Conquering Chaos

by Catelynn Lowell

  First Real Test

  Catelynn:

  Stress never came between Tyler and me. If anything, it brought us together. We united and supported each other during the hardest times, and we never treat our relationship as a place to dump negativity or take out our frustrations on each other. Obviously we’re not sweet and cuddly with each other all the time. There are times when one of us is in a bad mood and starts acting kind of short or snippy. But the good thing about being open and honest is that if one of us notices that change, they’ll just ask. Basically, if one of us is mad about something specific, we come out and say it. So if I notice Tyler being a little rude and I don’t know why, I’ll just ask, “Are you crabby?” And he’ll say, “Yeah, I’m crabby.” Then I’ll say, “Can I ask why?” And either he’ll tell me what’s going on, or he’ll tell me he doesn’t want to talk and I’ll leave him alone. There are times when we snap at each other, obviously. But we don’t let it escalate, and we always say we’re sorry we know we’ve acted out. It’s easier to own up to being a jerk than to blame it on the other person.

  Tyler:

  When we say a relationship is hard work, we don’t mean to make anyone think it’s not worth it. It really is just like taking care of a house. There are chores you have to do, and sometimes stuff gets broken, and you have to fix it. Those parts aren’t fun or easy, but they’re necessary to keep things in working order.

  Actually, chores are a great example. When we first moved in together, we realized we both hated doing the dishes. So for awhile they’d pile up while each of us put it off, and then whoever caved and did them would be really annoyed about it. Then we came up with a life-changing solution. Instead of letting the dishes pile up, we wash them as soon as we’re done. If you’re at the sink putting a dish in there, you can take five extra seconds to wash it. And if one of us forgets, like if I go to wash my glass and I see one of Cate’s dirty plates in the sink, we don’t make a huge deal out of it. I just say, “Babe, you left your plate in the sink.” She says sorry. I say it’s okay, and I wash it. There. Done. Nobody gets stuck dealing with a huge pile of dishes.

  That’s exactly how we try to handle our relationship. When a “dirty dish” or a problem is there, we clean it. No pile-ups allowed. But, hey. We’re not perfect. I’m not perfect. Cate’s not perfect. These things are easier said than done. And sometimes a dirty dish just comes flying at your head.

  Catelynn:

  Our first major challenge as a couple traced back to those eight months I spent in Florida, and a problem I’d had for my entire life: Lying. Tyler and I got really good about being honest with our feelings in our relationship, and it made us really strong. But for me, personally, lying had always been an issue. For my whole life, I had a habit of telling people what I thought they wanted to hear, even if it wasn’t the truth.

  I didn’t grow up with Tyler’s obsession with the truth. I watched my mom lie all the time. To her boyfriends, to me, whatever. And I got used to lying to her, or to them, about whatever it was easy to lie about. If the truth was going to start a conflict, I was not going to tell the truth.

  But even if the habit originally came out of a fear of conflict, it’s not good to get used to messing with the truth. Lots of my lies came with a feeling that I was protecting other people. I thought if I told them what they wanted to hear, it was better for everyone. But now I know that lying doesn’t really protect anyone but yourself. And what I learned the hard way was that lies always come out, eventually, and once the truth has been twisted into a lie, it’s way harder to deal with. Not many things can do as much damage to a relationship as a lie.

  Once a Liar, Always a Liar?

  Tyler:

  Lying was what sparked our first major fallout as a couple. It stemmed back to those eight months in Florida, where it turned out she secretly dated another guy. Two years later, after I found out, it was the closest I’ve ever been to walking away from our relationship. All of our relationship coping skills couldn’t hold a candle to this conflict. We had to work through some serious, serious issues to get through it.

  I spent that whole year waiting for Cate. We talked every single day on the phone for two hours at a time. If we didn’t talk to each other one day, we’d freak out. We talked for two hours and kept in touch. We told each other “I love you, I can’t wait to see you,” all of that. I was going to an alternative school, and one day in science we got to make our own sterling silver rings. So I literally hand-made a ring for Catelynn, carved our anniversary date, and kept it to give to her when she got home. I even tried to go down to Florida to see her, but there just wasn’t money in my world for that. One of our friends was able to go, and I was so jealous I was furious.

  I knew Florida was a different kind of experience for Catelynn. She wasn’t there by choice. She was basically forced to live there because the only place in Michigan she could call home was a drug house in the Detroit ghetto. I knew it was a complicated experience for her. But it was also her chance to have a fresh start. She got to change her clothes, she got to figure out what kind of person she wanted to be. It was a special kind of escape for her.

  When she came back to visit for Christmas, she spent the whole vacation at my house. I remember thinking she was so different. She was styling her hair, putting a lot of makeup on, and she had all this confidence I couldn’t remember. She would put her hand on her hip and pose for pictures like she’d never done before. Of course I got really excited about it, and then she had to go to Florida.

  Catelynn:

  Florida was a huge, drastic change for me. I was so used to being able to do what I wanted and not have to answer to anyone. But my grandparents were very strict. Severely strict! And I wasn’t used to that. I wasn’t used to discipline. At my mom’s, I could always come and go as I pleased and run all over town. But there, it was way different.

