Okay, maybe not ever, but a pretty darned good one.  Go read NOW: Simple Marriage on how to break free from marital gridlock.

Some of the commenters on Corey’s site didn’t understand the post, but it really resonated with me.  How about you?

After a marathon twelve hour fight on Saturday, we approached each other warily on Sunday.  Sure, we’d fallen asleep together, reaching for one another in the middle of the night for comfort and solace and reassurance, but the morning after is unpredictable.

Sure enough, the smoldering argument caught fire.

In the end, he saved us.  Despite my best attempts, I couldn’t.  And as we surveyed the damage from the haven of our bed, I realized something important.  Two things, actually: sometimes you have to unlearn a lesson, and some people can’t dabble safely.

~~~

When I started dating Joey, I was fresh off the heels of two horrible relationships, one romantic, one not.  The romantic relationship had ended very badly, leaving hope and instincts – and almost my career — in its wave of destruction.  The end of the platonic relationship hurt even more, so I’d decided never to try to talk my way through a problem.  Some problems exist in a world outside of words; they can’t be solved by talking.  In fact, talking only camouflages the reality of things that won’t change.  “Talking through it” becomes a euphemism for wasting time because you’re too chicken to do what must be done.  Leave.

I’d become great at running like hell when things got rough and it worked.  My relationship with Joey thrived on the real stuff, not just words.

One night, I made an excuse to leave and was headed out the door when he stopped me, gently, and asked me to tell him what was wrong.  The resulting conversation is forever burned into my brain as the one where I learned this lesson: Stop. Don’t Run. Talk things through.

Him: “We’ll be okay as long as we’re talking.”

Me: “What if it can’t be solved?”

Him: “As long as we’re talking, we’ll be okay”

I believed it.  I stopped running.  From that moment, I stayed, planted my feet, and fought.  I’d learned a lesson, and the lesson was that you have to fight for what’s important.

~~~

Not surprisingly, what seemed like a personal emotional milestone corresponded with a sharp uptick in the number of fights we had.  I’m nothing if not a good learner (unfortunately), so when the instinct to flee kicked in, I dug in my heels and prepared for a fight.  ‘Twas not fun.

And until yesterday, until I realized I’d told that story – okay, flung that story like it was a spiky ball of fury – during every. single. fight. we’ve. had. since, it hadn’t occurred to me to consider that some lessons shouldn’t be learned so well.

The good lessons don’t require constant defense.  And some lessons aren’t meant to be black-and-white, or figurative, or anything other than a nice thing your boyfriend tells you that makes you realize he’s a keeper. 

~~~

My ex-friend was an addict.  Because we had the type of relationship that involved incessant talking and analyzing of everything that’s ever happened, ever, we talked a lot about addiction and AA – to the point that I borrowed his AA book so I could read it for myself. {Finding that book on my bookshelf may or may not have knocked a few years off my mom’s life when she came to visit and was looking for something to read.} 

I learned that you can have an addictive personality and be addicted to feelings and emotions.  I am, and was. 

I learned that some people can’t handle moderation.  I can’t. 

I learned that people who are prone to addictive behaviors and loss of control need to be constantly vigilant.  I do.

And I haven’t been.

On Sunday, after my husband carried my pathetic, crying body to our bed to force upon me a hug I’d refused, I remembered all of this.  I remembered that you know someone has a problem when they’re truly, painfully remorseful every time they lose control, and yet, they continue to lose control, utterly convinced that this time won’t be like last time, every time. I remembered that some people can’t dabble in the things they find dangerous.  I remembered that I don’t do moderation – I can spend or save but not both, remember?

And I remembered that I own my life and my actions, and that even though my husband was at least equally to blame for our marathon fight, I can’t control him.  Hell, I can’t even control me.

So I came to the only conclusion left: I’d have to stop fighting, cold turkey.

~~~

Every time we fight, he runs and I chase.  I can’t explain it, now that I’m not in its midst, except to say that I firmly and honestly believe I’m doing the right thing by hunting him down so we can “talk things through so this never happens again.”  He flees, I chase.  It’s an ugly dynamic, one I swear I want to change.

