How long to try when it was (mostly) your fault?

[Rushton]

It's Christmas night and I just felt like posting an update. Sometimes just writing things out helps me feel better.

From all outward appearances, we just had a "nice" family Christmas. My wife cooked a nice dinner on Christmas Eve, we all spent time together as a family (me, wife, and our young kids); wife and I got the kids to bed and then worked together to wrap the Christmas gifts for a couple hours. We were polite, like "friends with kids" or something, I don't know. Inside I was a wreck of emotions, however.

Today we woke from our separate bedrooms when the kids got up early and we all went downstairs to open presents from Santa. She cooked a nice Christmas breakfast. We went to church together and shook hands at "peace" time, as is (now) usual, instead of kissing. We came home, the kids opened more gifts from one another etc. (neither my wife nor I got each other any gifts, for the first time since we were together; we didn't speak about it, it just seemed to be understood). She cooked a nice Christmas dinner. We watched a Christmas film together as a family; she even let herself sit next to me (although still at a good distance) on the sofa while we watched the film; she even brought me a drink of her own initiative when she got up to get one for herself. She was polite and her usual good mother self to our kids.

I did my best to help out around the kitchen, mostly by cleaning up, as usual.

But as is usual now, after the kids were in bed, there was no further interaction between her and I. She made an excuse (maybe true, maybe not) about needing to be upstairs because the youngest (who still sleeps in "her" room) was still awake. And our Christmas ended.

I messed up a couple of times: on Christmas Eve after the gifts were wrapped and we were going to our separate bedrooms, I tried to give her a hug; she let me hug her but kept it "standoffish" like she was sort of tensed up at my touch. Then tonight, when she said goodnight and turned to go, I said "Merry Christmas" and she responded with the same, then I said "I love you" as she turned and walked away without saying anything else.

I sort of regret those mistakes, but part of me doesn't. Most of yesterday and today, I had a strong feeling of sadness and melancholy, feeling that this would be our last Christmas as a married couple, and our last Christmas living together, after 21 Christmases together. After the mistakes I've made, I don't regret telling her that I love her. I don't regret trying to hold her once again.

I have been thinking more and more about agreeing to her suggested terms of divorce from a few months ago -- her getting the house and me getting the retirement accounts -- even if it's not strictly "fair" it's close enough, maybe, at least financially. I'm not sure she could even make that work financially, but if she wants to try, that's up to her.

I just don't think I can do this in-house separation much longer, emotionally. There is no "me" time with children as young as ours. We both pretty much spend all of our time either in our work pursuits (me with a full time job, her with a budding new home-business) or doing stuff with/for the kids. I can't really GAL under these circumstances --- I'd be a better father to my kids with the status quo, but I'm on an emotional roller coaster inside.

I can't see either one of us living like this for the next 10 or 15 years. So I think we must be headed toward a divorce or reconciliation.

But I don't see this in-house separation as helping us move toward reconciliation at all --- it seems to be a very comfortable limbo for her, as she maybe sorts out her options, and I'm just always "there" as the default fallback -- the man around the house to protect her, fix things, provide for her, politely chat at meals, etc., but not one to whom she has to provide any intimacy or emotional connection. I don't think she will ever really "choose" to work on our marriage under these circumstances. I think the in-house separation will almost certainly lead to a slow-burn toward a "good" divorce --- probably better for both of us financially if we stick it out like this for a while, and any number of additional months that we're together I suppose is a good thing for the kids. But with very little chance of a successful reconciliation or long-term marriage.

I don't really want to initiate divorce proceedings myself, because I love her and don't want to divorce.

Agreeing to her divorce proposal from a few months ago, and communicating to her that I'm OK with it if she still wants to initiate the proceedings, seems like a middle ground step to me. I think it would show my acceptance of her decision, and my willingness to end our marriage and go our separate ways. Whether or not she initiates a divorce after that would be up to her.

Our first Christmas together, 21 years ago, we (I, really) saved a piece of our first Christmas tree and made it into an ornament that we've hung on our tree ever since, as a memory of our first Christmas together. We decorate the tree this year and I didn't see how it made its way from the box to the tree, but it was hanging on our tree this Christmas. I believe that one of the kids, who all know what it represents, hung it there. I will save a piece of the tree from this year with the understanding that it very well may be a token of our last Christmas together. When the time comes, I will break that First Christmas Tree piece into two halves and give one to her, to do whatever she wants with, and I will keep one in memory of what we had. I'll give her a piece of the tree from our last Christmas together as well. Perhaps I will fashion them together into an ornament with photos of our beautiful children, as a reminder of how blessed we were to share those years and the creation of those lives.

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I'll end this post with a reflection on the theme of Job (the Biblical Job) in Terrence Malick's film "The Tree of Life" which has been on my mind lately. If you haven't seen the film, I highly recommend it.


"The very moment everything was taken away from Job, he knew it was the Lord who’d taken it away. He turned from the passing shows of time. He sought that which is eternal. Does he alone see God’s hand who sees that He gives? Or does not also the one see God’s hand who sees that He takes away? Or does he alone see God who sees God turn His face towards him? Does not also he see God who sees God turn his back?"

(Father Haynes, The Tree of Life)

"But Job! The moment the Lord took everything away, he did not first say, ‘The Lord took away,’ but first of all he said, ‘The Lord gave.’ ... Job’s soul was not squeezed into silent subjection to the sorrow ... his heart first expanded in thankfulness, that the first thing the loss of everything did was to make him thankful to the Lord that he had given him all the blessings that he now took away from him. . . . [H]is thankfulness was . . . honest, just as honest as the idea of God’s goodness that was now so vivid in his soul. Now he recalled everything the Lord had given, some particular thing with perhaps even more thankfulness than when he had received it; it has not become less beautiful because it had been taken away, nor more beautiful, but was just as beautiful as before, beautiful because the Lord had given it, and what might seem more beautiful to him now was not the gift but God’s goodness."



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Or, as Cormac Mccarthy, through one of his characters put it, "People complain about the bad things that happen to them that they don't deserve. But they seldom mention the good; about what they've done to deserve those things. I don't recall that I ever gave the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me; but he did."