The day before my youngest sons 4th birthday my wife sits up in bed, says we need to talk. I ask her about the spike matt that she is leaning against and offer to massage her. She says no, we need to talk first.
As you can guess this is the point that a chill runs down my spine. I sit up straight near the other edge of our bed and say: "ookay? What's wrong?"
I could try really hard here to remember the exact words back and forth, but it's been almost a month since then so I'll bring up the highlights: 1, "I have been miserable a long time and I think you have too." I agree, she's been hiding behind her phone on the couch and screaming at the kids, getting headaches from our youngests constant screaming. I've been trying to give her space from the kids and inadvertantly from me even though I would have been in her face and cheering her up before the kids were born. She loves our kids, but she told me when she started working as a preescool teacher that she needed peace and quiet when she got home. 2, "We need to separate. I saw my parents hate each other as they moved to separate bedrooms. I don't want that for us" I conversely have the opposite experience, my parents got double booked into the same apartment and fell in love by simply being near each other. Less than a year even. My parents divorced because mom was dying and dad asked her to help him get a new spouse. This is relevant, but we'll get to that. 3, "I love you but I'm not in love with you and I know the same to be true for you." To which I responded that I wasn't sure what 'in love' meant but I was absolutely certain that I LOVE HER. Yes, I was fairly annoyed at the third point. It still feels like a nonsense statement a month later. I find it difficult to separate love from in love personally. 4, "I don't feel attractive anymore" obviously I had neglected our love like I'd been neglecting her plants. By overwatering and underwatering them on alternate weeks. 5, we had gotten too comfortable around each other and we needed to separate to find ourselves without the other. To grow as people. Almost all of that sounds good. The only thing I don't like is the separation. 6, I agreed with her that things weren't good and maybe she needed a quiet place away from the kids screaming and I sort of fell in a heap crying on my side. Yeah.... Not my proudest moment there. 7, She asked me as she was done; "David, why aren't you fighting this?" Suddenly my hope for the future was re-lit! She WANTED me to fight for her love. I would be in charge of fixing our emotional distance. She wanted me to pursue her. I could do this! (emotionally exhausted and not thinking straight and quite frankly the reason I wasn't fighting was because she'd given me an ultimatum a month or so earlier that I hadn't done anything about. It was still on my to do list. So I felt I'd been forewarned even if it came as a shock)
I hid my phone from her and started looking for ways to reconnect when married with kids. Found the wikihow of to make your wife feel attractive: compliments, gifts, acts of service, touching her back whenever remotely appropriate, and so on.
The next day i gave her compliments, tried to do everything around the house, didn't say I loved her, because I was confused about her definitions of love.
By the end of the day she wanted a footrubb. Glorious, I thought, we're meeting halfway. I stuck to footrubbs, massages and clicking of backs. Seemed to be working out fairly well for a few days, until she was sms:ing her "happily divorced workmate", current best friend and future flatmate.
She looked up from the phone, saw me rubbing her (as shed asked me to do a few minutes earlier) glanced briefly at her phone again, pouted and pulled her foot away.
A day went by and we didn't even hug anymore. So I started my campaign of "accidental" touches. To make her feel attractive. After a week or so she seemed happier in general, so I felt encouraged. A week later again she told me that she would have liked to work things out between us but that she felt disgust whenever we touched.
A week has gone by since then and I've not touched her. But suddenly she asks for a footrubb.
I feel so confused. She tells me that she wishes that she could stay, because we could live in separate rooms. Financially we could still support each other and life would be easier. But the easy descision isn't nessecarily the right one and now that she is seeing improvements in the house and in my physical appearance (I'm wearing dress-shirts when I go working at preschools now. Impractical as heck but I'd rather loose shirts than her.) it would be even easier, but the feelings are gone and the is NO WAY that they're coming back. You can't force love! To me though, love is a choice. To be with someone in good times AND in bad even when your dreams are shattered you have someone to walk that life with that can depend on your support and you on theirs.
Looking back there is one thing that she has been asking of me that I cannot fix. I can no longer try to initiate sex or romance. I wish I could, but she won't let me.