But it’s not enough to tell myself I’ll stop chasing.  Once the switch is flipped, the fight takes on its own life.  And while I stand by my belief that everyone fights (they do, even if they call them disagreements), not everyone fights like we do.  In fact, I think most people can’t even fathom fighting like we do.  Those people are smart and normal and have healthy relationships.

We do have a healthy relationship except for when the gloves come off, which is like saying the weather in Oklahoma is perfect except when those pesky tornadoes come through.

I come from a long line of devout fighters, women who will dig in their heels and let the monster explode through their words, and my instincts once the fight begins are not to be trusted.

So I’m not fighting anymore.

My husband’s advice wasn’t bad advice, not at all.  Running away from every problem isn’t the way to build a relationship, true, but some of us shouldn’t ever negate the part of our brains that tells us to run, just for a little while, lest things get ugly.

Some of us need to flee.

~~~

Disclaimer: nobody was hurt physically.  No wine glasses were thrown.  Very few ugly words were used, though words were often used in a very ugly manner.  Nobody is getting divorced, though everybody is well aware of how close we came.  Nobody is going to work and deciding not to come home, nor is anybody going on a business trip and staying gone.  Everybody had a pretty good day once everybody else agreed to this abstinence-only plan.

Two years ago on the Today Show, a panel of women were discussing Valentine’s Day.

“I get so frustrated that my husband completely forgets about it,” says one.

“I just don’t understand why he can’t see that it matters, whether or not he thinks it should,” says another.  “I want him to care about it.”

“I tell my husband a month in advance that it’s coming and that it matters to me,” says the third.  “Then a couple of weeks before, I give him some suggestions for things I’d like.  A week before, one more reminder, and then the day before I put a note on his desk.  Valentine’s Day always turns out really well!”

The third woman was beautiful in that distinguished way some women have, with her silver hair cut short and stylishly and a simple (but undoubtedly expensive) gold band on her ring finger.  She’d been married a very long time.

~~~~

Once upon a time I thought love should be easy.  I thought if I was loved enough, doing what I needed would come naturally.  When I love someone enough, I can’t help but want to touch them, think about them, buy them things to show them I care.  How could that logic not hold?  I wasn’t separating the verb from the noun.

Then, of course, I learned that people love (verb) differently.  My husband loves me (noun) but his method of showing that love is very different than mine.  He cleans the house, takes out the dogs, does my laundry so I have clean clothes.  He cares for me in a very practical way.

I care in a more emotional way, showing him my love by holding my tongue when I want to scream, bringing him gifts despite the ten pounds they add to my luggage, touching him and hugging him and saying the words.

~~~~

I’ve been gone for the better part of two weeks, home for a brief 48 hour period last weekend, and now, I’m finally back home for a good little while.  Once upon a time, I would have felt lost and exhilarated by my rootlessness, even only for two weeks, because I wasn’t physically tied to anything.  Once upon a time, I started to feel that my life was what I happened to be surrounded by at any given moment – the city or hotel or company I could see.

But now, irrespective of the swanky hotel or happening city in which I find myself, I feel a connection to my husband.  When I call him each night, it doesn’t feel like a brief interlude in my life, but like the fog has lifted just long enough to feel like myself for a moment.  I really want to talk with him, even in the middle of a happy hour shindig with my coworkers.

At the same time, I’m frustrated by how difficult it is to connect via phone.  My husband really tries – he who hates phone calls more than anything – and so do I, but it’s not enough, never enough, not nearly enough.  It would be easier some days to not bother, but still, we do.

~~~~

Last night, at midnight, I was wandering around trying to get settled again.  The dogs were crashed on the couch, the cats piled on top of them, my husband was asleep in our bed, and for some reason, I thought back to the panel of women on The Today Show discussing Valentine’s Day. 

Why don’t we value effort more when it comes to relationships?  Where did we get this idea that the only real stuff is that which comes naturally?  Are we protecting ourselves just in case the other person decides the effort isn’t worth it, so we can say, “They weren’t the right person anyhow; look how hard we had to try”?

