Marriage – The girl who mistook her chair as a pulpit for the soles of her shoes

Valentine’s Day 2019

Today was pretty decent, beginning to end. I told Stephen that I may get him a card and that he shouldn’t feel he had to reciprocate. However we exchanged cards in the morning, worked much of the day (I wasn’t feeling the best so my afternoon was pretty low key). Then we ran a few errands, like Whole Food where I snuck in some chocolate for myself. Then we finished the night at this hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant up on Argyle street. Finished the evening watching Netflix.

Yep. No candlelight and roses, obligatory gifts and weird expectations. Just Stephen and I doing the crap we do. Another day, but a pretty decent one.

If I’m not worth it to him, am I at least worth it to myself?

There are boundaries in every relationship. Sometimes these boundaries can change, both by who erects them and why, and who challenges them. The boundaries set out for me by Stephen can shift depending on moods and circumstances. This can bring insecurity, since generally my coming close to these boundaries is met by him disconnecting and emotionally distancing himself. Disconnecting makes me insecure in my relationship. I feel unstableness in the connection and unstable in the relationship. No complex analytics needed to follow that one.

There are very few topics I would consider safe or free of boundaries that aren’t just ephemeral and light. If they are heavy or have negative (real or perceived) emotions Stephen has said they “just won’t end well for me.” His boundaries are concretely there for me and oh boy – they can be painful to run into.

But my promise to him was to address those boundaries and anything else calmly and with kindness, even if I feel hurt. Not to shriek in anger, pout, hide my face and cry. Not to hold a silent and anger packed grudge for hours, days and sometime longer. Ok I do yell. I have yelled here or there. Just the other day I screamed incoherently in the car out of pure frustration. I’m not perfect, I’ve fucked up some times. But I admit it. Both in the moment (or soon thereafter) and here and now.

So I shared that my boundary shifted Friday and he first exploded at me. It settled after a few hours and some decent and constructive conversation. Then the next morning he woke up at 6:30 was silently angry and me most of the morning. Not overtly pouting or slamming things like the previous afternoon, but he was down overall. He didn’t try to see me and how much I needed his support. How he needed to dig deep in himself to give me what I now need.

So, what I know is this … everything I give to him is welcomely received. Calmness. Kindness. Admitting when I make a mistake as many times as needed. When I ask for the same in return it is not openly given, but met with passive aggressive hostility and sometimes lies.

My question now becomes should I be bound to someone who doesn’t feel the same about me? And should I continue to be patient and wait for him to catch up?

I think he is worth it. Is it worth it to him?

The work.

I have not been writing much and therefore sharing anything at all. I’ve made a few posts… thought about how I felt and reread them only to find I wasn’t interested in sharing after all. Why? I felt like where I was when I wrote them had shifted. Everything continues to shift lately. That’s a really good thing, since the place they’ve shifted to is one of contentedness. And I’ve shared that the place of contentment isn’t always a place I can write from so nothing flows easily.

But I’m content now and sitting down to pick apart where that’s coming from. It’s from the work. The work is something I do a lot of.

What is the work? Its something that takes a great deal of effort some days, and none others. It’s as easy or as hard as you make it… but if the work is around a relationship then it’s as easy or as hard as you BOTH make it. It’s changing your perspective; it’s looking at a problem or situation from every possible angle, not just the one most comfortable to you. (Often that’s the delicious negative one we all like to cling to!). It’s about choosing a path that’s constructive, not destructive.

The work is hard to do on your own and almost Herculean if you’re doing it in the face of a destructive partner. That has happened here and there, but thankfully it’s not the norm. It’s an outlier. A destructive, nasty, insecurity inducing outlier.

After one particular situation where Stephen was destructive or really more insecure in his own way, as I saw it — I explained the work. I shared that it took a lot for me to view things in a positive way in the face of his destructiveness. I explained that what I drew upon were all the positive things that outweighed the immediate situation before me. I had to draw those memories around me like a blanket to change my view. I had to hold one after the other like a talisman. Examine each moment where I knew he loved me and showed that overtly. Each of those things added up to allow me a fresh perspective on his bullshit. I was able to see it as just that — bullshit. This is the work. It’s hard AF.

The downside is that every time you use a talisman you weaken it; you need to find fresh moments, strong in the memory of love and not worn thin over time. This is part of his work. Showing me these things overtly and without question.

