One More Day… a fight for what is mine.

 Dr. J gave us a booklet.  “A Summary of Dr. Harley’s Basic Concepts”  There are apparently 10 concepts that he has come up with to save marriages.  The idea is to fall into and stay in love.    We have been challenged to work on one concept  a day and document our feelings about each of them and how we are applying the concepts to our marriage.   

Basic Concept #1 :  The Love Bank

This is basically the idea that in each of us is a bank of sorts where deposits and withdrawals are made.  Deposits are anything that makes us happy or makes us feel loved or just feel good.  Withdrawals are all the opposites.   In the bank there is an imaginary “love line” and if someone deposits so much that your bank is full beyond the line, then you start feeling love.  In retrospect however, there is also a hate line that the withdrawals can fall below and so enters the feelings of hate. 

The other idea in this concept is that every single thing we do makes either a deposit or a withdrawal.   Doing the laundry, playing golf,  taking a shower, having sex….  all of these are one or the other.   Dr. Harley says that couples whose love banks are empty start looking to divorce as the most logical way to escape.  Most of the time they can’t even be in the same room.  But if we start filling those banks and understanding what makes our spouse feel “good” then the marriage can be turned around.

I guess it’s hard for me to think that everything I do is a deposit or a withdrawal.  It’s like marriage eggshells.  I’m sure the point is that we are supposed to make sure that the good outweighs the bad.  Honey and I started naming good and bad things that had happened today.  He said he probably wouldn’t come home tomorrow night due to work.  Even though he wasn’t being mean and he didn’t do anything wrong it was still a withdrawal because it gave me negative feelings.   And today I didn’t put his work shirts away because I was sick in bed but, even though he knew I was sick and he wasn’t mad it was still a negative feeling.  Negative feelings equal withdrawals.  Why is it so easy to cause pain?

Last night was a rough one.  Honey finally revealed to me how he felt about a few things that I didn’t know.  Doesn’t he realize that I can’t fix it if I don’t know it’s a problem.   We both thought last night was the last fight we’d have.  It seems like the better we get, the harder we fight.  Maybe we are disappointed.  I guess we need to realize that no matter how great things get we are still gonna have arguments but that doesn’t mean we are starting back at square one.  I know that he loves me.  But he knows exactly how to hurt me the most.   We are getting better at not screaming.  Actually, I’m the only one that needed to work on that.  But, I’m improving….slowly. 

 I do wonder where the other people are who are suffering in their marriage.  I can’t possibly be the only one.   I know that most people don’t reveal the bad side of things.  Most couples only want others to see perfection.  Who are we helping by doing that.  Not only are we making others think that something is wrong with their marriage but aren’t we just disappointing ourselves?  Isn’t it time to start owning what’s ours?  Good or Bad?

He’s seriously trying to blame this whole thing on me.  I mean right now I feel like one of those fake bloggers who writes about the person they want to be rather than just writing about themselves.    But today,  I don’t give a rat’s ass about one more day or fighting for my marriage.  I gave my all in Crossville this weekend and he gave nothing today.  He wouldn’t speak to anyone.  He was only an ass to everyone.  I have never been so embarrased or ashamed.  How could he be so cold to people who had provided for us and our children all day.  Even though I have had days where I hated his Dad, I have never been so rude or so cold.   These are the days when I think he truly doesn’t care wether we stay  together or get divorced.    How can this be the man that I married?  I have tried so hard to work this out.  Is what I feel now the thing I need to face.  Are people around me wondering what the hell I’m holding on to?  I’m so  hurt right now.    Have I been wrong to stay as long as I have? 

 And How is he blaming this on me?  I didn’t even do anything wrong.  I just don’t understand why it has to be this way.  You would think that two good people could get it right but we can’t.  Maybe I’m the one writing the falacy.???? 

Today was the ICE CREAM SOCIAL for Mr. Big’s class.  During the party Mrs. B gave out awards to each of the students.  She was approaching the last few awards whe she said…

” I need to tell you all a story to expaon this next award.  The day of our play a couple weeks ago, we had a dress rehearsal and all of the first graders came and watched us.  they told us that we did a great job and wished us good luck.  The following day, our class had art.  One of my students came back from art class with a letter they had written thanking the First graders for watching them and being so nice.  For this I would like to give that child the most thoughtful student award.   So  insert my son’s  name here  please come get your award.”

I have never been so proud.  He wrote a letter on his own to thank somebody for whatever.  who cares… I mean it was my kid and I’m proud.  I love when he surprises me.  He can be so extremely simple and then so extremely complex.  I am so proud to be the mommy.

Honey and I have our Counseling on Thursday nights.   This is the summary of this weeks session…..

