my marriage

i met my husband, H, about 10 years ago. we worked together, we were both dating other people at the time, we were both disappointed, blah blah blah. sound familiar? it's the soundtrack of my life, really. anyway, he broke up with his girlfriend due to commitment issues on her part. i broke up with my boyfriend because he was driving me nuts and H seemed like a better fit. BUT... i had started dating THAT boyfriend (let's call him B) after breaking up with my fiance earlier in the year. seriously, i have a problem. so i felt some degree of loyalty and guilt (like i do when i end all of my relationships) in breaking up with B. the other punch line: he lived RIGHT NEXT TO H. ahahahahahaaa!! sigh.

so H and i start going out. H actually asked me out to dinner before i was single, that naughty boy. looking back, that isn't really like him at all. so we gave it a shot and i was racked with guilt over how easy it was to be with him as compared to B. B had so many hang-ups and he was guilty over breaking up with HIS girlfriend for me. (it's like a goddamn soap opera. i'll make a flow chart after this over.) so H and i got along fabulously, but i had a hard time letting go of B. a really really hard time. so much so that eventually i broke up with H to go back to B. worst. thing. ever. B never really trusted me after that and H wouldn't talk to me at all.

long story short, i left B for good and H eventually took me back. i still say that H was essentially a rebound, because even after we started back on our journey together, i still had a hard time getting over B. H calls this period "having my head up my ass." nice.

so H and i worked easily together. B was way too social for my tastes. if he didn't have plans on both weekend days, he would get seriously depressed. i was the opposite. even if i had plans, i would try to find ways out of going. but H was in the middle. he didn't have a whole lot of friends in the area, but on occasion we would go out and have a good time. he was smart, a smart ass, well-read, witty, educated, came from a similar background. and he loved me.

we moved in together 6 months after getting back together. he kept all of his stuff, i kept mine. we had our own couches, books, book cases, dishes, cats. combining things has always been the hard thing in our relationship. he takes it the wrong way if i suggest we get rid of his thing; he says, "why not yours??" because yours is older, broken, uncomfortable, etc. or we would get rid of mine. it's like he thought i was going to become That Girlfriend who would turn the apartment into her personal space with flowers and doilies and he would just become another object to dust. sheesh.

some time around christmas, i saw B on the train. it fucked my shit up bad. i basically stood in the train station, shaking and trying really hard not to sob out loud. i think i told H about this. later that week, on a Sunday, i believe, i was working retail and H said he wanted to go shopping. jewelry shopping. for rings. huh? what? i was exhausted and really just wanted to go home, but he was pretty insistent. so we went, at 3pm on a sunday, all over the metro area, looking for a ring. to say that H is not proactive is an understatement. i don't know what lit the fire under his ass, but something did. so we found a ring and he kept it somewhere secret, planning on proposing at the right time.

we traveled to see his family the next month. during a reading at a dingy bookstore, sitting on the filthy carpet, he whipped it out and put it on my finger. for him it was sweet. for me it was less than ideal, but then i never really thought about how a proposal would go. my last fiance, F, proposed to me sitting in my lap in his pajamas. bah. i don't usually demand romance, but once and a while it wouldn't kill them, right?

so we got engaged. and we planned a wedding in six months. nothing was really difficult. we planned well together. i knew what he wouldn't care about (linens, flowers, etc.) and asked his opinion about other stuff. all in all, it was pretty fabulous. a simple, small wedding brunch. never having thought about a wedding before, this was just what we wanted. i was too old for the whole big shabangabang. fuck that. i'm not going in to debt for thousands just to show people i'm getting hitched.

the biggest sticking point i had was my name. i hadn't been planning on taking his. i was old and kind of attached to my maiden name. but he was upset that i didn't want his name and this really surprised me. of all of things to put up a fuss about. i didn't expect it at all. but i conceded. and it was the one thing (at the time) i wish i would have stuck to my guns about. but seriously, it was the only thing that we've ever really combined. and i thought, "this is one thing i can do to show my commitment to this relationship."

anyway, we got married and it was great. we enjoyed similar things, had similar ways of thinking, similar senses of humor, similar methods of cleaning. we didn't have similar movie or music tastes. at all. but i usually caved in because he was kind of intolerant to things he didn't like. ok, so i'll never watch cutting edge with him. or listen to orbital with him. so be it. some other sticking points: he hates the city. eventually he wants to move back to his hometown, which i have no desire to do. not that i want to stay in the city the rest of my life (or do i?) but he hates it. he hates driving in it, exploring it, hates it all. the reason he lives here: employment. i am the opposite. i love this city. i love all it has to offer.

but we stayed and bought a condo. again, that went pretty smoothly. no arguments. i think at some point he called me too picky. yeah, when we're going to plunk down that much money, fucking right i'm going to be picky. so we find a place, move in, buy furniture, a flat screen TV, a new mattress, kitchen table, etc. domestic bliss. the sex got a little stale. he's a "bedroom only" type of person. always on the bed. always. not even on the couch. i think once we had it bent over the arm of the couch in the beginning, but that was as creative as we got. and he was totally against PDA of any kind. he didn't even really like to tell me he loved me on the phone at work. he wasn't a hand holder, and hugs and kisses in public were rare. but truth be told, i didn't really care. i was losing interest in sex anyway. i had better things to do and honestly, it wasn't that important to me.

as our relationship progressed, we got more familiar with each other, as usual. the farting and burping and crass talk escalated. his idea of foreplay was to ask me if i would maybe be interested in some sex later. you know, after his video game playing. nothing was spontaneous. and i didn't consider him grabbing my ass while i was cooking foreplay.

