Thirty-One

I see marriages crumbling around me with alarming frequency these days, and it makes me scared. Scared because, if these people who I thought were happy and together for such a long time can suddenly find themselves broken apart, then what does that mean for me? A tells me all the time, we are never getting a divorce, he is sticking with me no matter what. I feel the same way. But, I was married to X for 13 years and that finally, thankfully, ended. A has been married twice before, long ago when he was in his 20's. He was single for many many years before he met me, and he resisted making a commitment for awhile. We dated for well over two years before he finally asked me to marry him, and frankly I didn't think it would ever happen. Loving someone and dating someone is a whole other game compared to marrying someone. When we got engaged, we were both actually contemplating breaking up and had talked about it, but A said that one morning he looked across the empty breakfast table and realized he wanted me there, and he missed me on mornings when I wasn't at his house. Without another thought, that afternoon he went to the jewelers, had them custom make me a two-carat diamond solitaire, and shocked me with a proposal the next day at dinner. A and I married five months later, a small ceremony on the beach with just family. X and I eloped when we were in our 20's, and no one was there for me that day, and I always regretted it- it hurt my family deeply to know that they were not included on the biggest day of my life. Actually, X is the one who insisted, he said he did not want any family there with us, and I should have seen that as a red flag but I was too dumb at the time. But A is very close to his family, as I am to mine, and A actually planned as much of the wedding as I did. What man does that?? I would like to think that A and I have a strong bond between each other, but I think everyone feels like that when they get married- otherwise, why go through with it at all? I would also like to think that this is "forever", but I thought that with X, too. Last week one of my friends of over twenty years announced that she and her husband of about 15 years were separating. She said simply, "He decided he doesn't want to be married anymore." They are in their fifties, no children, both very smart people who run their own individual businesses. He had moved out of state for his business, found a house for them, took half of their pets and almost all of the furniture. She was to follow in the upcoming months, and put their old house on the market and moved into a tiny apartment temporarily while she wrapped up things at her own office. But now he's decided he doesn't want her to be with him- he will stay in his new town and she is no longer welcome in his life. What the hell? What happened? They've weathered many hardships together and never faltered, and now what changed? A's best friend and his wife of 15 years are now proceeding with a divorce- the man had to move out of the home he shared with her and their two sons, and now he is living with his mother, very lost. He even quit his job and started seeing a therapist, trying to figure it all out. Everything he ever did, it was for his family and their future, and now it seems to be suddenly gone when his wife announced she doesn't want to be married to him anymore. But I understand, I said those exact words to X one day, and although it was a complete shock to him, I had been thinking about it for a very very long time. So what I'm trying to figure out is, even when A tells me he loves me and he's in this marriage for eternity and he is happy with me- can I whole-heartedly believe him? I'm sure our friends' spouses told them the same things through the years. A and I are only seven years into our relationship, when does the shine start to wear off? When does he stop thinking I can do no wrong, and start seeing only my flaws? What would it take to drive him away one day? If I gain another ten pounds? If I spend another hundred dollars frivolously? If I go another month without finding a job? If I serve another crappy dinner, or go another week without cleaning the toilets, or keep ignoring the stink from the litter boxes? What will it be? Will he snap suddenly, or fume silently for months? I live in constant fear of it, because we've both already had failed marriages, and what's to say one of us won't screw up again. I'm sure most people don't go around worrying about their marriage falling apart, and I'm sure the thought never enters A's mind either. But it seems to shadow everything I do. I wear one of those inane rubber bracelets, like the Lance Armstrong one. Only mine has A's name on it, I've been wearing it for almost a year now, when I first felt things starting to slip away, in my brain. I wear it as an anchor, to keep me mindful in all that I say or do, to remind me that there is someone else depending on me, someone else who will either suffer or gain from my actions. Sadly I think my biggest issue is lack of action, when I have my bad days and I zone out and ignore the world around me and never get off the depressing couch. A can tell when he comes home at night if I've had one of these days, no matter how hard I try to hide it. I want to be a good partner for him, not a burden, because how long does someone want to have to shoulder the extra weight before it becomes too much to carry around day to day? I've got to find a job, get out of this house, at least then at night when A comes home I will have accomplished something during the day, I will have something to talk about when he asks how my day was, I will have a valid excuse as to why I didn't clean up the kitchen from the night before. These last few months have been the hardest in all my 40-something years, and the worse I feel, the more it brings A down as well. He blames himself because he is the one who put in for the promotion, although we made the decision as a couple. His job caused me to give up my career, my friends, my dream house, my hobbies, my old town. Now I sit around and have none of that. I still have A, but 2 hours a night on top of 12 or more hours home alone isn't enough. I would never leave A, and I don't think he would leave me, no matter what. But just because a marriage doesn't break up, it doesn't mean it's perfect and happy either.

