Afraid of Being the Bitch

Somehow, in the past few months I stopped being afraid of being a bitch.

Perhaps it was a build up of the whole year, and this month was only a culmination of this past year. Either way, for the first time in my life someone called me a bitch and I was actually proud of it.

Always before, I back down. If I didn't back down, if someone pushed me past my bitch point I felt guilty. Years later.

Perhaps it was because this time I really did earn it.

Because when I said no. I meant it.

He was only touching me, he said. Patting my cheek and smiling. The first time I only looked at him, puzzled. The second, I pulled away. The third time I saw his hand coming towards me, I stepped back.

“Dude! Boundaries!”

I then proceeded to explain to him that I had a personal bubble, as did he. I would stay in my space for the rest of the evening, and I expected him to stay in his.

He didn’t believe me.

By the end of the night, we had words. Very loud words. Nobody else had heard the other conversations... only the ending. “If you don’t back the f*&$ off, I’m going to knock your ass in the dirt.”

After I left, the other men discussed my bitch-hood in depth with my husband. Culminating in the concern that he was perhaps being led around on a leash. He fully admits that he is whipped, but so am I, and I admit it just as freely. We think other people's concern for our marriage is funny, by the way.

He defended my actions, because he knows how rare it is for me to blow like that. He knows that I am very casual about setting boundaries in the beginning. I progress with each step. When I get to the point of raising my voice, I am done being nice.

No means no.

I do not deny that I was being a bitch at the moment. I gave him plenty of warnings. Then he decided he was going to give a friend a ride home, both of them were beyond driving. I told him hell no. I was designated driver for a reason. I told him that I was perfectly capable of taking care of her. He said he was going to anyhow and grabbed my friend's arm.

So, I stood up.

And for that I got called a bitch.

Is it wrong for me to be a little bit proud of that?

This was the same group of men who had caught my husband making out earlier and observed that we weren’t going to make it because we were “too in love.” *blink-blink-blink*He also defended our marriage. We’ve been together ten years and still make out by the firelight. I still worship the ground he walks on. We’re okay with that being considered a modern marriage failure.

No, we don’t do things the “right” way anymore. I don’t insult my husband, he doesn’t crack jokes about me. He doesn’t refer to me as fat, even when I am. I tell him that his hair loss only makes him sexier, and I mean it. We do a lot of things that aren’t normal for marriage, and it works for us. Either of us would do anything for the other, and we have proven that a dozen times over.

I think those men actually felt sorry for my husband because he was married to me. For that I am sorry. I strive to make him proud of me in all that I do. But, he wasn’t embarrassed at all. He was proud of me too.

He has worked hard to give me a safe place to experiment with all of the concepts I wrote about in “Sister, Survivor.” Boundaries. Assertiveness. Saying what you mean, and meaning what you say. He let me play with these concepts, and blow them over and over. He didn’t want a doormat as a wife any more than I wanted to be one. Those concepts saved my life. They certainly saved our marriage.

If that is a failure, then yeah, we are okay with it.

So I am a bitch now.

But, I’m a happy bitch.