So last night went well.  We discussed Honey’s  inability to be compassionate.  He can’t understand that I have different moods and thinks that if I’m not in my fabulous chipper mood then I must be “grumpy”.   Sometimes I just don’t have anything to say.  Sometimes I’m just too exhausted to talk.  So instead of saying “what’s wrong baby, did you have a bad day?”    He says “Why are you in such a bad mood?  You’re always grumpy.”  Which, of course,  pisses me off.  And then he has a legitamate reason to think I’m grumpy.

We also talked about the fact  that all of his employees hate me.  (this was revealedin our last session)  He thought that I was upset about their feelings.  So last night I was finally able to make him understand that I don’t care if they like me or not.  I am just upset that he would allow them to talk about me.  Doesn’t he see that they have no respect for him at all?  That’s what it looked like to me anyway.  He finally agreed to stand up for me.  I have said some really bad things about my husband in the past several months.  Many of them I regret and none of them will ever appear here.  But I will not ever let anyone say anything bad about him to me.  (until after the divorce anyway!  …. insert laughter….)  Honey is Mr. Concrete.   Basically if it’s not making us money or causing us harm then it’s not worth dealing with.   EXAMPLE :  One day one of Honey’s employees got ticked and  Screamed several inappropriate things at him and in front of the other guys.  Honey just laughed it off.  I on the other hand was ready to meet him at his house and let him know where I thought he could go.  READER MENTAL NOTE:  HONEY”S APPROACH IS MUCH BETTER BUT YOU MUST BE BLESSED BY GOD WITH THE ABILITY TO USE IT.   I, being Honey’s exact opposite, am not able to look at things the way he does.  Not at first at least.  My process is this… FEEL – REACT – THINK.   Honey on the other hand THINK- THINK- REACT- AVOID FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS AT ALL COST.   That is something that has taken me a long time to appreciate about him.  But I do envy it now.  One of the things we have learned In “how to stay married class”  is to take a time out and consider the other persons side.  Why did he do ______ ?  Why did he say______?  Was he really trying to hurt me.   Did I hurt him/her first?  What I’ve found is that in most cases he isn’t really out to get me, although it does feel that way sometimes. 

 I have done a few things right in the past few months and one of the most important ones  I would reall like to share here.  We were told growing up that “you are who you hang out with” .   The people who surround you influence you even when you don’t realize it.   (this works with good and bad people)  When you marriage is falling apart,  it is detrimental to the health of your relationship that you seperate yourself from other people in “shaky” marriages.  My first thought when this was revealed to me was that I want to help and support my other shaky marriage friends but in oll honesty I can’t really be of any help to them at this time.  I can do exactly what I’m doing now and tell them to hang in there and make sure that they know they aren’t the only ones in a fight for what is theirs, but I can’t help them cope and I can’t give them advice.  I need to be around marriages that I envy.  I need people who lift me up.  I need people who respect my marriage and won’t encourage me to bash my husband.  I know there are friends of mine who have wonder lately what my problem is and why I haven’t been hanging with them and I pray that one day God will mend those realationships.  But I can’t be anything good for anyone if my marriage remains like it is.  That includes my children.  The thing that has hit me hardest in “class” is that Mrs. J told us that when we fight, (although we may never see it)  our children feel like we are unavailable to them and we are in turn causing them to have emotional insecurities.  Holy Crap!!  I don’t want to do anything that hurts my kids.  I’m being a bad mom by not getting this crap figured out.  Mrs. J said in many cases the children are actually better off after a divorce.  All I have to do is stop fighting with this amazing man that God made for me and everyone will be better off and happier.  ha  easier said than done.

Are we sure this is true?  I mean I have felt an awful lot of anger lately and I don’t think I feel any underlying emotions.   And Good Lord help me but I am so sick of saying I’m sorry.  So sick.  Ahhhhh!

Really it was a pretty good weekend though.  Saturday night we had a camp out in the backyard.  It was so fun.  Tank thought it was great.  We cooked hot dogs over the fire pit and then made S’mores.  We set up our tent and passed out.  Yep, that’s roughin’ it.  ha.   Not too much to tell about all of that.  We spent all of Sunday at our old house.  We kept it as a rental when we moved and it’s been occupied by the same owner for 3 years… until now.    So, due to the EVICTION, we had to clean.  A lot.  I was so overwhelmed when I walked in there.  I couldn’t breathe for some reason.  Tank’s room was the same as it was when we brought him home from the hospital.  Mr.Big’s room had been painted as well as most of the rest of the house.  I just felt sick though.  We came home to this house from our honeymoon.  Tank took his first bath there.  We became a family in that house.  And there it sat, disrespected and covered in filth. Honey found me in the nursery crying.  Boy was he confused.  “But, you hated this house”  Hell, I wasn’t expecting to have this reaction myself but here we are so deal with it.  “I’m so mad”  that’s all I kept saying.  “I am just so mad”.  Luckily it was useful anger though because after I dried my tears, I threw myself into cleaning.  My whole body hurts from it. 

