Upside Down

There have been very few times in my life when in the blink of an eye, everything is turned upside down. Black is white, white is black, the world is topsy turvy and I'm left reeling at the strangeness of it all. The day J said, "Our relationship is in crisis," was one of those disorienting moments.

In retrospect, I couldn't have been completely oblivious to the fact that he was unhappy; after all, it was at his request that we started our weekly Friday-Night-Date-Nights. And hadn't he frequently fumed that the children took all my time and energy? That he was jealous of all the love and affection I gave the baby?

Even so, of late I had been under the impression that he wanted to spend less time with me. He'd become increasingly snappish anytime he was home, taking out his suddenly-short temper on the kids and I before retreating to his office or driving off to go train-watching, spending the remainder of the weekends in self-imposed solitary. I'd actually congratulated myself on handling it all so well, allowing myself to become absorbed in reading endless books rather than take offense at his cold shoulder, and concentrating on getting myself mentally healthy so as not to give him another reason to be angry.

And then something came to light that I felt explained all his behavior. So when he first broached the subject of our relationship, I remember thinking, "You're just deflecting." I told him he had to stop relying on me to make him happy, that it was unreasonable to expect me to be the source of all fulfillment in his life.

It took a few days for me to realize that he was serious; That he wasn't just trying to blame me for all his unhappiness and dissatisfaction, but was actually hurt and lonely and dealing with uncomfortable emotions by lashing out at me. And just as that dawning awareness was taking root in my mind, he uttered, "Our relationship is in crisis," and I fully expected the next words out of his mouth to be, "I don't think this is working. I want a divorce."

I was an emotional wreak for several days following as I tried to wrap my mind around this new reality. Luckily, he did not want a divorce. Completely the opposite, in fact. He missed me. He missed us. He wanted to feel like something more than just the parents of our children and partners in paying bills.

So we're figuring it out. For the most part, it's wonderful-- he brings me flowers, we go on long walks, and we've blown more money on babysitters this month than we have in the entire year previous. But sometimes, I look around at my topsy-turvy world and have to spend a day reeling and weepy at how things could be so different from what I thought they were.  That I could be so unaware. That it only took one person for our relationship to be in crisis, but it takes two to fix it.


{image by Turner Duckworth via Print for Love of Wood}