Yesterday my husband reached out to hold my hand or touch my shoulder more times than I can count.  He’s not a touchy kind of person, but I am, and he did that for me.  When I first realized the effort, I wanted to push it away (“Please, don’t overdo it making yourself have to touch me, geez!”) but I didn’t, making my own effort to accept his.

This is not so different than dating.  You spend extra time to look nice and impress the other person with your brilliance, after all, except the stakes are higher and the payoff is greater now, so why do we discount the need?

“Do you think I’m as weird in person as I am on my blog?  I think I’m probably weirder.” After a week of trying valiantly to hide my insecurities in the pursuit of corporate respectability, I couldn’t help but ask.

“I think everyone’s weird.  If they don’t seem like it, you just don’t know them well enough.”

~~~

Tonight, I had drinks with the second person I’ve met through this blog, and it was fabulous.  A little awkward at times, sure, but that was to be expected when one of you word-pukes her deepest concerns and fears regularly (guess who?) and the other participant admits to reading every word.  We had Japanese food at my favorite kind of place (family-owned, somewhat divey, with crazy things like fish liver on the menu) and talked for more than two hours.

She said I’m more scattered in real life, which is true, and that it’s probably because on this blog, I generally have one topic I focus on at a time.  In person, I’m more random.  Also true.  For a moment I felt like Penelope, she of the “I really am very weird in person, even more so than on my blog” kind of personality, but then I realized we’re all probably a little weirder and more scattered in person than via the written word.

I love this blog because I’m constantly reminded that each of our experiences as women isn’t as different as we sometimes fear.  We all struggle with the ridiculousness of making a marriage work, with the strange and wonderful quirks that make men men, with balancing life and love and work and passion for all of it.

I love the connectedness.

~~~

I bought a jacket today.  In a real retail store.  At full price.  I didn’t compare online, search for something on sale, or debate the merits of sun protection versus wind protection.  The color was great, the style was fab, and the price wasn’t outrageous.  So I bought it.  Then ripped off the tags and put it on before I could talk myself into taking it back.

I felt kinda guilty.

When I told my husband about it, he suggested I do that more often.  “You spend all of your money on food,” he pointed out.  “Why not spend some of it on clothes if they make you feel better about doing your job?”

I realized today that my favorite black sweater had a hole in the armpit, perfectly understandable since I bought it five years ago at H&M for $12.  Little by little I’m wearing through the clothes I purchased when I had a real office, and it’s time to start replenishing, if only because it’s hard to concentrate on corporate respectability while worrying about a hole in my armpit.

I have a real office in downtown Seattle with a view of the water where I can watch the ferry boats in between meetings.  And a new Seattle friend and a new jacket.  It was a good Wednesday.

Martha Beck grouped Dr. Laura with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, noting that certain public personalities want only agreement, not real discussion.

I listen to Dr. Laura because she’s on talk radio during lunch hours and that’s when I’m usually in my car.  I’d prefer Dave Ramsey, but he’s not on, and I can’t handle music sometimes.  I think that’s the most dangerous kind of influence, actually – the kind that surrounds your consciousness rather than being invited in.

I listen to Dr. Laura but admire Martha Beck, so I had some soul-searching to do.

~~~

Over the past couple years, every assumption I had about my life and role as a wife has been tested.  My husband is not like my previous lovers – he was raised by a stay at home mom, grew up in the generally conservative South, had always been the primary earner and decider in his relationships.  And I’m not like his – I’m the primary earner in my life, have lived in big cities, alone, and have always made all my own decisions.  I was raised by a divorced mom and involved dad, never felt particularly maternal myself, and was only sure that I never wanted to be left without options.

I never ever for one moment considered being a stay-at-home-mom.  Not even once.  In fact, I was pretty convinced I’d fail, hating every minute and resenting my kids for trapping me in an endless cycle of tasks I hate.  My ex-husband declared early on that he’d love to be a stay-at-home-dad; our path was set.

Then I got divorced and married a Southern man.  He never explicitly said he thought I should stay at home to raise our kids, but he mentioned he always thought his wife would.  Once.  In the first six months we were dating.  But it stuck with me and I began to imagine he wanted me to be that kind of wife, whatever “that” was.  I never specifically decided to consider the option, but between my assumptions about his wishes and regular doses of Dr. Laura, I started to wonder.

