Screwing the Pooch on Marriage in Madrid

Making Mistakes and Learning From Them (Hopefully)

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Well, I screwed the pooch hardcore yesterday (4-24-25). We’ve been in Madrid three weeks. It’s magical, gorgeous, romantic and surreal on so many levels. All this is to the good, of course. (Obviously.) I’m enjoying the long walks along narrow cobblestone streets, the practicing of basic Spanish (slowly getting the hang of this), we even got a Spanish bank account.

But. We’ve also been clashing. Me and Britney, my wife.

It’s a mix of things. First, we always fight during Big Change which is humorous and ironic, really, because if you think about it our entire relationship—which has still somehow only been 2.8 years—has been One Massive Change. When we started dating in August, 2022 I was living alone in Santa Barbara, fresh from New York City, and my father was dying but still very much alive. Then I moved into Britney’s house in Lompoc, an hour north. Then we got engaged. Then my father died. Then we got married. Then we traveled to Thailand, did an epic 15-day road trip through Canada and traveled to Morocco. Then we sold my Bay Area house. Then we bought a multi-unit property in Portland, Oregon. Then our beloved dog, Franky, died at age 16, suddenly, right before the move. Then we moved into the lower unit of said multi-unit. Then we prepped for Spain. And finally we actually moved to Spain, Madrid, where we are now.

Exhausted yet?

And before we even met I had my own intense journey, including going through a long and hard breakup with my ex after 4.5 years, falling for a half-crazy woman I met in Mexico City, moving to New York City, dating a rising-star painter, and surviving the global pandemic in what turned out to be very dangerous East Harlem. (Read the memoir here.)

But I digress.

Point is: More big change. Moving across country with three cats. Britney and I are a strange mix of very similar and incredibly, profoundly different (read: Polar Opposite). So it’s challenging. We both have our childhood trauma, our history with alcohol and drugs, our so-called Hero’s Journey. She’s much more practical, money-wise and down-to-Earth than I am; I’m the Intense, Sensitive Artist who sometimes (I hate to but have to admit) “creates his own reality.” (Not always! But sometimes. Thanks, Mom.)

Anyway.

First I exposed our fights on my other Substack, Sincere American Writing, where I’ve been publishing regular updates on Spain. Writing about other people in my life publicly has always been an “issue” with and for me. (Or even just writing personally about people I know.)I wrote about this HERE. I’ve pissed off women I dated, friends, and of course and most poisonously, my mom, who I’ve written about frequently. No one, to my knowledge, in any deep personal way, has ever written about ME, which makes all this unilaterally unfair. (Because I don’t truly know what it feels like.)

So Britney got angry at me about this personal exposure. I wrote vaguely in general terms about us fighting and our momentary (not already fixed) money issues. She didn’t like this. Understandable. I think most people would be on her side. I get it. Perhaps it’s fair to call me an asshole. However, you have to at least try to see it from my point of view. I’m a writer, damn it, and I observe, I express, I share, I get honest, deep and vulnerable. But what Britney said is true: I can write whatever I want about myself, but writing about HER is a different story and, essentially, “infringes” on her right of privacy.

*(I did edit the piece a bit to cut some of this material out. And this stack is OK for this material since no family or friends subscribe. She read this piece prior to posting.)

But there were other issues. Since this stack is safe because no family or friends read it, I’ll say it: We had an awkward and uncomfortable snafu regarding money with my mom. I won’t get into details. It’s been resolved now. But let’s just say it was deeply uncomfortable. Britney didn’t like the way I phrased things to my mom about this issue; she didn’t appreciate the language I used. It’s true, I must admit, that I have a bad habit of 1. Forgetting important details; 2. Not always listening as much as I should; 3. Writing or saying things too quickly without checking with her first or fully fleshing it out in my mind; etc.

On top of this my mom, too, was angry at me because she felt I’d miscommunicated with her, which I very well might have. But EYE saw the problem as fundamentally stemming from my mom, not me. So there was conflict with both my mom and my wife. Never fun. Add to this that Britney was tired and not feeling great and we get yelling arguments and me apologizing for what felt like between 15- and 20,000 times during the course of the day. We both basically stayed in the house all day, eating, napping and fighting. We had dinner reservations at 8:30 up on a very high building with epic views. But at around 5:45pm, after our third or fourth bad fight, I said I didn’t want to go to dinner and wanted to be alone. She said FINE and stalked away, down the hall to our bedroom.

I felt conflicted, mixed, angry, sad and confused. I grabbed the keys and left. I took the old, tiny, rickety elevator and walked out of the apartment building into the bright, harsh 6pm sunlight. I walked around Plaza Espana, looking at the statues and plaques and the people all about. I felt myself scowling and was even whisper-mumbling anger remonstrances under my breath, victim-y bullshit about how “hard” life is and how unfair it all was and how many goddamn times can a man say “I’m SORRY,” for fuck’s sake!

Slowly, as the minutes passed and the sunshine burned against my skin and I walked around the castles and the old cathedrals and amongst the people—it seemed like everyone was a happy, smiling couple—my anger and frustration began to melt little by little. After an hour it had more or less dissolved completely. Going on walks—something I’ve loved all my life—has proven an effective maneuver after fights repeatedly. Works like a charm. By 7pm I knew I’d go back and, once again, apologize. I knew I’d still go to dinner with her. I even searched for flowers. But I couldn’t find any. One Indian guy was selling single roses but only took cash. I found an ATM to get cash from but it wanted some four digit pin from our bank, which I didn’t know or have. So, dejected but happy, I walked back home.

She was up and in a better mood as well. My phone doesn’t get roaming or use data because we’re trying to save money (I am going to get a new Spanish line today finally) ergo we couldn’t talk or text, which turned out to be a godsend. It would only have been reprimands, apologies and more anger.

We kissed and made up (literally and symbolically) and talked things out for a while and all was fine again. The truth is Britney and I have always fought. I think this is just the way things are with us, as individuals and as a couple. We’re both intense humans, strong-willed and determined, thinking things should go “our” own way. Truthfully, Britney is right about things in general—when it comes to most practical things and generally interpersonally between us—probably 85% of the time. Maybe 90%. She sees things much more clearly than I do in many respects. I have my mom’s genes: Sensitivity, reality-shapeshifting, denial, drama, anger. Britney has her own issues stemming from a father who took off when she was young and a mom who is codependent with men, etc. We both have control tendencies.

But in the end we love each other wildly. We need each other. We “complete” each other, even, to be a little corny. We love spending time together, even though we fight often. (It goes in waves and is sometimes mellow, sometimes hardcore.) We have learned that, after three weeks in Madrid, we need some time apart. Now that we’re settled in and have our own apartment and all that, we recognize that it’s time to forge our own individual daily routines and to each do our own thing some days. We don’t always have to be together. That’s part of the problem. It’s healthy in a marriage to cultivate your own separate spaces, lives, identities. And of course we’ll still see a lot of each other. We’re all we have out here. We live together.

I’m grateful for all of it, of course: Britney, marriage, our cats, living abroad, all the privileges I’ve had and continue to have. I know she is, too. We’re still relatively “young” (42 and 39) and we’re wide-eyed and bushy-tailed living in Madrid, a mix of Mexico City, Manhattan and Morocco. Tapas, elegant Spanish cuisine, Spanish spoken everywhere, the constant stink of European cigarettes, statues and gothic buildings and castles and open plazas and narrow cobblestone streets which make me think of Paris and parts of the West Village.

It’s good to be alive. We fought yesterday. But today is a new day.