Okay guys. Let me share with you A Day in the Life, in the DB world.
Yesterday, was a great day with my W...art museum, dinner out, great conversdation, shared deep stuff but lots of light heartedness too. My W is suggesting many other trips too so in and of themselves should be great times.
We get a call from her MIL who lives with us in the in-law apt, and she wants to talk to us. So we go see her. She says she wants to move out and needs help economically to do so, and to provide for herself in the future. One of her main reasons to leave is that she couldn't bear to watch our family fracture and it has been killing her.
Now, know that she and my W are so much alike in retreating into their inner shells, not facing stuff head on, and then just exploding in a worldwind of emotion down the road. So, this would have to be handled with exquisite care.
Suprisingly my W takes the lead in suggesting that the issues that plagued her, her entire life are in many cases the same issues that plague her Mom. My W said that her facing of these issues and learning to overcome them are what is helping us in our M and maybe we can apply the same awareness to this sitch. She told her Mom that her Mom isn't really up to date on where our M is, nor its affects on the kids. She said that we are really way much further along and in a much better place than we were before, that we are both fully aware of the others issues, progress, need for time and understand each other very well right now. I just sat back and thought "yeah baby, keep talking".
So then, the floodgates were open in terms of how with the things we all needed to learn about ourselves, and improve on, were preventing many key areas of understanding between us all, and how it affected our quality of life. My W was literally saying that, yeah we all freaked out when the bomb dropped but in the end have managed to get this far without the even larger damage we have seen in other family members sitches. I was thinking, "wow, you do see our strengths now, and that the original horror when the bomb dropped was truly many overreactions by all of us to something brand new and massively challenging".
My W said that we all have a choice here, we can certainly blow this all up or we can sit back, communicate, listen, and come up with new answers. We can and should make a point to stop bottling up things, bring them out in the open and find better solutions. I thought to myself, thank the M gods for her saying this. Early in our bomb days I used to suggest this same thing for us but she wasn't ready to hear it. In fact would tell me I was out of my mind and we had no chance whatsoever.
This conversation gave us all the chance to acknowledge how each of us in our own way and with our own issues made life difficult for the others. And, how we have learned new things and we all got the chance to say how we have learned and can be better as individuals and as family members.
We will see. So much input in a day!
It got me to thinking about something 25yrs said and I have been trying to wrap my mind around it since. It was something along the lines of how in a M, you might think you have some sort of contract with the other but in the end you don't. Kind of like they are their own person and so are you and you don't "own" the other. If the other chooses to leave they certainly have that right.
I struggle with the idea that at least for me, when I married I felt like there was still a me as an individual, but there was also this me/her marriage hybrid person so I took if that this would be the case forever. I guess, with that mindset I innocently took for granted that there would always be an "us".
Somewhere along the many thousands of posts I've seen was her comment along the lines of that there is no contract and you have to earn your M every day. Every day is a gift so handle it as such I think she was saying.
I thinking about it. Do you really take the mindset that every day is just this sole entity, kind of like completely living in the now? Do you not take comfort in being married as a sense of how nice this is to know that you have melded with this person for life? Or, is that too possesive? Should you just take every day, make the most of it, and do the highest and best things you can do? Does this all apply in a M?
The other thing I have been thinking about is that I keep reading people here post about "piecing". What is that about? I dont recall it in the DB book but maybe I should go back and look again. Can anyone explain it, or direct me where to find it? Is this what is happening to my M now?