~~~

Wondering is good.  Options are good.  Assuming your path is set for whatever is reason isn’t.  So I started to consider the benefits of staying home with my children, paying attention to the choices made by other women, looking again at my childhood and my mother’s choices. 

But more importantly, I got a better sense of myself.

When I first moved away from the home I’d shared with my ex-husband, I was surprised to learn new things about myself.  It was like getting to know myself all over again. I discovered that I liked to cook, couldn’t stand elaborate patterns, preferred blank walls to mismatched paintings.  Who knew?

Similarly, I was surprised to find that I liked the idea of staying home with my kids, at least for a little while.  I was bewilderingly unable to consider leaving my husband to parent alone, even for a week, and not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t imagine it.  And the stuff that made me whimper in fear related to house-management, not child-raising.

Learning is good.  Paying attention is good.

~~~

I had a cushy stay-at-home job for the past few years, one where I decided what I worked on and how much progress I made on any given day.  I hated it.  Without external and somewhat objective evidence of my worth (both to my company and on a personal level), I floundered into self-consciousness and doubt.  Despite the best efforts of my husband, best friend, and even (the horror) my boss, I continued to feel useless and unnecessary.  I obsessed over paint colors and fireplaces and wedding plans because at least those tasks seemed clearly defined.

This was me, minus the large team:

And the more responsibility I had for running a large team, trying to hit many goals at once, the less work I did. Honestly, I just didn’t know what to do. I was outside my core strength.

And I know this:  the first sign that you are outside of your strengths is when you can’t make yourself do the work you need to do.

So I changed jobs.  Sort of. {Meaning I will be changing jobs if HR gets it together and gets me an offer, but I’m doing it already anyway.}

And now this is me:

I am great in that phase of a business–thinking, philosophizing, finding holes in markets, finding holes in ideas. I never give up. I always have another idea, and I don’t mind feeling lost day after day, week after week.

In any office, employees gravitate to the job each should be doing, no matter what the titles are. Sometimes we gravitate to a job and it’s not available, and we go nuts doing something we shouldn’t be doing. Sometimes we gravitate to that job and it’s such a good fit for us that we do it even without a title.

A lot of people say they should be doing a job they do not have the authority to do. Here’s some news, though: You’d be doing it already if you were great at it. Ryan Healy is now Chief Operating Officer at Brazen Careerist because he’s already shown he can do the job. That’s how you get serious promotions:  doing the job first, in an outstanding way.

And now I’m back to the me I knew – the kindly ass-kicking, embarrassingly confident, unflinchingly capable me – and I’m scared.  My husband only knew the cushy-job me and has already remarked on how different I seem when I come home from a work trip.

I knew this was going to happen.

Because I am different.  When I know what I’m doing, I know it – and I love it. 

~~~

My first semester in college, I took macro-economics with a professor known for chewing up and spitting out freshmen.  At the end of the semester, just before the final exam, I dropped by her office to find out my exam scores… for the entire semester.

“I’m here to find out my exam scores for the semester, please,” I said.

She sneered a bit, pulled up my paper file (1997, people!) and suddenly, her demeanor changed.

“Oh!  I didn’t expect this.  Most people who don’t know how they did are failing.  You got a 100, 100, and 98.  Why didn’t you know that?”