6:30 a.m.

There’s a moment first thing in the morning when I wake up and I know nothing. No memories or expectations for the day. Just me as I am. Waking up. This morning at 6:45 the first bit of awareness I had as I came online was of Stephen. He was there next to me and warm and cuddling into me. That was all I knew for a few moments. It was really nice. I was happy.

Here at the end of my day, I’m still happy.

Anatomy of insecurity…

So… I have mentioned here and a few times that I do not feel very solid in my relationship. I feel as if the place I occupy is tenuous, at best. I’ve shared this with Stephen a few times to his immediate dismissal. He acted as if that was the end of that. Dismissed.

He was bored at work yesterday and initiated a text exchange with Aimee, like much of last week. Almost daily text exchanges, it would seem. He told me about it when he got home, after the exchanges took place.

Now last week I asked for immediate transparency. I was hurt when he told me well after the interaction and that even though he was in the office, I really did want to be ‘in the know’ about this type of exchange as soon as possible. I explained things were fresh and we needed to build trust on this point; he understood and agreed to have a sense of immediacy.

Back to last night… I felt a touch betrayed by the fact that his understanding of immediacy was now different from just last week. I was also concerned that almost daily text exchanges were well outside of how he typically interacts with friends and family. I shared these concerns. He got annoyed.

So here we both were – me feeling unsure of my place around Aimee and him feeling annoyed and probably angry. He decides – fuck it, and decided to go on a walk. He asked me if I’d like to join him… I say ok, since I think we have some things to work out and talk about. He goes to the store and buys smokes. He smokes one, walking along and saying little. (I’m not saying much, either…)

We get to the park and he jumps up on a ledge and starts walking along. I asked him to please get down and wait two beats. He doesn’t, so I thought – I don’t need to be scared he will injure himself, too. I should just go home. Queue more arguing. Phone thrown across the park — as if that is the root of his relationship with Aimee. I saw it as a temper tantrum.

I walked home. I’m feeling like I want to self-destruct, too and words about being worthless and not a priority to him circle my head. I get back to the house and decide the same as him – fuck it. I head to the car and text my mom, who had asked how things were going earlier that day. I tried to call her back, but she was already asleep… I sat in the car and thought about how screwed up everything got in just a few hours.

I also recalled that in an exchange with Aimee we spoke about transparency. I decided that she was due the knowledge of how this friendship was exceeding the bounds I was comfortable with; I texted her. I admitted she was an unwitting participant in something that made me uncomfortable, but it was important for me to share where I was at with things. I then stopped my self-destruct meltdown and went home and painted. Focused on things that brought me a modicum of happiness, accomplishment.

Enter Stephen’s return… suffice to say, and in the interest of readers everywhere, I’ll summarize. He was annoyed, then pissed WAY off that I had over stepped my bounds by texting Aimee. Queue drinking on his part, on an empty stomach no less. I apologized for making him uncomfortable by sharing the issue I had with her, despite having agreement from her that this was fine and expected. We spoke about it a bit more, he seemed to calm down. A few more misunderstandings whereby he assumed the worst about me and my actions. I had to be patient and explain where I was coming from; I tried very hard to not show insult at how he views me. But damn it hurt.

Then he walked the dogs, smoked more and fell into bed after asking me several times if I was awake. I was drifting off, but got woken up by the frequency of the inquiry. I asked if he needed to talk to me, if that was why he incessantly asked about my state of sleep. Nope, just curious.

Since I was now awake I shared what I was feeling with him. I felt spent. I felt my love was abused, taken for granted. My understanding and forgiveness not met in kind but assumed wholly for him alone. I was making sacrifices that were taken and again – unmet in any way. This is not how I see a relationship I wanted to be a part of. I want kindness. He said in his drunken state that he really loved me. He understood what I was saying and agreed. He said I was very wise.

Then he woke up and told me he didn’t want to be married to me anymore. Again.

Contentment is fickle.

So the other day I wrote about going to yoga and feeling rather content with what was happening in my life overall. That was a nice Friday, followed by a insanely productive Saturday morning and afternoon. The evening imploded in itself a bit only due to lack of motivation to maintain the breakneck pace set throughout the day. My couch called my name and I answered.

