The Marriage Map is good because it comforts us by letting us know that almost every marriage goes through these stages:
1: Head Over Heels 2: What Was I Thinking 3: If Only THEY Would Change 4: Oh, That's Just the Way THEY Are 5: Home, At Last...
Where have I been on the map?
I believe that in the first six months of my R that we had passion. We stayed up late, drinking beer, playing cards, watching Rush Limbaugh and making fun of the guy. H made me LAUGH!!! H was adorably funny, admirably strong and had a quality of pride that I'd never encountered in my own family. H's world was black and white, whereas mine was always some shade of gray. H met me at a concert once and the passion was not something we even cared to contain. It was awesome.
Then enter "What Was I Thinking", but I knew what I was thinking. I was thinking we could overcome our differences, our problems, but I never consciously, directly or honestly tried to overcome anything. I thought we'd just stick it out. I thought "this guy's a GOOD man, he cares about me and seems to have a really big problem with me trying to break up with him, so he must love me. Right? We got married in this Stage.
Then, the dreaded "If Only THEY Would Change". H was depressed and used alcohol to "calm the beast". From my point of view all it did was let the beast out more. I think the core of the problem here was with my infidelities. Everytime I brought up drinking, H brought up my past betrayals. We weren't getting anywhere with that. We just shoved it as far under the carpet as we could. In this stage we had our first child. Having a child catapulted us into living separate lives. Me the Mommy (silently praying the hurts would heal themselves, that H would seek treatment, and that I would be forgiven and released from the responsibility H gave my infidelities for his drinking problem). At some point I figured that H would not change for me, and that I had to change in order to stop feeling so cruddy. I changed in the wrong direction... I got more and more distant until our M was like a ghost in our lives.
We're here now, still. Sort of. We've discovered that it is we who must change, however I believe we are still looking to each other to be the catalyst or the reason for change.
Where would I like to be? Yeah, Stage 4 sounds really nice. We are faced with figuring out WHO we are and communicating that to each other so we both feel loving and accepting.
(I was going to write "loved and accepted", but that's incorrect because I know H loves me and I know I accept H, but I don't think H feels loved and I know I don't feel accepted.)
