I can tell him anything, and he'll still like me

30 years ago, my Gen X heart fell for a guy who told me I could say anything, so I asked him to marry me

Life feels fullest in late May. A turning-point of the year towards something brighter ahead. The schedule is maxed out with graduations, recitals, and end-of-the-school-year plans, just as summer plans are ramping up, requiring logistical planning … and forms. Though busy, I always feel a sense of calm when the newly filled-in trees start filtering sunlight with a soft glow. 

Each holiday and seasonal change brings up memories too. And by midlife, there’s usually some of every kind. Memorial weekend is when my stepdad Gene was buried after a long illness, leaving an emptiness impossible to prepare for. 

Memorial weekend is also when my heart grew with new love, falling in love with my husband a year later. And when our first child was born seven years after that.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of when my husband Brian and I became a couple. Thirty years is a long-ass time. Long enough for a story to fully take shape. Distant enough to own everything.

Our IRL how-we-met story

I love how-we-met stories, especially when they were all IRL. When you had to decipher every detail, trying to figure out who the other person was, and if there was interest – either way. 

I first met Brian in 1992 just after I turned 18. We both worked as activity aides in a group home for the developmentally disabled. Slowly we became friends, talking on the phone and hanging out in groups. 

Brian had Kenny G curly hair, pulled back in a low ponytail. He wore flannels over cartoon character t-shirts. His car was cheap and his brown suede high-tops were held together with duct tape. Working in community theater, taking every creative class offered at the community college, he happily went about, finding his own space within the same bad-boy 90s I felt stuck in. 

His confidence in simply being himself totally fascinated me. I never met anyone like him before.  

Still, I wasn’t sure about going out with him. I worried a dating fiasco might jeopardize a job I really needed to pay for college — and one I liked. On top of that he seemed younger and more sheltered, even though he was two years older. As I got to know him, I started realizing he was much more mature than me in ways that really matter. 

But what really convinced me to go for him, was seeing how he treated people, including the residents who lived in the group home. It wasn’t only that he was kind. He treated them as whole persons, deserving the same respect and interest as anyone else. 

I watched Brian react with calm and compassion when residents became agitated. I saw him sit beside them, finding ways to help them find joy within the repetitive rhythm of an institutional life. And the more I watched him, the more I felt comfortable around him, and the more I wanted to be around him. 

I started mentioning him more in my journal entries: “I feel so comfortable around him.” and “He’s totally not stuck on himself.” And the most refreshing: “He is a very real person.” 

Memorial Day 1993, meet-the-parent moment

That Memorial Day, I invited Brian over. He was the first boyfriend who met my family, going beyond the front door just picking me up. I was a bit nervous: my family could feel like a bit much at first. 

My smoke-filled home was always packed with people, some for extended stays, crashing on the dispersed couches. Sounds of people debating, electric guitars strumming, and video games never ending went way into the middle of the night. 

And no topic was off the table at dinner: Clinton-era politics, Simpson-style humor, masturbation, whatever. My mom’s conspiracy-theorist boyfriend usually shared some revelation, like the federal government keeping a cure for cancer secret — after reminding people he was a Mensa-certified genius. 

Voices talking on top of voices, getting louder as the night wore on. But there’s one voice I do miss hearing: my grandma Odessa loved sneaking up behind people, surprising them with a low-pitched, drawn-out “Boooo!” 

No matter the chaos around us, that was the day we knew we’d be together, like indefinitely. Here’s what I wrote in my journal the next day: “We totally talked a lot. I like it cuz I can tell him anything, and he’ll still like me. He told me that.” And after 30 years, I still feel that way.

I was fed up with making myself smaller — dieting my body, dumbing myself, and drawing down my boundaries — just for a guy.

A runaway teen to a 90s bitch

My relationship with Brian was a turning-point moment leading to more than finding love. He helped stabilize me at a critical time, when my story could’ve gone in a completely different direction. It’s why getting married at 19 made total sense. 

My life fell into a tailspin early on in high school — dating much older guys, hanging at Chicago clubs and with hairbands. After too many MeToo moments to count, I detached from myself.

At 16, I ran away from home and then spent a month in a psychiatric hospital — unwillingly. Their tough-love approach overlooked almost everything. I left with more trauma and dropped out of high school. But I started a new school my senior year and was able to graduate by taking night and summer classes at the community college. 

Then my stepdad died. I went more inward, focusing on college and work. I was alone, but I felt safe around books. Life was quieter and more stable. I took a break from dating and had already started rethinking what kind of relationship I wanted.

As a young girl, I fell in love with fairytale romances between irresistibly flawed, powerful men and young, sweet women, sometimes still girls. Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Or Luke and Laura from the TV soap General Hospital. Just like the Laura character, when I was raped as a young teen, there was no language to even describe it other than being my fault.

By 17, I was so done with guys thinking they could do what they wanted with me. And I saw what life was like for boomer women staying in — or trying to leave — relationships with men who held all the power. I didn’t want to accept being treated as anything less than equal. I didn’t want to be a sex object, baby machine, mommy, or maid for some guy.

On top of that, I wanted emotional intimacy. I wanted someone who valued all the sides to me that I was still figuring out, sides that women before me weren’t even allowed to have. My Gen X heart wanted the irresistibly flawed guy who wasn’t overpowering and who valued my ambition—a Say Anything love story with a guy I could say anything to.

