Backsliding

For a few days there, I thought we were headed in a positive direction. I suppose I want so badly to believe that the strife is over and we have begun to put real distance between ourselves and this rough spot in our road (rough spot? How about bottomless pot-hole?) that I get overly optimistic when I see any glimmer of hope.

Evidently the habit of attacking each other whenever we are under stress has become too ingrained. It is our knee-jerk reaction whenever we encounter anything other than glass-smooth sailing. One theory that has been whirling around is that, faced with a situation that makes us need to yell at someone or something, the only “safe,” or acceptable place to direct that negative emotion is at each other. You can’t go around screaming at strangers, or dressing down your in-laws, employer, employees, or co-workers. So all that garbage gets dumped on the person who is supposed to love you enough to take it.

Problem is, I really can’t. Take any more. After five years of processing more garbage than the local landfill, I’m buried. I suspect he is, too.

One bad thing is, with this lingering heel problem—the final fillip from that rathole café—I haven’t been able to do much walking. And walking helps me work through what I need to process. Ignoring my throbbing foot, I took a long walk yesterday morning; I did some productive ruminating.

I realized, for like the umpteenth time in my life, that you can’t change anyone but yourself. I can talk, leave, threaten, cajole, stand on my head, but there’s no guarantee the husband is ever going to change the way he treats me. He could…but I can’t count on that. I have a couple of choices here, but one of them is NOT getting him to act differently. It is I who has to make changes.

I have to accept that who he is now and how he relates to me now are facts. He is what he is. And then I have to decide whether to stay in the relationship based on that information. If I choose to stay, my job is to figure out how to forge an acceptable, peaceful relationship with the man I’m married to NOW…not the one I thought I married, nor the one to whom I would like to be married.

Yes, I am going to have to make changes. Rough times ahead, to be sure. Because another thing I’ve learned over the years, as a corollary to “You can’t change anyone but yourself,” is that changing yourself is about as easy as getting toothpaste back into the tube.

Oh, I don’t dispute that I have changed over the course of our married life. In fact, these last five years have been extremely formative. And not in a good way, I’m afraid. Which is, I’m sure, a large part of why the husband’s attitude toward me has shifted so drastically. I am a very different person than the one who stepped off into the unknown territory of entrepreneurship. So the husband either does not know how to, or has chosen not to, relate positively or lovingly to the person I am now.

So now, for the sake of peace in the household and sanity for both of us, I have some work to do. There are coping skills I need to master; I need to learn the art of negotiating—or not, as the situation demands. And I—who have freely admitted all my life that patience is not my virtue—have to divine a hidden well of that commodity and immerse myself in it. Somewhere, I have to find patience with the husband, and patience with myself. Without it, I’m afraid all my ruminating and planning and clarity will get me nowhere.