Hopeless?

What do you do when your supposed partner in life refused to, well...PARTNER with you?

I've been in counseling for a few months, since a big blow up with P back in May or June. During this fight, I fell to the lowest of my lows, wanting life to just end. I decided that something had to change, for real, this time. I had to create some distance, because I couldn't-- I wouldn't survive like this.

My counselor suggested that I write a letter to P describing why I had decided this distance was necessary, what I was feeling that drove me there. For the past few weeks, having finally gotten the chance to do so, I began writing this letter. I explained that I know he thinks I've changed, but that the reason lies in the troubles we've had. That I don't feel loved and because he outright refuses to give me what I've asked for to feel loved, that I can't leave myself open to hope for us. It hurts too much.

Since making the choice to create distance, I basically just put all my feelings on shut-down. Whenever I'm hurt, I ignore it. Whenever, I wish he would say he loves me, I ignore it. Whenever he says he hates a show I'm watching, when he says my outfit would look better with different pants, when he says hates the friend I'm talking to or about to meet, when he says he doesn't like something I do, I just swallow it. Because what's the point? This marriage is clearly not for my benefit, so why fight that? It's too hard.

Not surprisingly, things have been better between us. P has been more affectionate, even nicer. The problem is that he wants intimacy. It's been hard to ignore the feeling that despite me getting absolutely nothing in the way of emotional support, the love I so desperately need, he keeps demanding of me more and more. But I give in. When he asks, I give in. Because I know he needs it, and I can't stand the fighting.

The past few weeks, I've been waking up 3, 4, even more times a night. I think it's all just getting to me, and when P asked me once what was wrong, I said "nothing" and I cried myself to sleep without him knowing. I've been so exhausted. Last night, I went to bed at 8:30, but at 11, I woke to P trying to "start" with me. I made a disapproving noise and gently tried to push him off. He refused to listen, and kept going. At this point, after giving in so many times, giving my body to someone who makes me sick and makes me hate my life, to someone who has said he loves me just twice in the past 6 months, I was angry. I said, "STOP!" He got up and slept on the couch.

Today, he sent me a list we had agreed to work on--a list of 10 things the other can do to make us feel loved. One item: sex. With the one item was 3 paragraphs on why he feels neglected in our marriage because of the lack of sex in our marriage. Rather than getting angry, I asked that he send me the rest of his 9 items, because we had agreed to write 10. He said there was nothing else I could do to make him happy.

So what do I do? How do I answer that? Hasn't he now made it impossible for me? I was starting to feel better and now I feel hopeless again. Week after week, I try to tell myself I'm strong enough, God will help me, blah blah blah. Bullshit after bullshit. But when this is his response, what am I supposed to do?

Dream Man

After a few drinks with a good girlfriend, I'm sitting at a bar to enjoy some solitude with my thoughts when a tall, handsome man approaches me. He has a genuine smile and that "good guy" vibe that disarms my usual aversion to conversations initiated by strangers. We end up sharing some sushi and a long conversation, when I realize that we've progressed to a point where I need to tell him that I'm married. I have a kid. 

After what seems like the longest awkward silence in history, I tell him. The disappointment in his face confirms my intuition that there was something happening here. We talk about P and why I'm there, sitting alone. How unhappy I am. How alone I am. But in the end, he purses his lips and bids me goodbye. He walks out of the restaurant, leaving me to again stew in my thoughts. I feel a familiar heaviness on my heart, grieving what life is as well as what my life could have, should have, been. I'm thinking about how my reality is so full of sadness, loneliness, resentment. It feels like my dream life walked out with this man I had just met. "Why couldn't we have met sooner?" I resign myself again (for the thousandth time) to the reality that is and try to put these dreams away at the back of my mind, when the stranger (who didn't seem like a stranger at all) comes marching back in.He grabs me by the wrist and takes me outside. The street is dark but pleasant with an orange glow from the streetlights. It doesn't feel that late but I know it must be. Suddenly he draws close and plants a passionate kiss on me. It's not lust that drives him but love. It sounds ridiculous, but I know it to be true. The way he looked at me across the table, held my hand, listened intently, smiled with his whole being, I know that he feels the way I do: this is my soul mate. I'm crying now. I'm so thankful to have met him but pained knowing we can never be together. 

