Ciao! Thought I’d check in and get a few things off of my mind. H is still back in KC working on the house after seven months. I was at the end of my patience with it, because I think he often makes decisions that prolong the work on the house rather than move it toward completion, but after spending a week out there in October helping him, I also see that he’s doing a very big job entirely by himself. To a certain extent that too is a problem of his own making, since I am the more social of the two of us and he is disinclined to rely upon anyone who doesn’t belong to that very small class of people who might be called friends for life. I’ve been encouraging him to try to get his brother and a few people he trusts involved in the project, but I am sure he will still end up finishing the house on his own.
The real down side to this is that he feels guilty that it’s taking so long. There are a few people beginning to wonder what is taking him so long, but his guilt has turned it into the idea that everyone is bad mouthing him for being such a burden to me. That’s my H’s MO… make choices that amount to procrastination, so that he feels guilty, then decide everyone hates him because he’s obviously unworthy, resulting in a depression that leads to evading the issue that results in more procrastination . (I read the part of the book about not nagging, so I pretty much keep my mouth shut. What does one do when he does the nagging for me?)
The procrastination part isn’t so hard to accept, if one just decides that he’s a procrastinator who has to go about things in his own way, then one can just plan on the procrastination. At any rate, I do get entirely sick of hearing about how everyone despises him and everyone is out to get him. Occasionally, he can actually joke about everyone being out to get him, but the sad truth is that it really isn’t a joke to him.
There are days when I wonder if I didn’t screw up by trying to save my marriage. It really can be a bummer being married to someone who is depressed, self-critical, paranoid, and won’t be reasoned with. Some nights we sit on the phone for hours while he spins conspiracy theories about the people we know. I spend as much time trying to get him to put it into perspective. It doesn’t matter what points I make, someone is taking something vitally important from him, someone is threatening him, someone is offending him, someone is making his life harder and they’re doing these things as some kind of personal vendetta against him and/or me.
I’m about the only person he believes isn’t out to get him, though I’m problematic in a different way, because I’m not constantly vigilant the way that he is. I am a weak point in our defenses, because I’ll actually talk openly about myself with my family, my friends and even acquaintances. I guess I take the Tsar Alexander the First approach to self-defense … if I give it all away, the enemy will probably figure out there’s nothing there that they want anyway.
Besides that, my husband has accepted lots of other things that I do to threaten our well-being, some are inconsequential in my opinion and some things admittedly are really problematic. I think he came out of our divorce phase with a sense of resignation about the flaws in my character, and I suppose that is a good sign.
Life has been in a holding pattern since I moved to Denver for my job. At first I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to do things that are difficult to do when H is around, like read all night or take a yoga class or go to church on Sundays. But, I also know that going in that direction would not set me in the right mind frame for when he finally does join me here. Besides the fact that I get really philosophical in a way that totally annoys my H when I start spending a lot of time at church, I also wonder how fair is it that I start on my own grand life and make H figure out how to fit in when he gets here – kind of how things started in our relationship when we first met. I really want for this to be our first real opportunity to build something together. To pick a house together, to pick friends together, etc. So, I tread water and am bored a lot.
I think I get way too much time on my hands to think, and way too little positive interaction with my husband to make the marriage seem worthwhile. I anticipate that things will be better when he finally joins me, but his resolve to get the job done seems to be flagging as he gets more guilty, depressed and alienated. It seems that this wears on me more and more, while at the same time I see more and more how important I am to him.
Short version… our relationship doesn’t work to well when we’re apart.
We did celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary at the beginning of the month. Imagine that we’ve been separated by 650 miles for most of seven months. When we’ve been here, we’ve been in the constant company of my parents who don’t really like having our dog around. When we’ve been in KC, we can’t stay at our house (no furnishings, appliances or plumbing) so we are constantly in the company of relatives or working on something – and none of our relatives will let the dog stay with us. So our big anniversary present was to rent a hotel room with a kitchenette that allowed dogs. We cooked dinner, watched television and spent quality time with the dog all in complete privacy. It was so much fun, we were giddy.
Anyway, there’s all of the news. Hope everyone is doing well and taking care of themselves. On that score I have managed to lose a respectable twenty pounds since I moved out here and even managed to get myself back onto the elliptical this week. I love my job. I love the people I work with… I just wish I didn’t have to put myself in a box every night at five. Well, I can always Skype H and find out who’s out to get us today.
MAL: It might make that guy from TX feel a little better to know that I'm still paying for that weekend in VA Beach myself. On the rare occassion I mention it, my H looks at the wall and act as if he didn't even hear me... and I was relatively well-behaved.
