Married Money Matters.

Many years ago, I tried to remedy my suppressed anger and loneliness by focusing on making money. But since the problem wasn’t financial, money couldn’t fix it. This life-destroying combination of not pursuing my dreams and not-fucking my husband was an emotional problem. It was a identity crisis, in fact. Trauma Voice and I were having some serious dialogue. Here is a piece I wrote a few years back, when I was trying to escape The Game of our marriage, but kept getting hooked back in…

August 2015.

It just so happened that, after we got engaged, my husband got promoted. He went from working 35 hours per week to nearly 70. Since being married, he’s been promoted again…and again…and again.

With every pay increase and long-distance flight, I felt a little more “owned.” This wasn’t conscious, of course — Bob never insinuated that I was his property, and I never agreed to be a house wife — but his sudden emotional distance replicated a familiar experience from childhood, and the wires in my brain were getting criss-crossed.

Although I couldn’t put my finger on it while we were dating, there were a handful of reasons I wondered if we were right for each other. For one, invisibility. Feeling invisible, that is. I knew Bob didn’t see me the way I could see myself. And I don’t mean that in a self-aggrandizing way. I meant that I felt unseen in an authentic way.

To cope with not being mirrored in my intimate relationship, I lost myself in work addiction…the kind that required me to build an image. And my run with an overt obsession with work lasted about 4 years. You see, my image — that falsified version of myself I created and promoted to make money and feel high — disappeared in an instant…when our bank accounts grew…and woke me up.

Because if his rapid succession of promotions, Husband made the kind of money that diminished the purpose or monetary worth of my entire career. By 2014, my contribution to the household income became pennies in his jar of twenty-dollar bills. My salary was a liability, in fact… just weeks before a business trip, I discovered my income pushed us into the next tax bracket. After Uncle Sam took his cut, it seemed I was working 60 hours per week for minimum wage. And I was pissed.

I don’t think I knew I was pissed…or who I was pissed at…but I was. Raging inside. I felt raped. Nonetheless, I swallowed my anger like a good little girl should. My religion told me to do it. And here’s an important lesson about swallowing: it makes you depressed.

Whether you swallow your own anger or someone else’s, our innate desire for justice must be expressed. And if we don’t release it consciously, it will release itself however it pleases. We must think of anger as an emotional energy that needs to move. It needs to move out of the body and into something disposable. We can use journals and music and exercise, we can share about it with trusted friends and throw rocks at the pavement. If we lack the awareness to properly channel anger, we might fuck strangers for being too hot to ignore (this is anger turned outward), or eat buckets of Cheeze-Its to punish ourselves for wanting (this is anger turned inward). This moving wave of red, spastic energy is toxic when harbored. Swallowing it is the worst thing we can do — it shuts down the body. It disintegrates us. Dis-integrates our personality….

…and this is what happened to me.

I wish I could tell you that my self-esteem was stronger than my paycheck, but it wasn’t. It was the only sense of autonomy I felt I had left. My last year of photographing weddings, I attended the annual WPPI conference in Las Vegas with a colleague. And although I was dressed “button-up-strong” on the outside, I was secretly grieving. I grieved the passion that died when I felt like a total loser. I felt like a passionless loser living next to a pristinely defined magazine-cut out named Bob.

It was almost like missing the color magenta. The insatiable drive I once felt for my growing business was dwindling…just like our sex life. I could keep pushing forward, I could keep making propositions, but it felt like a waste. Like I was a waste. I was Uncle Sam’s bitch, and he didn’t want me. My husband, that is. He didn’t want me.

Why not? Fuck if I know! I was 125 pounds and teaching Zumba six times per week. I was 29 when we got hitched. You’d think he’d wanna pound my brains out! But the opposite happened…once I was caught…once I was contained…once I gave up my dignity to keep us alive…once and I kept myself home to do the things I swore I’d never do. Make dinner. Bake banana bread. Gross.

The conversations in my head went like this…

Director’s Note: Trauma Voice wears apron and 1950’s beehive. Rachel is sassy and confused, pixy cut in gym shorts, as usual.

Trauma Voice: Rachel, now that you don’t have to work, and you make a fraction of the money, you need to be a Good Wife. That submissive white-girl kind. You have to be all about the family…even though you refuse to have one. It’s your duty. You are not allowed to be a roaring Career Woman Lioness anymore.

Rachel: But, what does money have to do with anything? I thought I signed up for an egalitarian relationship. I don’t understand why we are like two separate people who live two separate lives and hardly hang out. I think I should work for my own quality of life…you know, to keep my autonomy.

Trauma Voice: I know you and Bob used to have a very independent personalities, but that’s all gone now. From this point forward, he’s the boss you are his slave. If you want to keep your autonomy, you should do that cooking thing the Yuppie Moms do. You know, with real dishes and an oven instead of a paper plates and a microwave.

Rachel: But Trauma Voice, I don’t like cooking. And I hate dishes. I think we should eat with our fingers and use napkins for everything.

Trauma Voice: Bahahaha! Oh Rachel, you naive child. What you like doesn’t matter anymore! You have no power because you make no money and your are an expendable female who doesn’t want to bear offspring. You unsexy thing with no more magazine ads and five-star reviews. Now, go craft. Go craft and learn how to sew. Go to your friends’ children’s soccer games and feel inadequate for refusing to populate the earth.

Rachel: (Thinking. Speechless. Confused. Panicked. Whisper-Crying. Opressed. There are no words.)

Trauma Voice: And remember, for everything you accomplish from here forward, Husband shall receive the glory.

Rachel: Wait, what? Why? That’s not fair. What the fuck?

Trauma Voice: Because he is the man and you are the fortunate recipient of his generosity. After all, he pays your bills. And, of course, you can never tell him about this. If you do — if you try to explain this strange dichotomy that’s taking over the marriage — he will have no idea what you’re talking about…which will only affirm how belittled you should feel for having a menstrual cycle and a “mood disorder.”

Rachel: (Powerless. Resigned. Dead inside. Dusty vagina. Cobwebs. Numbness.)

Trauma Voice: Stay small. Stay small and don’t be a burden. Don’t shine too bright. Don’t take the glory away from Husband. Pretend you are happy for his success, then blame his job for your depression. Got that? Excellent.