Brace for Impact
As promised, here’s the first of my journal entries chronically the death of a marriage. You’ll notice is starts out just after Thanksgiving of 2017. You’ll also notice that I was feeling some really sharp feelings of sadness, shock, and remorse. For quite some time when this all started happening, I was overcome with guilt. I took on the lion’s share of the blame. Stick with me, though. I’ll get to a better place in time.
I also want to call out that the text in bold is info I’ve added to clarify some things that might come across as blurry. I’ve also changed the names of people & towns.
Monday, November 27
I wanted to start documenting the place I’m at in my life, particularly in my marriage, as I watch from the sidelines as my husband falls out of love with me. He has so much going on; a business that isn’t taking off, a job at a wedding studio he hates, another job with other people that are stimulating and fun; when you’re around cool people that you don’t really know that well, it can make the people waiting for you at home seem boring & not so very cool anymore. I get that. I understand that I don’t make him laugh the way Mike (a work friend) does, or have the same entrepreneurial spirit that James (a work friend) does. I’m also not as skinny as Sally (a work friend) or as talented as Amanda (a work friend). Being around those things at work probably makes it hard to remember what he liked about me- not my talents or anything, just the way I was when we were doing nothing.
We don’t have the money right now to see a counselor or doctor, because I foolishly quit my job when I was unhappy and didn’t want to compromise my integrity. How I wish I had stayed in it and could be of some help to Joe now. Who cares about a billing report or a boss that wants me to lie? It means nothing to me now; there’s nothing more important to me than Joe.
I didn’t say “I love you” this morning, in hopes that at some point during the day, he’d say it to me. He still hasn’t.
Sometimes I wish I was dead; that way, he wouldn’t have to admit to anyone that he stopped loving me, but he would be free of me.
Other times, I think I’m being dramatic (as I have a tendency to do) and that things aren’t so bad.
It would be very hard for something to happen to our relationship- explaining it to his grandmother, mother, little brothers, cousins- all those people who were asked to welcome me into their lives with open arms. (Important to note that “Joe” is extremely close with his family, codependent in fact- we don’t figure that out until later in journaling. He’s one of eight siblings, his parents were divorced when he was a teenager and has a complex & difficult relationship with his dad, but remains close with his father’s family. We’ll say their last name is “Jones”. It’s important as I will say things like “Grandma Jones”.) What would they feel? Those people who cheered us on from the beginning, and have always looked at us as the happiest couple.
Grandma Jones always reminds us to communicate; it’s what she didn’t do in her marriage and wishes she had. I try to, but again, Joe doesn’t really want to face the music about what he’s dealing with, so our conversations are short.
He says my vehement rejection to the idea of staying in Smithtown, is what started the spiral. He didn’t say outright that’s when he stopped loving me, but it is. (This is a made up town name. I’ll refer to the town throughout my journaling, but I’m really talking about the home that’s there. Joe’s mother purchased a dilapidated double block before we were married, and all her children took on the responsibility of fixing it up. However, the fixing up only ever got about halfway done. The house, thought split into 2, was really like one big house with several siblings living there with his mother. We lived there when we first got married, in the attic while 2 of his siblings living in the bedrooms below. Another 3 siblings lived next door with his mom. We lived there for about a year and a half, though we agreed on staying one year. We moved to a tiny apartment a few minutes away and stayed again for a little over a year, until he said he wanted to move back to Smithtown. I reacted strongly, as I didn’t want to go back to living with his family, but I compromised and we went.)
I compromised, and here we are, living in Smithtown, with his mother & brothers, and it’s been fine. I’m happy in our home and have tried to make it comfortable and happy and pretty. I like being here, but I know I’ve held grudgey feelings, too.
I thought maybe that’s why Joe stopped being intimate with me, because there is so little time where the house is empty, but that’s not it. I don’t really know what it is, honestly.
Honesty is another problem we’re having issue with. When he didn’t come home one night when he said he would, and wasn’t answering his phone, I panicked. I called the office where I thought he might be, but his boss answered and said he wasn’t there. He hadn’t seen Joe at all, actually.
I called in the big guns and spoke with his friend James, and his brother Andrew (this is a fake name), until finally I heard back from him. Where had he been? Out for drinks with his boss. Only I knew that wasn’t true, because I’d spoken to his boss. It turns out, he was simply with his friends getting a few drinks and thought I’d be mad. Now, I know the earth-shattering and gut-slicing feeling of realizing your husband wasn’t injured in an accident or mugged, he was just lying to you.