Then I woke up in a funk of Sunday morning. It’s now Sunday evening and I’m ready to just go to bed. I went to yoga, napped, listened to a podcast series Stephen was exposed to recently, grocery shopped and we cooked dinner. Decent day on paper. However the actual day was just ick. Can’t point to how or why but everything has felt off. I am tired, exhausted even.

This has screwed up my contentment. It took my momentum right out from under me. I’m not feeling solid about anything. I’m feeling like I want to take to my bed by 9 pm and try to start over again tomorrow.

Observations

I write more when I’m hurting or processing pain. Growth comes from that pain so I think this observation makes sense. However, do I become complacent if I’m content? What growth does contentment bring?

Contentment brings routines, structure to my hours and days. Starting habits I only whined about either not having motivation to do or truthfully never really wanted to do. Like exercising.

I went to yoga class last night. First thought after was “where is my bed and how soon can I go to sleep?” But instead we hopped in the car to head off to a neighborhood we are looking at real estate in. Once there, we stopped at a ramen shop, walked around the ‘hood and generally had a good time.

Contentment doesn’t bring me the massive upheavals that a lot of my personal growth so far has rested on. It needed to rest on that, else the upheavals would drown me. I had the choice of get up and grow or stay down and die. (Dramatic, I know.)

Contentment is a new space to explore and use.

So another habit that I don’t want to fall by the wayside is writing. Sharing thoughts on this new spot I’ve found myself in; figuring out how to move forward in a long term marriage that is not as solid as we thought. Working through issues as they arise so we don’t end up with a mass of resentments and fears. Secure and safe and supported and maybe… content.

Melancholy mirror.

Something that has made itself known again is an emotional mirror that happens in my relationship. This is something that I am unsure about. It exists, but hinders what I can share with my partner.

Here’s how it works… what I feel is mirrored by Stephen quite openly. For example I felt sad last night for a few reasons. (If I’m happy so is he, it works several ways.) But little things had conspired to take my joy from me and make me feel small and inconsequential. Not a priority in my relationship.

It happens. I’m human.

So I shared this feeling after a nice dinner out and followed by popping by a new pub for a drink before we headed home. As we were heading to the car, me feeling safe and in a good spot, I shared that I was sad about a few things. I trusted that I was safe and a priority. I had no idea it wasn’t really safe.

<<BOOM>>

I had detonated something that told Stephen to be sad about my sadness. My safe place was gone by the time we drove home. What was left was Stephen giving up on everything. His own sorrow was heavy and awful and choked everything. He wasn’t enough for me. What he was doing wasn’t worth anything. All the work he put in to date wasn’t ever going to be enough. This is just more of the same… marriage doesn’t change. It’s never going to be enough for me.

It’s hard to set aside your own needs to focus on someone else’s. Especially when they wipe away all the hard work I’ve done. My need for comfort or reassurance set aside. De-prioritized. I needed to dig deep last night and show Stephen he was good enough. I had to reiterate what I saw him doing daily, what I loved always. All the things I poured into a love letter had to be touched on again for him.

Where does that leave me? I just don’t know. He apologized this morning for being dramatic. But I’m still left feeling like less of a priority and more of a burden to him. That’s not a comfortable spot for me.

Repairs…

Slow down, hard work ahead.

It’s New Year’s Day and I am thinking about the road ahead, like many people. However, I’ve been preparing for that road for a while now, so maybe I have a head start. I’d like to think I do, but given there’s no real end to things it may not make a bit of difference. So what does the road ahead entail? Kindness — that’s my battle cry.

Stephen realized the impact our separation had on my immediate family recently in a conversation we had about it. He’s planned on how to repair and move forward in a productive way for him and I applauded that.

However, that raises the possibility for repairs needed with his family, those members he is open with about things personal to him. Given that his closest sister was an advocate for him being out of the relationship with me, is there repair needed there? I don’t know; something to ponder. What I did by leaving him was done at his request. I don’t know if there’s anything I should do except to leave that as a decision I made in kindness and not look back with the “what if” or “what else” perspective. I’ve made the best peace I can with the other members of his immediate family.

No one said this road would be easy. There’s continuous road work ahead and no end of construction season. As pot holes and break downs happening along the way — I will deal with them. No advanced work can be done for something unexpectedly requiring repair.

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable, best I can do.