Rule #1 of counseling is that when asked “how did that make you feel?”  we aren’t allowed to reply “angry”.   Anger is a secondary emotion.   Anger is how you feel after someonehurts you.  You feel anger because you’ve been disappointed.   I thought Honey was the one who had trouble with emotions.  I can’t even Identify mine.   I mean all this time I thought I was just mad.  Turns out there’s some underlying emotion that I haven’t faced yet.????  Guess it’s time for some soul searching.

I would like to start by sharing with you a huge secret of mine.  I have a spending problem.  It’s actually a little more like a “going out to eat” problem.  Because Michael gets home so late, the boys and I go out to eat alot.  I also have had a hard time not going out for lunches because if I’m out already, it’s too “inconvienient” to go home.  All this eating out has caused several problems.  For instance.  Honey’s points are as follows……  1.  he’s at work making money while the boys and I are out eating.  2.  Our children will learn better eating habits by eating at home more often.  3.  Eating out is costing us a fortune.  4.  I am putting more on our credit card than I can pay off.  (by the way,  rule # 1 in our marriage is There is Absolutely No Reason to Have More on The Card Than We Can Pay)

There has also been the problem of My Parents.  Honey is, in no way, close to his parents.  I, on the other hand, had a horrible relationship with mine in my teenage years and now have two best friends.  My mother is a giver.  She shows her love by buying  and giving things.  And several times a month she and my dad would call and ask the boys and I to meet them for dinner,  their treat.  Of course I always went and I always offered to pay.  But Michael (because of the way he was raised) sees this behavior as “mooching” rather than simple kindness.  Now comes the dreaded agreement….

Two weeks ago we left our counseling seesion with a large homework assignment of talking about our finances and the role we each play in preparing for the future.  “sigh”.   So  in order to get our credit card payed off as quickly as possible this is what we decided….   From now on our money will only go to the bills, groceries, gas, prescriptions and co-pays.  Sounds fun huh?  This means NO EATING OUT!!!  We are buying no luxury items.  No Beer for the fridge.  Not even PBR which is like 3.99 for a 24 pack.  No extra junk food.  Just the things we need to survive.  It’s only been 15 days and it’s really been hard.  Especially when Steph comes over and says “I have a great idea for us to save gas today,  we can walk to Cozumels” !!!!  How crappy is that?  And then today was field day at Mr. Big’s school and all the mom’s were bringing their kids Sonic for lunch.  Not me though, we had school pizza!!!  Mmmm, tasty!  Mr. Big didn’t care though.  He just wanted me to be there so I guess when I put things in perspective,  not eating out isn’t such a bad thing.  We may end up taking a nice vacation this year beacause of all the money we are saving!!

Although I can’t think of anyone else in the world that I would like to be married to, I can’t seem to get along with my husband these days.  Quite frankly the odds were against us from the begining.  I’ll take you there….

At 19 I got pregnant by a close friend  (and so starts an interesting story).  I immediately left behind the life I was living to start a new one.   Mr. Big was born in  March of ’02.  The following February Honey fell back into my life.  We had dated for a few months in ’99 and 2000.  Honey builds fences and my employer, at that time, was interested in getting one.  The day after I told her about him,  I came out of the movie theatre only to find his truck parked next to my car….???  The following Monday as I was leaving work,  I saw him again building a fence a few doors down.  ????

(I know that at this point it is hard not to wonder where exactly the odds were against us.  As a matter of fact it looks to me like FATE. )

So on with the story…  The following Friday was 2/14/03.  (valentine’s day)  So, after some convincing from my friends and my mother  (she had always loved honey) I called him.  What better way to find out if he’s seeing someone than to ask him what he’s doing on Vday?  So we chatted.  He sounded excited to hear from me and made it very clear that he wasn’t seeing anyone.  We agreed to try to get together the following week to catch up.  That phone call was at 4:00.  He called me back at 6:00 to see if I would come over.  Cute huh?  I know, it makes me want to fall in love too.

Honey and I only dated for 11 weeks before he proposed.  And 16 weeks later we were married and off to the Bahamas.  (fun but hard to leave behind my little man for the first time). 

