Just put some things down...very very very rough draft


I am appreciative of the effort you have put in over the years at growing and tending to your business as a means to provide a beautiful home for our family. I am grateful for the fact that you working as hard as you do affords me the luxury of staying home with our children. I am honored to have one of the best if not the best yards in our town and probably surrounding area. I take pride in knowing that my husband is able to and does care for the outside appearance of our home making it a welcome place for gatherings of family and friends and often both. I feel lucky to have a husband that is smart enough with finances that our children do not have to go without but still learn the discipline of waiting for and/or earning the luxuries they have. I am proud, honored, grateful… that your efforts at providing a good life for our family allows us to entertain without wondering how we will pay for the food, that we can take annual vacations that don’t put us in debt. I am grateful and lucky in so many areas that it saddens me to feel the emptiness that I do when it comes to our marriage and ultimately our family.

The distance growing between us is heartbreaking. These feelings are as you know not new. I tried when we were just dating to accept the fact that we didn’t spend much quality time together because you were busy securing a strong financial future for us. I believed you when you told me the next year would be better because you’d be more secure in your business. When we were getting married I thought that I’d find myself just as busy with our home and children and wouldn’t mind you being so busy with your business. As the years have passed by you’ve become more and more vested in your business…that I still respect and do understand there is now the added pressure of the sole responsibility for the financial stability of our family on your shoulders. Unlike some wives, I have no fear that the phones will get shut off or we’ll have to serve only hot dogs and burgers at our next cook out because we can’t afford steak and chicken. I don’t worry that our children won’t be able to participate in extracurricular activities because we need that money to pay the bills. I don’t worry that you’ll gamble away our retirement or the kids savings. There are a lot of things I don’t have to worry about and for that I am again grateful and I know it is YOU who make it so.

Obviously I’m trying to say more here than you are a wonderful provider and maintainer of our home. I’m seriously concerned for our marriage and family. It is not a matter of this week I feel this way or even this season. I know the winter has been hectic with it’s storms but what winter isn’t. The spring will soon come and you’ll be busy with work again until the winter, which again might be busy with snow. It’s not about your business or your very strong work ethic, it’s what it’s always been that those things come first. My complaints are not new to you and maybe that’s why nothing ever changes but now something has to change. I don’t feel connected to you at all and as I said to you three years ago, I don’t know how much longer I can do this (your response then was “well that sucks”) I’ve tried talking to you about our marriage and get nowhere. When I come to you to discuss the state of our marriage you either have nothing to say or you tell me to call a lawyer and put the house up for sale and disrupt the kids lives. I feel very stuck. I’ve tried many ways over the years to ask for what I want and need from our relationship. I’ve tried to give you what you want when you are wiling to let me know what that is. I asked you if you would want for either of our children to end up in a marriage like ours and you agreed that you wouldn’t and yet don’t seem to want to do anything to create a marriage you wouldn’t mind your kids choosing for themselves one day. I’ve asked for what I want/need repeatedly and repeatedly been given reasons why you wont or it just hasn’t happened. Just last January (after you chose to go to see the Pat’s play for the weekend) you told me this (2007) was going to be the year that things would be different when you were going to step up to the plate (not the exact words you used but the point), I don’t feel like that happened.

I don’t want our marriage to be over but I feel like it is. I don’t know what I thought was going to change after our separation but if anything changed it was for the worse not the better. I’m not writing to you to attack you or put this all on your lap I’m writing to you because I feel like I’m at my wits end. I have tried making suggestions like a date night each week, I’ve tried to keep myself busy in hopes that maybe my being busy would peek your interest. I don’t feel like I’ve been met with honesty from you. If you are still not happy in this marriage then it’s not fair to choose to just accept that it’s your cross to bear…it’s not just about you there are other people involved in this marriage (meaning our children).

I think our kids deserve to have a whole family. A whole family to me is not just having mom and dad still married and living under the same roof. It’s having a mom and dad who still make the time to spend with each other, who still laugh together, who are friends and can deal with issues as a team.