I cannot make people smarter…

I don’t have a super power to make people smart, or make them grow, or make anyone do anything if I am honest. I have the power to do all those things for myself. I can grow and become a stronger person. I can show that to the world, and maybe fulfill my goal since childhood – to be an inspiration to someone. Any one person.

But that’s not certain; I cannot guarantee I will inspire. The only certainty you get is you are born and you will die. What you get in between is not up to you, in most cases. The sooner you understand this in life, the better off you’ll be.

Here’s a real kicker though… learning it once is not enough. You learn this same damned lesson over and over, if you’re lucky enough to. Or you ignore it and try to make things kowtow to you. Find a guarantee, wait for something sure. (Godot, is that you?) That won’t work and won’t teach you much beyond how to fail. Mind you, failing is not a lesson to disregard, but it’s painful and hard to do, too and most people don’t use it as a lesson.

When you start to see that things, people, dogs (!!) don’t bow to your will you’re a bit lighter. The way to inform the world about what you really need is to give that to the world. Yep. Complicatedly simple, right? Not if you don’t know what you need, there is work to be done to get to that simple point.

So what does that mean in practice? To me, today it means I give my love to my husband. Show him what I have and see what he responds with. Will it be in kind? Will he simply take? I don’t control that, there’s no certainty. What I can be certain about is me, my actions and what that can teach me.

Calm, cool and collected…

Today has been tough. I’ve got a cold and my head is stuffed up. I also have a splitting headache. Light hurts, sound is unbearable.

I’m down physically. This brings me down emotionally. Mind and body conspiring against my recent balance and purpose. Those are still around but buried under snot and insecurities. Yeah, that’s pretty much where I’ve spent today.

So if I follow my analogy here, I have to dig deep in snot to find myself calm, cool, and collected. I need help sometimes when things get this tough and I conspire against myself.

This is where my partner comes in handy.

Masks are useful… and terrible.

Something I encountered as I started to open up with friends and family was a level of incredulousness at the fact that Stephen and I were not the perfect couple. We had masks we wore and we played our part for others very well. Too well.

But something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

Holding a facade together with such tightness and skill took a lot from both of us. I’m sure he would agree. But the work we put into keeping up the facade took so much energy that there was little left to fix the foundational issues. What was left was the artifices of a relationship.

A while back, Stephen expressed interest in putting work in fixing the facade as a priority. I was interested in putting in the work to the foundation only. We were at cross purposes entirely, both righteous and looking out for what we thought was best.

Turns out we needed to demolish the whole damned structure; maybe now we pull out anything salvageable. Then we decide if we want to rebuild something all together new, and if we include the salvaged pieces from the last 21 years. I think and believe that’s the right path forward.

What other people think of you is none of your damned business…

My mother-in-law cannot stand me and I’m fine with that. One of my sister-in-laws follows suit and there’s a part of me that finds that better than fine, gleeful at her dislike comes to mind. But that’s not kind, so apologies to my readership. Let’s just set her aside, she’s irrelevant really.

The dislike from my mother-in-law started when I first met Stephen over 20 years ago. A series of events, telling outright lies about my relationship with Stephen and passive aggressive scuffles over years — all underpinned with continuous resentment at “taking her son away” — made for super fun times together with his family. I could write things about her behavior that would make most people’s toes curl. (I’ve horrified people with her exploits, trust me.)

But she is not my problem to solve. It is her responsibility to deal with her feelings and results from her actions. If she wants to stew and lie and share intimate details her son opened up to her about, she can and has proven she will.

My feelings for her now are simply that she’s the mother of my husband and he is welcome to bring whatever he would like from his family dynamics to his and my future relationship. I have always brought things from my family to our relationship. Some he may have even found annoying to deal with, I bet.

If he were close to her, I would deal with her blatant disrespect more. I would have to, it’s just who I am. But as it stands, she hadn’t been a frequent issue except to occasionally highlight that Stephen would let the disrespect to his wife stand, but he avoids conflict at every turn. This is not a new action or isolated issue. He does that. I love him, faults and all.

I would stand up for myself if I needed to at this point in my life, no worries there. I’m not a 22 year old who is trying to make my way in a new relationship or marriage. I’m solid in who I am and in what bullshit I’ll put up with from anyone.

