So yesterday I had a real conversation with my W about saving our marriage -- I think the first such conversation in 7 months. I think part of what enabled the conversation to happen is that I intentionally sustained direct eye contact much longer than I usually do. Not staring, but eye contact that seeks an emotional connection.
"Do you want to tell me something?" she asked. I talked about wanting to save our marriage, using our energy to do that rather than divorce mediation. She has the idea that she will continue to have a relationship with me after a divorce, and I kept pointing out that when people love each other they work out the problems because they love each other, that this is the "for worse" part. She wondered why I stopped asking about what was going on in her life. I said just seeing and being with her is emotionally painful and being focused on the events in her life is not what I am most interested in -- though I want to know everything there -- but what I do want to focus on is how to work out our issues together, using the time we have had separate lives as a source of discovery so we can have a better marriage.
She kept saying she had been consistent is closing the door but I think she began to hear me standing up for our marriage in a way she had not anticipated nor heard the same way before.
I assert a conviction that we can do this and we do not need to divorce...I believe in us doing this, strongly. I think she is taken aback by that because I am not fitting the scenario in her head about how I am supposed to be acting.
The conversation felt real and perhaps moved her a bit to re-think and re-assess if her "consistent" path is the right one for her. It felt like we had an emotional connection in the conversation.
I don't expect this is as larger than it is, but hope won a little bit yesterday, and perhaps step by step, stone by stone, we can build a bridge to each other, slowly, care-fully.