Back to the destined for failure part….  So I had a baby.  We had a short courtship and engagement.  Our wedding was scheduled for August 30 and the first week in June we got some bad news.  Honey had gone to the dermatologist to check on this exzema thing he had been dealing with for several years.  The doctor decided to do a biopsy and run some tests on the skin cells.  Honey had cancer.  Thats all the doctor said.  “Honey, you have cancer.” (actually he used honey’s real name)  “You need to go to Vanderbilt.”  There we were, not knowing if this meant 6 weeks or 6 years.  All we had was Google.  (By the way, despite what you may think, that is never a good idea!)  Ofcourse, that did nothing but confuse us even more.  Honey sat me down one night and told me that he loved me no matter what and nothing was gonna change that, but he couldn’t blame me if I wanted to leave him.  He felt it was unfair to ask me to stay if there was a chance that it wasn’t gonna be for very long.  Obviously I told him that I wanted nothing more than to spend our lives together and if that was only gonna be 6 weeks then, by God, I would take it.  We finally got to Vanderbilt in late July and found out that Mycosis Fungoides wasn’t gonna kill him.  There isn’t a cure but as long as it doesn’t spread (only a 10% chance) he will be fine.  Light treatments are a normal part of our winters now but it’s not a big deal. 

So skip ahead a month or so and we come back from our honeymoon and “SHOCKER” I’m pregnant!  Are you seeing how we could feel doomed?  1.  baby from previous relationship   2. married quick  3. cancer  4. baby on the way  …..  We really had a hard first year.  And things have only gotten harder from there. 

Honey and I started talking about getting a divorce nearly a year ago now.   Things have just been really hard and we forgot about each others wants and desires.  At the begining of 08 we agreed to stick it out a little longer and attempt some counseling.  Which brings me to this blog.  I want to be able to verbalize everything we’ve been going through.  A week ago we were over.  Our counselor finally convinced Honey to start fighting for us.  The point is Today we both want to fight for it.  Tomorrow may only be one of us fighting.  But it’s constantly a fight to keep what belongs to us. 

Tonight on ER (favorite show), Luka told Abbey that he had an image of how they were supposed to be but what he realized was that they were more like a row boat on choppy water and they would have to fight daily to stay afloat.  Or something along those lines.  My point is that Marriage is a gift but it has to be fed and nourished to survive.  When you forget what it needs, it just starts to die.

I have allowed myself to be defined by everything that has happened in my life.   Being the oldest child.  Being the black sheep at a very young age.  Getting pregnant at 19  by a guy I knew but didn’t love.  Jumping into a marriage before I knew what it meant.  Ultimately, I never planned for any of these things to happen but I have allowed them to “be” me.   “who are you….?”   “who me?  well, I am a mother and a daughter and a wife and a sister and a room mother at my son’s school and….. “  Do you see where this is going?  You can’t tell if you want to be friends with someone by those things.  Who I truly am has been influenced by them but not defined.  This is where I clarify….

 The Truth Starts Here

I am 26 years old.  I live a much older life than I should.  Because I got pregnant with my first son at 19, I was forced (in a sense) to grow up pretty fast.  I got married when he was 17 months old but not to his biological father.   And my husband is my exact opposite.    I am a lover of music and sing all day long, everyday.  I consider myself to be a socialite.  I am most at home in a crowded room of laidbacks.  I love having people over.  Grilling out for all of the family or hosting wedding and baby showers for my girlfriends.   Now I’m not saying that I don’t love being a mom and a wife.  There is nothing I want to do more than be a stay at home mom.  I just mean that isn’t all that defines me.   I put all my efforts into being a good mom and teaching my children to all that I can to ensure that they are, one day, two amazing men.   And I don’t think there is a more important job than to be the wife that God intends for me to be.  But isn’t there room for a social life?

I just realized that without knowing me, it might be assumed from my title that I am already divorced and fighting for custody or possibly a couch.  That is totally not the case.  If you have come here looking for a man-basher you are in the wrong place. The truth is that Honey and I have been discussing divorce for about 8 months now.  We agreed in January to start seeking counsel.  I think that we thought that it would be a quick fix.  The thing about counseling is that, in order to start fixing things you first have to admit your faults and start owning your wrong-doings.  (Let me see a raise of hands… who likes admitting they were wrong???  My point exactly.)  So it’s been really hard.  I realized that as a 26 year old, mother of two, in a failing marriage,  I felt really alone.  Who can encourage me to keep going.  Why isn’t anyone else’s marriage falling apart.  How are the other couples we know getting by without counseling.  Why are we the only ones who can’t make it work?  I don’t know if anyone will ever even look at this page but I know I should write about fighting for my marriage just incase somebody who is thinking that their marriage should come to an end will come across it and find enough hope to hold on just one more day. 

I think right now that’s all I can do.  Today it’s okay and I don’t know what tomorrow will bring but I can’t worry about that.  I just have to make it today.