The Laundry List

The first little inkling I had that something was not right about M was the socks.  We hadn’t been dating very long, and I was in that initial stage of infatuation – he was so charming and really made me feel special.  We were both off from work, and I was just hanging out at his apartment.  He was doing his laundry and I absentmindedly sat on his bed and started matching up his socks while he was in the other room.  When he came back in and noticed what I was doing he became very upset.  He raised his voice at me, telling me that I had matched them wrong, started pulling them apart and obsessively laying them out and re-matching them.   I was upset at his reaction; I was just trying to be helpful.  He calmed down and reassured me it was okay – he was just particular about his socks. 

I put it out of my head pretty quickly, okay fine, the man is particular about his socks, so what?  Looking back with the years of experience I have, it wasn’t just about the socks.  It was about control and keeping me on my toes.  Soon it became about the shirts – they had to be hung dry, placed a certain way on the hanger.  Then the pants – hung dry, certain way on the hanger.  I have certain clothes I liked washed and dried a particular way, so I tried to be accommodating.  After all, isn’t part of a relationship about doing the little things for each other?

 But then one day he became short-tempered with me and yelled that I was hanging the shirts wrong.  “No, “ I said, “you told me to hang them this way.”  His insistence that he had said otherwise had me confused.  At the time I was very hurt by his mean-spirited criticism and doubting myself. 

This kind of scenario repeated itself over and over again, beyond the laundry.  I tried to do certain things the way he liked them, as I expected he would do for me.  Then the requirements would change – although he would insist that the requirements were the same as always, I just heard him wrong.    I had never had troubles with details, I have a successful career, I was in the military and listened to and carried out orders all the time.  Why was I always mishearing things at home? 

 One book I read calls it “gas lighting” after the movie.  I get it.  Tell me one thing today; tomorrow insist you told me something completely different.  Do it with such frequency and sincerity that one begins to doubt their own sanity. 

Looking back, I should have run screaming after the sock incident.  Who knew?