Making the Choice to Save Your Marriage

I've been reading another blogger who recently went through her discovery. I linked to mine so you can know what I mean by discovery. I didn't link to her because she's going through so much, I'm not sure she'd want more people looking at her turmoil and I'm not certain she'll keep blogging. Talking with her through comments, and reading her other comments has made me think of all sorts of things.

In those moments of the discovery it is imperative to make the right choice, and the right choice for your family. As much as we are pro saving your marriage here, I know that not all marriages should be saved. Believe me, I know this. But, with the exception of emotionally/physically abusive relationships, I think that the right thing to do is to at least try.

And why not try? What else do you have to lose by trying? You have so much to lose by giving up and letting it all end.

I knew if everything came out and if I lost my husband, it would be the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I could see myself as an old woman looking back at my life and knowing that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I knew that I would be miserable.

When I was sitting in the office with the counselor that day after the Discovery, he asked me what I wanted. A whole host of things flew through my head. I thought about the Other, the connections we had, how badly I wanted to be married to someone I was in love with. I wanted to be free to be in love. But that wasn't really the right answer. If I was truly objective the answer would be that I wanted to love my husband desperately.

So when he asked me, I said, "in a perfect world, I'd love my husband."

I'm sorry I cannot really explain what happened in those next moments. I can't explain how I fell in love suddenly. Love that I had never felt before. This is where it is a bit different for me than many others. I started with Husband knowing I didn't love him like that. But content to be with my friend and feeling like I'd never love anyone. It wasn't me settling, it was me making a choice to pick someone I knew would make a great husband, friend and father. I thought that would be enough, but it wasn't.

Many people who marry have been in love with their spouse at some point. There was something there that drew you to each other. Over the years you lose so much of yourself. Love is replaced with resentment and apathy. Pretty soon you're a stranger to each other.

But if you opened yourself up, opened your life and your heart and all the secrets in your soul to your spouse, and your spouse to you... you could begin again. You could start new and build something beautiful from your broken marriage.

If you were the betrayer, like I was, that choice of fighting isn't so much in your control. You are at the mercy of your spouse to decide if they can bear to be with you anymore. But, in those moments you could chose complete an total honesty. You can be fully open with them and do everything you can do to convince them you want to get help for your marriage.

I just hate seeing people give up. Seeing people who know there is something broken in their marriage and that they don't love their spouse, decide it is too late. Sometimes its not too late.

I had no reason to fight, I knew I never loved him, what would make me think that would change? And we'd had so many fights over the years, so many hurtful pointless patterns we fell in to. They hadn't changed in 10 years of marriage, why would they change now?

But they did, fully and completely change. When something so awful happens your whole life goes through an enormous change and you have no choice but to adapt, to kick through the water to the surface, take that deep shuttering first breath and make for the nearest shore.

Keep swimming, swim until your arms give out. And if you don't make it, if you sink into the water and drowned, well, at least you know you gave it everything you had. You tried your best. You can move on and make the best of your after-life. But, please, at least try to make for land.