Disclaimer: I am not giving advice
here. Really, I'm crap at advice. I'm sharing experience.
“Sarah”*,
I'm writing this as background for you,
because when I try to say this stuff conversationally, I digress and
self-interrupt and never get through it.
Our conversation got me thinking, while
I was driving somewhere, and adding up.
Out of 22-plus years of marriage, there
have been probably seven, maximum nine, that Ms T and I both really
count as “happy marriage” years. Ms T's memory agrees pretty much
with mine, because I asked her.
You missed much of this “from the
outside”, much as I didn't notice what you wanted to tell me, until you hit me over the head with it. So much for
appearances. Also, I'm kind of aspie, and apt to miss subtle signals.
Post-natal depression drove quite a
chasm between Ms T and I in the mid-1990s. Even when we looked
besotted to an outsider. Even though we tried to go everywhere
together – we were finding it hard. Communication fell in a hole.
Later, the boys were high-maintenance,
and until we got a decent diagnosis and counselling for them, we
often got into arguments. Communication of a sort, with an apology at the end as a perverse incentive. When you don't know what's going on, a
blame game happens easily.
The counselling was notionally for the
boys; but a lot of it ended up being counselling for Ms T and I. And
it helped.
Ms T's early menopause, about that
time, wasn't a picnic either, she reminded me today.
Our first trip to the UK helped a lot.
We'd hit wits'-end a little bit before that – boys difficult, the
wind-down of my then-workplace, my first attempt at freelancing, my
mother driving us a little nuts!
Then we got to see the boys in a
context where we didn't have to worry about what the school would
say. They got to go places and respond to them without the hassles of
school-appropriate behaviour. We got to see them through eyes like
yours, instead of a principal worrying, a head teacher disciplining,
etc.
That trip also helped get Ms T and I
communicating better, because instead of the talk being “what are
we going to try next to settle them down?”, it was “wow, they
love The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, and instead of fearing them
being bored by The Globe, they were entranced, and we talked about
that, and so on.
Things went on an upswing for a few
years after that: we began bush-walking, came to the UK again, I was
making good money, Ms T was still working, there was spare money to
start renovating the house (ha!). That good period – call it five
years – was absolutely the best of our marriage.
Then Ms T's health began to fail. You
know the story from there. Thankfully, Ms T and I managed to wash up
on the same shore. Whatever is wrong isn't us. So we cling close.
We got
lucky, but it was hardly ever a certainty.
The
only thing that is certain
is that the times we looked over the abyss of separating, we drew back. I suspect we were mostly too scared to split up.
It never was a special “better” marriage that we had. We nearly
didn't have it at all. Neither Ms T nor I really know what the secret
sauce was. We know what is working now,
but how we got here is a bit of a mystery.
Along
the way, we had to farewell some treasures. There are gaps in our
relationship where there once were habits, things that were once part
of she-and-I. Yeah, I might cry about that from time to time.
So it
goes; we're here.
*Not
her real name, obviously.