He says he think I'm being abused and wants to hire a private investigator. He wants to help me out of my marriage. Not so he can have me but so that I can be free. He sees that I'm trapped, in a cage. A cage adorned with all the things society tells you that you should want and need, but a cage nonetheless. Deep down I feel an immense sadness that this isn't who I'm married to, who I've built a life with, but the dominant feeling is safety...I feel so safe here. He loves me, cherishes me. He wants to protect me, adore me. This is what's missing from my reality.

No, this didn't actually happen, but some version of it has been haunting my sleep for about a week. Last week, I woke up at 1 am after having this dream with tears streaming down my face. Does he actually exist out there somewhere? Would I want to meet him? Will I ever get to feel that in my life? I was crying out of mourning--mourning for a love that I had always dreamed of but will never have.

I don't mean to over-dramatize my life now. It's not like it's THAT bad. Yes, my pain is real, my stories are real, but lately it's been quiet. Pleasant, even. I've just been extremely depressed having to accept eating crackers for the rest of my life...I've tasted ice cream, pasta, seafood, steak...but I've sentenced myself to a lifetime of crackers.

I don't think I would ever cheat on P, even though these days I secretly wish he would cheat on me so I would have an excuse to get out. But I'm finding myself longing for something more outside of him. Up until now, I longed for more with him, but now I long for a life outside of him. I want more, and it makes me equally scared and sad. Wonder flutters in and out when I see certain men here and there, and it's harmless but the longing inside doesn't feel harmless. Motherhood is unbelievably wonderful, but I envy those who are single, just starting to reach for what they want in life. There's hope left for them where there is none for me.

Hope that Refuses to Die

I keep telling myself that the path to my own peace and happiness is to let go of hope, let go of the idea that anything will change for the better. Holding on to the expectation that things can get better in my marriage is, in my opinion, a root cause for so much of my anguish. Because when things DON'T change and the same situation presents itself over and over again, I'm beyond disappointed. And instead of building up a tolerance for that disappointment, I become more raw with each let down, becoming quicker to anger and despair.

For about 3 weeks or so, I've been testing a combination of remedies for this chronic case of delusional hope (or anxiety/depression, whatever you want to call it). I started taking an anti-anxiety medication prescribed by my OB-GYN that I filled but never took at P's "expert" advice. (He insists medication only hides the problem for now, and all the issues will just come back with a vengeance once off medication.) I've also adopted a philosophy of trying to care a lot less. Combined with weaning off the breast pump and a baby who is growing more and more content and easy (for naps and individual play), it's been a pretty calm, dare I say, pleasant time.

When things are quiet like they are now, I start to doubt myself. If I can change the environment by being quiet myself and holding back, why can't I just keep doing that? Is it all my fault? Is he right about me? But then a situation erupts and I'm reminded again that I don't create this world by myself. So it becomes a waiting game, like staring at a bomb whose timer just reads "soon" instead of a countdown.

Hope also starts to creep its way back in during times like these. Are things really getting better? Is something different this time? Maybe this time it'll stick. Like a stubborn weed, hope insists on sticking around and makes its presence known through an unintended show of affection or endearing thought about P, and I almost feel like I'm betraying myself. Don't be a fool. You can't be happy. It won't last. This is not your life. It's as if while trying to filter it out, collecting only the callouses and bitterness, hope keeps finding it's way back in stealthily, unnoticed until I step back and realize, oh hey...there it is.

But maybe this is the right thing. If I don't look at it so cynically, it's really that I'm trying to find my joy in other places than my marriage. It sounds sad at first, but is this what it's like to learn to not idolize my husband or my marriage? Is all the heartache and pain a result of idolatry, and God is just surgically removing what I had fused to my heart that shouldn't be there? It's true that I had always dreamed that marriage would complete me, fulfill me. And while I can now admit that maybe I rushed into marriage with the wrong person out of pure desperation and fear for what it might mean if this didn't happen, I didn't think I was idolizing him, or marriage, for that matter.

