There's no doubt in my mind that the anxiety Donna feels about me is justified. I've given her plenty of reasons to mistrust me and put her guard up. Having her mistrust and anger aimed squarely at my nuts has certainly done enough to build a few barriers on my side of the equation too.
That's all well and good when it comes to blame-placing and finger-pointing but doesn't do us much good in the world of everyday, you know, actually getting along and trusting each other. Sometimes all the years of jabbing with one hand and blocking with the other make it just plain hard for us to even muster a civil amount of decorum, let alone intimacy. It's a strange dynamic given the fact that we are both widely regarded as personable, easy-going, charismatic people.
So what's the solution? How do we both take the gloves off and stop playing defense with our fragile, damaged emotions? Playing nice gets us by on any given day, but it's just that... playing. The best coping we've come up with so far is just to ignore the hurt for a few days or weeks at a time while we grit our teeth and smile. But that only works for a little while. Eventually, it stacks up and one of us does something to let the other know that we're hurting. Something, anything at all to say, "hey, this still isn't resolved and no amount of pretending will make me as happy as I want to be."
For this round, we seem to have gotten it out of our system but what happens when the bell rings and the next round starts?
Filed under - MarriageSomeone once told me, "Don't just take the gloves off. Step completely out of the ring." I've tried it and it works. When there's no one for my husband to fight with, the fighting stops. It took some getting used to because I'm not generally one to turn away but the more I did it, the more naturally it came and now I can walk away from any situation which I know I'm not going to be able to change. I've said I'm sorry. I've proven I'm sorry. That's all I can do.
I haven't ever been in your situation, well no one's ever been in your exact situation...but:
Talking about it is the only thing that works for us. Honesty about your feelings, perceptions, needs, wants. You can assume you know what the other person is thinking and feeling and after so many years together you may be right in your assumptions. But you might not be. Give each other a chance to talk about it often and it will get easier.
If you tend to use "You do this" or "You don't do that" openers, try "I feel that..." or "I understand it like this..."
This all sounds so simple; I don't mean to imply you haven't tried this all before. But something's not working.
Just curious: What's going to keep you together if you don't want put forth the effort to communicate honestly? Isn't that intimacy on the most basic level?
Good luck. And try hard.
Pete, why are you two still married?
Unless your posts are the equivalent of electronic abdominal crunches--that is, you're just working everything out on the screen--life really is too short to suffer the way you make it sound.
I'm telling you, marriage is hard, but not THAT hard. I can say this because it took me about 30 years to figure it out. If you have to work so hard at something, there is no time or space to lighten up--ever.
So work at it, try to be happy, bend for each other, but good god, get out if you can't make it worth doing.
My ever-so-humble opinion.
There certainly are days when I ask myself that. I'm sure Donna does as well. Being married to me presents its challenges for her too, without a doubt.
On the other hand, there are days when the answer to the question is obvious. When things are peachy-keen, they are magical.
Plus, there is the element that you mentioned. That what you, the reader, see is just a snapshot of the whole picture. I tend to write about the things that are most pressing to me and, as a result, all the writing comes out skewed towards the dramatic.
This spoke to me though, "If you have to work so hard at something, there is no time or space to lighten up--ever." Sometimes, it is so much work that we don't have anything left to give anyone and everyone suffers for it.
That's a long answer to a short question.
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seems that if you really want that intimacy you keep talking about, you can't play defense at all.
i've never gotten anywhere with my partner by keeping myself at a safe distance. this made some of our fights pretty spectacular - we live in portland; i think you could have seen lights on the horizon.. in tillamook.
we've been together over ten years. it's been stormy at times. but all the edges of our arguments have smoothed edges now. they're so familiar, we know the terrain of every one. so even though our emotions are still in it, the hurt is mostly gone. the landscape has changed, evened out, worn down.
take off the gloves and give up the anger. anger is only protecting you from real pain, and you have to feel that pain, over and over and over, to get used to it. not to make it less, not to make it better. just to get used to being in pain. being in love is exactly like being in pain, because you are exposed - all the time.
and it's just as great and as terrible as it sounds.