The concern and reason for open contemplation here is the burden Stephen feels from the strife and the toll it’s taken on our relationship. I’ve been vocal about how her disrespect hurt me over the years, how I could not believe someone of her age and a mother would behave in such a ridiculous and immature manner. That’s not something he needs added to his own plate by me. It’s his mother – so how he deals with it is up to him.

But since he shared our separation with her, things are heating up for him. Throw in contemplating reconciliation and she’s not going to go quietly. She’s also not going to be happy overall and possibly in the future with me there. Unfortunately Stephen will have to deal with most of the fall out on that end.

My empathy goes out to him, but my actions are to remain calm and out of it. Unless he needs and asks for my help. Or a shoulder to lean on. Whatever. Those things I will give freely and kindly.

Well… I did something that might be stupid or it might bring me joy.

So I wrote my husband a love letter detailing all the things I love about him. HIM. Not some concept of a husband. Not things I wanted or things I needed. I detailed some things he brought to the relationship that I now understand were unappreciated and unheard by me. Unfiltered and without any reservations or requirements of him.

He texted and asked me to tea. (We both quit coffee a short time ago, we aren’t that proper!) Since I am about 6+ hours away from Chicago and he’s there and working, we are speaking tonight. Not face to face as he asked but it’s something.

I am hopeful for the future. I’m not going to make demands; I have always made demands. I’ve been very demanding in our relationship but I’m prepared give and understand instead. Novel idea for me but more kind and more in line with who I want to be. And that’s hopeful regardless of the outcome.

I am going into this evening from a place of love and kindness. Let that be my guide.

Regardless of the outcome, writing out my feelings in a public arena like a blog is scary but I am going to keep going here. This process here over the single week alone has helped me more than anything so far. Being vulnerable is hard but being accountable is what I need here.

Our tandem bicycle…

Any relationship is a bit like a tandem bicycle.

Recently a good friend and I spoke about the rising storm that hit me full force last week – my husband asking me to leave him alone and dissolving our marriage. When in conversation this analogy of a relationship as a tandem bicycle was raised it was the beginning of that storm, so I wasn’t sure what was going to happen… counseling, separation or divorce. Regardless, the conversation and her analogy was appropriate when I do a postmortem on my marriage.

Imagine you get married and get on a tandem bike. Our bike looked like this – I was the driver, steering the bike. Stephen was the power behind me doing a lot of the pedaling. We went in a direction we were both happy with, pedaling along together. I still steered, he put in a lot of the power that first decade. We hit bumps, but we loved each other and wanted to be on that bike.

Then he stopped wanting to go where I went. He stopped putting the power into pedaling. He coasted a lot. I would stop and ask — why aren’t you putting more in? We need to get where we are going!! He would tell me he would try and pedal harder and he guessed he’d go where I wanted. Truth always was he didn’t want to go where I was pedaling towards… adulthood, responsibilities and financial obligations that lasted 30 years or longer. I was of the mindset that everyone travels this road and got scared because the power behind me was only sporadically there. Then it would drift off into a fog for the next 10 years.

Two things about that… I was a big advocate for staying in the fog, since it obscured the pain from feeling alone. It was a false sense of togetherness being in the fog together. But it wasn’t a clear view and honestly it became the reason behind a lot of what we did together.
Second point was my fear and how that worked. As I got more frightened by pedaling this tandem bike alone I got angry. I was mad that he said he wanted to go in the direction I was steering; I got angrier still at the coasting and the lack of interest in where I was trying to get us to. My anger became everything. Everything. It became me.

Eventually we would stop the bike and threaten to go with separate bikes all together. I was fearful to begin with and this just made the fear paralytic. The only thing I could do is find my anger and wrap it around me. Live it breathe it. I stopped steering and got lost in the fog. Stephen stopped peddling and stayed in the fog, too.

Now Stephen stopped taking the tandem bike into the “shop” to fix it and wants to go his own way. My fear turned into anger did that. The fog we made for ourselves obscured everything.

I want back on the bike, but the right way. I want Stephen who is not lost in a fog. I want the Stephen that was pedaling along with me and shouting directions as to where I was steering. My wants aren’t important to him anymore and I will respect that. I don’t know if being together on the tandem bike is possible for us any more. This is where I am now.

I am slowly replacing the anger and paralysis with kindness and love. This is where I am going. I’m still scared but it’s what I do about that fear that is the opportunity for growth.