"How Are Things?"

A question I get asked a lot is: “How are things with you and your husband?” I know people mean well, and they’re curious to see how we are doing which I appreciate. I just end up feeling really uncomfortable being asked this for several reasons: 1) I’m not always sure what all I should really say because it changes daily; sometimes hourly. 2) I am not focused on our relationship right now. 3) I’m just as confused as everyone else is on how to go forward in whatever kind of relationship is best because I feel like I'm still really uncertain about my feelings. 4) I’m still trying to figure out how to best cope with what happened. Sure it’s been a few months now, but these emotions and feelings can take a while to sort through not to mention much longer to resolve. I’ve actually been told to my face that we needed to “hurry up and decide” because it makes things awkward for our family and friends. Because obviously our relationship is about everyone else, and their comfort is our main concern. (<--read that with heavy sarcasm) So, here’s my side, since that’s the only version I can give you. And just a heads up, this is long.

Have you ever read those quotes or memes on Facebook that go something along the lines of: “I love you so much, but sometimes I want to run you over with my car. LOL!” They’re all different, and sometimes we look at them while chuckling and thinking “Oh that’s so cute, because it’s so accurate to real life. Hahaha.” I’ll be the first to admit that I was one of those women who used to talk about how amazing it was that I could go from wanting to choke my husband one minute to not being able to keep my hands off of him the next. Because that’s love, right? We take the good and the bad. A relationship is two different people sharing a life, not one entity, so of course there would be disagreements. There would be times when you made mistakes, or did something that might irritate each other. This was a normal occurrence in marriages, but the important part was that at the end of the day there was still so much love between the two of you. Well, for me that’s not all there anymore. No matter how much I try to get that feeling back it's just not surfacing. The mistakes he made weren’t cute. They weren’t just a bump in the road that we could look back on and laugh. I wasn’t a saint either. Instead of talking things out or trying to get him some help sooner I grew angry. I grew so tired of feeling like the only grown up in the relationship that I stopped caring. I became distant soon after that, and I just shut down. I also allowed myself to be disrespected. I allowed the emotional and verbal abuse to reach a point that I have no idea if we’ll ever be able to fully recover from it. Instead of trying to work through things I would just counter his words with complaints. If he wanted to see a bitch well then I would show him just how big of a bitch I could be. There were several months that I recall where I couldn’t walk through my front door without having something to argue/complain about. The people he was talking to, the friends he had over, and the parties that were being thrown until 3am on nights we had to work. The household chores always ended up being left to me, he was doing a lot of drinking, and we were always short on money. I'll admit that we would have a few good months, but then the storm would start brewing again. Fast forward to today, and there are days when I think that everything will be okay. I feel like we try to tiptoe around each other, and it gives us this illusion that life can go on as if nothing happened. We’ll get through this I tell myself. We’ll get back to being the “us” from before everything went wrong. But then I ask myself if that’s even a good place for us to be? Isn’t that just moving backwards? Wasn’t I in a horrible state back then? Why would I want to allow our relationship to go back and reset to that point? Currently, all I can say with honesty is that I have days when I feel comfortable around him. I feel at peace for a few moments, and it's as if we picked up where things left off. We get along for awhile, and it feels like we're a family again. And then there are the days when I question whether I should even attempt reconciliation because things just feel so different. I feel different. WE feel different. The dynamic of our relationship is so so different. It feels like playing pretend sometimes. It feels...off?

Then when I say that I’m “not focused” on our relationship it doesn’t mean that I’m not working towards something. No need to rehash all of the details, but if you want to go over it there’s a lengthy post here. And it’s somewhat of a follow up, here. It’s safe to say that there’s a lot of hurt; especially on my end. I’m sure that he feels some of it too for his own reasons. The relationships he pursued gave him something that he felt I couldn’t give him so I'm sure that left a part of him feeling incomplete when he came back. And in all honesty, I’m not even sure if he was wrong in feeling that way in the first place. Maybe I can't give him what they did? Then there’s the issue of trust. At times I feel like there’s a huge mountain of distrust that just keeps getting wider. I don’t know how to close the gap, and often I wonder if I’m even meant to? What some people don’t realize is that the lack of trust in a relationship can cause it to crumble. You can’t just toss that pillar to the side because that leaves the rest of the foundation weak. So, it can affect the daily things that are talked about, communication in regards to how you really feel, intimacy, and even how you feel about yourself. Full disclosure: I feel that we both have tried to restore intimacy in our relationship. I know that I've tried to recreate what I felt from before; to ignite that passion again. I have tried my hardest to recall everything that brought us together. To look passed what had happened, and see that we were trying to be better. Which is what I had begged and prayed for. BUT it’s not the same. There’s something missing. And often my mind wanders to the other women. Anytime we try to be close as a couple I instantly think of them. The sting almost feels like I’m pouring salt on an open wound, and I have no idea how to make that stop. So, the solution with the help from my counselor was to not force anything. Take a step back. Work on my issues. Work on my life. I need to figure out who I am, what makes me happy, and learn about my needs. I need to learn how to love myself, and bring my self-confidence back up. Discover some form of independence for myself, and learn where I begin and end. Once I do that, I can approach our relationship/marriage issues. So, that’s why I’m focused on ME rather than US right now. Who am I? What do I like? What will I allow? What won't I allow? Am I doing things that make me happy? If not, why am I doing them?

With all of this written out it may seem negative. It may seem like I'm beating on a dead horse, or as if all the roads basically lead up to us getting a divorce. What you don't see is that THIS is just part of a great big process. I'm feeling the same way countless women before me have felt. I am feeling every bit of the betrayal, and heartache. I'm feeling my failure and shortcomings in regards to my marriage. The fallout. I may not seem like it when out in public, but I carry it with me everywhere I go. These days I meticulously go over every option. I constantly doubt my abilities, and I question absolutely everything. I'm hurting, and at times feel like just walking away. In some eyes, I would have EVERY right to do so. In others I'm doing the best thing by keeping my family together. But it will eventually be left up to how I feel once I'm done recovering. Once I've purged everything that I have inside, and I've gone through all of the stages. It will come down to how he feels once he's done recovering. Once he's sure of how he feels. I'm trying to be as open about where I stand emotionally when I feel really certain about how I feel. I want to have that open dialogue because I feel communication, no matter how hard, is key to heading in a good direction. A  mature, and loving one. Whether it's together or not. So, that's how things are for now.