The Husband said something in recent weeks that makes sense: (a) he has no one to talk to, which is very very true. There is nobody. And (b) for the last two years, people have only wanted to talk about his Marriage, not his Hurt.
I am ALL ABOUT talking about my marriage - it's the most important thing to me. But it's not the most important thing to him, to be honest. He lost his whole Life, his Purpose, his Friends, his Reputation, his (perceived?) ability to Provide and Protect, and Nobody has come alongside him in Stepford to walk this long road.
He is coming undone, off and on, after years of the same. He has nothing to give to anyone (except to the kids), and feels like he's losing his mind and his faith, along with his life. It's the Loss trifecta.
Yes, sure, I selfishly think it's been cruel and sinful - the physical/emotional freezing out of me by him, pre- and post-affair, I am ready to come undone over that point alone. But this post isn't about me today. (shocker, I know) And as I've spelled out before, ad nauseum: he has his reasons. I've been an abusive spouse. But the affair (his part, my part, the aftermath) complicates the 'black & white' of it all.
The Husband has often thought that God must be waiting for him to get something, or solve some spiritual Rubik's Cube - that he simply does not have the strength to do, and cannot understand - before God will move/encourage him/change his circumstances.
And, honestly, between you and me, and at the risk of sounding like the Total Fcuking Center of the Universe: I do sometimes wonder if the lack of effort/focus toward the Wife and Marriage Relationship plays any part of his lack of Restoration in other areas. Is it 1Peter that says something about how you treat your wife affecting your prayer life? Plus the whole your-body-is-not-your-own stuff, etc. from Corinthians.
BUT.
BUT: I realize that I may likely be extrapolating out of my self-centeredness here. That's just me me me, want want want, take take take- which is how The Husband views me, and has said so. And at this desperate point for me, is certainly the case.
BUT.
He has no one to talk to, and that still remains true. And moreso now, two years later. No friends, no phone calls, silence. He falls frequently into a pit that gets deeper with no one offering a hand that doesn't point back to me, what he did, and Fixing the Marriage above all else. No one else is in this house to see him slowly dying from the hurt. Losing his mind from the stress. Falling down in his continued, never-ending pain. A succession of days go by with no change. Day after day after day. He is coming apart with nowhere to put it. He can't sleep. He has mysterious aches and pains. He keeps a headcold/sinus infection that flares about once a month. This from the Artist Formerly Known as the Picture of Health.
We both have our Falling Down days, and then somehow live to crawl the next inch.
He was reading a book a few months ago, Rebuilding Your Broken World, that made this point: that if the church/community doesn't offer grace, restoration cannot occur. I understand that, but don't believe the church/community is bigger than God, who can do anything no matter what the world does.
And although He's not come through yet, I still hold up my tee-tiny Bic lighter in this darkened concert venue in my -albeit faltering- hope that God, the Ultimate Rockstar Savior, will come back for an encore performance. But my husband holds onto this book's point as The Reason (or one of them) that his World Will Not Be Restored.
He's in no shape for marriage counseling (as so many people continue to recommend), or any form of 'counseling' - he is SO alone, and feels God is punishing/ignoring him. He is in his own cocoon of self-loathing and hopelessness - I swear I don't think anybody GETS that. And in order to have someone talk to him, he has to pay them (when we've counseled). And even those people quickly focus on Fixing the Marriage, and don't give any value to his pain and the Loss of Who He Was; only What He Did.
Which compounds his hurt and only continues the path of Aloneness.
So. I am desperate for The Husband to have someone to talk to, before I come home to find him dead from a stroke or heart attack, or worse.
He is a good person. I believe in him - even while I have emotionally beaten the sh!t out of him for far too long, and continue to when I feel threatened. Damn me. He has talents and gifts being wasted and unused. I believe God has a purpose for him that it's not time for yet, for whatever frustrating/heartbreaking reason. He has lost faith in his future, and he has NOTHING coming in.
No one feeding him hope. I try to encourage him and tell him what I see, but obviously, I am so enmeshed in this situation from my own stuff, sins, wants, and the complexities of our situation - that it's laughable to think I could possibly be effective at this point.
And so I continue to pray for him, for me, for us, and struggle with my own faith issues because of the lack of God-Saving-the-Day here.
He needs a friend. Just one. Just someone to listen to him and validate him. And hold his arms up in this battle (what Bible story was that? I can't remember). Would he even be able to see that person reach out -and reach back - at this point, this late in the Disillusioned and Mistrustful game?
More on my crap later, of which there is always much.
Where does the time go? Been 10 days since I posted? geez. That was unheard of back in the day.
Anyway, got stopped dead in my tracks last night by these words of a Wise Internet Sage (especially the last paragraph). Shared with ya'll with said Sage's permission
Maybe forgiveness is simply the act of letting go of the hurt and allowing ourselves to move past it while continuing to live. To take the lesson we have learned and use that knowledge, instead of being paralyzed by the fear that it will happen again. Not to be stupid, no, nor turn a blind eye, but instead to trust ourselves, knowing that we have already faced a terrible thing and survived. We try to teach our children to learn from their experiences - why then do our own often experiences make us want to hide.
Bitterness, resentment, anger, these are all extremely heavy burdens to carry. If we can find a way to forgive, maybe we can just lay down that burden and cherish what we do have.
Sometimes I look around at other couples in their mediocre relationships and wonder if there is a bomb in there waiting to drop. Or maybe the bomb will never drop and they will simply continue to go on as they are, never realizing how much more there could be to their relationships.
Maybe we are the "lucky" ones in that we all really know how great our marriages could be, and we have this wonderful goal to strive for. All they have is what they think they know, the same thing, day in, day out. I don't know what is better: to never really live and never really hurt, existing in a state of numb indifference, taking each other for granted; or to experience the highs and lows of what we are going through - at least we know we are alive, we know what we want, we are striving to make ourselves better people and to, hopefully, make our marriages better in the process.
If you saw The Matrix (the original), you may see the parallel here - which pill would you choose?
...Is that a word, Snarkiness? Or should I spell it Snarkyness?
Anyway, every post I'm composing over here in Stepford is sounding like a complete b*tch-fest (a/k/a Snarky), and that's not very nice, so I'm keeping them marinating in the Drafts folder until I can be a little more balanced.
Which does not seem to be today. Dammit.
I'm mad and frustrated and hurt and p*ssed off. And it's not even PMS-week. But I still want to be fair, since the pen is mightier than the sword and all that.
As my husband attests, I love to be miserable, and the victim, and in the middle of Drama. Yes and no. Drama, yes, I've copped to that before. Victim? check, but I've been working to confess those times in the past and act accordingly in the present. Miserable? It may be a familiar thing in my life, but I don't aim to be miserable, or want it. That pisses me off. Take this fcuking misery, you can have it.
Ugh. My snow-covered acorn is becoming an avalanche. Will post an update when I recover my center.