This is a hard path of thought to follow, because to be honest, my faith is so little these days that I no longer find joy in God, in thinking of Him, in singing for/to Him, as I used to. Much like the needling feelings of doubt I felt before getting married, I would rather put God in a box for now, shove Him in the back of my closet, and ignore it for now. It's too painful to look at Him, to talk to Him, to think too deeply. For now, I'd rather live in black and white, and let the dust settle, the wounds heal bit, before looking any closer.

Brick #2: Empty Words

Empty words and gestures are, in my opinion, worse than hurtful ones. To portray one thing on the surface while underneath the distracting perfume and beauty holding a meaning altogether betraying is like finding out the love if your life with whom you've shared a beautiful amazing story together is actually someone who hated you the most and just told you it was all fake.

P is someone who literally cannot see from someone else's perspective. Every act no matter how objectively wrong has a good explanation, usually involving me somehow forcing his hand. When we first started dating, he had been keeping in touch with his ex, which bothered me. After several arguments about it, he finally agreed that he would cut ties with her. One day I found out he had continued talking to her and was actually hiding the fact that they were going to a concert for a favorite band of theirs together. (To this day, this is why I hope Dashboard Confessional dies in a fiery plane crash.) He argued that he had only agreed to cut ties with her because of me, because I made him. Somehow, his lying in making the promise and in hiding his continued relationship with her were both my fault.

Every thoughtful gesture, every kind word, even every apology has been empty.  The other day, he confessed that he didn't actually have a full day of work and had actually spent half the day with his friend who had a few days off before starting a new job. I said I didn't understand why he would hide that. Why do I care if he takes a half day off? He said he thought I would have more to say, that I would be upset. Translation: I lied because of how you would react. I said that I trust him to handle his own job, that I'm more upset about his lying. He never apologized for it. He even makes a joke out of it. Remember when I said I was at work?

The irony is that he was actually let go of by his previous job because of his behavior. HR had found that he and several coworkers had inappropriate relationships, making overtly sexual comments to one another, and they gave him the option of quitting or being fired. I guess to his (teeny tiny) credit, this isn't uncommon, particularly in the sales field, and it was just his coworkers' and his relationship to say stupid things to each other. He had bought a female coworker with whom he was closest with a souvenir tshirt from somewhere and it happened to be too small. Tie that with what was viewed as an inappropriate relationship, HR took this as an intentional, sexually overtoned act. So I guess it would actually be appropriate for me not to trust him at his own job.

If you say something and mean it at the time, albeit with a shallow understanding of what you're saying, and down the line you show that you don't mean it, were those words ever true? P used to tell me that he wanted a marriage where he would "cherish" his wife. Today, the fact that I'm so unhappy, so empty in this marriage means nothing to him. No matter how I feel, it always comes back to how I don't know his heart or how I need help. My sadness holds no meaning to him. My heartbreak goes unseen, unheard, unrecognized. His sight and reach only extend to where his own feelings end. The rest doesn't exist.

About a month ago, after what was maybe our biggest fight ever, I told him that I had no faith anymore, that I hated church. His response was one that would be more appropriate if a stranger had come up to him and said, "I have this hangnail on my finger, and it's really bothering me." He said, " You should look into that and do something about it." It's not that he's wrong. Obviously, I should. But the detachment and utter lack of compassion in his voice and words...he might as well have said, "Sandwich otter windmill."

During the same conversation, I blurted out that I just didn't want to go on living anymore. It's all too painful, and as much as I love my little guy, I felt so unfit to take care of him, to do anything. In response to this and to any thoughts I expressed of how he should just leave me, he brought up our wedding vows, that we had made a covenant. Honestly, this makes me want to laugh. Vows? Covenant? How can you choose only a handful of words out of the millions that have spilled out of your mouth to actually mean something? Looking at our life now, on that very day when we exchanged vows, we might as well have said "Sandwich otter windmill."

