03-2-2009 - My marriage story....

My mood while writing this blog: Hopeful

I wanted to post this because I want people to know that there is hope and salvation for a marriage in trouble. If you disagree with me, that’s ok, I don’t mind…but please keep the negativity to yourself and don’t post a comment.

My hubs and I are expecting daughter #2 in 7 weeks and the girls will be almost 13 years apart in age. This was NOT a planned pregnancy by any means, but as soon as we found out the real trouble started in our marriage. Jason (hubs) and I knew we needed help with our marriage, we were living more like roommates that a married couple. We were at a turning point in our 13 year relationship, a crucial one at that! We seemed more the individual persons that the couple and we never talked or communicated any more. It was then that hubs told me he was having feelings for a friend of ours and that he was scared that it would turn into more.

That statement sent me into a huge puddle of depression and hubs and I decided that it was time to call a marriage counselor or we were finished. Here I am pregnant with a "whoops" baby and he's telling me that he has the hots for a friend of ours. Wow, life sure can turn on a dime! We started seeing a marriage counselor to deal with everything that was happening and we discovered that yes, we were married, but we were on a best friend level than anything else. That alone was a huge eye opener and a sad point as well....where had we gone wrong? How were we going to fix the mess that we now had?

The first thing that counselor told us was "communicate", ok sure...not a problem....but how? Jason and I both come from families where our parents divorced at really bad times in our teen years. We had zero role models to learn from about healthy relationships and had been going through the motions of our marriage for the last two years! (at least) So where do we start...she gave us a tool that is amazing! Its called an "I" statement, and we used it and it actually worked! We stopped arguing and started talking and started to understand one another again.

Now here is where my point comes in...we stopped having sex when all this counseling started because we had realized that we used it as a band aid when our arguments couldn't be resolved. We would argue, say mean things to make mute points, apologize for saying those things, then have sex to make up and no resolution was ever found. Obviously we were both missing something in our relationship, and the sex just died off. It was very hard to deal with from my point of view because my body had changed so much and I was feeling like a whale. So to have my hubs not want to be with me sexually made me very, very self conscious. Then when we started to figure it out, I already had body image problems from being over weight my whole life, and he was resentful of those feelings I had and took them as a personal strike against him. He felt that we had been together for 13 years and I shouldn’t be self conscious around him at all, like walking around naked or sharing a shower. I could never bring myself to do those things, unless I had been drinking heavily!

Things have gotten better on my part, with some help from the counselor and some real deep self analyzing I had to do. I am still a bit self conscious, but it’s getting better everyday as I try to do something that pushes that panic button in my head. I deal with the panic, tell Jason what it is that pushes me to panic and we talk about it together and we’re supportive, even if we don’t agree 100%. I also realized that with that part of our marriage being a missing piece of the whole puzzle, it may have made him want to be with someone else because I made him feel that he wasn’t good enough. So I have to take some of the blame there. We were both missing very vital pieces that we needed to survive in a marriage, we both started looking outside for those missing pieces and realized that we were about to lose one another because our needs weren’t being met.

Now that we have 3 months of counseling under our belts, we can have a disagreement with no yelling or slamming of doors, or stonewalling or any of that anymore. We talk and find a resolution, no matter what! There is no more feelings for a friend of ours, I am no longer depressed and life in general is getting better everyday. We just started having sex again in the last few days, and we both recognize the spark that was missing is back. And we know why it had died, and we know that we fixed it. But the most important thing is that we can connect on the right level now, and it makes us closer. We were missing a lot of key things in our marriage that killed our spark and damn near killed our marriage and family.

My heart goes out to anyone who is having problems in their relationships, but especially when your pregnant! It just makes it all magnified and all the more serious and all the more important to fix before you have a new born in your arms. That baby will take every moment of your time and every sane thought you have for many months. And the only way that you’re going to survive with your partner by your side is to get those feelings out and dealt with now.

I am so sorry this is so long!! It turned out to be a lot longer than I intended, but I sincerely hope that my story helps a bit. ~ Candy~