It’s funny. How the perspective of one brother isn’t the same for the other. How the narrative was built for one, but not the other. How the truth is true, for one and not the other.
When she met E, he was living with one foot in a world he loved and one foot in a world he was desperately trying to escape. The relationships we have with our parents are complex like that. Where one child looks at their parents and sees admiration, another sibling looks at the same two people and sees trepidation. E had picked a school as far from home as he could get. And after college, he didn’t go back.
He wasn’t allowed to fail. The plan had already been written for him. College. Graduation. The marketing job. Success. A quiet, demure girlfriend who would become his wife and never have a real personality, or opinion, of her own.
He didn’t do that, though. He met her.
She is stubborn. Opinionated. Outspoken. Bold. The yin to his yang. Period. And they fit. They met, dated, dated some more, got married, had children, built a life. A life they created together. She was not the daughter-in-law his parents wanted. She was the wife E wanted, though. So much so that they are celebrating 25 years this year.
The crossroads came. It started on the streets of Breckenridge, Colorado, and ended with his mother telling him she never approved of her. Never approved of the marriage. She said those words while their four-year-old was sleeping in the next room and a son was growing in her belly.
It was those words that broke E.
There had been a million other words chipping away before that moment. His parents visiting them in Texas. Him opening the door. Her looking at him and saying, “Oh, you sure did get fat.” The continual barbs. The suggestions that maybe he should just eat a salad. The passive-aggressive subscription to Midwest Living that mysteriously showed up in their mailbox, the quiet hope that she would learn to decorate the home the right way. The job ad clippings for marketing positions, despite his clear and repeated communication that he did not want to work in that profession.
And he didn’t just break. He shattered. Into a billion pieces.
It’s one thing to know your parents hate your wife. It’s another for them to say it out loud. To acknowledge, plainly, that they would rather see the marriage fail than succeed. And when he shattered, the consequences were definitive. He was done. He cut off contact. He focused on his daughter, his pregnant wife, and eventually the birth of his son, who had been diagnosed before he arrived with either a death sentence or a minor complication. They wouldn’t know until he was born.
Here is where the villain was born. E set his boundaries. To protect himself.
And this is also where the assumptions were made. That she was the one pulling the strings. That if he had just stood up to her, somehow the future would have looked different. The problem was that they couldn’t fathom E having a mind of his own. Maybe because, in so many ways, they never had minds of their own. And those assumptions grew. Got more jaded. Went deeper and deeper.
There was a point where she talked E into reaching out to his parents. And he did. And he continued to set boundaries to protect himself and his family. That was the problem. Those boundaries forced him to prioritize his children. His wife. Instead of his mom.
So, when the text message from E’s brother, C, came that she, mom, was not doing great, it also came with the dripping words of hatred. “You never did give a shit” C said. “You were never there for your family”. “Dad would be so ashamed of you”.
And this time, he didn’t break into a million pieces. This time, he shook his head and moved on.
He did give a shit. And you can only beat a person for so long before they say enough is enough.
He did care about his family. He had done an incredible job raising his children. He was a devoted father, husband, and friend. He was beloved by his coworkers.
His dad would not of been ashamed of him. He married a woman, he fell in love. He put his family first.
And that made him the villian.