It’s more than love…
In the spirit of full disclosure, I have been trying to write this post for months. A minor mental health setback this spring knocked my creativity and writing off course. More to come on this soon, however, I do not recommend trying to pull yourself off medication that a professional has deemed necessary for you.
I will go on record and say, officially, that I do not regret for one second the decision I made to leave my marriage. That relationship was so far beyond unhealthy that it swung all the way back around and choked itself out. Broken, we decided that this marriage was not what we wanted. Neither of us, regardless of the “why” wanted this narrative to be what it was. What we did agree on was the idea that neither of us were our best selves. With heavy hearts, we decided to call a spade, a spade.
We spent over a year operating as co-parent roommates. We disagreed. We argued. We resolved. We cried. We talked in circles recalling the major stressors of our past and tracing the lines backwards to see just how each stressor contributed to the demise of our relationship. We met weekly at the therapist couch and discussed different strategies for surviving what we had been through.
The marriage we had was swallowed by stress and trauma. We had a miscarriage when we were together for less than six months and then got pregnant again right away, traumatic pregnancy ending with emergency cesarian section and a preemie, we were broke, we had a honeymoon newborn with significant medical needs, nineteen different providers to juggle for our son over two states, a kiddo that went back and forth to another house each week, early childhood intervention for two kids, work discrimination, parents who died, shift work and overtime, a very hectic retail schedule, we were ships passing in the night and each of our ships were being overrun by pirates.
We walked away from the destructive cycle that we had and made the decision not to look back. Out of the broken pieces of our marriage that lay shattered on the floor, we found the one piece that could not be broken; friendship. The solid foundation of friendship that was there all along is what sustained us through the most difficult times in our relationship; little did we know was serving as the basis of building a new one.
In the fall, my brain shut down to survive and during that time I was literally a walking zombie; unstable, suicidal, & terrified. I hit the bottom of the mental health pool, and I was laying there staring up at the sky with blank eyes. Suddenly afraid of my own shadow, Ian helped me put the pieces back together. He sat with me and held my hand while I called the Chief of the department I worked for and told him I was not stable enough to return to work. Ian drove me to the doctor’s appointments and took me with him if he needed to leave the house. He did everything I did not know he could. He was taking care of me and for the first time, I let him.
As I continued to improve and become stronger, I would feel my breath release when Ian would come home after work. I could not deny any longer that I felt safe and comfortable when he was around. In February of 2024, I realized that I did not want to live another day without him and would spend the rest of my life choosing him…choosing us.
Every part of our relationship has changed; we found a deep connection that we did not realize was there because it was buried under stress; we couldn’t see it.
And now…
We communicate on a level we never have before.
We dropped all the “you vs. me” and operate as a team every single day.
We support one another and course correct as necessary.
We take turns captaining the ship.
We spend time together, like real, actual time. We no longer go out to dinner or go to a brewery and drink our faces off to sleep it off at home. We started hiking together, day tripping, seeing our state and New England. And we started investing time, energy and finances into the house we live in; into the place where our foundation is.
Determined to live life differently, we shifted all our priorities.
We share grief and talk about it, rather than bury it. I had absolutely no idea how deeply Ian was also grieving the deaths of my parents, especially my dad. I was so consumed with hiding my own grief and pain that I assumed he was not feeling any of it. I found myself opening my heart and listening to Ian’s grief story in a way I had not heard before. Recognizing that this situation affected him in a way that far surpassed being a spouse was a game changer for us.
Every relationship is a “work in progress” but this one is different. We built the relationship that we wondered if we could have…we work every single day on the marriage we have always wanted.
This past weekend we encountered a rain cloud over a little getaway weekend trip we had planned. Our vehicle was broken into, and hundreds of dollars were stolen. Had this occurred a few years ago, it would have sunk our day, our weekend, our month. Learning to cope differently, we never once blamed one another for the incident, and we leaned into each other instead of leaning away from one another.
Our story has aspects of classic plot and story line twists, including chapters that neither of us predicted. We joined forces to eliminate the villain (stress) and focus on what will sustain us through this life…love.