My Husband Was Deaf For Two Years. Then One Night In The Kitchen, He Spoke To Me In Perfect English. How Do I Ever Trust Him Again?
Facing the Reality
Catherine stayed with me that night, and for several nights after. Richard called repeatedly; I didn’t answer. He showed up at the house; I locked the door and told him through the wood that if he didn’t leave I’d call the police. He left letters, long handwritten letters explaining his reasoning, apologizing, begging me to understand. I burned them in the fireplace without reading them.
Dorothy came by; I didn’t let her in either.
“Margaret, please be reasonable,”
she called through the door.
“You’re carrying my grandchild. We need to discuss this like adults.”
“You lied to me for almost two years!”
I called back.
“You watched me struggle to learn sign language. You watched me quit my career. You cried at our wedding like you were so grateful someone would accept your damaged son, all while knowing it was fake. While knowing you were both testing me like I was a lab rat.”
“We were trying to protect Richard.”
“You were trying to control him! Control who he married! Make sure she was submissive enough, patient enough, grateful enough to put up with whatever you two decided to dish out.”
She left, but she kept calling. So did Richard. So did my mother, though I’d stopped answering her calls too. I was alone with my growing belly and my rage. And my grief. Because it was grief. The man I’d married didn’t exist. The relationship I’d built was with a fiction. Every sign language conversation, every written note, every moment of silent understanding—all of it was tainted now.
Had he laughed at me when I practiced my signing in front of him, messing up the hand positions? Did he find it amusing when I worked so hard to communicate with him? Did he think I was stupid for not figuring it out? And worse, much worse: did I even know him at all? What else had he lied about? What other parts of Richard Hayes were fictional?
Catherine was worried about me.
“You’re not eating enough. You’re not sleeping. This stress isn’t good for the baby. None of this is good for the baby. You need to talk to him, work something out. You’re married. You’re having his child.”
“I don’t even know if I want to be married to him anymore.”
The words hung in the air. Catherine looked stricken.
“Maggie, you don’t mean that.”
But I did. Or I thought I did. I didn’t know what I meant anymore.
Dr. Patricia Chen was the therapist Catherine found for me, a calm woman in her 50s who specialized in complex relationship issues. I liked that she didn’t say “marriage counseling” because I wasn’t sure I wanted to counsel the marriage as much as bury it.
“Tell me what happened,”
Dr. Chen said in our first session.
I told her everything. The whole story poured out: my loneliness before meeting Richard, the pressure from my mother, the relief of finding someone who seemed to see past my age and unmarried status, learning sign language, quitting my job, the pregnancy, the reveal.
Dr. Chen listened without interrupting, her face neutral. When I finished, she said,
“That’s quite a betrayal.”
I started crying again. I’d been crying for two weeks straight, it seemed.
“He says it was a test. To find someone who would love him for himself.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“I feel like I was a contestant on some sick game show where I didn’t know I was competing.”
Dr. Chen nodded.
“That’s valid. Your consent was violated. You entered into a relationship under false pretenses.”
“Finally. Someone who understood.”
“But I need to ask you something, Margaret, and I want you to really think about the answer.”
She leaned forward slightly.
“In those eight months before you married, during the time you were dating Richard, did you love him?”
“Of course I did. That’s why I married him.”
“Why did you love him?”
“Because he was kind, and thoughtful, and patient, and because he was deaf.”
I stopped.
“No, of course not.”
“Are you sure? Because from what you’ve described, the deaf man Richard was pretending to be had very specific qualities. He was quiet. He communicated deliberately. He couldn’t interrupt you or talk over you. He had to really listen, or appear to listen, to everything you wrote or signed. He seemed patient because he had no choice but to be. He seemed thoughtful because every communication required thought.”
“That’s not… I didn’t…”
“I’m not saying you’re a bad person, Margaret. I’m saying that the reasons we’re attracted to people are complicated, and sometimes the very things we think we love about someone are actually the things we’ve projected onto them.”
I sat with that for a long moment. Was she right? Had I fallen in love with Richard’s silence? With the fact that he couldn’t judge me out loud, couldn’t criticize, couldn’t voice the disappointment I’d seen in every other man’s face when they realized I was 32 and single and maybe a little too independent?
“He still lied,”
I said finally.
“Yes, he did. And that’s not okay. But the question isn’t whether what he did was wrong. It clearly was. The question is what you want to do now.”
