I think the Honeymoon, and I mean the whole period that is often referred to collectively as “The Honeymoon Period”, end shortly after touch down in Houston following the actual vacation that is also referred to as The Honeymoon.
Days after being home I wondered if I had made a mistake, if we made a mistake. He was so interested in marrying me within the first days of meeting and this eventual grew to a near standstill – with all the romance neatly packed away like a winter sweater for the appropriate day when you desire wrapping yourself in the warmth and comfort of something so familiar. I asked him if he felt like we made a mistake. He said no. He seemed like he felt like it was the best decision of his life. But I was torn. Something I had wanted to so badly was finally mine and it was hardly sweet, but rather full of bitter distant doubt. I don’t know where the trouble started but I can surely point out the weak joints.
We come from such different backgrounds. We have such different ideas on fairness and politics. We have different ideas on how to love, but not that each of us wants love – we both certainly do want love. But they way we want it is clearly very different. I try to give love in a way I would like to receive it. Yet, my heart is so wounded I always feel like I am holding, my full potential to love, back.
We both had lives before each other. He read about my life, but I have heard about his from the same lips that said vows to me, the same lips that whispered sweet nothings in the ears or mouths of so many women before me. We have fought over this a million times. As a woman, I want to hear that none of that meant anything, that they were just words said to get what was wanted. My husband can’t offer this solace, and yet I so badly want him to. He doesn’t doubt my love for him, only fears my leaving. So, I have fought hard to make sure he didn’t think I would leave. Yet, I knew it wasn’t working for me, but I thought it would be different when he wasn’t pushing me way or pulling me toward him, only to push me away, yet again. Marriage was to be the answer.
We haven’t spent that much time together. We have talked a great deal. But when I read the communication he had with his friends before me, he is a different person. I have shut him down. He doesn’t engage with them as he did before. In part because I see the kind of interactions that occurred to be so far removed from what I consider normal interaction between friends. But these friends are different. There are some that are married but it is a large group of singles that vacation together, visit each other in foreign countries, keep track of each others lives in great detail (and all before Twitter and Facebook). To me it is odd. It is odd because it isn’t like with my friends. My friends are all over the place. Some are finishing their Master’s Degree, one is finishing medical school, some are married, some live in other countries but mostly my friends are deeply connected to one person in their life – their partner. I don’t anyone that has been single as long as my husband and his friends. So, I can’t really understand a situation that appears to me to be group dating without sexual intimacy but they have intimacy that goes beyond a lot of sexual relationships, and it is difficult for me to adjust. And on top of it, his friends are really opinionated (as is he) and it comes off as rude to me, and perhaps this is because of my background and how most people I know are just so grateful they don’t list favorite or acceptable eating locations, but rather go along with what everyone else is doing and somehow they just make it work. I am not saying either of our friends are better than the others. But my social circle is smaller in part due to isolation and also mainly to the fact that when I am in a relationship, I put my focus there.
When I read the exchanges he used to have with people on public forums like blogs, I can’t help but ache a little. He isn’t this person anymore because of me. His friends hate me because I am from outside the circle. I hate them because I don’t feel like they want me to be a part of it. I also don’t trust him and I know this hurts him. I know that he pretty much has an email address for every single person he has ever met, even if for 10 minutes standing in line for a movie or on a dive boat or they sat 5 rows behind him in Freshman Orientation. So, I would imagine the same kind of conversations go on, but just in the form of email and not on Facebook.
We are trying to work on a relationship but we are 10,000 miles apart and everyday myself esteem falls. I am trying to pin point why it has plummeted and today what I can come up with is that being so far apart and me living in the boondocks, I am not around ANYONE. This means there are no fun conversations with hotel staff on the way to the lobby (or the water cooler or whatever your office situation may be). He works for a huge company and sees and knows a ton of people. I don’t, not because I am not good at meeting people, but there is really no one for me to meet. I go to an office by myself, I sit by myself everyday, I drive the two hours everyday by myself, I come home to be alone and exhausted (most recently anyway). I am tired of faking it. I miss the gym, I miss talking to be able about training programs, or beer, or church, or seeing another persons lips move in real life time with the words they say. I miss yoga and seeing people in coffee shops. I feel a bit like a prisoner in my own hell waiting for the release date, the day my husband leaves his place in the desert and returns to the US. But I fear us being able to make the adjustment to making a live together here work. I fear that I will not feel loved. That I am not capable of feeling loved. That I will be frustrated because we have not had time to get to know each other before we are thrust into a life somewhere together that will mostly like have his friends and family present and not mine. When my friends take vacation, they go with their partner on a mini-moon, but it seems like his friends vacation to see each other. I am not sure I am up for that kind of lifestyle. I want to feel included but I think perhaps it is a bad idea for those that don’t believe in the power of genetics to participate in genetic drift (dating outside the cirle). Is this going to lead to an even worse nightmare? My husband is changing who he is in order to love me – is that fair?
I am off to Kuwait in about 7 days. I hate going because my schedule changes and I leave my dogs, but yet I love going because I love giving to him and seeing him smile and to see his happiness at the end of the day when he sees me. But he is so tired and I have waited all day, it hardly seems fair. Then it all seems over before it really started and I am on a plane home to pick up dogs, grocery shop, and get back to work at a job that I don’t know if I have on a week to week basis. I just keep showing up, like that guy in Office Space – but luckily I get a paycheck, it might never be in a timely manner, but I get one. One more day at the office is one more closer to his being home.
When we first started dating his plan was to be home by now, about 4 months before now. I think it only gets harder, not easier. But he has stayed longer to help me, to help us. Each month longer he stays is a payment on my student loans, and my student loans are no small feat. So, obviously I am entirely indebted to him and fight to accept the distance and the amount of time that he is spending there.
Marriage is not 50/50 or any form of a fraction. It is a fairly complication equation where XX = 100% and XY = 100% and when you try to find the fraction you end up with 1. It takes two people to make one marriage (period) and each person must give their 100%, but sometimes (most of the time), this is very difficult and you wonder when you get to give up. The answer is easy, NEVER.
