The Marathon of Marriage

Two years ago this month I wrote about the state of my marriage with the post, ‘Words‘.  Then ‘Words Opened Doors’, literally.  A tense week before Christmas H and I decided that while we weren’t speaking to each other except in front of the kids we would stay together for the holiday and go from there.  A few weeks later marriage counseling began and we had hope.  We hoped to work out our differences to stop that fights that had vicious moments where we screamed at the top of our lungs, “I HATE YOU!”  so violently that it left me exhausted. Yes, that was me and I did. A lot.  I hated him and what we had become.  The feeling was mutual.  We had become stunted, afraid to speak our true thoughts and realize that things had changed.

Months of counseling went by, individually and together we plowed through, reading books, doing homework, having date nights and away weekends when feasible.  We realized that our sucktastic relationship wasn’t just affecting us but making our eldest child a tantrum, anxiety-riddled mess who couldn’t deal with frustration.  We got her help too.  Therapy for all! Now that is a quick way to meet a deductible.  We really thought things were going along well until we hit last December.  It became clear that we were over-confident.  We may have ironed out a few problems but marriage counseling isn’t a race. You can’t sprint to the finish line but instead, as my dear friend likes to think of it, marriage counseling is more like a marathon.  Oh, indeed.

There we were another December later and we fought so loudly and hard that I shook for a solid hour afterwards and lost it at a kiddie birthday party the minute I walked in the door.  Good times.  I felt like a failure.  I felt betrayed and wondered how I could think we were out of the woods yet. How naive.  I felt like we had to start all over again.  In a way we did, but only another chapter not another crappy novella.  We continued to work on it together in counseling but realized changes in our individual worlds had to be made.  We didn’t have a case of mom guilt on our hands but dad conflict instead.  Yes, that is a real term.  I stayed quiet about the state of things in our marital world for the rest of the world because despite the wild ups and downs and serious fights we had so often in the beginning the second year was much more intense.  It was a year of growth for both of us and getting to know each other all over again.  I was surprised when people stopped me at Blogher this past August and asked about my marriage but  I should not have been surprised. After all, I did put it out there.   I was surprised that people remembered or cared.  But here is the thing, the longer H and I go on this journey and continue to make the effort of saving our marriage, of maintaining our marriage, the more I realize that all of us in relationships are battling the same scene.  It’s whether we choose to acknowledge and do something about it or keep sweeping it under the rug.

I realize now that it isn’t about getting together once and going on our merry way. That’s too easy.  It isn’t enough to be in the early days of bliss and thinking we know all about each other and that’s it.  It is realizing that we change and grow for good or worse over the years and adapting to those changes.  Can you adapt?  Do you even want to love the person you have become let alone your parnter?  It is about realizing that how we want to be loved isn’t always how the other person might need to be loved. It is about being grown up enough to deal with that long battle and all that life offers and spits at you in the process when those challenges occur.