Twenty-Eight

Lately I have been struggling with trying to figure out what makes a marriage good. And what makes a good marriage a great one. I have lots of practice and experience on what makes a marriage bad. With the 13 years I suffered being married to X, it is very easy for me to now create a laundry list of what to do, and especially what not to do. Like, you don't push your spouse into the wall, you don't throw stuff at them, you don't sleep in separate bedrooms, you don't just dump them off at the hospital and leave when they're having major surgery, you don't force them to have an abortion or else you will leave them. That was life married to X. The 7 years I've spent married to A are a vast improvement because 1.- I'm a much different person now and 2.- He is not X. I would like to think that A and I have a wonderful marriage, even if we did meet later on in life when we were both approaching 40, and even if both of us already have failed marriages on our resume. I would like to think that the horrors I faced married to such an idiot like X, made me mature and grow into the person I am now, so that I can recognize and appreciate a fantastic man now that I have one. But I do have doubts, about myself, about keeping the home fires burning. When X and I split up, it surprised most people because they never knew how we were at each other's throats all the time. A few close friends knew, and they were ecstatic when I finally divorced him. But, no one really knows what goes on in the privacy of a couple's home. X was always charming and funny and brilliant out in social situations, but at home he was hell to live with and screamed obscenities and treated me like garbage. When I would mop the kitchen floor like a normal person- with a mop- he would stand behind me and yell at me about how lazy and worthless I was and that I should be down on my hands and knees with a brush, scrubbing the floor (true story, happened more than once). He told me over and over again I was a whore, that all women were whores. I asked him, does that include your mom and two sisters? YES!, he told me repeatedly. Wow, his dad, who was a chronic cheater, really fucked him up. X was once an ambitious man who was motivated and intelligent, and that's what attracted me to him in the first place. Hell, the man was SO smart he actually had a job interview at NASA, but was so stupid because he failed the drug test. Over the years I watched him spiral from a talented, lively, determined professional to become a burnt-out, drug-obsessed, aggressive, unemployed bum. My god, did I do that to him? Will I do that to A? Am I that much of a burden, am I that bad of a partner? Will I drag A down to my level, or is he strong enough to lift me up to his? It's hard for me to separate X's own failings as an individual from our cumulative failings in the marriage. Surely he didn't marry me and then suddenly decide that all women were whores- that thought was a deep-seeded, hidden fester that just finally exploded once he met me. Especially fat, lazy me who didn't even so much as look at other men, what was there to accuse me of? I remember how we dated hot and heavy in the beginning, in our early twenties, both still living at home with our parents. The minute we started living under one roof together, it was like someone had pulled a curtain down in between us. We had NO business getting married, but neither of us knew it back then. Sometimes I think I bullied him into it, gave him ultimatums, but then again I know how stubborn he was and no one, not even me, could ever make him do something he didn't want to do. He just wanted someone to cook for him and clean up after him, like his mom did, and I was awful at both. He wanted someone he could push around and control, like he did his mom, and I wouldn't put up with his bullshit, so that made him even angrier. He would get right in my face and call me an evil, conniving bitch who only wanted to hurt him (direct quote)- just because I wanted to watch something different on TV than what he wanted to watch (another true story)! Like I said, the guy had some messed up thoughts about women. Even though his parents were still married, it was obvious to me (now, not back then) that his father must have treated his mother like shit because X had big time issues that had nothing to do with MY behavior. He actually "paid" his mother once a month and told her to keep her mouth shut about his comings and goings. But there came a point, quickly, where we both just didn't give a shit anymore about each other, the marriage, our future. Just a year after we married, I was already thinking about calling it quits. But instead we just grew indifferent and somehow squeaked out a long, miserable 13 years with each other. He never would go to marriage counseling with me, I would make appointments then have to cancel them because he refused to go. Yet he was shocked when I finally told him I wanted a divorce, that I didn't love him anymore. I try to forget about my life with X, yet I want to remember it so that I avoid the pitfalls this time around. A and I seem to have lost a little of our sparkle these days, and I know a lot of it is my fault. He is still the same man, works hard, comes home to me. But since I have been drowning in unhappiness, I feel like I am taking him under with me. I feel like this move that we made, to further his career, has somehow ended up hurting our marriage. He works more hours than ever, has more responsibility, and I am more needy than before when I had a job and friends and hobbies outside the house. I am leaning on him too much, to fulfill me, and I think it's taking its toll on him, on us. And I want to stop the train wreck before it happens. We've gotten word that his best friend, who has been married to his wife for probably 15 years and has two sons with her, is now on the verge of splitting up with his family. His wife, it seems, is unhappy now and has asked him to please step back and give her some alone time, so that she can sort things out and decide if she wants to stay married to him or not. The friend is not surprised, he says they've been growing apart for some time now. I found out recently that my only sibling, who has been married to her husband for almost 20 years and has two sons with him, is having troubles in her own seemingly perfect marriage to the point that her husband gets angry and leaves the house for hours on end just to get away from them all. I know all marriages metaphorically hit speed bumps, not just out there in the busy streets of life, but in the parking lot at home as well. I know it takes hard work, and I'm prepared to do it, if only I had guidance and assignments to work on. Maybe I need to see a professional to talk it all out, I don't know. I told A that I don't feel as though we are connecting the way we used to, when we first met, and his response was to make plans and take me out of town this coming weekend. I would rather have sat down and discussed it, but it seems like every time I put voice to the unhappiness inside of me, A breaks his back to "do something" to fix it. I really just want to talk, to figure it all out, to make certain we are both on the same page. If A keeps jumping through hoops every single time I am blue, I'm afraid he is going to wear himself out, and get tired of me soon. And then what will happen? If he gets tired of trying to keep me happy, is he going to get tired of the whole marriage as well?