“I feel like a bitch,” I proudly wrote in my journal, feeling fed up and done with making myself smaller — dieting my body, dumbing myself, and drawing down my boundaries — just for a guy. I felt more clear-eyed and confident again. My life felt back on track.

Another crisis at home

But at home, everything fell off track after my stepdad died, leaving a mountain of medical bills. Such a shitty place to be for my mom: losing a spouse and then worrying about whether your car will be there in the morning. Toggling between friends and family calling to grieve and bill collectors wanting something when you have nothing left to give. 

My mom was in survival mode. Only 41, she’d already survived a lot growing up in poverty and foster homes. Living through a high conflict marriage and divorce. She rebuilt her life after low points before, but losing Gene was really hard: he understood and appreciated her like no one else had. 

I watched my mom get up at 5am to go make biscuits at Hardees and then spend the rest of the day on the phone — negotiating with bill collectors, or trying to find a job. I felt helpless, but focused on doing really well in my community college classes. I wanted to make my mom proud.

And then there’s Maude

During the winter of my freshman year of college, the fragile grounding I’d found fell away when my mom’s whirlwind-romance boyfriend moved in. He was nice to my mom and to my grandma, but his Archie Bunker-ness brought out every bit of my Maude mouth. I couldn’t make myself be Edith-nice around a guy who thought women should keep their mouths shut unless desired otherwise by the male with authority.

Lots of men still thought like that then, but I’d never lived with one before. My dad was a Poli Sci major and loved debating with me, especially if I had a contrary viewpoint. My stepfather Gene was an English major who loved to toss questions back at me, pushing me to fine-tune my thinking. 

Eventually things between us escalated to a big argument. “If you swear one more time, I’m gonna kick you out of this house!” he yelled in my face. “So of course I said, ‘F**k you,’” I wrote in my journal. That led to him calling 911 (and then hanging up). I started hyperventilating, and learned that the breathing-into-a-brown-paper-bag thing I saw on TV actually worked. 

He became the first rift I ever had with my mom. And that rift felt deeper because I was always, always, on the she-said side after my parents divorce.

It took me all the way into my 40s before I realized I was enmeshed with my mom. And the untangling work was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but so worth it. Our relationship is still close, but in a healthier way. And I can work towards avoiding the same pattern with my own grown daughter.

After the blow up, it was clear: we were not two people who should live together under the same roof. So I started planning my way out.

And then there’s Brian

I took a second job as a cocktail waitress to save up so I could move out. I wasn’t legally old enough to work there, but they didn’t care. Wearing daisy dukes and a tuxedo top, I knew I’d have to put up with a lot of shit. But the tips would be worth it, I told myself. I’m used to being harassed, I can handle it.

Working there opened my eyes further to just how many broken, fully-grown people there were — covering up pain, while causing more. At the same time, I felt myself drifting towards becoming one of them too. 

My grades tanked. I was smoking. My eating disorder was back. And I started seeking out danger, because it felt in sync with how I felt: like I didn’t matter. I’d stopped drinking in high school after seeing what addiction did to my stepdad’s poor body. But I wasn’t far above the threshold of changing course on that. 

I felt alone in the world and mistrustful of people in it — including my dad. Beyond his department store manager job and sports obsessions, he was busy doing the midlife-crisis, buying-a-sports-car, dating-younger-women thing. But what really bothered me was how he seemed satisfied hearing about my mom’s struggles. Like he was vindicated: see, she should’ve never left me. I still had something to do with him, but wanted nothing from him.

I started feeling like the shell of a person I became in high school. Feeling like I was about to fall into a type of relationship that was exactly what I didn’t want, following my mom, and my grandma, down a path filled with bad (or worse) choices.

And then Brian came along — my knight in shining armor. Not one trying to overpower me and lock me up, but one who helped me reclaim my own power. He was the first guy who treated me like a real person. “Most of the guys I’ve been with only wanted me cuz they thought I was attractive and they only wanted one thing. But with Brian, I feel like a whole person,” I wrote.

Brian had the grounding strong enough to stabilize me, keeping us both above ground. In an ideal world, I would’ve found that grounding before a relationship, with some counseling help. But most things in life don’t happen in perfect order. And just as bad relationships can be destructive, healthy ones can be healing. Even so, I know that’s not the usual outcome.

A knight in shining armor usually turned out to be nightmare.

The knight-in-shining-armor myth. Most of the women I know who entered relationships at vulnerable moments ended up in worse situations. Going back generations, knights in shining armor usually turned out to be nightmares, especially during the getting-away part. My mom's boyfriend became a stalker after she broke up with him. And I did eventually get a punch in the face from him I’d been bracing myself for. 

30 years and counting

A year after we started dating, Brian and I got married. I wore Keds and a white linen dress from The Limited with the tags still on — I needed that $69 back.

I think the reason our relationship has lasted so long — with ups and downs of course — is because we thought of each other as whole persons from the start. I can’t take credit for that — I learned that from him. It’s allowed us to change and grow, even apart at times. But, we’re still finding new ways of connecting, oftentimes on a deeper level. 

Now our own kids are growing up and forming new relationships. I’m doing my best to keep my big 20th century mouth shut. But I’ll smile any time they find someone they feel close to and has their back. Someone who they like being around and can say anything to. Someone who they treat just as well. What can be better than that?

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