Marriage

What is it?  Basically some sort of agreement between two people.  From a civic point of view this agreement can involve anything.  The church's version is a sacred agreement with details that differ by religion.  The legal version is to protect the passage of property between entities.  When I agreed to get married twenty years ago, hubby and I made our own pact.  It was to be a marriage between two equals.  We would share all things in this life.  Everything split evenly down the middle.  Possessions, work, chores and financial responsibilities.  We would support each other and help each other along the difficult path of life.  We would be there for each other.

Well, I've broken that agreement.  I became very ill and can no longer fulfill my half of this deal.  I can't work.  I can't do chores.  I can't cook.  I can't drive the kid around.  I often can't listen to him bitch when he's had a bad day.

Hubby has had a bad three years.  He is angry.  It oozes out in weird ways that isn't intentional on his part.  He throws grand mal hissy fits on a regular basis.  While this anger isn't directed at me personally stuff is getting broken around the house.  I don't like this and I don't want to deal with it anymore.  It is toxic and isn't helping me heal.  I can't fix this since it is his issue but I can't tolerate this anymore.  In some ways I feel like I'm being punished for being sick.  However this might just be a perception on my part and not what is really going on.  I haven't sorted this out yet.  It is too complicated.

We are at a weird impasse.  Our agreement is broken and we haven't managed to renegotiate it yet.  I'm not even sure what I want out of our marriage.  I don't like the way it is (not) functioning right now.  We definitely need help and I'm going to look up a couple's councilor tomorrow.  This is beyond my abilities to fix.  I don't have enough insight into the weirdness that is occurring on a day to day basis to even have a constructive discussion with him.  We seem to have fallen into weird scripted discussions that repeat themselves on a regular basis that don't lead to any type of real resolution. 

What baffles me is how did this happen to us?  We used to be really good at talking with each other.   We used to talk through everything and come to a resolution that suited both of us.  We wouldn't have lasted this long if we hadn't been able to do this.  I was so proud of our ability to work things out.  Somehow, when I wasn't paying attention, we got out of the habit and we now have this odd uncommunicative form of discussion.  I call them dances because I can almost write the script out verbatim.  We have the dinner dance, the chore dance, the work dance, the finances dance, the illness dance.  I can't totally blame this on the illness.  This weird communication style crept up on us prior to me getting sick.  My illness has just increased the frequency, intensity and duration of these dances.  I don't like this.  I don't want to dance anymore.  I want to get back to having a real marriage to someone I can have a real discussion with. 

After 20 years I am almost past the illusion of people being truly equal partners.  It is more like you take turns being alpha and beta and you don't have to be alpha in all arenas at the same time.  Things morph constantly.  I think some where during our last three years of marriage things got frozen.  Things aren't fluid anymore.  We're stuck in a malfunctioning pattern and it needs to stop.  It isn't healthy for either of us and I'm not sure our marriage can survive this for very long.  I'm hoping for change.  I want to do things differently.  I want to fix things.  Make them better for both of us even if I'm not sure what I want.  I know I don't want this anymore.

Sorry this is so rambly but I had to do this as free flow thought.  My brain is too tired to function linearly right now.  I also wanted to write out several ideas that I'm struggling with before I lost them in my foggy memory.