I didn’t know that because the only thing that happened during the 8:30 am class following an exam was that you got your test back. I preferred to sleep in, confident I’d done well.

~~~

I have this new job and I love it, but I don’t want to tank my relationship again.  I’m trying to be cognizant that other people don’t care as much about my job as I do, that my husband doesn’t yet recognize that my bluster is to counteract my worries, that I have to learn to leave work at work for the sake of home.

And I’m a little bit overwhelmed to be reminded how my preferences affect so many futures.  It’s the same sense of responsibility I feel when I hear the phrase, “Happy wife happy life,” – like, wait a minute, now my happiness has to carry the weight of everyone else’s?  Are you kidding me?

But I’m grown up now, or on my way there, so I remind myself that nothing is black and white.  I can want to stay home with my kids for a few years and still go back to work.  I can NOT want to stay home with my kids and still have a great relationship with them.  I can define my future however I want.

Or, to be more accurate, we can define our future however we want.  My husband and I had a chat about accepting each other’s influence, and contrary to our public personas, I seem to take too much influence and he might take too little.

I won’t be the wife he thought he would have, but neither is he the husband I thought I would have – nobody is.  We all discover somewhere along the way that reality isn’t quite like we’d expected…

… and that’s okay. 

~~~

So my next step is to challenge my assumptions about my husband.  Somewhere along the way I defined myself as the “keeper of all things household,” so I worried about hiring a housecleaner and dog walker and making freezer meals when my travel schedule got crazy.  I had this idea that things would fall apart because I’d be too busy to deal with them.

Turns out I didn’t “deal” as much as I “pondered,” so there wasn’t much left undone and my husband stepped in and took over what was.  We’re both happier that way, actually, because he’s much more the Doer and I’m much more the Stress Out and Worry While Not Doing-er.  (My truck insurance finally got moved and my tags are getting renewed and the dog’s medicines are all refilled.  In a week.)

And now I’m thinking about life with kids in a city far, far from my company’s headquarters.  We don’t want to move, so what does that mean for me, my career, my family, my husband, our children? 

What if I lived somewhere else for one week a month, leaving my husband to care for an infant full-time?  Why not? {His family is local so they could pitch in, and yet, I feel weird about that, even though I wouldn’t bat an eye if the situation was reversed.} What if we all lived somewhere else for half the month, packing up and moving cross-country every few weeks?  Why not? {Not sustainable past infancy, but in the short-term, maybe.}  What if we moved? {We like this area, my husband is starting a four-year degree program in the fall, and waaaaa, I don’t wanna!}

What if, what if, what if?

~~~

The best part about being a grown-up is seeing life clearly and still thinking it’s fantastically exciting.

I’ve been sitting with the idea of resentment for a while, not sure exactly what I think or how to avoid it.  I know that in certain periods of my life I’ve been prone to resentment; I can sometimes see it coming but rarely manage to intervene in time; I worry about it on behalf of my friends and their decisions.

And then it struck me: it’s about the decisions.  The best defense against resentment is to decide. 

~~~

Last night a friend called my husband to ask for a favor.  If my husband did this favor, it would be at my (albeit minimal) personal expense because we had a date and I was waiting. 

I can tell you with certainty that when this situation comes up – and it often does – my husband will bend over backward to help a friend out, whether or not the relationship is reciprocal.  It’s how he is, and as a reformed acquaintance-pleaser, it drives me nuts.

Once upon a time I did the same thing, putting myself out for people I barely knew while taking for granted the people who love me.  If challenged, I would adamantly defend my kindness and politeness and general good character, but really, I hadn’t yet learned that the risk of perceived slight from an acquaintance was well worth the confirmation of loyalty with a loved one.

There are people who will come to your aid – and thank you for asking them – and there are people who will fit you into their lives where they can.  The former are loved ones, the latter acquaintances… and there’s nothing wrong with either, but you have to know who’s where.

I once let my sick (and unbeknownst to me, dying) cat be stressed by some random person’s puppy while we waited at the vet’s office.  The person was nice, the puppy was interested in cats, and I went along with it despite a few hisses from my poor cat.  My cat died not long after (literally, 20 minutes) and to this day, I regret not defending my cat’s needs over some random person’s cute puppy.

So I have a very literal priority chart in my head and I know who matters and in what order.  Frank, my cat, is worthy of my loyalty, sure, but not at the expense of my husband’s sleep.

Husband > Frank 

Indiana, because he’s sick, gets more attention, but not at the expense of Frank, who’s been with me much longer. 

Frank > Indiana

If an acquaintance asks for my help and it fits into my life, I will happily oblige; if not, I’ll say I can’t.

