Surviving a Dead Marriage

One thing I’ve learned for sure, possibly the most valuable lesson of my going on forty years of “coupledom”, is this – you can’t have a relationship with someone who is unwilling, or cannot, have a relationship with you! A simple, basic truth if I’ve ever seen one. I know this from years and years of knocking, pounding, hammering, and banging my head bloody against a locked door – the door to my husband’s sensibilities and understanding. I have discovered one thing when I finally stopped pretending all was cozy with my friends. 

When people said I was lucky that Greg loved me so much to buy me wonderful things and I want to told them frankly that if anything, he does this for two reasons only - how it look to the outside world - to his friends and workmates, and that works for him. But also to appease what little guilt he feels about ignoring me 70% of the time. 
The rest of the time...the other 30% is spent ridiculing and being abusive to me - spitting and screaming in my face, calling me names unfit to type here and shoving me around. 

This man certainly is not interested in my life and what I do with my time. He's not ever even asked about it, only if it has to do with him and if I try to share it otherwise, he shuts it off...shuts me off, coughing over my speech, falling asleep or leaving the room.

If I share things with him in email that we used to be mutually interested in, he doesn't even bother to open the emails. Not music. Not hockey. Not cats, or cars... Yet I am expected to listen to hours of what goes on in his life, how his workday went, his drive home and his arguments with whomever - the irritant du jour.
 
And constantly being accused of not caring if I didn’t sit up and intently hang off each and every word he tells me about friends of his and their problems. 
And how much they loved him because he's such a good listener. Really? I was never offered shares to that side of him!
There are lots of us married singles around out there I have noticed since I’ve joined photography forums  and begun playing guitar again. People who are not only eager to help me on my mission to play well again, but actually inviting me to their homes for jam sessions because my husband can’t be bothered to pick up his guitar, bought but never played or his drum sticks to share even a half hour a week playing tunes together. 

Maybe us married singles are even a majority, who knows? What has helped me the most to survive and thrive in a long-dying and long dead ‘marriage’ is simply that I made up my mind to find kindred spirits and I have. As my husband moves away from the things we used to love together, I am finding more and more people I am moving closer to, who share the things I love. While I remain completely faithful to my marriage vows, I will always be that, I do wonder if even that is appreciated by him or just expected, since he has no feelings of closeness one way or the other. Nor has he ever! 

This determined attitude I have though began way back when I was a kid. However, somewhere along the line after my first marriage dissolved, I lost the way. Growing up, I could see how many people around me had eaten themselves up with negative thoughts and emotions. They were going through the motions of life but not really alive...not living. So what do I do after my first marriage? Why, I marry one of these very people who personifies negativity! Who cares less about the things I do, who is unwilling to share in them and worse, won’t even afford me the time to pursue them myself because I am disabled and overworked in our home. A home that he also cares nothing about. 

In fact, the only thing I can think of offhand that he loves/likes is himself. And what he can do to spoil himself, lavishing gifts and toys on himself to make up for a relationship he doesn't want...obviously! So I have decided that if I have to stay here in this miserable relationship (and do to my lack of income and health care insurance I do need to) I decided, no, I promised myself that I would be different. Not only would I handle whatever challenges he set out for me, I would deal with it without bitterness. To me, this is the ultimate victory, keeping my mind and my heart ever open, not letting the abuses and the negativity of his life turn me into a crusty old curmudgeon. 

I like to think that in making light of difficulties and laughing at the ironies of our lives we can create learning opportunities from the worst of circumstances. It is in real life breakthroughs – other people’s and my own, that I still find strength to go on in my less than blissful partnership. In the darkest, lowest, loneliest times we all need to seek refuge in insights of others like us and they provide us with the strength that can uplift us. Sometimes they come in wonderful, unexpected ways. Friends mostly, old and new, books, music, movies, quotes that give us comfort and support. 

Sometimes nothing helps until time forces us forward, to find our way once more. This is the space at which I find myself now. On the cusp of acceptance that it’s over. It is and has been very difficult for me to handle physical things I’m no longer strong enough to handle. Things doctors have told me to avoid but I am nonetheless forced to do them because my husband is in a frame of mind now that he's allowing the house to fall to ruin too. Unless I am able to do them they are left undone...it doesn't matter to him that his investment in his home is diminishing month by month. What used to possibly be the most beautiful house and grounds on the street are now verging on hovel status. If it weren't for a lawn service that cuts our lawn I'm sure it would look even worse than it does. And being disabled myself, I cannot do any of these things. 

My husband is suffering bipolar depression and will not do anything about it. He’d rather let it eat way at everything like a cancer than to make any effort to mend his life. And until or unless he does that, we are both doomed as a couple. Unfortunately, we have pets who will suffer from this decision too but again, he doesn’t care and I am helpless to force a person to want help if they don’t. I cannot sympathize with him. I could if he were fighting to get better, I'd be fighting right alone side him, but with him not showing any interest in improving his life or ours, I feel nothing but resentment verging on hatred. 

I never in all my life thought I would find myself at this place. With all the issues my husband has had over the years I've always managed to circumvent them and find ways of enjoying my life. That's because I was always able to live with some hope. That is all gone now but for one man who shall remain nameless at this time. Someone in a similar position as I, who 'get's it.'

I had to seek out others to even have a friendly conversation about anything. Or write in a blog to express my feelings that should be going to a husband that cared. And in that, irony emerged. I find I haven’t lost at all. I have to believe this, that I can’t lose again or I will surely perish.