David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

Fear of possible violence keeps some people trapped by misery

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For years, I’ve known she wanted out of her terrible marriage.

She never should have married him. I don’t think she ever loved him. Not really. But he wanted her very badly. He pursued her hard. After a series of less-than-stellar relationships, it made her feel happy to be wanted so much. And he checked all the boxes on her “must have” list. So she accepted his proposal and they got married.

Even before the wedding, she saw red flags, but she didn’t want to back out. She kept making excuses for him. She was a strong woman, so she thought she could control the situation.

But as soon as they got married, she found out that he had been putting on an act about what he was. The red flags she had occasionally seen turned out to be routine behavior. Verbal abuse was constant. Belittling was an everyday thing. She soon realized she had married a malignant narcissist. She didn’t know anything about narcissism until then, but as she started reading about it — at my urging — she recognized her husband in every possible way.

She finally admitted something to me tonight. The only reason she hasn’t left him so far is that she fears he wouldn’t let her out alive.

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Who are you trying to impress? Answer may explain who you are

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This seems to be reunion season. College and high school classes all over the place are getting together to reminisce about old times and to nervously eye each other — with many thinking, “I don’t look that bad yet, do I?”

I know at least half a dozen people who’ve been to reunions in the last month. For some, it’s just fun, but for others it’s a time of sober reflection. When I talked with one friend today, he told me his reaction to seeing his classmates from not that long ago.

“Being there has me thinking about some things,” he said. “I looked around that night and realized these were the people who I grew up wanting to impress — and when I look at them now, I can’t figure out why I ever cared what they thought of me.”

When you were a small child, you wanted to impress your parents, maybe your siblings, maybe extended family and family friends. As you got older, the circle of people you wanted to impress changed. You wanted to impress your peers. Then you wanted to impress romantic interests. Your audience kept changing.

But at every point in your life, your choice about who to impress has said very loudly who you are.

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Little boy for whom I was named shows what my mother hoped for

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When I was born, parents didn’t know whether they were getting a boy or a girl until birth, so they often had two names ready. If I had been a girl, I would have been Susan. Instead, I was David Michael.

When I was young, people would often comment that my sisters and I all had “Bible names,” so they assumed we were named after Bible characters. But my mother let me know that I wasn’t named for Israel’s King David, even though I adored his exploits because of our shared names.

No, I was named for an inventive little boy who appeared in a series of elementary school reading books. My mother taught young children from these books. And I still have a copy of one of the books from which she taught. The one I have is called “More Friends Old and New,” which had been in print in some form or other since 1912.

I was leafing through this battered old copy tonight — reading the story called “Wheels for David” — and realized that my mother made a good choice. She gave me something to live up to.

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