How My Husband Saved Our Marriage

my handsome architect

“Your mom and I are in hell right now and the bottom line is marriage is hard. It’s really bleeping hard. It’s just two people slogging through the shit, year after year, getting older, changing — it’s a bleeping marathon, okay? So sometimes, you know, you’re together so long you stop seeing the other person...” (by Stuart Blumberg & Lisa Cholodenko except using real f-bombs, not bleeping ;-p)

Being married IS hard. I’ve said that before (though maybe not as bleeping eloquently as Julianne Moore in the movie THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT) and I’ve said before that the hard work is so so so worth it.

So I think now would be a good time to tell you the story about how my husband saved our marriage.

About five years ago we let things get a little too comfortable between us. No, comfortable isn’t adequate – we let ourselves grow complacent. And like the character in the movie, I didn’t feel like I was being seen which to me translates as “you don’t love me”. Like so many of us, I need to feel understood, accepted and wanted in order to KNOW that I’m loved; for goodness sake, pay attention to me!!

Heck, I make it pretty easy to know me – it’s pretty evident from this young blog that I’m not exactly the type to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself – so you also know that there was no way my husband could claim he didn’t know that I was unhappy. But still, nothing changed and we were soon just co-occupants of the same house. I was starting to not care that he wasn’t paying attention which meant we were going down a very dangerous path. I think complacency causes the death of more marriages than anything else – probably because a lot of the “anything else” is done because of the complacency.

Then I few months later, I realized something HAD changed. But cynic that I am, I immediately assumed he was only paying attention to me because I lost some weight. Naturally I accused him of that but he just said no and wouldn’t fight with me about it.

Instead he kept paying attention to me, showing me I was wanted and doing sweet things for me. Little things that meant a LOT to ME. I mean, diet cokes before getting out of bed? Heaven!! It took a little while but his love wore thru the shell I’d started to build and our marriage was back on track. Almost without me realizing what was happening.

And then one day I woke up and saw how different everything was. He loved me!! We were closer than ever before, even closer than that initial period when you think you love each other desperately. Closer because we knew each other more fully and still loved each other more. People even started commenting on our relationship.

The close, good relationship had crept up on me just like the boring, bad one had. Only, while we had coasted downhill, someone had to work hard to push us back up hill. And I figured since it wasn’t me, it must have been him (I’m pretty smart, in case you didn’t know).

And being me, I just flat out asked him what changed.

a truly happy couple

He told me he decided that loving me was the most important thing he could do. Then he decided that he needed to love me the way I needed to be loved.

And he did.
Patiently.
Despite me not seeing.
Despite my accusations.
Until.
And still.


next time: what he has to say about all this and after that: the lessons we learned