Four

I call this blog "My Life Is Okay Now" because this marriage is a thousand times better than the first one, and as a woman in my 40's I am so different, and more in tune with myself, than I ever was in my 20's and even my 30's. I believe my unhappiness is all an illusion, and all in my head, and if I could fight through it I would come out on the other side as the woman I am supposed to be at this point in my life. Instead I feel like an immature, sullen, lazy, spiteful teenager who puts their fingers in their ears and goes la-la-la-la-la whenever a parent is talking to them. I don't know what that means in relation to my life, but that's how I feel right now. Just leave me alone, get out of my room, I don't want to deal with it, you don't understand me, I don't wanna do that....all that stupid crap. I believe that much of it is caused by the chronic, unyielding, numbing physical pain I am normally in. Today, for instance, the pain is so bad I literally can't think about anything else, I can't feel anything else. I can't pay attention to the TV show I'm trying to watch, I can't think about what I want to make for dinner tonight, I can't worry about the load of laundry I left sitting in the washer yesterday, I can't think at all. The pain makes me feel like a failure. I can't clean my house, I don't ever want to have sex, I struggle with my weight, I am constantly in an ill mood, I never smile anymore, I rarely get a good night's sleep, it even hurts to drive my car. It took a long time to figure out what was wrong with me, and now that we know, the treatments seem to be useless and even the pain medication only- sometimes- temporarily makes me feel normal. My husband seems sad when he tells me I'm not the same person since we got married, that I changed completely, but what he fails to understand- or won't believe when I tell him- is that the pain started three months after we got married and that's why I suddenly became a "different person". I read a lot, and an article I stumbled across recently said that people in chronic pain tend to suffer from depression. Makes sense to me, although I'm not sure why it took me so long to put two and two together. My pain is a common one- sciatica- and I hurt my back one day in a very common way- housework. Since that particular day, I've been in extreme and constant pain, despite pain medication, despite lumbar injections, despite physical therapy, you name it. And ever since that day, my feelings of failure and worthlessness and surrendering to the dark hole keep growing. The pain won't go away. I have days where it may be less, but never a day of zero pain. On the "good" days I usually become manic and do too much and bounce around from project to project, trying to catch up. Because of that, a good day is almost always followed by a bad day, and I blame myself because I feel as though I overdid it. On some days, I feel like the pain is simply an excuse not to clean the toilets or walk on the treadmill, and I just tell my husband I don't feel well. He doesn't question it, and he expects it. He's even told me to my face he's just come to expect that out of me now- he doesn't love me any less for it, but I know deep deep down inside of himself he HAS to be full of regrets for being married to me, whether or not he wants to admit it. And I feel disgusting and I feel like a damn pig because it hurts so much to vacuum that I just don't do it, and I don't mop my gorgeous wood floors or wipe down my beautiful granite countertops that I picked out myself. And I'm pissed that I live in an almost half-million dollar house and it's so filthy that I wouldn't let my pet sitter come in without enough advance notice for me to quickly clean the living room and close the bedroom and bathroom doors. My husband has offered to get a cleaning service for me, once a month, once a week, whatever I want. But I'm stubborn and in denial and I've refused because for me that just brings home the point of what a loser I've become. Nothing hurts me more than the evenings where I can't get my fat ass off the couch, and I hear my husband unloading the dishwasher himself- after I've been home all day and he's worked for 12 hours. I do love my husband, I really really do, and I hate myself because I am such a terrible wife and partner for him. He gives me everything under the sun, and not only do I not take care of it all, I am usually in a sour mood when I'm with him. What is wrong with me, why can't I get through this?