  So I suddenly caught myself rebelling a lot. I started sneaking out to hang out with friends I made there. After my grandparents caught me sneaking back in a couple of times, they took my door off the hinges as punishment. They were not putting up with that trailer park wild-child stuff at all. Eventually I got better and settled down, but I was still going through a lot of anger and anxiety, and I was always looking for ways to get my mind off of it. Like I said earlier, at that time I was basically addicted to marijuana. I know you can’t technically get addicted to marijuana, but there’s nothing else you could call it. I had to be high all the time.

  That was where this Florida guy came in. He was this older guy who was chill and always had weed and cigarettes. I was always willing to hang out and smoke weed, and one thing led to another. It didn’t take a psychic to predict where that was going.

  Tyler:

  During those eight months when Cate got her other boyfriend, and I was just in Michigan waiting. Our agreement was that we were going to wait for each other, but at that age, how long are you really going to do that for? Obviously she didn’t leave me. We still talked every single day. But that’s almost what made it so bad. She was lying to me that whole time. I’d call and ask what she was doing and she’d say she was with her friends. Then I’d hear a rustling around and I’d hear her say “Shh,” and suddenly the phone would hang up. Later I found out every time I called she was at her boyfriend’s house, and she had to go outside to the porch to talk to me. He’d come out and ask her a question or something, and she’d have to hang up real quick.

  Once I found out, I was hurt. But then I thought about it so much that I got into this weird obsessive state. I wanted to know every detail about him. What was his name? How tall was he? What color was his hair? And the details I heard just made me more fixated: He was eighteen years old, he had a job, a sports car, he lived in his own place. I started comparing myself to him, everything he had against everything I didn’t. It just killed me to think about it. I got obsessed with every single detail. Especially the sex.

  The thing was, this brought out a lot of my own issues, t
oo. First of all, my obsession with the truth. My whole thing wasn’t really that she had this boyfriend, it was that she didn’t tell me about it. Of course we had an agreement to wait for each other, but we weren’t stupid. We knew that was a hard thing to stick to at our age. I felt like she could have come clean with me and we could have gone from there. Instead I felt like I was played for the whole eight months. The lying was what got me! The girl I’d been with before Cate had lied to me all the time, and I swore I’d never go through that again. And that’s where my stubbornness kicked in, because once I’ve made a vow to myself, I start seeing things in black and white. And that can make things even worse.

  But also there was this fixation I had on sex. I could not stop thinking about the sex. The movie in my head was just them having sex. My stomach would turn, I’d feel nauseated. It literally made me sick to my stomach. And I thought if I asked her everything and got the dirty nitty gritty nasty details, I could make the movie go away. I got so obsessed with every detail. I went into so much. I asked how many times they had sex, what did they do, did she like it, all of this, all of that.

  Catelynn:

  When we were going through that, I was terrified. I couldn’t believe I was going to lose something I really wanted because of something so stupid. The fact was, I hated who I was in Florida. I had dated this guy because he bought me cigarettes and weed. He was helping me to rebel. I was using him to get things I wanted. I just don’t like to think about it. If I could go back in time, I would take all of that back.

  In Florida I went from being this prude girl who had so much respect for myself, to being the type of girl who would date a guy basically because he always had weed and cigarettes. That made me feel horrible about myself. I felt like a slut, honestly, and that was something I never wanted to be.

  And once I was back home with Tyler, I just wanted to leave the whole memory behind. A big part of the lie was that I was so obsessed with wanting to protect Tyler’s feelings, and our relationship, that I just didn’t want to tell him something that would be so bad. But part of it was also that it was a really bad memory for me, something I hated to think about. After it came out I used to cry to him and say, “I hated the person I was when I lived there, and I won’t ever go back to that.”

  Tyler:

  I had to fight against my own stubbornness to even try and work it through. It wasn’t even my brain and my heart saying different things. Part of my brain was telling me to stick with my guns, that if she’d lied to me about this she’d lie to me again. But another part of my brain was telling me to cool it for a minute. I had to force myself to think about whether this was really unfixable, whether it was really worth giving up the relationship.

  So we tried to give it a shot. And from my end, what was feeding the issue was my obsession with knowing every detail. I was so psycho that I demanded this guy’s number so I could call him and get all the details she didn’t want to share with me. So she gave me his number, and I sent him a text pretending I was Catelynn. I said, “My boyfriend’s probably going to get in contact with you. He asked me for your number so just tell him what happened and be honest with him.”

  This guy wrote back, “Why? Okay, whatever.” And then, still thinking he was texting Catelynn, he wrote, “Do you want me to tell him we talked last night on the phone?” That made me stop cold. I got in touch with Cate and asked her when she’d talked to her boyfriend in Florida. And she said, “I haven’t talked to him in five months.”

  “That’s it,” I said. “You’re busted. I caught you. You’re done.” We broke up for three weeks. I thought that was the end of it.