My life > acquaintance

Requests are negotiations, anyway, so if I say I can’t do something and you reply that you really, really need me to, I’ll see what I can do.

Make sense?  Not to my husband.

~~~

He asked if I’d meet him later.  I replied that I was already waiting.  He defended his generosity and honor and loyalty (to a friend I don’t doubt wouldn’t reciprocate if it wasn’t easy).  I stopped arguing, hung up the phone, and waited.

An hour later he arrived for our date.  We got through it, but it sucked.  I told him I was hurt, but really, I resented being stuck waiting while he ran across town at the last-minute request of someone who doesn’t have the same loyalty to my husband.  I do.  I have that kind of loyalty to my husband, and yet, I was the one waiting.

When, in an agitated state, I called my bff, she said I probably should have cancelled the whole thing when it was clear he’d be late rather than stewing about how he chose someone else over me.

Oh.  That never even occurred to me.

~~~

You avoid resentment by choosing (anything!) because resentment is a grudge born of perceived lack of choice.  When I feel like I have to go along with you for whatever reason, I’ll do it (“What choice do I have?”), but then I resent you for taking away my choices.

I can avoid the whole cycle by just not doing whatever it is I don’t want to do.  We, as adults, always have a choice – maybe not an easy one, but a choice nonetheless.

I’m not resentful that my husband doesn’t want to move to Seattle because I’ve chosen to respect his wishes.  Staying in Tennessee, then, isn’t his decision for me to resent, but ours together.  If I didn’t want to stay or give him that much power over my career, I could insist we go, or find a compromise, or do any number of things other than pretend I had no other choice than to go along with him.

If I decide to stay (or go), I can’t be resentful because, well… you can’t really resent yourself, can you?

~~~

What do you think?  Am I on to something or just talking in circles?

I am all the time.

My husband was not-so-nice to me last night.  Not mean or jerk-y, just not very nice and a bit distant, and (for once) I had no idea why.

Much discussion ensued.  Not “discussion” but discussion.  Not fun discussion, but we kept the conversation going despite discomfort on both sides; kept the tone low and casual despite hurt feelings; kept getting closer to the root of the problem despite a preference for denial.

This morning in the shower I was struck by how contradictory human nature can be.  We act out when we’re hurt.  We belittle when we feel small.  We are most sensitive with the people who most care.  And we induce the very thing we want least by our own actions.  {At least, I do.}

But last night I was lucky.  I’d had a nap to catch up on lost sleep and was still feeling the disconnectedness that gets me through travel weeks.  So when he admitted he was hurt, I understood that he needed more than an apology.

He needed support.

We all want to be married to the cheerleader – not the girl in the short skirts but the person who makes us feel good about ourselves.  In a classic human nature kind of quirk, when we want to be pumped up, we let ourselves sink lower, as if being more upset and pathetic will prompt a spontaneous outpouring of “you can do it!”

He thought I thought too little of him when in fact I thought too much.  I thought he was threatened when in fact he was inspired – and then frustrated.  He withdrew when what he wanted was to be drawn out.

So I did. And it worked.  Yet another life skill learned from hours spent in airports (along with “being genuinely nice gets you far,” “talk to everyone, no matter how intimidating or seemingly worthy,” and “sometimes you just have to go with the flow.”)

Anonymous said… Can I still ask a question? Am I too late to the game? My question is, how did you know that it was time to get divorced (with your previous marriage, obviously)? My husband and I are struggling to put it simply. Is there a sign I should be looking for? Right now it seems like a divorce is the only light at the end of the tunnel.

I got this on my Blackberry while driving and I wanted to pull over to post advice as quickly as possible.

But I didn’t.  I can’t offer advice; when it comes to divorce, nobody can, but they do… and if you’re in a bad place, you don’t always hear it.  I wouldn’t have.

So instead, I will offer you my perspective on my own divorce with as much honesty and clarity as I can.  If you have follow-up questions or just want to talk with someone who has no vested interest in your future (other than that I care, really I do), email me at notquitebettycrocker@gmail.com.  I also think you should ask the same question of someone who thinks their divorce was the right thing to do – but make sure they’re at least five years out, because the relief of not having to try anymore can take a few years to wear off.