Bricks

The long lapse in my posts can be explained by two things:

1. I can't for the life of me find the will or energy to do much for myself outside of sleep since having the baby.
2. There is too much to say and it's all too painful to say.

I'm not even sure who has the address to this blog or who I've shared this with anymore, so I'm worried about revealing more than I should, but the truth is that my life has never been as hard and painful as it has been these last few months. It's somehow true that at the same time, I've never experience the love and joy I have in the last few months either.

Before I got married, there were several key people in my life who warned me of the difficulties that lie ahead if I were to go through with my wedding. My relationship with P has never been easy, but we both chocked it up to a passion that meant the pendulum swung equally far on the love and misery sides of the spectrum. Even when my own pastor told me that he didn't want to officiate our wedding (a mere 10 days before) because he felt I was making a monumental mistake...even when my friends told me that I was fooling myself...even my own skin crawled at the very real possibility that I was committing myself to someone who didn't really love me like I thought he did...even in the face of all of this, I was more afraid at the time of what it would mean if I didn't follow through.

A is now 6 months old, and I've entertained the notion of being a single mom more times that I care to count. My personal bias aside, it seems that my baby's extraordinary cuteness is almost a cruel joke, such a stark betrayal of the reality of the rest of my life. A is such a happy, easy, adorable baby, that the endless "you're so lucky" comments I get help me to at the same time feel so thankful for the gift of my baby and hide from the ugly truth of how unbearable my marriage has become.

The burden of my husband's complete unawareness of his double standards and cruelty are too much for me to bear, and I've committed to building up walls to protect myself. I'm not someone who builds walls easily. I'm an open book, willing to share my life's story with a friend, no matter how new. Even when faced with a betrayal of trust, I usually take it as a sign and lesson that I am not meant to be friends with that person and I move on. But after 6.5 years of learning and relearning this lesson over and over again about P, I think it's finally sinking in.

It wasn't a single act or event that laid the first brick of this wall, but I've been collecting bricks one by one over time. Each hurtful word, each lie, each hypocrisy...a new "thud" to add a brick to the pile.

Brick #1
When we were dating, I knew I loved P very early on. When I jump, I jump with both feet, smile on my face, arms carelessly in the air, and vibrating with excitement and anticipation. But P is very careful and calculating. I used to think this was a sign of thoughtfulness and wisdom. I now see it's only his way of building up a pile of coals to heap on people's heads when they finally prove they're unworthy, as he always suspects people will. Even after finally deciding he wanted to marry me, even after proposing, he still wouldn't say the words. When he asked me if it bothered me that he didn't say them, I confidently (and foolishly) replied that it would bother me if I thought that he didn't. He said that was a good answer. I misinterpreted this to mean that he agreed, that he did love me, but now I think that he meant exactly and ONLY what he said: it was a good answer.

He finally said the words about 2 weeks after our honeymoon, which was 4 weeks after our wedding. That's right. He didn't tell me he loved me at our wedding. He didn't tell me on our wedding night. He didn't even tell me in Hawaii on our honeymoon. But even so, when he finally said it, I felt triumphant. I KNEW IT and finally I had my confirmation.

Another of my mistakes was that I figured it would be easier for him to say it once he "broke the seal." I knew it was always difficult for him to say those words, to anyone, but I thought that somehow, once he started, it would come more easily. We've now been married for 2.5 years and I've heard it fewer than half a dozen times. When we argue, I tell him that this has caused me so much pain and is at the root of a lot of my  resentment towards him. I tell him that all the betrayals I experienced early on due to his relationship (and his hiding it) with his ex come back to me and make me doubt his love for me even more.

P enjoys cooking tremendously, and I admit that since having A 6 months ago, I've cooked maybe 2 or 3 meals. I'm certainly thankful for this and realize that maybe 1% of husbands out there do this. P insists that the cooking he does and all these other acts of service should tell me he loves me. That this should be enough. But the problem with this line of thinking is that even his acts of service come with a cost. It all comes with a cost. During one argument, he stopped washing dishes, cooking, helping me carry the baby to the car. He said it was to prove a point. What point? That he neither cares about me nor about the baby as much as he care about himself, about being right?

