My Best Friends Have Hairy Legs (3 page)

His intelligence amazed me. His compassion floored me. And that was just the beginning.

C
HAPTER
3

Red Flags

Marc and I were engaged after we had been dating for almost five months. Looking back now I can see all the red flags that I ignored while we were dating because I had been lonely and wanted the “happily ever after” urban myth. I had been married before and it had taken me several years to feel safe enough to open myself to another serious relationship. When I fell in love with Marc and Ryan, I thought that it would be easy to be a step-mother (you may laugh sarcastically here), and imagined that Marc’s ex-wife, Marie, and I would become friends—maybe not best friends—but at least united to give Ryan the best of both worlds (you may laugh even louder and longer at this). He spent the school year with her, and just school breaks with Marc. I knew I would never replace her in his life, and really didn’t want to, but I hoped that the love and friendship I offered Ryan when I did see him wouldn’t be taken as a threat to her status as his mother. I guess I had watched the movie “
Stepmom
” too many times because I couldn’t have been more wrong about what our relationship would be like.

After my retinal tear I ignored the red flags out of fear. Fear of what I would do if my vision didn’t return. I asked Marc if he was sure he wanted to marry me. I didn’t know whether or not full vision would return or how only having partial vision in that eye would impact my ability to work in the future. My current job involved a lot of computer work, taking a paper syllabus and putting it into a software program that would allow for computerized training and testing. If I couldn’t see, I couldn’t work. I also didn’t know if there might come a time when I would need assistance for day-to-day living.

Marc had told me a few weeks prior about spending time with a high school friend who had a degenerative disease and how he felt that he “done his time” for any kind of volunteering to help others by being friends with him (red flag). He wasn’t interested in helping others who were handicapped, or those who were less fortunate (red flag). Because he felt so strongly about that I was concerned that if I lost all my vision that one day I might be sitting home in the dark waiting for him to come home and he would never arrive because he decided to just leave me. I told him he had a get out of jail free card. I wouldn’t question his reasons, even though I had fallen deeply in love with him and Ryan and knew that if he called off the wedding, I would be crushed. But he said he loved me, didn’t want a life without me, and wanted to marry me as soon as possible. He picked the date, I made the plans.

We married a few months later and within a month of the wedding we were in marriage counseling. Something had changed in Marc the day after we got married and I couldn’t figure out what it was. He no longer wanted any physical contact unless I initiated it, which was a complete 180 from what our relationship had been like before we married. I couldn’t understand how a 3 year old man who had wanted to make love for no less than an hour four times a week could suddenly flip a switch and say he was satisfied and happy with having less than five minutes of sex once a month. I certainly wasn’t happy with the sudden decrease in “quality” time and just wanted to understand what had happened. Did I need to wear more, or wear less when we went to bed? I had shopped at Victoria’s Secret buying lingerie and perfumes trying to get him to pay attention to me again. I tried going to bed wearing nothing and tried going to bed wearing men’s flannel pajamas. I showered every night, put on fresh make-up, wore perfume. Nothing I did made him interested in me.

I couldn’t understand how he could be happy with getting hugs or kisses only if I gave him one when before it was him who had wanted hugs every time we left for work or came home at the end of the day. He stopped talking to me about anything other than himself, his son, his ex-wife or his job, and always acted disinterested in anything going on with me. It seemed that most of the discussions we did have involved money—how much I was going to spend on him or his son.

We didn’t fight about it. We disagreed on things, but I’ve been around enough angry men in my life between an alcoholic step-father and an angry second husband to know that fighting in anger never resolves anything. I tried talking to Marc a few times and every time I asked, he said he was happy and he didn’t see anything wrong with the sudden drop in our sex life. I asked if his lack of interest was perhaps the nutritional supplement powder he was taking but he had been taking it before we married, so that wasn’t the cause. He still woke up with a morning erection, so he hadn’t suddenly become impotent—he just let it “go to waste” instead of giving me a “wake-up call.” It was like he had become a pod person. Unemotional. Cold. Unfriendly. I was baffled. When I asked if he would consider marriage counseling, he said yes and went willingly every single week.

Shortly after Ryan arrived for Spring Break that same year, Trooper started to have some behavioral and physical issues. He started throwing up stomach acid two or three times a day. Trips to the veterinarian showed nothing, he was healthy and normal in every other way so I believed that he simply had developed a sensitive stomach. I started him on a healthier diet and began to make sure that he ate three times a day. I would often hand feed him breakfast and dinner, and Marc or Ryan were responsible for making sure he ate lunch. Trooper also suddenly became afraid of the dark, afraid of plastic grocery bags, and sudden noises. Furniture that was out of place would cause him to freeze and bark before running out of the room. I couldn’t understand the change in him and would work patiently with him to try to restore his confidence but nothing made any difference.

