought being ‘why is that even necessary?’ but my ex gave me a scathing look, like ‘why do you think?’ and that sent into this state of panic.
And that state of panic never really left me that night. I don’t remember what we did for dinner. It must have been something nice, but mercifully, I don’t remember it.
He then said, would you like your presents now? Nervously, I said ‘okay’ and I unwrapped a large box from Hotel Chocolat for dipping things into melted chocolate. In the end, that box stayed unopened on the kitchen counter until it went out of date and one of us threw it away.
The next gift was even worse.
He said ‘open this first but you have a different gift before’ and I opened it and it was a selection of massage oils. He had this look on this face, like he had worked really hard on this. And he said something like, he’s prepared everything and he walked me into the bathroom where he’d run me bubble bath with candles and music playing. And he’d said that once I’d finished soaking in the bath, he’d give me a massage.
And I nodded my head and he left. I closed the bathroom door and slid the lock into place. And I stripped out of my clothes and dipped my foot into the bath but it was scalding hot. I felt like my skin would burn off and I almost wanted that. I was tempted to plunge into the bath all at once. Some part of me craved it. But I couldn’t. I ended up crouched at the edge of my bath, naked, my arms wrapped around myself.
And I had one of the worst panic attacks I’ve ever had in my life. I was crying and I couldn’t breathe. I felt so … exposed. Vulnerable.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so mis-seen in my entire life. How did he think that this would be something that I would want? It seemed obviously geared towards some acts of intimacy. I felt like… was he expecting sex from all of this? How could he have not heard me when I’d told him not more than a month ago that I didn’t feel valued in our relationship, I didn’t feel like my needs were even considered. I told him that I’d felt overlooked. That I wasn’t a priority. That I didn’t love him.
And he worked so hard. So hard to try to fix things that weren’t the problem. It isn’t that he didn’t buy me flowers. It was that he hadn’t known what my favourite flowers are. That he didn’t know me well enough to know what I’d prefer instead of flowers.
I didn’t feel safe in my bathroom with that bubble bath or those candles. With the weight of expectation. It felt, like he’d continue to make me feel over the next five years, that I was breaking our marriage in the face of him labouring to fix it. But in all the wrong ways that still made me out to be the bad guy.
Baby, Can I Hold You 