I often sort of regret writing too intimately about my marriage. Probably I should regret it completely and not do it at all. But it's freeing as well as useful to send this stuff out. The reason I often sort of regret it is I'm never sure how accurate it is and want to go back and modify or explain or some damn thing, just to be clear, you know, as if that matters.
Tonight I made myself dinner and noticed my boys weren't around and flashed forward to when my wife makes herself dinner and her boys aren't around and neither am I, and I got all teared up.* It just didn't seem right, and (not for the first time nor the thousandth) I wondered how much of what I'm doing I really need to do, how much of it is really my true direction, how much of it is just me fooling myself, selfishly trying to make my own desires come true for whatever reason, how much am I going to look back sometime hence and say, ya damn fool look what you done throwed away.
How do you know what your feelings really are? How do you know when they are truly what's driving you and not some mental self fake-out?
* - Empathy is one of those things that, when other people don't have it, I just can't understand them at all.
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You don't. You can't. Or maybe they always are. Always, including when we make the decision to get married, or we decide we want to make a child, or we change jobs.
We go with our feelings (usually) and then try to stick to that, keep it going, keep convincing ourselves that was the right choice. And we're lucky when it turns out it was the right choice for that time.
I suppose we're lucky if it stays the right choice.
But the feelings sometimes change. And change hard.
I'm of the opinion that the people who stick with the early decisions no matter what, even when the feelings have done a 180, are either genuine saints or just resigned to misery.
I still have guilt feelings, sometimes. I still think of him, alone, lonely. I think of what was. I get very sad. Can't ever go back to what was. And he's lonely, alone today mostly by his own doing. He's clinging to what was and what he thought should be, but not looking ahead. And that's the saddest thing of all.
I don't know how you can NOT know what your feelings are. Mine are always so clear to me, though of course they may change over time. They change for cause however, and the causes always make sense to me even if not to others.
I've ignored and denied my feelings though, which is a Bad Thing. Gonna try really hard not to do that from now on.
I'm not sure what you mean by "accurate." Accurate as in, here is what is true for me? If that's the case, then it's accurate. You can't write what's true for anyone *but* you.
For me, I've learned that just because I have a feeling, that doesn't mean I have to do anything about it. I can just notice it and let it pass on by. (The whole world would be a better place if everyone did this -- imagine entire nations saying, "hmm, anger, let it pass and let's get down to working on our problem")
If you're paying close attention, the heart never makes the wrong choice. It's the "brain" (aka conditioning, socialized belief systems that we have swallowed hook line and sinker from childhood, etc) that fucks us up.
Aileen makes an excellent point, there, in her last para.
Yep. Invisible like button clicked on Aileen's entire comment.
Right, and some part or other of my brain keeps coming back and saying, wait, wait, what about, and what if, and didn't you, and what will the children think.
I was driving along thinking on that and realized I can't protect my kids from much any more. I can't protect them from anything, really, so wanting to protect them from the one big bad thing I can avoid -- their parents splitting up -- is kind of silly if I know I've already moved on and am just taking this time to let my lazy mind and body catch up.
And furtherly yeah, when I think on how I got where I am in life, it is so clear when I was unable or unwilling to listen to my heart. I never trusted the sunovabitch and really should have.
Well, here I go.
It's all been said, but, my only answer is: feelings, not brain.
im with you don on feelings not always being clearly understood. there are some things that i just know without a doubt is the right thing to do... others are not so clear. its also easy to get caught up in the 'perception' of things or to over analyze. in the end bring it down to something really basic. hold two images in your mind of the choice you need to make, look at each one and then open your mind to hear/feel what you heart says. then go with the heart.. as others have said, it will never steer you wrong.
i used to think my dad was stupid for leaving his last wife cause she was a great person and they could have lived their lives out together in relative happiness, but i realize that he did what he had to to follow his heart. that was the right thing for him and anything else would have been settling. to me, settling is worse than having the occasional.. what if reflection.
move forward! do something for YOU. its your life and you deserve to find/discover happiness. you really can only move forward...
I was driving along thinking on that and realized I can't protect my kids from much any more.
In my view, you can't protect your kids OR your wife. You can't protect anybody. All you can do is be as honest as you can, with everyone, including yourself. It's very clear to me that you are taking your time to be careful and deliberate, and not doing or taking anything lightly. I think that's the best you can do.
Imo it's a disservice to your kids to stay in a situation that's making you unhappy, not giving your full self to your spouse, and faking it generally. (I'm talking about teenagers on up -- there is a case for staying in a non-abusive mediocre situation to give little kids a two-parent household, and I'm glad I did this, though I let it go on too long.) What example are you setting for these older kids who have to get it by now that this is far from an ideal relationship? That they should also stay in an unsatisfying relationship later on out of duty or inertia or social pressure? I didn't want to give my daughters that idea -- to me, that's the opposite of protecting them.
It's beautiful that you're all saying about the same thing, and that it validates at the very least the idea that hearing these things when I listen closely to the silence is not entirely insane. I'm also more cheerful lately than usual. Coincidence?
I agree with Paula. The best thing my parents ever did for me was not stay together. They divorced when I was young enough that I have no memories of them being together, but I can extrapolate from what I know and say with complete conviction that living in a house with both of them would have been the suckiest thing in the history of suck.
You have to lead by example and model the behavior you hope for. If you don't want them short-changing themselves, then you can't do it either.
"Coincidence?"
I find I am generally cheerful when I am 'balanced' and in tune. Sort of a Feng Shui of the psyche
Wow. This was a discussion that really touched me.
"Right, and some part or other of my brain keeps coming back and saying, wait, wait, what about, and what if, and didn't you, ..."
I can soooooooo empathize. I'm back home, vacillating between days when I think we can change some things and make this work, and days when all I want to do is strike out on my own.
Yep. And as I move stuff around in this room I'm taking over, it's like shaving pieces off my heart like deli meat and kicking them around on the floor, and it just doesn't translate in blogs and comments and the other online distractions I use to pretend to some moments of sanity, and I can't help wondering WTF, how come I have to do this instead of having nothing better to do than mow the lawn and make the place look nice for when she gets home?
I'm reinstating my blog crush on you. Just so you know.
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