Keep Your Hands Offa My Mojo

[Thinker]

I miss the marriage I want.

Not the one I had or have.

[SmileysPerson]

What does it take to honestly assess the totality of a marriage?

In what @hoosiermama nicely termed the "shock-and-awe" phase of a divorce, of course being married was the Greatest Thing Evah, and we want her/him back "so much," and why-o-why did it go wrong, and whatever can I do to save the marriage, and I'm married until I'm dead, and this is wrong, it's all wrong, it will forever be wrong, because he/she just can't see what a wonderful, stupendously super thing our marriage was, except for those things that I did that chased her/him away, but I'll GAL and 180 and assess and fix those and be the man/woman only a fool would leave, and then it's over to the Piecing boards and Hoorah!

But like everything else, that doesn't last. It doesn't last, IMO, for two reasons -- first, because it's false; second, because we are creatures of survival. With respect to the latter, this means we adapt. We come-to-grips-with. We adjust. We move on.

But it's the former I'm interested in today. Can one honestly assess a marriage in the midst of the divorce (-busting) process? The WAS is always "fogged out" -- d'uh. But isn't it within the realm of possibility that, in his or her own way, the LBS is all fogged out, too? That the noble ambition of preserving marriage, that the grit and determination shown by many an LBS, respectable as it is, is misbegotten? That s/he is simply swimming against the tide in spite of all evidence to the contrary?

And here I don't mean "evidence" that WAS is walking-away. Again -- d'uh. I mean evidence, belief, feeling that the marriage was not, in fact, everything LBS makes it out to be in the midst of The Process. That LBS is fighting to save merely a version -- and a conveniently constructed version at that -- of the marriage, the marriage LBS wants to save and not the marriage LBS actually had.

We say, "Wow, what a 2x4 that was! What a wake-up call! Now I know what I had!"

Really? What if you had exactly what you thought you had, what if "who you were in the marriage" was in fact exactly who you are -- and the presumptive wake-up call was really not a wake-up call at all? What if you're simply gilding the lilly?

MWD writes -- and more power to her for honesty -- in the first chapter of the book that not only is it the case that not every marriage can be saved, not every marriage should be saved. And though one is tempted to hedge and say, "Well, of course not, but that's really limited to abuse or addiction or whatever," I'm not sure that's correct.

Maybe it is, in fact, the case that not every marriage can or should be saved. Maybe, just maybe, if LBS was completely honest with her-/himself, That Marriage would take on quite a different hue.

I write this because this is what I'm thinking about these days. Of course, I'm a bit fogged-out myself, but this line of thought started early on my path, and I've just been suppressing and ignoring it and pretending it wasn't there. But it leaps out at me now, again and again, in past journal entries.

What was I really trying to do? Save a marriage or convince myself that my marriage was worth saving? That I wanted to save it? Now that she's making some tentative noises that suggest she's having, if not second thoughts, then perhaps first-and-a-half thoughts, I'm looking at WAW quite differently.

This was the woman who not only took ZERO interest in my work -- not even the superficial level of interest you take with the letter carrier ("Hey, Charlie, how's work going?") -- she actively demeaned it. This was the woman who, rather than take family vacations or getaway vacations with me, demanded time and again to be able to "get some space and hang out with girlfriends" -- in Asia, Europe, Alaska, and on the-gods-know-how-many "girls' weekends" across these United States. Who couldn't get back to work fast enough after my return from Iraq, lest she have to spend any more time with the kids (or me) -- I was back on a Friday, and she was in the office on Monday. And, I remind myself, the woman with whom I had sex perhaps a dozen times in the last 3 years, and then only subject to ruthlessly enforced limits and ruthlessly invoked demands ("would you finish already!").

So I'm wondering, in a kind of macro-philosophical sense, when and where the image-creation starts and stops. Which is the more honest assessment -- the one at the start of The Process or the one much later? Surely it's the case that this varies from person-to-person.

@Thinker wrote he misses the marriage he wants. And I can certainly relate to that statement.

Dangerous as it is -- apostate that I am, perhaps -- I think I'm at the point now where I'm willing to admit that, much as I might miss the marriage I want, WAW is not the woman to make that marriage with me.