~~~

We shouldn’t have gotten divorced.  Not then, anyway.  He moved out a few days after the first time I (soberly) uttered the words, “I don’t want to be married anymore.”  Within a week I was living alone in our apartment; he’d gone back to our hometown; we were no longer a couple.  It was stunningly and stupidly fast.

That declaration should have been the start of a long and soul-searching process: joint counseling.  But I wouldn’t go, not wanting to be told by a third party that I was broken, that we were over, that I’d screwed up beyond repair.  I wanted the blessed relief of not being responsible for our marriage and its problems anymore.

So our marriage ended because of ignorance on my part, and his.  We didn’t know that you could say those words and get through them.  We didn’t think to ask, “What would it take for us to get through this for one more day?”

Five years later, I can’t guarantee we would still be together, but I have a pretty good feeling we would have.  Our incompatibilities weren’t insurmountable; most people’s aren’t.  We just didn’t know how to be married, didn’t persevere, didn’t realize there could be a light at the end of the tunnel for us both.

~~~

I lied: I will give advice.  If I could go back to myself five years ago, I would tell her to stop looking for signs and just stick it out for a while.  There’s this theory that you augment anything simply by paying it attention. (Check out this month’s Fast Company for a really great article about improving children’s weight in Vietnam.) Couples counselors – good ones – now look for a bright side, any bright side, and ask couples to focus on that, even if it’s a tiny part of their lives.  Relationships aren’t about the average experience; they’re about extremes.  So if you can find something good in each other, one tiny little thing, and focus on it solely, you can grow it until it starts to take over. Again*.

The light at the end of the tunnel is time.  Pick a length of time that seems interminable, say, two years, and just decide not to decide until then.  With no decision to make, you’ll be a little freer to live and less likely to be sensitive to everything that’s not good.  Then find one thing that’s good and focus on it, starving everything else of attention.  Let everything ugly wither by virtue of attention starvation.

And find a good counselor.  Go separately AND together.  Both are important.  If you can’t find anything good, take a break.  Move in with a friend, don’t talk to each other for a week, go on separate vacations.  Sometimes proximity is a bad thing.

~~~

{*I was going to post this later, but this seemed like a good reason to post it now.}

I spent the week away from my husband while reading books about relationships and happiness and marriage, which of course led me to miss him greatly.  Also, in a time of great personal stress, he was supportive and positive in the way I needed, things at which he sometimes has to work.  He was trying and I appreciated it.

Then I got home, and in our first exchange, I was annoyed.  Very annoyed.  Stunningly and breathtakingly annoyed.  I held my tongue, got off the phone, and pondered the disconnect.

There’s the idea of a man, and there’s the implementation of a man.

Dating is fun because the goal is to get the idea of a man.  You’re not looking for details like whether he picks up his socks; you’re looking for neat things like generosity and tenderness and integrity.  Those are really fun things to look for, hence the fun of falling in love!  I looked at him and thought, this man is kind and generous and fun and supportive and I want him to be the father of my children. 

Then you get to the next step, which is how you live with the implementation of that man.  How do I get past the fact that he thinks the kitchen is clean because the dishwasher’s running, never mind the stack of dishes on the counter that didn’t fit?  How do I deal with his economic negativity?  How do I help him when he’s down while not giving so much of myself I’m resentful?

The implementation is not so fun.  And if I’m not careful, I spend all my time in the details and almost none anymore in the fabulous and fantastic idea of this man.  The details don’t add up to the idea; picking your socks up doesn’t add up to “generous and supportive,” and before I know it I’m out in the weeds.

