I feel the need to share something; something I’m not proud of but which has been so helpful to me that I confess it here. I’m probably going to say this badly. Please forgive my stumbling. Just know that it comes from my heart. I go back and read some of my older posts and I hear a woman who is bitter and angry with her h. One who, in spite of efforts to the contrary, still was laying blame at his feet for our troubles. Frankly, those posts are embarrassing now.
Turnaround happened when I realized I had to give all that up. Hurt and frustration were blinding me. I realized something about myself that I found distasteful. I was wanting my h to feel some sense of contrition, to see his role in all this the way I saw it. I wanted him to change his ways because of a realization of how badly he had been treating me. I wanted him to feel bad about it. I took a long hard, painful look at myself and did some serious, heartfelt thinking about whether there was any real benefit or hope of long-term future change in trying to achieve this. Was this what I really did want? The answer was no.
I wanted our loving marriage back. I couldn’t feel so bad about what was happening in our relationship if I didn’t love him as much as I did. More than anything else I wanted him to know how much I loved him. I wanted to really know how he felt about me and if he had the same desires I did for our marriage. That’s where I started the conversation we had a few weeks ago. I was scared to death….foolishly, I might add. From there the conversation took its own course.
I am so much back in love with my husband, even more than when we first married. Sexual desire? Not a problem anymore; no extraordinary measures needed to have sex. It all comes as easily and naturally as I remember it from many years ago. We’re back to looking at each other through eyes which really see each other as that person we love. I no longer see him as the person my earlier deluded mind saw.
My husband is the same person he was before our conversation. His behavior isn’t that much different. But I see the love now, not so much because he made dramatic changes but because I changed the way I looked at him. There are selfish, uncaring people out there, but my spouse isn’t one of them. I have always seen him treating others with selflessness and sincere concern. Why would I think he wished to treat me any differently than the way he treated people whom he hadn’t pledged to live his life with? (Because I'm the slow kid in class. Okay, I admit it! Michelle was right. [That reference is to an earlier post. But I'm slow, so I don't know how to link posts.])
That conversation, in which we truly looked at each other again, has done more for me than a year of individual therapy, antidepressants, couples therapy (which btw left me thinking my h only married me because he didn’t think anyone else would come along!), or anything else I had tried. I had to reconnect myself with the profound love and care I had for my friend and lover of so many years. I had to see him as he really was rather than the image I had created of him.
I freely admit that I am a woman in love and my image of my husband is probably just as delusional now. But if so, I like this delusion so much better!
I don’t think it matters if you are the sex-starved spouse, or the emotional-support-starved spouse, or the I-need-someone-else-to-balance-the-checkbook-sometimes-starved spouse! It matters that you want to reconnect with your spouse in whatever way it takes.
In hindsight (which is 20-20, I know), all of this with my h had little to do with how much sex, how much emotional support, how much whatever. It had everything to do with how much I loved him and how much more I wanted to fully experience that love rather than hang onto my sense of being wronged. It was only then that I could really move forward and talk to my husband from the depths of my heart.
I’m not saying this very well. Nopkins and Michelle say it better and shorter in Corri’s Diving In post.
Michelle was right. [That reference is to an earlier post. But I'm slow, so I don't know how to link posts.])
