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I Was a Good Wife All Week. Why Do I Feel Sad Monday Morning?
I've decided to try for a healthier marriage rather than an affair or walking away, to ease the pain I feel over how my life has turned out. Why? Because of the potential rewards to be found in working out problems instead of tossing them out the door. I think there must be a baby in that basin of dirty bathwater. After all, who else would know you and work with you when you're old? You'll need that shared history.
This past week, I groomed my thoughts. I paid attention to the positive things about my spouse. He works hard. He cares. He has strengths where I have weaknesses. I was loving and giving because I wanted to be that kind of a person.
It went well. We went to a restaurant and ate, and we laughed. The next day we had an argument and we kept arguing until we were laughing.
Now he's gone back to work and I doubt what I've just done. I've worked on strengthening our marriage, and yet now I feel like I've somehow dug myself deeper into a hole!
I remember when my husband said the thing that I felt angry about. He was factually and technically right, but emotionally he had taken on the colorings of someone rolling their eyes over a truculent teenager. Later when I confronted him on it, he denied that. However, that was my perception. I felt so angry, I wanted to hurt him, badly. I didn't act on that, any more than to ask him if that's how he was feeling at the time. He skirted the issue and said it didn't matter what he was feeling, just that the problem had to be taken care of.
I am so sorry to say that I have stored this perception of mine away in my heart, or the pit of my stomach. I'm told I must let things go and be forgiving. However, right now tears are in my eyes. Tears of hurt and anger. You may judge it the same way as my husband did, that it was really a simple matter and that I am hyper-sensitive. But I now value that aspect of myself. It makes me a good artist and writer. Furthermore, whoever said a spouse must always be forgiving and tolerant...Well, that's their choice. I'm teetering on the brink. This incident and others over a 19-year marriage...
Okay. I'm not innocent. I am careless, I take things for granted, I overdraw the checking account by some small sum several times a year.
I think that sometimes emotions hold a truth that logic can't define. My tears of rage and the pain in my stomach are not to be discounted, or else I'll wind up sick in my old age.
I know the title of this post says "All week," And yet I mean more or less most of the marriage. This is just a snapshot.
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May 19, 2008
Hello Lisa! I just discovered this marvelous website. I am a married 51 year old woman. I am going through incredible changes on the inside and (ugh...)the outside. When I read your post of today's date, I though it was me talking. I have gone through the very same emotional roller-coaster with my husband. Your words regarding wanting to work it out and stay in the marriage echo mine, for all the same reasons. I have a theory: I believe in middle-age, we women must form a bond and be there through thick and thin for each other. Men and younger women just do not get it. Keep writing.Sincerely, Robin
What are your changes?
I kept wondering why that little exchange with my husband bothered me so much, and I think it was just that he refused to be real with me and instead withheld his authentic thought/feeling about me, which I think was a head game. If that's so, I'd like to learn about this so that I can stop being gulled. It makes me furious. I may be overly insecure, but we're all imperfect.
Thank you for responding. I too am finding that sometimes it seems we older women are all we've got!
Spend more time on activities
When I've focused inte4ntly on my husband, it's been easy to find many ways he lets me down emotionally. When I get active in my work or community interests, then I'm able to notice the good aspects of my husband. Also, friends are a wonderful cureall and exercise comes in at second place. So get out and enjoy the warm weather and call a friend for coffee.
Right on.
the rest of the week I did things to "kill the pain," Things that felt rewarding. I took a long bike ride to run my errands. I bought a shrub for my garden and planted it. Very satisfying. I worked and they let me decorate for a party. Now I'm not brooding over things.
I think it's important to stop projecting my dissatisfaction with myself onto my husband. If I still want to be a free woman, I will, but for solid reasons, not just vague things.
--LA
Hello Lisa
I haven't checked this site for about a week and just now saw the responses to your original email. It really does feel good to temporarily "ignore" the husband and jetout there and do something independent of him. Just as long it is something that I sincerely want to do and find meaning in. I read that book "Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars". In one chapter, he tallks about how men sometimes go into their "caves" and that we should just ignore them during those periods. I think that might work in reverse. When I become involved in things that exclude my husband, he suddenly becomes more curious about what is going on with me. It is not a game, really because I sincerely need a little space sometimes. What do you all think?-Robin
Cave time?
I notice that too. I crave the opportunity to just go spend some time on my own. And it's sooo hard to explain it.
Can't write much but bbs
In My Solitude
I had a falling-out with a friend. Now I'm down to one, and we are both busy with jobs.
I made a list of all the churches and volunteering I've tried and discovered I don't want to go back to any of them. And I want to be honest and be as ornery as I feel. My husband is tolerating it so far. I tried to explain that I'm trying hard to act like I really am. It seems like it would help to just be genuine and stop pretending to do all those things told by radio talk show psychologists we all know.
I thought I'd make a list of all the things I don't like about people and see if it wasn't true that those are things I don't like about myself. I'll get back to you and say what I come up with.
I want to make new friends. But first, I want to feel excited about people. It's not easy for an introvert.
Deeper into that hole
I find myself thinking that after 27 years I should be positive that I want to stay in this relationship, but there are still days when I still wonder why I'm here. How can two people know each other so well, and yet not know each other at all? Why are there still "hot buttons" that can be pushed? Shouldn't we have those talked out by now? I guess that's why we haven't gotten married :-)
If you live as an unmarried couple...
Does it get the same as when you're married, that you can't just leave?
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