i can’t remember

I can’t remember what I was going to write about. I wanted to try (again) to get back into the habit of writing more often. I was considering this week what I wanted to do with my blog, what level of detail or audience was appropriate and I am comfortable with. Part of this was prompted by a short little note I wrote to Daniel this week which I was particularly impressed with and felt it a shame that he would be the only one who could appreciate my masterpiece.

Regarding that particular piece of prose, in the end I think I decided that it’s a bit too explicitly personally intimate for me to feel comfortable with a wider audience. (That makes it sound like some kind of hard-core porn but it really wasn’t.) I really don’t know where this train of thought is going.

I have been feeling very lovey and mushy this week. It was just one of those types where there is nothing specific extra cool happening but everything runs smoothly and everyone is (for the most part) nice to everyone else and I felt very happy and appreciative of my family and my life. Then on Thursday it was our wedding anniversary (9 years) and that made me feel good. Daniel wrote me a love letter which I have wished for him to do for so long. I read it standing in the laundry out of the way of everyone else who had just gotten up and wanted drinks or breakfast or whatever else and when he turned around and saw me crying over it he laughed at me.

I also felt a certain amount of pride in our wedding anniversary. As we have been together for longer and become more and more accustomed to each other’s habits and moods and needs I feel more desire to be with him.. not just in the sexual sense but just being together, both doing things together and doing our own things while in each other’s company. He is what gives me comfort and and security and a sense of an anchor or lifeline that I can always return to when everything in the outside world becomes too much. And the pleasure in returning to the inner world of just us is also enhanced by the connections and glimpses I get of the greater universe and realms that I see for but a brief flash when we are joined. It doesn’t get boring after a long time, it just gets more comfortable and easy in the mundane moments and more intense and exhilirating in the moments of pleasure in each other.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, The probability that a marriage will end in divorce has been increasing over time. Based on the nuptiality tables, around 28% of marriages entered into in 1985–1987 could be expected to end in divorce. This proportion increased to 33% for all marriages entered into in 2000–2002. We got married in 1999, so I suppose that excluding all other factors, the general population chance that we could end up divorced is ~32%. I know people who began their relationships after we did and have already ended them and even moved onto others – more than one! How can people think that someone is right for them when they are not? How do you make that error multiple times? And if it’s not an error, if people know that the person they are with isn’t the right one, then why are they wasting time in that relationship or marriage when they could be finding the right person instead? How do people fight with their spouse? Not disagree, or even annoy or anger each other, we do that.. I mean real fighting where people yell and throw things and say the most horrible things to each other. How do people manage to get so caught up doing other things that they forget to “do” (not that kind of “do”, just actually giving time to them) their spouse? For me at least, if I don’t keep coming back to Daniel and cocooning and rejuvenating I start to feel lost and listless and alone and unable to manage the strain that interacting with the world takes on me.

I don’t understand how such a significant portion of the population can get it wrong. And since that 32% is not an insignificant number, are we actually going to be part of that group and are at the moment just deluding ourselves that we are any different? I don’t think we are, but how do you know you won’t when presumably most or all of the people who get married enter into it assuming that they will be part of the 68% rather than the 32%?

So. I feel good and encouraged that we have got this far and are still just as excited about being married to each other as we were when we got married. It is an encouragement that we will stay in the 68% group.

i can’t remember

2 thoughts on “i can’t remember

  1. wow. how do you say in one comment what might be going wrong in so many marriages? i suppose i can only speak for my own.

    for me, i guess it was a case of thinking that i knew someone when i didn’t know them as well as i thought i would. also, i thought that person might change as we got to know each other better. i don’t mean that i wanted them to change who they were or i wanted them to be a different person. what i mean is that i thought they might open up more & let me in more than they did at the start.

    i suppose if i’d not entered into the relationship more slowly, then i might have known them better & realised that my needs would not have been met, no matter how long the relationship went on.

    when my emotional needs weren’t being met, then i went elsewhere to find those deep emotional ties which were missing from my marriage. it was a bad choice on my part. it wasn’t a bad choice as to who i chose to try to meet those needs, it was a bad choice to think that it was acceptable in the situation & i acted it out in the wrong way.

    it’s so hard to see, from the inside of a relationship, when some needs aren’t being met or when things are not the way they should be in a healthy relationship. i suppose i kept assuming things would change .. but they never did. i thought they were changing for so many years, but then it would always come back down to the same place again: a place where nothing at all had changed. it’s so easy for others to see, from the viewpoint of outside the relationship, when things aren’t right. from the inside, i guess it’s a case of not seeing the forest for the trees.

    if i’d been able to recognise early on that the relationship wasn’t based on an equal sharing of life, emtions, love, values, etc, then i suppose i would have removed myself from the relationship sooner.

    it’s taken being out of the relationship for years (& there are more revelations every day of what it should have been like, but wasn’t) to recognise the things that should have been, but weren’t. it’s also taken a much more functional, healthy & equally balanced relationship to see the things that were not only unequal, but were completely missing.

    i keep keep typing for pages & pages about this, but most of it would require more thought than the brain space & time that i have today.

    maybe that answers some of your questions .. at least in my own situation.

  2. Tess says:

    I love this part Jade,

    “He is what gives me comfort and and security and a sense of an anchor or lifeline that I can always return to when everything in the outside world becomes too much. And the pleasure in returning to the inner world of just us is also enhanced by the connections and glimpses I get of the greater universe and realms that I see for but a brief flash when we are joined. It doesn’t get boring after a long time, it just gets more comfortable and easy in the mundane moments and more intense and exhilirating in the moments of pleasure in each other.”

    That describes how I felt about my marriage. We’d been together happily for 17 yrs, and he really was my anchor and lifeline. We shared everything, and were so close. Then suddenly, he’d found someone else. He told me I was his best friend now, and she was to be his wife. Just like that…

    I read somewhere that people change about every 10 years. I know I had changed. I was older, and had health issues that placed a burden on my then husband. My personaility had not changed much…but my body and ability to do things for him had changed at that time. He changed, too. Some call it “midlife crisis”. My ex’s mother swears that’s what she sees going on with him. His father had just died, our kids were all teenagers…and suddenly, he found someone else.

    When our three children were smaller, neither my ex nor I could ever imagine not being together. We were a happy family. I was content to be a stay at home mom and wife, and he was content to be the breadwinner and husband and dad. I think as Coralie said, these things really center around the fact that one or the other feels their needs are not being met. The key is that when people change…their needs change with them. I guess that’s how people that are sure they’ve found “the one” can end up divorced anyway.

    Great entry, kudos!

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