You're Not Pretty Enough (19 page)

When Dave was present for these, he’d feel helpless and go
internal. Figuring he was to blame for my state, but also feeling like he had no control, he let chaos rule his response. Wielding its lasso, chaos would ring the noose around his neck and lead him to our home office. There, he’d sit
angrily at his computer and mass apply to jobs—regardless of fit—just to take action, any action, that could possibly get him employed, get us back on track.

I let chaos rule my response too. I didn’t like being left a
sobbing mess. I didn’t like that
my
being upset turned into
him
being upset. I didn’t like that we moved from taking care of me to taking care of him, but as a problem-solver, I’d go right into that mode, chasing him
upstairs and hovering.

“Why are
you
upset?”

“Because I hate this! I don’t want you to have to work so much!”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, standing behind him, looking at his
applications. “But do you really think you’d be happy doing data entry? You’ve already tried that, and you said you didn’t like being in an office…”

“Well, I don’t have many choices, do I?”

When we were calm, we could talk about things more
rationally. I’d try to provide idealistic advice: “You have a degree, you have experience, you just need to apply for things you’re interested in, network, do some informational interviews. It’s a number game!” This would go OK for a few
minutes until we went into what is arguably the least sexy dynamic in a marriage: parent/kid.

“What jobs did you apply for today?” I asked one night after work while I changed into pajamas and logged back in again. “Weren’t you
supposed to do the dishes?”

He looked at me, resentful, doing his best to hold back the most epic eye roll. “I don’t think you understand what it’s like out there, Jen. It’s not easy for me like it is for you.”

“You think what I’m doing is
easy
? You think I’d be
doing this if I had a choice?” It got to the point where we were saying the things we thought were firmly lodged in the Never-Say-That Zone. “God, you know what?” I spit. “You’re supposed to make my life easier, but you only make it
harder.”

He looked at me, sad. “You should have married someone better.”

My heart broke. This was my sweetheart, my love. I never wanted him to feel that way. It also broke my heart because sometimes,
fleetingly, I thought that too. I put my arms around him. “Don’t say that,” I soothed. “Never say that.”

When these fights came up just once or twice per year, it was easier to pretend we could live like that infinitum. But as they increased
in both frequency and emotion, we found ourselves often exhausted and raw. I lived in a perpetual state of anxiety in my own home.
What type of mood will Dave be in? Will I be able to concentrate enough to get my work done tonight?
What if I’m not, and I lose my job, and then we lose the house? AHHHHH!
And always in the background:
where is my happiness?

*****************

The first session with our counselor was all about how we
communicate.

“So when you’re in a bad mood, how do you want Jen to react?” she asked Dave.

“I just need five minutes to shake it off, and then I can talk.”

“Did you hear that, Jen? Do you think you can just give him
space?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you want Dave to do when you cry?”

“I just want him to understand that this is the way I manage
stress. I have a good cry, and then it’s gone.”

“Dave, do you understand that this is just Jen’s process for releasing stress?”

“Yes.”

Therapists sometimes talk to you like you’re a child, but I
liked it. We trusted her and saw her over a period of four years and felt good about the fact that we were seeking help before it became irreparable. Every session gave our marriage a good “therapy bump.” Before we reverted back to old
patterns, that is.

In June of 2010, I left my job to freelance so I could devote more time to my creative pursuits. This was something I had wanted for a long time—something I planned for and saved for (I could safely pay the
bills for a year and had lined up work in the meantime). While working from home, I could see Dave’s funk in full effect. He was sleeping a lot and moody. We fought. Almost every other day. Again, I couldn’t concentrate. The happiness I eked out of my new work/life balance was squashed by the tension in my home.

Whenever I’m facing a major life change, I ask myself the same question: what will make me happier—staying in the situation or heading into the unknown? When the answer comes back as the latter, repeatedly,
then I know I’m ready for the change. As our fighting increased, the unknown became less scary.

One night I sat alone in my backyard. Dave had gone back to bartending, so I had nights to myself a few times per week. I just sat quietly
and thought about how I’d tell Dave I wanted to separate—that we had tried working on our marriage for several years while living together, but it felt like we were having the same conversation over and over—even with
our therapist—and none of it was helping. In fact, it was getting worse. At the very least, a separation would help us clear our heads and give us a respite from all the fighting.

But I was afraid to tell him and didn’t know why. It wasn’t
because I was afraid to have a tough conversation. We’d had plenty of those, even conceding that if things didn’t get better one of us was going to have an affair or move out—truths that left us both wincing. So what was I afraid
of? Divorce? No, I’d gone through that. Being alone? No. Finally, it came to me: I was afraid he wouldn’t do the work, afraid we’d separate for a couple weeks and then he’d “give up.”
What if he doesn’t fight for me?

Well, you want him to fight for you. What does that tell
you?
And then the words became clear. The next evening, I found him lying in our bed. I sat down next to him, stroked his face, his neck. “My sweetheart…” I began, my voice a little shaky but resigned. I told him what was in my heart.
I told him I wanted to separate as a means to save the marriage and that I believed we could. That the space would do us good. He heard me, even thanked me for being brave enough to start the
real
conversation. But he did not
want a physical separation and wrote me a contract detailing specific actions he would take to win my trust and eliminate the tension in our home.

