My husband and I just celebrated our 9 year anniversary. When you first get married, I don't think you stop and think - I hope this lasts. Or think - man, this is going to be tough. Now, I did think long and hard about if I really wanted to marry my husband. I had already been married once, and it was not a good marriage. Nor did it end all that well. I had my two kids. I was happy. Did I really want to enter into another marriage? I asked myself - do I want to wake up next to this man every day for the rest of my life. At the time I said yes. And we have had our ups and our downs. We are very different - almost complete opposites in most things. We disagree on foods, books, movies, opinions, hobbies, talents, we aren't even of the same faith. When we agree on something, we usually joke that we should mark it on the calendar.
We have been through a lot in our 9 years. The stresses that hit you in life can be a bit much. And with the stress, even the smallest problems can be amplified. The past six years of working midnight shift, dealing with issues like bills, no money, car problems, kid issues, working opposite shifts, rarely sharing the same bed at the same time, and all the other stresses in life can add up. Then you take the fact that most of the time I'm sleep deprived, grumpy, and doing a million different things. Somewhere along the line - the fact that we rarely saw each other, argued about so many different things, annoyed each other, and were both extremely frustrated with things started to take its toll. I started wondering what the hell we were doing. Why were we even together. We seemed to be pulling apart rather than pulling together. I think we were so busy trying to take care of other things, we were forgetting to take care of our relationship. I was unhappy with a lot of things - my job, my hours, my lack of sleep. I felt very alone. I spent most of the night at work alone, I spent most of my evenings alone with my one son. I didn't get to go many places, see many people, talk to many people. The more isolated I got, the more alone I felt. The more alone I felt, the angrier I got at my husband. He got to do things I didn't get to do. He got to see people, do things. He got time away from our son. He got to do things he wanted to do. It seemed like I never did. That I was carrying all the responsibility and he was getting the easy end of the deal. Resentment can throw a real wrench in a relationship. Communication turns into arguing, arguing turns into yelling, yelling turns into silence. And silence can kill a relationship. When you stop even talking, you start feeling like you are living with a stranger. So, that was where I was at. Angry, resentful, silent, and wondering if I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this guy.
Going into the new year, I wanted to make changes - lots of changes. Heck, that's why I started this blog - to make changes. I wanted to get busy living, be happy, make positive changes. As I made these changes, I was still focusing on the negative aspects of our relationship. I wasn't thinking about the positive points of it. And I certainly wasn't making any effort to make it work. Instead, I was slowly convincing myself that there were more reasons to end it. And a relationship is much like a plant. You have to have good roots, a good soil, and a desire to take care of it. You have to show it attention - feed it, water it, love it, and take care of it. If you don't, it will die. When we were planning our wedding, my husband's pastor agreed to marry us on the condition that we go through premarital counseling with him first. We agreed. At the end of the sessions, the pastor told us that he had never met two people more prepared to get married. He said that so many people who wanted to get married were wearing rose colored glasses, that they were so blinded by the flush of new love, they weren't realistic. We went into our marriage with our eyes wide open. We knew what we were getting into. It wasn't some whirlwind romance where we were swept off our feet. We had good roots. I honestly think we just forgot to take care of the relationship. We let everything else take precedence over it. We stopped feeding and watering it. And it was withering.
But, I also somewhere in my wisdom realized that I didn't want to make any snap decisions based on pure emotion. I knew I am tired, I am not thinking clearly, I am not at a good place to make huge life changing decisions like this. So, I told myself to hang in there. To wait and see if things got better. I wanted to wait until I got a new job, made some other changes, got a grip. Which was a step in the right direction. But then - I realized something. It wasn't going to get better if we didn't make it better. If I didn't change how I was looking at it and see the good points. If I didn't start making the effort to make it work. To make him a priority too. To remember all the reasons I married him. They are still there. The wonderful, loving, faithful, loyal, honest, silly, funny, creative guy I fell in love with was still there. I had just forgotten to look for him. I let him become a last priority on the list. I let our relationship be last on the list too.
So, what to do? Do I give up and get divorced? Do I take the easy path and say that it's just too hard? Because in some ways - yeah - way easier to just call it quits and walk away. I would then not have to work on the relationship. I would not have to compromise. I could do what I wanted. I think that's part of the problem today. Too many people walk away. It's easy. A couple hundred bucks and a divorce is yours. But no. That's the easy way out. And I would, in the long run, end up losing one of the most important people in my life. My husband. And while he makes me nuts. He makes me angry. He makes me frustrated. He also makes me laugh. He makes me smile. He makes me feel loved. He makes me think. He makes me feel beautiful. And.. he makes me happy. So while the past 9 years have been up and down. And even though I will probably still complain about him, get mad at him, and even want to give up again at some point. I love my husband and am a very lucky woman to have realized this before it was too late.
No comments:
Post a Comment