The Walkaway is fogged out, lost in the fantasy, especially when OP is involved, eh?

Isn't it possible -- equally possible -- that LBS is just as lost in a fantasy?

[gucci loafer]

paralysis by analysis

[hoosiermama]

Isn't it possible -- equally possible -- that LBS is just as lost in a fantasy?

Oh, absolutely SP. ALL of this is part of the process. The "process" being GRIEF. Grief over what was, what we wanted, what we dreamed, what we lost and what we thought we lost. Grief over our self-image, or children's pain, our future or what we thought our future would be. Grief when we see elderly couples holding hands because that won't be us. Grief that hits when we least expect it about the most unanticipated things.

Getting thru this sucky-but-healing-and-necessary process ultimately makes us who we are, who we will be. Processing all this stuff--which is what you're doing--is part of grief, part of transforming it from crisis to an "afog" (another f*cking opportunity for growth). Think sausage--an ideal example of processed food--not pretty to watch happening, but dang tasty once it's complete.

Our perceptions of what our marriage was really like vary depending upon which stage of sausage-making we are in. And ultimately our decision can't be whole until we get to the point of "acceptance" (God, I hate that term)--until we're really okay either way. And until we're there for awhile , because this is a very dynamic process.

So yeah, gotta be zen-like and just be with all of this, continue to generate mojo and figure out who we are as SP and not SP-and-Mrs. SP. Flashes of wisdom thruout, also flashes of pure terror and confusion. But it's the only way out of the fog.

[june72]

After 14 months post-bomb, I ask myself, what is so amazing about him? He's not worth this, etc. It's a phase I have.
For me, given a very different situation then yours, it's still worth it. And the kids will always be worth it.

But if I have to look at the marraige as it was pre-bomb... it was pretty crappy. So obviously I do not want to go back to that marriage but to a better one with my hubby. (If that will ever happen)

But, and I hate to do this, to quote the character Claire from the tv show Heroes; "50% of marriages end in divorce... but how many of the remaining 50% in their marriages are actually happy?"

Gets you thinking.

[SmileysPerson]

Now this "paralysis by analysis" thing @gucci whipped out is clever, but may be simply an example of a different kind of avoidance behavior. "Just because it feels right doesn't mean it's the right thing to do" - how many times does one encounter that bit of DB wisdom? So who's to say that it only operates in one direction? Isn't it equally possible that just because reconciling "feels" right - huzzah my marriage is saved - that in the grand scheme of things it isn't right? How often does one see a "sad to be back" thread?

[billclay18]

No, apparently to WAW a marriage is binary. It's either perfect or it's a catastrophe; you're either matched or you're doomed; you either see everything the same way or you're polar opposites.

You could not have explained it any better!

[orangedog]

Typing on the tiny.

Sp. Yes I agree lbs can get caught up in the fog and mission of dbing. But weren't you already past this? Hadn't you already admitted yourself dead under the speir's doctrine? Hadn't you seen that until a soldier was dead he couldn't fully function as one.

Do you want to know why you hid in that ditch back there? Because it takes a while to climb out. It's difficult and not something we can do in one day but only in stages.

Only when you get the clarity of dropping your mission ( empty mind ) can you see what is really in front of you. That my friend is the real work.

Odog still struggles and still has plenty of work too.

[hoosiermama]

No, apparently to WAW a marriage is binary. It's either perfect or it's a catastrophe; you're either matched or you're doomed; you either see everything the same way or you're polar opposites.

You could not have explained it any better!

Just one of the many thinking errors of the WAS--and the LBS in crisis, and for that matter, most of us in crisis. Binary/dichotomous thinking, catastrophizing, overgeneralizing, mental filtering to see ONLY the negative, jumping to conclusions, minimizing/maximizing in perception, emotional thinking, labelling, blaming, focusing on what one can't control, personalizing. Cognitive errors that lead us to make mistake after mistake because they control our perceptions and make us wear dark glasses 24/7. Sound familiar to anyone?

[hoosiermama]

Here's an interesting viewpoint:
http://www.thirdage.com/today/dating/part-ii-trying-to-get-over-someone