Collection accounts from Marc’s past started to surface that he tried to hide or blame on his ex-wife. In early spring we discussed a major purchase—a Jet Ski that he wanted to get before Ryan came up for the summer. We both agreed to wait until the following year since money was tight. I was paying an extra $300 a month for the collection accounts that he didn’t have funds for. When his reenlistment bonus arrived that fall he promised he would repay me for the collection accounts. But in spite of our discussion and agreement, he went behind my back and got the Jet Ski anyway—telling me only when the credit union refused to loan without a co-signer because his credit was so bad. He was forced to call me from the desk of the loan officer with the seller sitting right there, and ask me to come down to sign. I was furious, but I went. I didn’t like being pushed into a corner and having to choose between playing “bad cop,” or “good wife” and told him so later that evening. I told him he would still be responsible for repaying me for the collection account, but all the expenses for the Jet Ski were his responsibility only—I would pay for nothing. He later told me that he had wanted the Jet Ski before Ryan came up so that he could rub it in his ex-wife’s face.

That year was the hurricane season from hell. Ryan was up for the summer. Marc’s ex-wife had turned out to be something from a nightmare. That summer she told us that her mother had died and asked that we not tell Ryan before he came back because she didn’t want to spoil his summer. Marc’s parents sent money and restaurant gift cards to her, and we also sent a sympathy card. She was given a week’s bereavement leave from work and apparently her co-workers “passed the hat” for her as well. We later learned that it was all a lie—she just wanted the paid time off from work. They fired her when they found out.

One weekend when we dropped off Ryan, she said that she was diagnosed with cancer and asked us not to tell Ryan because she didn’t want to upset him. She asked if we could take Ryan an additional weekend since she was due to get chemotherapy on her birthday and didn’t want him to know she was sick. When we brought him back after the weekend she said she was to get her treatment, she was sporting a new tan, haircut & color, and manicured nails. All she could talk about was the weekend she spent with her newest boyfriend learning how to surf.

I cringed every time the phone rang because the arguments between her and Marc over money and Ryan lasted for hours and left all of us on edge. We never knew what story she would tell to try and get money or sympathy from us. She had “heart attacks,” car accidents, and ulcerated eyes from putting contact lens cleaner in her eyes instead of wetting solution. I wear contacts and I while I can understand making that mistake in one eye, how could she have done it in both eyes? The cleaning solution is instantly painful, and once you put it in one eye, you don’t usually put it in the other eye.

She would also claim Ryan was ill and constantly take him to doctors. In one school year, he missed 73 days of school because he was “ill,” or she overslept, he missed the bus and she refused to drive him to school. He was constantly going to see doctors and coming to see us with all kinds of medications—both prescription and over the counter. When I noticed that some of his prescription medications had not been refilled in six months or more, I stopped letting him take anything that had not been refilled within the last month, and so most of the time when he was with us, he wasn’t taking any medicine. When Ryan was with us the only times he would be sick would be when he threw up from stress after getting off the phone from his mother’s interrogations.

My last eye surgery hadn’t improved my vision, and it was beginning to look like the loss would be permanent. My father was diagnosed with a terminal illness that had a five year life expectancy—and he had been misdiagnosed for three years.

I was starting to have physical symptoms from the stress of the marriage and everything else. There were days when pain nearly brought me to my knees. Trooper continued to become fearful of everything which only added to my stress. I had never had a dog that was afraid like he had become. I couldn’t understand it.

Marc and I continued counseling sessions with no progress. He talked about issues dealing with his ex-wife or son, and would say that he was happy with me, but had no reason or explanation for why he no longer wanted physical contact. He would commit to trying date nights as an exercise to improve things between us, but then as soon as we left the office, he left that commitment behind as well.

I had a good relationship with my in-laws, but Marc and my issues were not ones that I felt needed their input. They were aware that we were getting counseling, but otherwise they weren’t interested in what was going on—right or wrong—in our marriage, which was fine with me. They lived eight hours away, and there was little they could do to help other than listen. I didn’t feel it was appropriate to address our bedroom issues with his parents, or anyone other than our counselor.

I still refused to face the possibility that I was being used. I have an MBA, for Pete’s sake. I’m supposed to be smarter than that.

As the year wound to an end, Trooper continued to throw up two or three times a day, and his fears had increased to almost all men. Men wearing hats or carrying anything resembling a stick (like a fishing pole) would make him bark in fear and try to get away. I had to start taking him for walks on a harness to keep him from slipping out of his collar, but that didn’t even work. One afternoon a neighbor wearing gardening gloves and carrying a paper bag of lawn clippings made him so frantic to get away that he pulled out of his harness and ran panicked across the street. I was horrified that it would happen one day and he would get hit by a car. I started walking him with his leash doubled in the harness and collar. He hated going out after dark and once we were past the reach of street lights, he would freeze in place and refuse to move forward.

I just couldn’t understand why Trooper had changed so much from the happy puppy he had been when he was six months old. His behavior wasn’t something I could explain away, and the difference between him and every other pet I had ever had was like night and day.