My Husband Has Always Told Me I’m Not Feminine Enough—At First, He’d Drop Hints About Wearing More M…

My husband always used to say I wasnt feminine enough. At first, it was just passing remarks that I should wear a bit more makeup, put on a dress once in a while, act a little softer. Thats never been me. Ive always been practical, straightforward, not especially preoccupied with appearances. I work, I solve problems, I do what needs to be done. Thats how he met me; I never pretended to be anyone else.

But with time, his comments became more frequent. He started comparing me to women we saw on Instagram, to the wives of our friends, to his colleagues. Hed say I looked more like a mate than a wife. Id listen, sometimes argue back, and then wed move on. I never thought it was anything serious. I saw it as the sort of difference everyone has in a relationship.

The day I buried my father, everything changed. Suddenly, all those little remarks seemed anything but trivial. I was numb with grief. I wasnt sleeping, I wasnt eating, I couldnt think about anything except how I might get through the funeral. I grabbed the first black clothes I found; I didnt put on a scrap of makeup, barely brushed my hair. I simply didnt have the strength.

As we were about to leave the house, my husband looked me up and down and said, “Is that really how youre going? Couldnt you at least try to tidy yourself up a bit?”

At first, I didnt even understand. I told him I didnt care what I looked like; Id only just lost my father. He replied, “Yes, but still people will talk. You look a state.”

I felt something twist painfully inside me, like someone had crushed my heart to dust.

At the service, he was there with everyone else, shaking hands, offering kind words, looking appropriately sombre. But towards me, he kept his distance. He barely touched me, never asked how I was coping. At one point, as we passed a mirror in the lounge, he quietly told me I ought to “pull myself together,” that my father wouldnt want to see me like that.

Later, back at ours after the wake, I asked whether that genuinely was the only thing hed noticed about that day. If hed not seen how broken I was. He told me not to be so dramatic that he was only sharing his opinion, that a woman shouldnt let herself go “even at times like this.”

Since then, Ive seen him in a different light.

But I cant leave him. I feel as if I cant live without him.