Sometimes you reach a point where you look back over your life and wonder what the hell happened. Personally, I have not been completely content for quite some time. Is anyone? But it wasn’t until four months ago that I truly saw myself for what I had become and my life for what it is. It’s not a pretty picture.
The same thing that has left me quietly dissatisfied for several years is also the thing that brought me to my knees a few months ago. It is my marriage relationship. I’ve longed for the kind of friendship and closeness that we felt in our early years, but it continues to escape my grasp. While I was already unhappy about this, it wasn’t until I realized that my husband was giving that friendship and closeness to someone else that I hit rock bottom.
He’ll tell you he’s done nothing wrong, you see, because he claims not to have romantic feelings for this other woman. In fact, he hasn’t met her in person but has talked with her online, via text and telephone. The fact that he has spent more time interacting with her than he has with me – his wife, for God’s sake – in recent months apparently has no bearing on the rightness or wrongness of his behavior. Evidently his moral compass allows him to develop a “very close emotional” relationship with another woman, as he put it, while his relationship at home withers.
What I saw in myself was someone more needy than I would ever want to be. Without feeling secure that I am the most important person to my husband, I literally wanted to die. I felt like I would die for several days after he told me that he was now “very emotionally close” to another woman. I felt like I could not get enough oxygen. I felt like my heart was under unusual strain. In a nutshell, my heart and lungs physically hurt in proportion to my emotional pain.
I prayed that God would just strike me down. I couldn’t imagine going on in a world where I wasn’t loved by my husband. I couldn’t sleep or eat. I lay awake at night thinking about all the ways I could die and considering options for taking it into my own hands. The only thing that stopped me was what it would do to my children. It was hard for me to think of anything but my pain at first, but thankfully, the love I share with them was able to shine a light through the cracks in my wreckage.
I was shocked by my reaction. Obviously, this wasn’t a happy development, but I never thought I would feel my life wasn’t worth living just because someone – even my husband – didn’t love me. For the record, he never told me he didn’t love me. I base that on my observations of his choices.
I am sitting here three months after the initial bombshell. I have gone round and round wondering if this marriage can be repaired and if that is what I want.
Is this marriage something worth fighting for? Is it too far gone?
My happiness is definitely something worth fighting for.
Click “blog” to follow along as I muddle through this valley with hope of finding my way out, one way or another.
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