This is a painful story to tell because it is the biggest disappointment and failure of my life. But I think it is worth telling. We met at a church young adult’s group lunch. She was 18 and I was 25. I noticed two things about her immediately: she was very cute, and she had an engagement ring on her finger. The other guys there didn’t seem to notice the ring but I did. So I tried to acknowledge her presence without appearing to “come on” to her. At some point she broke off her engagement and then sometime later actually initiated our relationship. I was flattered that she noticed me! We dated – my first and only really serious relationship – and after two years I asked her to marry me. I remember the moment I asked very clearly: I was so scared that my heart was pounding so hard she thought I was having a heart attack! But she said yes, and I was – we were – happy.
I don’t know why she first dated me and then agreed to marry me. I certainly wasn’t setting the world on fire with my ambition or achievements up until then, so that wasn’t the reason. But I have learned that for me at least “the heart loves who the heart loves” and there sometimes isn’t a lot of reasoning that goes into it, or control over it. I basked in her attention, and our love. Getting married made me take responsibility, start to plan for our future and learn to sacrifice my own needs for “our” benefit. I grew up and became a better man. Her attentions over the years took a naïve and inexperienced young man and turned him into a pretty decent human being.
I loved being married to her. It wasn’t always perfect: we had our disagreements and hardships, but I thought we had something special. I had my insecurities (still do) and they could rise up and create discord.
Twenty six years later I went to help my widowed mother move. When I came back my wife was a different person. I remember clearly pulling up to the house with a trailer of my parent’s things I hauled back with me. She looked at it and turned and just walked into the house. From that day forward it was like there was a wall between us, in the bed and in our lives. That was in June, and shortly she started talking about not wanting to live with me and moving out. I don’t remember us having a discussion about “Why?”, it was just as though she had crossed some threshold and made up her mind while I was gone. I wondered “Have I done something?” and “Did she have an affair while I was gone?” All kinds of potential explanations passed through my head some crazier than others. I was too stunned to know what to do or how to handle it.
She did move out. I tried not to get angry and over-react; to be patient and let her work it out. I remember telling her once that I didn’t know what to do – I didn’t know whether to fight to try to keep her or let her go. I got an eye-roll for that comment. So I waited.
Sometime in September she stopped by and we were in the kitchen talking. I can remember it very clearly because she said “I haven’t been honest with you. I realized the first year we were married I had made a mistake, I have been unhappy ever since and I don’t know if I can take it anymore.” I learned that she had thought about leaving me after our first child was born, but she expected I would fight for custody and that my parents would back me and she thought she might lose. So she stayed and our lives progressed. We went through a failed pregnancy and then later had a second child.
I was stunned by her revelation to me. My mind raced. I knew our marriage wasn’t perfect. I knew I had lots of flaws and so did she. But why this, why now? In times of crisis I tend to bury my emotions and go analytical. I ask her if we could try counseling and got a very angry negative response. There are reasons for this I learned much later. I didn’t know what to do: she had moved out; she was unhappy; she wasn’t willing to go to counseling with me; she didn’t want to live with me; I was miserable being without her and I was miserable in the current situation of uncertainty. I should have kept my mouth shut, but I said the only thing I could think of: “Well if you are unhappy and don’t want to go to counseling with me to try to fix this I don’t know what other options there are except divorce.” She said “I guess not.” And that was it, the death of a marriage.
I was out walking this morning, 12 years later, and I realized that what I should have asked her was “Why are you – why have you been – so unhappy? What do we, or I, need to do?” But those words never entered my franticly racing mind. Spoken, those words might have started a conversation. They might have led to her telling me why she had been unhappy, and we might have discussed what needed to change so we could start building that happiness. Maybe we would have been able to work it out. But my failure to speak those words sealed the outcome.
Some of my reading since then has revealed that men tend to want to “fix” things but the women in our lives just want us to listen to them. I was listening to the words, I understood what they meant, but I wasn’t hearing the meaning behind those words. I was looking for solutions when maybe she just wanted me to hear her. And maybe that was the problem all along.
I truly loved her, but that was then, and that love died a long time ago. That life is over. I hope that I get the chance to share in love once again, and that if I do, I will take the painful lessons I have learned and make good use of them in that new relationship.
September 10, 2018