Should I give him one more chance?

“OK, as long as you do those things, you can stay.”

So when he stopped doing some of those things—things that he himself outlined without any prompting—I called him out on it, which made him defensive and me angry. And that’s when I made our last
appointment with our therapist that day. It shocked Dave—to have this “sprung” on him—but I told him it was nonnegotiable, and to his credit he adjusted to this new reality rather quickly. This allowed us to use the rest of
the session to talk about our feelings surrounding it and the terms.

“I’m afraid you’re just trying to get me out of the house so you can divorce me.”

“No way,” I said. “You do the work, and I’ve got you. I want
you back with me.”

We came up with The Rules of Separation:

1. No dating (read: fucking) other people

2. Talk every day

3. Do the work

That first couple of weeks sucked. It took him about that
long to trust me when I said fixing the marriage was the goal, but once he did, it was full speed ahead. We had the best conversations of our marriage. We were vulnerable with each other, and we were also each other’s protectors. We went
on dates. I was able to concentrate on my work, and he was able to figure out his path. And now? Now he’s back home with me. Now he makes my life easier
and
happier. Now
he
picks up the health insurance.

It’s quite a powerful feeling to separate and come back together. It makes clear you’re both there by choice versus obligation, which makes it easier to be vulnerable with each other because we know we have each other’s back. It made us
partners
. While we didn’t make a full
180-degree turn from where we were, I can say with confidence we made a solid 165.

What do you know, princess? You got your happy ending after all.

In 2010, I began telling my stories live onstage in DC and New York City. The one that resonated with people the most was the story about my former marriage and divorce.
Especially
the comments my ex-husband made about me not being “pretty enough.” It tapped into something. When I
launched a website to promote my writing and performances, I used that phrase,
you’re not pretty enough
, as the domain name. I thought it was catchy, but I also thought it was a “joke” only my friends and family would catch, and maybe a few
others.

And then something interesting happened. I noticed I got a startling amount of traffic from people who Googled some variation of the phrase “what to do when you’re not pretty” or “how to be pretty when you’re
not?”

It surprised me, seeing all these searches. At first I thought,
why are people asking the Internet?
To me, it’s the same as
asking a Magic 8-Ball. What answer could possibly satisfy that question? And yet, my site was among the first to come up. Being what it was at that time, I’m sure those anonymous web searchers thought,
who in the hell is Jen
Tress?
And,
does Jon Bon Jovi have a restraining order?

Month after month I’d see these key words, that phrase, in my analytics. It bothered me of course, but I didn’t know how to respond. Hell, I didn’t know if I
should
respond. Then I heard about a trend of tweens
and teens uploading videos to YouTube and asking the Internet, again, to judge whether or not they were ugly. Some of the comments were encouraging or suggestive: “ur pretty, you should just get bangs, yo!” But many were
unnecessarily cruel. That’s what motivated me to take action. But where to start?

I went into consultant mode. What did I want to put out there? What was my vision, so to speak? That came fairly easy: I wanted to
provide an alternative to the current environment. I wanted there to be a safe online space where people, mostly females I assumed, could explore that “not pretty enough” feeling in a way that was authentic, empowered, and productive. I wanted it to be a place to have a conversation or a good think versus a
five-second sound bite, good or bad. Those inspirational messages we see—“You ARE beautiful”—those are good reminders. But are they enough to change our perspective and behaviors in a permanent way?

Knowing my perspective alone wouldn’t nearly answer that “Am I pretty enough?” question, I sought out other voices. I collaborated with universities in the metro Washington, DC area, with women and gender studies
departments and faculty and students. I set up on campuses and administered hundreds of surveys around this feeling, asking, “When was the last time you felt ‘not pretty enough?’ What drove that feeling? How did/do you pull yourself out of it? What advice would you give to others who feel this way?”

I developed a web series modeled after Dan Savage’s
It Gets Better Project
and watched, fascinated, as the subjects I interviewed came to some serious revelations. One woman said to me, “What I discovered
about myself, talking through this, literally changed my life.” Everyone’s story is different. We each enter that “not pretty enough” feeling via our unique experiences, which are influenced by culture, class, race, sexuality,
and gender, among other factors. But even through our differences, some common themes emerged.

1.
It’s all about feeling “enough.” “Pretty” is just the gateway word.
No matter what descriptor you put in front of that word
enough
,
be it pretty, or smart, or more generally, good, it all boils down to feeling like we are not “enough.” Pretty is an easy filler because looks are the easiest (and laziest) things to judge, to categorize, especially in Western culture where beauty is prized and norms are held up to unachievable standards.

2. Parents set the tone.
They—or whoever our caretakers are as we grow from childhood into adulthood—are the ones who teach us the way. Even if our parents love us and tell us we’re beautiful, we
still pick up their habits. If parents are focused on their own appearance in a way that is out of balance with all other parts of their identity, chances are their children will internalize that. If parents validate and guide their
children based on the particular needs and interests of the child, then that, unsurprisingly, has a really positive affect. The big rub is this: parents become the template for the types of relationships we choose throughout our lives, whether they be romantic or with friends.