You know, it’s funny how you can spend so much time trying to figure out the ‘why’ of something when, really, the ‘why’ doesn’t even matter sometimes. It’s like trying to understand why the sky is blue by staring at a puddle. You’re just looking in the wrong place, getting a distorted picture, and probably getting your shoes wet for no good reason.
I remember this phase, a long time ago, where I was obsessed with understanding patterns. In everything. If X happened, then Y must be the cause. Or if I did Z, then A would surely follow. I applied this to people too, especially those closest. Thought if I could just crack the code, you know? Like one of those ridiculously complicated coffee machines – just need the right sequence of buttons and perfect, calm coffee would come out every time. That was my practice, my little project, trying to make sense of the emotional mechanics of relationships.
So, when things went incredibly, deeply wrong in my marriage, my first instinct was to analyze. What did I do? That was the big, flashing question in my head, wasn’t it? If he was angry, if things got… loud, or worse, if he actually laid a hand on me, it had to be a reaction to something I’d done. My brain went into overdrive, searching for my mistake.
- Was it dinner? I remember thinking, maybe it was too salty, or not on the table exactly when he walked in.
- Was it something I said earlier that day? A tone I used that I didn’t even realize was off?
- Did I not listen enough when he was talking about his day? Or, heck, did I listen too much and offer an opinion he didn’t want?
It was like being a detective in a case where you’re also the prime suspect and the only victim, all at once. I’d go over conversations, actions, tiny little things from days before. The mental gymnastics, honestly, I think I could have won a gold medal. I’d try to change my behavior, walk on eggshells, predict the unpredictable. That was my ‘practice’ – trying to find the formula to prevent the explosions.
Then one day, it was like a switch flipped. Not because I found the ‘answer’ to why he would hit me. Oh no. It was more like I finally realized I was asking the wrong damn question. It’s a bit like this one time I was trying to get a refund for a faulty gadget. I spent weeks arguing with customer service, explaining why it was faulty, why I deserved my money back. They just kept giving me the runaround. Then I realized, the ‘why’ from my side didn’t matter to them. Their system, their policy, or just their plain unwillingness was the actual wall. My ‘why’ was irrelevant to their actions.
And it hit me with my husband. Trying to find a logical ‘why’ for his actions, blaming myself, it was like trying to patch a sinking ship with sticky tape. The problem wasn’t the tape, or my patching skills. The problem was the massive hole in the ship, a hole he was responsible for, a hole he kept making bigger. My ‘practice’ of self-blame was just me getting exhausted and covered in useless tape.
So, why does my husband hit me? Or why did he?
Honestly, after all this time, all the trying to understand, the real answer I landed on is: it doesn’t matter what my ‘why’ is for his behavior. The ‘why’ isn’t in what I did or didn’t do. My actions were never the true trigger for that kind of awful response. The ‘why’ is about him. His choices. His issues. His inability to manage his own anger or frustrations in a healthy way. And trying to figure out his ‘why’ from my end? It’s a complete waste of precious life. It’s like trying to make sense of a toddler’s tantrum by analyzing global politics. Wrong scale, wrong logic, wrong everything.
My practice, the one that actually started to help, became about something else entirely. Not ‘why does he do it?’ but ‘why was I trying so hard to find a reason in myself that would make it okay, or my fault?’ That was the real puzzle. And once I started looking at that, things started to, very slowly, make a different kind of sense. It wasn’t about understanding him; it was about understanding that I didn’t need to understand his reasons to know his actions were absolutely wrong and that the responsibility for them was never, ever mine to carry. That shift in my own thinking, that was the practice that mattered.