My ex-husband is a great guy, but I got so close I lost perspective.

~~~

My point is: it’s hard to have a great (or even good) relationship when you’re constantly looking for evidence to support its existence.  You start to get so tired and beaten down that the only relief you can imagine is to be alone.  I’ve been there.  And that’s okay – it’s probably true that you need to be alone for a while.  But don’t confuse needing relief with needing to be apart from someone you believed enough in to make a leap of faith when you got married. 

That person is still there, those people are still there – you’re still there.

If the only light you see is that you’re both still trying, or that you’re both still living together, or that you’re both equally exhausted by your efforts, it might be enough light.  Give yourself permission to ignore the bad – even just for a little while – and see what happens.

And if you need to get away, you can come stay with us… just plan on taking a dog home with you when you leave!  {And if I can be so selfish as to ask something of you, keep me updated somehow, pretty please.  I’ll wonder about you.}

Last night, at 1:30 in the morning, I needed a cuddle. 

“I need a cuddle,” I whispered as I wormed my way into my husband’s embrace.  Lately I’m asking for what I need and it’s working.

But in a departure from our norm, he laid his head on my shoulder and snuggled into sleep.

And an epiphany slammed into my heart with such force, tears sprang to my eyes.

~~~

I have never held this man in my arms and wanted to protect him from the world.  Despite his youthful demeanor and silly little-boy quirks, I’ve always seen him as a man.

My ex-husband, to me, was always a boy.  I loved him like a child some times, like a father others, but never like a husband, someone with whom the tiny battles of intimacy are fought.

I never fought him.

Instead I ducked and lied and hid from him, as if only his vote counted in our life, as though his judgment on all things was final.  He was the parent I must have needed at the time, taking me in his arms and giving me the stability I must have wanted.  He was my protector, the person who would fix everything and make it all better.

And yet through it all, I was overwhelmed by the suffocating pressure of being responsible for him.  His life was mine to make good, and as someone not even grown up enough to take care of herself, I collapsed under the pressure.

I was eight years old again, trying to protect my divorced parents from sadness by changing the radio station to happy songs.

But he wasn’t my son, or my father; I was neither his parent nor child.  He was my husband, but I was too young and the only relationship I could fathom was parental.  I’d not become enough of an adult to see one in him.

~~~

Joey and I have spent most of our relationship in locked horns, battling over the many things that form our life, but I’ve always seen him as a worthy adversary, perhaps the first in my long line of long relationships.  I’ve never felt the need to take care of him, or make his life good, or be his everything.  I’ve never wanted to wrap him in my arms and protect him from the world.

I’ve never even felt the need to protect him from myself.  {This explains the magnitude of many of our battles.}

This relationship has been hard for me because we’re forging new roles, figuring out life as partners, as adults who have to share.  Sometimes sharing sucks, and I don’t have really have adult partnerships to model. 

So in this dance, we have to step on toes to find the right rhythm, because we’re both responsible for our own feet.

~~~

The tears ended abruptly and a new lightness replaced the lump in my throat. I hid under the covers with my Blackberry, needing to put this understanding into words before it faded.

And another door closed on my previous marriage, this time with a comforting thud.

“I think I made a mistake.”

That’s what I think when things go wrong. Every time. Fighting with my husband, bad surprise at work, terrible news about, well, anything, and…

“Oh, God, I think I made a mistake.”

The first thing you think when things go bad says a lot about you.

“Oh, no, this is going to be really bad,” might be factual once or twice, but if you think that every time, it’s probably not. “I just knew this was going to happen to me,” suggests a bit of paranoia and maybe some poor-me, don’t you think?

“Oh, this is definitely a mistake” says that I take too much responsibility and blame for everything. It says I believe bad things are my fault. It says I think I knew enough to know better, even when I didn’t.

My first thought when things go wrong says I live in regret. It says I need faith.

I want to live in faith. I want to stop worrying that every imperfection in my marriage will come back to haunt me because in my fcuked up universe there is perfect karma. I’ve been there, I know how liars learn. I want to believe we’ll get through things and that just like things get worse, they get better, too. I want to remember to breathe until the urge to throw something passes without having to recite, “Breathe. Don’t throw things,” over and over and over again.

I want to stop saying these things and start feeling them.

So the next time I am screaming within the depths of my head that “I think I made a mistake!!” I’m going to try like hell to think this next:

The future is never wrong – even when it’s not what you expected. (hat tip)