When I asked him to try to commit to tell me he loves me maybe once a week, he responded this way: If you want me to say 'I love you,' then act loveable. To me, this feels like something you would find in some universal list of things a human being NEVER says to another. It would fall between "You should just kill yourself" and "You were a mistake." I've felt this way a number of times about things P's said to me. Wow...I can't believe someone would actually say that to someone else's face.

I tried explaining it to him this way: the words are my "first language" and the actions he's doing (which are in HIS comfort zone) are my "second language." Him refusing to speak my first language is the same as if I were to commit to him to give him 10 hugs every day for the rest of our lives but to refuse to ever sleep with him again. It's the same, right? I give him what I'm comfortable with even if it's not what he wants, but it's ok because it's close enough, right?

I've decided that hanging on to the hope that our marriage will get better, that one day he'll show me loves me in ways that I need and crave, have only left me vulnerable to more pain than I know how to bear. Believing in the possibility of change makes me a fool and gives me a false sense of reality. It's keeping me from happiness. The only way to make it out alive is to focus on my baby and accept I will not have the marriage, the love, I always dreamed about. A friend asked me, "But isn't that so sad? How can you live with that?"

It IS sad, but I can't live the way I've been living either.

Sometimes, it's so hard to convince yourself that you're not actually miserably unhappy...

Advice to No One

To Expectant Fathers (none of whom read this blog),

Get over yourself. At least for the 9 months during which your wife carries a bundle inside her that you created together and will soon require even more of her time and energy.

Here are a few things you should know about her experience:

• When your wife does not complain, it doesn't mean she's not struggling. She trying not to be a nag.
• When she doesn't ask you to pick up ice cream at 2am, it does not mean she doesn't want to eat something that's not there. She's trying to let you sleep, or maybe there's something else she needs more.
• When she doesn't ask you for a foot massage, it doesn't mean her feet don't hurt. She just doesn't want to be selfish.
• When she isn't eating heartily, it doesn't mean she's just not in the mood. She's trying to hide the heartburn and distaste.
• When she cleans and does the laundry, it doesn't mean she's got a surge of energy. She's trying to fulfill the role she feels she's supposed to fulfill.
• When she does not complain, it does not mean things are not hard for her. She's wishing you understood that.

Here are a few things you should learn:

• Your child does not develop needs after birth. It has needs now. It needs its mother already, even while it's in utero. Your needs already fell out of #1 priority. Deal with it.
• That said, your wife's body is not at everyone else's disposal. She is already giving her body up to her growing child, which is causing nausea, heartburn, difficulty breathing, phantom itching, discomfort, difficulty sleeping, exhaustion, and headaches. No one cares that you aren't getting enough sex or other physical affection.
• Your firm grip on your money needs to be loosed. Providing a little comfort and relief while your wife carries your child is worth more than the few dollars a month you're saving while being stingy with single degrees of air conditioning.
• Your wife's pregnancy may not be like any other you've heard of or seen on television. All you need to know is that her body is going through things she's never seen it go through before. If she needs it, get/do it. If she says it, it's true.
• Your "plans" for what kind of father/husband you'll be after the birth mean nothing. How you behave now is speaking louder than those promises.
• Even though you're a man and you may not "nest," it is your job to help your wife do it. You are not expected to understand, just to BE understanding.

Here are a few things you should and should not do:

• Rub her feet before she asks you.
• Don't just offer the things you can "do" that are practical. Sometimes she needs things that aren't practical. Ask her what she needs.
• Do the things she asks quickly. Not in your timing.
• Don't complain about what you're not getting. You're supposed to be HER support right now.
• Don't complain about what she's not doing. She is overwhelmed with her own list of to-dos (for you AND the baby).
• Don't compare her now to before she got pregnant. The rules have changed.
• Don't tell her you did something or sacrificed something for her/baby and then make her "pay" for it later. These are necessity. Not bonuses.
• When she asks you to do something, don't do the opposite. It's hardly funny during normal times, and now it's even less funny.