  Catelynn:

  There’s no way to explain how helpless and terrified I was during that whole thing. All I could think about was how I might lose the best thing in my life based on this one stupid thing that I knew, one-hundred percent knew, that I would never do again. And the fact that it was really the lie that had him the most upset was even harder to deal with. Because lies really had become normal for me, even if I had learned to be honest, too. Lying was definitely a habit I fell into frequently, and I hadn’t experienced the damage it could cause before that. It was a devastating wake-up call.

  United We Conquer

  Tyler:

  I’m really headstrong. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that. But I was stubborn on this, too. Cate tried to talk to me the whole three weeks, and I forced myself not to. But deep down I really wanted to just let the whole thing go because I loved her so much. My heart was battling with my stubbornness.

  In my head I was thinking, “Tyler, just leave her. She lies once, she’ll lie again.” But in the end I thought, “She’s too good to let go for something like this.”

  I could see her coming face to face with this problem of lying that she’d never really confronted before. She was struggling to work through something inside herself the way we’d struggled through so many things together. And I thought, “I have to help her with this.” I didn’t want to break up and regret it over something we could have worked through together.

  Eventually I texted her and suggested we go back to counseling. So I decided we should get some help and figure out why I was so creepily obsessed with this, and then figure out why Catelynn was lying and how to stop it.

  And then it all came out in counseling why she lied and all of that. Lying is something you learn. She had to lie all her life to keep the peace. She learned about it from living in that house. It really came down to, “Can you live the rest of your life with her and get over this?”

  Catelynn:

  Going through counseling was actually very beneficial. Not only did I learn why I was lying to him, but I learned why I lied, period. It was because I was always trying to protect people around me. It was a huge awakening for me. And it was like, “Really, Catelynn, do you want to go on like this? Do you want to lose this person you loved and know you ruined something amazing over something so stupid?” No. I did not.

  And ever since that, I’ve been a totally different person. I don’t lie. I tell him what’s up. I was willing to learn. I told him, and I meant, that I would do everything to make it better. It hurt me so much that I had hurt him. I would cry not because of myself but because of what I had done to him and the pain I had caused him. If I could go back, I never would have done any of that.

  Tyler:

  In counseling we talked about my psychotic obsession with the sex that was involved. Most couples say it’s the emotional side of cheating that matters the most, like the important thing is whether or not it “meant anything.” But I felt like I would have been fine if they were madly in love. I was obsessed with that specific physical part of the relationship. I was worried about the sexual things. I don’t think I ever asked if she loved the guy. I didn’t give a shit. I wanted to know all about the sex. That’s weird. It was weird, and I knew it.

  The counselor came straight out and told me what she thought that was about. She said, “You’re obsessed with this because of what happened to you when you were a kid means everything to you. Your whole ideal of sex is important and significant in your relationship. That’s why you’re so obsessed with that whole aspect.”

  I still had that horrible feeling that I couldn’t erase my obsession without facing the details for myself. If I could do it all over again, not that I would want to, I would have gone straight to her boyfriend and gotten the answers and closed the case. People say not to ask questions you don’t want the answers to. But that was the process I had to go through to get over it. Now that I’m older, if I have a suspicion I’ll investigate. I’ll find proof. Because I can’t get less than the truth.

  Catelynn:

  Since counseling, I can’t handle lying! There are still times when I struggle with the reflex to be dishonest. There are a lot of times when lies come out automatically, without me even thinking about it. My mouth opens and I just blurt out whatever lie pops off of the tip of my tongue. It’s such a deep habit that I haven�
��t gotten enough distance from it yet. But now, after I say something dishonest, my heart will start racing until I have so much anxiety that I have to come clean.

  One therapist told us that was a normal part of the learning process. When I explained to her that I couldn’t stomach lying anymore but was still struggling with this automatic reaction to blurt out the kind of crap I was used to saying, the therapist told Tyler that was a normal part of it. She said, “Sometimes Cate might need five minutes to think about it and work through her reaction.” For me, because the roots of my lying are based in feeling unsafe, sometimes I need extra time to find a way to say something that makes me feel safe. And still, sometimes my mouth just vomits words and then five minutes later I think, “Shit, I just lied about that.” Then I’ll turn to Tyler and say, “I’m sorry, babe. That wasn’t true. This is the truth.” And that requires me to have trust in him not to get so mad that he’ll yell at me and leave.

  Tyler:

  The counselor told me, “Your job is to make her feel safe enough to tell you the truth. So whatever you have to do to make her feel comfortable and safe and confident to tell you the truth, that’s what you need to do.” And that went along with me having to work on my reaction. I’m almost too honest and blunt sometimes, and I’ll say whatever I’m thinking or feeling when it’s not really necessary. So I had to work on my reactions to what she said. If I freak out when I’m unhappy, she’s not going to feel safe telling me the truth. And really, that’s not hard for me to relate to. I’ve always demanded that people hear my side of the story before they judge me. So I can learn to do the same thing from my end.

  Catelynn:

  A lot of relationships end because of trust. Once it’s broken once, you can’t get it back. You have to make a habit of honesty in your relationship and you have to make each other feel safe. It had to be a team effort. If he has a problem, what am I doing to fuel that problem? If I have a problem, what’s he doing to fuel my problem? How can we help each other instead of escalating this?