He thought I would be mad, he lied, he made excuses to desperately spend time with people other than me- where do I start with the problems in this situation?
He tells me he doesn’t feel appreciated. So I’ve tried more and more to express to him how important he is to me. He’s everything to me, in fact. The future is a terrifying mystery, and he’s the only person in the world I saw myself navigating through it with. He felt the same about me at one time, and I don’t know how to bring that back.
I love him so much, and I am realizing that I’ve taken our time together for granted. Curling up in bed watching movies, eating Chinese & laughing together, walking our dogs in woods- all of these moments I didn’t appreciate enough. So now, it’s not the future that’s the scariest thing to me, it’s that I might not have him with me to go through it. It’s not just the little moments, either, that I took for granted. It’s the big moments when he fought for his family or friends and wanted to give so much of himself, just because it’s how much he loves. It’s all the times he worked to make me smile when I was upset.
Maybe I’m not attractive to him anymore. I’ve gained weight, and my skin isn’t pretty the way it used to be. Maybe I’m just boring him to death, and his trip around the country made him see all that he’s missing out on. (He went on a 2 week excursion with his business partners that started a side project they’ve built a music app and rented an RV to do some promoting.)
Is that the answer- I let him go? That’s what you’re supposed to do if you truly love someone. It hurts me to think about, though. I’m aching just imagining him in his new life, without me, and happy. That’s selfish of me, though. I want him to be happy again; as happy as he was when we first met. That just might not include me anymore and I have to accept that.
The worst part is going through it alone. I can’t talk to anyone about this, mostly because I can’t say the words out loud. The most important thing I’ve ever done in my life & I’ve failed at it. It was my one job to be a good wife & I haven’t done that. How do I admit that to someone?
Maybe I admit that to Joe first, and we go from there? But he doesn’t want to talk about it. I walk on eggshells around him now, and don’t want to bring up anything that makes him unhappy. So I’m constantly thinking about this with no one to talk to about it, not even the person who was supposed to be my partner in all things. It’s fear, too, that he won’t deny everything I’m thinking. I want him to say that he loves me and this is just a rough patch and we’ll work through it together like we always do, but what if that isn’t what he says?
Even now, I’m imagining it and I feel crushed. What if he says “I’m sorry, but I stopped loving you. I’m not in love with you anymore and I want us to be apart”? What if he looks at our life, and our families, and our dogs, and our stupid collection of pots and pans and DVDs and blankets, and it’s not worth staying with someone you don’t love anymore?
Wednesday, November 29
“I don’t know if I feel the way about you that I used to.” What does that mean? The answer is simply this: Joe is too gentle to say he doesn’t love me anymore. But he doesn’t say he does love me, either.
This morning when I said it, he said it back, but I told him not to. “What do you want me to say? I’m trying?”
The light at the end of the tunnel is this: I told him that we loved each other once, and maybe we could get back to that place with a little help. He agreed to get the help, so I’ve called every therapist in the area and am waiting for a call back. My mother told me she’d pay for whatever it costs to see someone.
At least he agreed to put in the effort & give it one more try. But that could be because he can’t tell me to my face that it won’t work.
I am hoping beyond all hope that it does work; my whole life depends on this. My value isn’t tied up in Joe; I realize I need to be an independent person again. My happiness isn’t tied up in Joe, either. It’s my contentedness, my sense of safety and support. My motivation to be better and try new things and listen to new music and meet people and make friends and be more considerate and learn to show compassion. That’s what I’ll lose. Not to mention my family- I’ll lose a grandmother and a nephew and siblings; little boys I have grown to love. I know he resents me for a lot of things- Smithtown, quitting my job, being lazy. But these are things I’m trying to fix, so maybe we can be fixed, right?
My mom says that it’s hard to have a relationship when you aren’t around much, and he’s not. Even when he is, he’s on his phone with his music app business, thinking about work, inventing new projects. He’s not really with me, so we’ve fallen into a rut of watching tv, eating macaroni, and pretending grocery trips to Walmart are dates.
I will do anything to fix this, I will. But I can’t think about it now, because I have to smile at my mother when she comes to pick me up.