No matter how much he drives me crazy, or the awful times we’ve been through (of which there have been far too many), I know that I won the Husband Lottery. I’m demanding, and petulant, and short-tempered, and imperfect – yet no matter what I do, this man loves me. Unconditionally, and thoroughly, loves me. I know that now.
Recently our marriage turned a major corner. I rarely discuss the full details of my relationship out in the open, but this is a time in our lives that I’d like to revel in the moment – because it’s a good one. Finally.
See…when we were dating, we were the type of couple that I thought other couples were jealous of. We were madly in love, treated each other like the center of the universe, and knew from Minute One that we were destined to be together. However, becoming parents less than 2 years after we began dating took a real toll on our relationship. We went from being ridiculously happy to being ridiculously unhappy in a matter of a few short months. Neither of us was emotionally equipped to deal with the new responsibilities of parenthood. Our marriage began sailing south less than 6 weeks after my first son’s birth, and it circled the drain for years. Yes, there were moments of calm during the storm – it wasn’t awful all the time – but I was never really as happy as I had once been, and feared that I’d never be that happy again. The Hyphenated Husband always insisted we’d be “fine,” but with my nomadic upbringing, my first instinct was to cut our losses and both move on before another minute was wasted. When HH said “I do” he meant “forever, till death do us part, and all that jazz.” But when I said “I do,” I meant “For now, ya know, unless it gets hard, and then I’m probably outta here because I wasn’t raised to put up with any nonsense.”
Because of my Cut ‘N’ Run attitude, I’ve threatened to leave more times than anyone could count. Every time he annoyed me, I was shopping for apartments on Craigslist. Then, I’d get too lazy to think about moving out, and we’d just go right back to living in a mediocre marriage. I know that’s not the adult way to handle things – I never said I was an expert at staying married – that’s just the only way I know how to handle difficult situations. Get out, Gina. Move on. Start anew while you’re still young enough to make a new life elsewhere. This is how I was raised, and it’s a hard habit to shake.
Exhibit A: A friend asked me to write a guest post on her site 6 months ago about how I managed to marry a feminist male, and every time I sat down to write that post, I felt like such a hypocrite for trying to wax poetic about my rocky marriage that I never ended up writing a single paragraph for her.
Exhibit B: When we were first invited to be on the Discovery show, one of the main reasons I turned it down was because I didn’t want to have to pretend on national television that we were a perfectly happy family when I felt like anything but. I didn’t want to feel like a fraud.
But HH has never given up on us. Oh, there have been times that He’s been pretty mad at me. Really, really mad at me. Mad enough to say and do things that are hurtful and mean and hard to take back. But he’s always remained convinced that we’d find a way to make it work – somehow. I, however, took a lot more convincing. I’m stubborn and emotionally lazy like that.
Finally, after a particularly heinous week last month, I came the conclusion that this marriage might actually end if we didn’t turn things around by the end of summer. No matter how many times I threatened to leave over the past 4 years, it never occurred to me, until this one particular week, that there could actually be a divorce in our near future. I don’t know what made me finally come to this realization, but something felt different this time. I suppose it just got so bad that I knew things couldn’t last another minute the way they were. And ultimately, I think I finally recognized that I’ve never taken much responsibility for trying to fix the mess that our marriage had become. One particularly heinous week made me see that if nothing changed – if I changed nothing – our kids would be living in two different houses pretty soon.
So, we talked. And this talk was different than any talk we’d had before. It was different than the failed therapy sessions we tried two years ago. It was different than all the other times we promised we’d try harder, but never did.
This time, we both got the message – loud and clear. We both recognized that now is the time to save this marriage, not tomorrow, or the day after that. Today.
And just like that, things began to turn around. All of the sudden, I fell back in love with my husband. I see him differently now. I’m attracted to him again. We kiss now – a lot… something we hadn’t really done in years. I’m kinder, and more understanding of him. I don’t get annoyed as easily, and when I lose my temper now, I actually apologize instead of acting as though it was justified. And he sends me love notes during the day… making sure I know that he’s thinking of me even when we aren’t together. We’re both treating love as a verb, and it’s paying off.
It’s good. For the first time in four years my marriage is really, really good. So, on this Father’s Day, I want my husband to know how much I appreciate him being the husband and father that he is. His wife and his children are very lucky to have him.
We all love you, Daddy. We really do. And Thank You for Sticking it Out with Us.
I am new to your blog. This is a great post. Thank you for writing it. I think more people need to hear things like this. Our 3 children joined our family in just 11 months. It wreaked havoc on our marriage. We actually made a pack that we would not consider divorce until the youngest was five so that we could survive it. Like you, though, I threatened to leave several times -- because I process everything out loud and he was the one there to hear it. Poor guy. He stuck with me, though. And, right about when the youngest was five, things turned around for us.
When people hear this, they are shocked. But I think it is more common than we know. It might help people to hear more of this.
P.S. My husband is not hyphenated, but he did take my name when we married -- also a feminist. I wonder if that is what makes them stay -- they have the capacity to understand how motherhood affects both the woman and the marriage.
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