but things really go downhill when he downloads that video game. now he's in front of the TV all the time. he gets home from work and turns it on. he gets up on the weekends and turns it on. i never have control of the tv unless he goes into the other bedroom to do work. then he says, "it's all yours." gosh thanks. weekday evenings, he'll play until dinner time then ask if i want to watch a movie. his choice, of course. it's the one thing we'll (passively) do together, so if i pick a flick he doesn't want to watch, he'll go in the other room. sometimes, i'll pass on the movie and go into the other room to read or play on my iphone or text D. sometimes i listen to my ipod and knit. i feel very lonely. i have expressed to him my hatred of that game. the fact that he talks more to the people on the other end of his headset more than he does to me. he thinks he's being better by asking me to watch movies with him but he's not. a few months ago, we did a puzzle together. that was fun. but here's what i am always hoping:

1. he'll email me from work and ask me to meet him somewhere for dinner.
2. he'll make random hotel reservations for the weekend.
3. he'll be reading or fixing or organizing something when i come home.
4. he'll make me dinner. a real dinner that he thought up himself, not just something he found in the cupboard at the last minute.
5. he'll find something less obtrusive than that game to take up his time.

he is taking me for granted. put that on top of his intolerance and his vasectomy in the face of my disclaimer of wanting kids, and i am pretty pissed off right now. my biggest problem (or thing i'm most proud of) is that i accept him for who he is. it's not his fault he doesn't want kids. fine. nagging him won't get me what i want in the end. if i throw that damn game console out the window, then i'm going to have to find something to do with him in return. what would that be? he doesn't like to any of things i enjoy. biking, exploring, shopping, camping. i don't really like to sit still and he likes to do nothing but.

i think he knows something is up because he's telling me he loves me all the time now. he'll look into my eyes and smile and say that it's totally awesome to be married to me. of course it is. i let you do what ever you want at the expense of my happiness because that's what i do. i know if i demand what i want to be happy, he won't give it to me. or he will for a short period of time, but then things will go back to the way they were. so why bother? i know how people and family dynamics work. 

so there i was, in a perfect storm of loneliness and unease when i met D. i fought it for a long, long time. like i said before, the guilt was overwhelming at times. i think all the time, what if H knew what i was doing? it would kill him. i used to close Pandora's Box on a weekly basis. i would go a day without talking to D and i would try to extend that as long as i could. the longer i went, the easier it became. i would blow him off with excuses for why i couldn't talk. or i would just tell him that i didn't feel like talking. when you're constantly over-analyzing your marriage and your relationship with another person, it gets really tiring really fast. but i noticed that when i would push D out of my life, i would get really tired. sad. irritable. even if in the front of my mind i was perfectly OK with not talking to him, now i was faced with my crumbling marriage. the relationship i was supposed to be saving was out in front of the TV, too busy to pay attention to me. it was incredibly isolating.

my question is why? why do we do this to ourselves? why do i feel compelled to be loyal to a man who could obviously care less if i existed? i come home late and he doesn't even look up from his game. i have always been the one for full disclosure (of most things) and i would tell him when i was coming home late. he was never like that. he would go to do things after work and not tell me where he was and he would come home and hour, hour and a half late. meanwhile, here i am thinking he got hit by a bus, kidnapped, shot. but since he doesn't need it from me, i shouldn't want it from him. so he doesn't really care where i go or what i do. the fact that new things occasionally show up in the home. he never asks. so why do i feel so guilty over having an affair? why does society frown upon this? is it the secrecy? ann landers would be aghast. "it's just wrong." but tell me why? why do i feel like a piece of shit in my marriage and out of my marriage? if i would been able to see how shitty this was going to be, i would have tackled it head on and dragged H kicking and screaming into therapy. but you never want to think that your marriage is that bad off. and the thing with D... was the same thing. you never want to admit that your marriage is so bad that you step out. but it happens. so why do i let a bunch of people who haven't walked in my shoes make me feel bad. dan savage doesn't make me feel bad. or maybe he would. yes, my husband would be upset if he found out. yes, i feel i have a good goddamn reason for doing it. yes, i should have talked about it with H.

and i've come close. so so close. but for some reason, i don't want him to feel the same feeling of rejection that i have felt from him. if we split up, it will be because i want kids and he doesn't. it will be because we don't have much in common any more. over these past few months, i have come to terms over what i will miss if i leave him. in the beginning i would start to cry at the thought of missing some things. but, honestly, being with both of them made me happy. D gives me the attention i so badly crave, and H gives me the financial stability and familial history that i enjoy.

but i have crossed over. i have crossed over from H to D. this last vacation away from D really broke me in a way. stepping back from your marriage and really taking a good long look can bring things into focus. there are insurmountable odds in this marriage. and whereas 6 months ago, i would have said no fucking way am i throwing in the towel, now i wonder why the hell not? despite all that i've written, i still love H. but i didn't sign on for this. he's becoming one of those people he always made fun of. i didn't know i was marrying a video junkie. i solidify my feelings for this decision by thinking that i would probably leave H anyway, with or without D. H doesn't love me enough to have a baby with me, and deep down, that kills me. it's a rejection that tears at my soul. yes, i didn't want kids, but i always wanted the option. i always wanted someone to look into my eyes and say, "i would have a baby with you." and i thought i could get him there. i thought our love would transform that part of him. but it never did. and now it's too late. it kills me just to type this. a deep down, crushing sadness that wells up in my chest and radiates out my fingers. a silent despair. one that H will never, ever understand.