The Survival Lesson from DV that Makes Me Want More Than Trump

The king is a delicate man

Because of recent headlines, I’ve been remembering what it was like to live with a delicate man.

We were married from 1994 to 2008. I was nine times pregnant, had five live births, and raised four surviving children. We lived in six homes and attended five churches. He held four jobs. We had three sons and two daughters, and in the end, I grabbed my children and ran one night, barely escaping a murder-suicide. I wrote the story in A Well-Trained Wife.

When his arm flung, I’d flinch, not sure if he was going to cuff my temple or merely gestate wildly to make a point. If he wasn’t already mad, my flinch could do the trick because he didn’t like how it felt to have a flinching wife. He felt that said something about him, and it did, but the solution was for me to hold still, not for him to self-examine or self-control.

When I was head down with my kids, taking care of our home, and being happy, a sudden sound could still make me jolt. A car door at an unexpected hour could signal disaster. Coming home early wasn’t always good. A pause was needed; no breathing. See his face first. That’s how we’d know.

When we were seated in church, and all eyes could turn after a childish whisper or babble from a baby, I’d hear the pastors address the men. My husband was respected as the head of a beautiful Christian family. He used polite manners and theological vocabulary. He held babies. A woman does not slander a respectable man. She bites her tongue; she swallows the blood.

Delicate men can’t tolerate criticism. I thought encouragement would help.

There was a long phase of our marriage during which I wrote him love letters. I left notes boosting his mood on the mirror and taught the kids to thank Daddy, pray for Daddy, and rub Daddy’s shoulders.

He did receive a lot of encouragement from other men. Our shelves were lined with books bolstering men in their quest to be strong leaders. Promise Keepers. The Man in the Mirror. Federal Husband. The Exemplary Husband. To live with a delicate man is to wave goodbye as he drives out Saturday morning for the men’s prayer breakfast and hope he confides honestly about last night. Maybe the other men will suggest a doctor. Maybe they’ll tell him to stop.

He didn’t ever really stop. There were long gaps between “it happened again,” and I wondered if we’d grown past it every time. But my hope was in donuts over burnt coffee in styrofoam cups and the weepy male apologies I’d seen naughty pastors make when they’d been caught screwing or screwing up. It always happened again.

Delicate men can’t tolerate change they aren’t in charge of. I thought talking to him about it would help.

As the years passed, I became pretty good at negotiation, the art of the deal, and secondhand psychology. I learned to anticipate his needs and buffer his disappointments, soothing his rough spots while denying my own. If I was tired that day, I knew I’d be even tired-er if he lost it. So, ask not what your husband can do for you but what you can do for your husband.

It’s not enough to say he “didn’t like change.” Over the years, we experienced a lot of it. What he didn’t like was the change he wasn’t in charge of, and I often felt like I spun in constant circles, wobbily attempting to find balance in his water hose of blustered ideas. The ideas had a life cycle: aiming high, sounding loud, then dissipating or sliding down fast. He never had the steam to follow through.

As his safe space and trusted home base, he emptied himself before me, bottoming out so many times. He knew that I'd have a soft word even if he lost his job, his temper, and his sanity. He knew he could stand in the middle of the street and lose all three, and I’d shuttle the children inside, only to return to him and ask what he needed. And it stayed that way until my life and my children’s lives were threatened.

I’ve been thinking about that, and what it says about him, and what it says about me, too.

It’s difficult to find serenity and peace in a culture of violence. I tried tuning it out, shining it up, and focusing on other things.

I learned that when things were terrible, they would also be good again, and life would eventually even out. This was a coping lesson, not wisdom. These are words we say to self-gaslight enough to get our work done. It’s out of our control anyway, and things don’t really change. 

But “things” do. When people change, things change. Situations and circumstances are mutable. I discovered that on the outside after I left. When I knew better, I did better, and yes, it made a difference. Things changed, and times did, too.

I learned that he could only surprise me by being worse than I expected. He never surprised me by being better, and when I softened and tried to “think the best,” I was the one left holding the bag.

But there’s something to being the person who wants more, who wants better and believes the world can offer it: she refuses to normalize what’s happening. And when I think about life with a delicate man, I know part of my survival was never giving up on expecting more.

Delicate men don’t like to look weak. They’ll avoid exposure and deflect blame. They’ll pretend to have power and strength they don’t have, and I may flinch or jolt from the sound of a shadow. But I know better now. I do not believe them.

If we want life to be good again, we must be involved in doing good. If we want more, let’s be more. If we want to escape Christian Patriarchy, we must find ways to leave, and what that looks like might be different every day. Because here’s the thing—

The recent headlines are scary on purpose, but that’s mostly all they are. Scary words that will dissipate quickly, spoken by a king who has no kingdom.

“Trump is acting like a king because he’s too weak to govern like a President.” — Ezra Klein

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