Every time I look back at our lives, I’m so glad I never called off our marriage.
When I motioned to my best friend in eighth grade that I wanted a life of ups and downs, I wasn’t implying a difficult life of highs and lows. I think in the depth of who I am, I was saying that I knew I needed challenge and rest, challenge and rest, challenge and rest. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Not in an exhausting kind of way. In a recharging kind of way, knowing that the gift of challenge is growth. I’ve always loved growth, but it doesn’t happen when things come easily.
Just as I couldn’t articulate what I was feeling when I called off “going out” with the boy I liked when I was 13, I’m realizing I may not yet be able to fully articulate why it’s important to stay with the one person in my life who has made daily interactions shallow, connection-less, and frustrating, but I’m going to try.
I think there is a mystery, a hidden secret somewhere in all this. I’d still love finding a key that turns us into a finely tuned companionship. Or going off on my own to seek out someone who fulfills my need for emotional electricity and chemistry, if only it wouldn’t affect our whole foundation and our kids’ lives. But life doesn’t operate in a vacuum, so that option would have rippling ramifications for all of us.
There may not be a fully satisfying resolution either way for me (or him) in this earthly life. I sometimes think of our union as an arranged marriage. We arranged it for ourselves in a left-brain sort of way. As time has guided this marriage, it will undoubtedly continue to unlock further nuggets of understanding. I spent years trying to learn the root of his fears in order to feel some sense of relief. I have now grown out of needing answers for my sake. I haven’t figured out how to deepen our superficial relationship; it may remain this way. But I hesitate to disrupt our bond because it allows us both to sink into other deeply satisfying elements of life. For instance, our children and their feeling of safety and security is paramount to both of us, and together we want to see their life journeys play out. Where they go and what they do is a fascinating thing for both of us to watch unfold day by day. In another life area, our lack of depth with each other actually fuels the need to accomplish other things we were put on this earth to do. If I can’t wallow in love all day, I’m going to work on my goals and dreams and encourage him in his pursuits. And something that is deeply comforting about us is our similar priority in spending time outdoors and traveling.
I don’t know about other marriages and what they’re like, but sometimes I wonder about the ones that are deeply loving and built on chemistry. Do they become stale over time or do they remain deep, even remain electrified? I’m sure they change over the years, and each marriage is unique. The weird thing I wonder about our marriage is do we actually have constructive tools we’ve developed that keep us loyal in hard times in ways that other marriages lack? In other words, we’re used to hard. But when deep, flowing marriages hit obstacles, could it rock them harder because they’ve never done hard before? Or because they’ve never seen their mate in an adver- sarial way, and it hurts too much? I don’t wish that on anyone, but perhaps there is an odd kind of strength and resilience we have built because we aren’t strangers to emotional difficulty. I have no idea. Just something I wonder about now and then. I’m not honoring the hard times, nor do I want anyone to have to swap deep love for a discordant marriage. Just wondering if we have more going for us than we realize sometimes.
My husband has very gradually grown out of being a fearful, anxious, obsessive-compulsive perfectionist. This is a miracle I never quite knew (but desperately hoped) was possible at the beginning of us. I wondered for years if it could happen, and it has. He was such a ball of restlessness for such a long time. Today, he’s a sweet guy. He still doesn’t realize his sentences are filled with the words “I,” “me,” and “my,” but he’s not what I’d call a narcissist. He just lacks awareness and needs more people in his life. He can still pontificate about monotony, or comment on all kinds of surface-y subjects that normally go without saying for other people, but these days he asks about me and tries hard to interact with me rather than just talking and talking. If anything, he is conversationally impatient and ADD. Not so much with others, but routinely with me. I can handle it for the most part, though, because he’s lighthearted. He no longer enters a room with a kill-joy attitude, ready to find something that isn’t right or something we’ve done wrong, though that’s only changed in the past year. He still enters a room talking and leaves a room talking, but these days he isn’t controlling, edgy, or demanding; he just has a harmless need to be heard.
My husband’s love languages have grown. I witness his acts of service toward me every day. He does the dishes at night when I accidentally fall asleep beside one of the boys at bedtime. He’s given us the gift of travel more times than I ever imagined in my wildest dreams. He contributes to charities I care deeply about because he knows how much it means to me.
I still long to experience the kind of marriage that makes you giddy every time you think about the other person. I know that’s not a fairytale that only exists in the movies because I experienced it firsthand long ago for almost eight years. I still long to hear words like “I love you,” “You are so beautiful to me,” or “I’m the luckiest man in the world to have you as my wife.” I haven’t gone unscathed.
The life my best friend described in junior high with her hand motion implied a predictable ease. Maybe I’m not the kind of person who can handle predictable ease all the time. Maybe for me, ease isn’t easy. Maybe it’s actually hard on me. Maybe I need more. Not more drama, per se, just more psychology—learning, failing, understanding, digging, thinking, reading, vexing, and growing.
Or not. Maybe I would’ve happily luxuriated in a lifelong rela- tionship ruled by mental and physical chemistry and indulgent romanticism that was always consistent and reliable.
I’m pretty sure no one escapes hardship in some way, though, and I’m realizing that no matter where it comes from, we all face suffering from one source or another.
Neglect’s Toll on a Wife: Perfection’s Grip on My Husband’s Attention © 2023-2024 Lila Meadowbrook
