Oh how I love him, let me count the ways...

After that lengthy list of issues, you may be thinking one of two things.  You may be thinking that I'm insane to stay with him, or that I'm just insane :).  I swear, neither of those things are true (well, I might be a little crazy, aren't we all?).  All of what I said is accurate, but that's not the whole story.

Despite these things, Scott is a truly kind and wonderful person.  We all have our faults and he's no exception.  Some of these "irregularities of character" are double-sided.  His fault becomes a virtue in a certain light.

His grumpy snarkiness has a brighter side, he's a fundamentally honest person.  I'm not sure he would know how to lie if his life depended on it.  He really does have no self-censoring mechanism.  It makes dealing with him very easy in a lot of ways.  I know that if he says something, he really means it.  I don't have to worry that he's going to say one thing and mean another.  It's just not part of who he is.

His impulsiveness comes out in romantic ways as well.  His proposal to me was heartfelt and spontaneous.  When he buys me flowers, it's not because he thinks he's in the doghouse, it's because he saw them and they made him think of me.  There's an innocence to him that is very appealing.

His rebelliousness is not a virtue in the normal sense, but it's a virtue to me.  I am not your run of the mill person either.  I really value his streak of independence.  He doesn't usually think like or want what the average person does.  This allows me to let my freak flag fly too.  I find that refreshing.

He's a really good friend.  He will drop anything to go help someone he cares for.  He's kind and usually very understanding.  The girlfriend he had before me was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after they began dating.  He stuck with her through the whole ordeal (she's fine now), and remains friends with her to this day.  He's usually very supportive of me in my trials and tribulations.  When I was diagnosed with a digestive disorder that caused me to have to completely overhaul my diet, he was right alongside me without complaint.

He loves animals and they love him.  This isn't a virtue per se, but it really indicates what kind of person he is.  He is very gentle with animals and takes very good care of our pets.

He's fun.  We don't exactly have the same sense of humor, but he is often full of laughter.  I love that about him.

He's great in the sack.  Really.  He is a considerate lover, I never go away unsatisfied if he can help it.

He is a natural feminist.  He really has never given me any indication that he feels superior to me, or that men are superior in his mind at all.

He loves almost all women.  Seriously, you show him a woman, and as long as she's not anorexic, he'll find something about her that he thinks is hot.  I really, really love that.

So much of what makes a person wonderful is not quantifiable.  I found myself writing and re-writing this entry multiple times.  How can you capture a person's essence?  It's a lot easier to list your gripes than it is to explain why someone is fantastic.  So, I'll just say that essentially, he is, or has the makings to be, a truly amazing man.  He is the best person I've ever known.  He just has a real problem dealing with his own emotions/inadequacies and I often get caught in the cross-fire.

My side of the conflict...

I can't continue my honest account of wanting to save my marriage without acknowledging my issues with my husband.  I do plan on explaining how truly wonderful he is also, so please don't take this to be my description of him in its entirety.

He has pretty bad ADHD, which he won't seek treatment for.  His ADHD causes him to have some fairly anti-social qualities.  He has no self-censoring mechanism.  He blurts.  Unfortunately, his outbursts are sometimes hurtful.  He's not abusive, don't get me wrong, but he often is a lot harsher with me than he should be.  I get my feelings rubbed the wrong way, or even hurt, on an almost daily basis.

He is impulsive.  We will often discuss plans, come to an agreement, and talk about how to implement whatever scheme we've decided on.  This is all great and as it should be.  However...I will come to find that Scott has gone and done something completely different and without my knowledge or consent.  When we first got married, we bought a rundown little craftsman and went about the happy business of making it our home.  Our front yard was a mass of lumpy, weed infested grass.  We had many detailed conversations about what to do with it.  I had only one stipulation, he could do whatever he wanted, as long as he left some grass so that in the rainy winter months our front yard wouldn't become a mud pit.  I woke up late one Saturday morning to find that Scott had dug up most of the front yard.

He doesn't follow through.  Back to the yard.  I finally just gave in and decided to help him in his endeavors.  We rented a bobcat and dug the whole thing up.  He had me order a large load of dirt so that he could fix the quality of the soil.  The day after we dug up the front yard, a large truck came and dumped many, many yards of compost-y dirt in our front yard.  The dirt sat there for the next 12 months.  When he started talking about working on the yard again, we made the unhappy discovery that a good portion of the dirt had washed away over the winter.  So, we ordered more, which also sat untouched for a year.  Eventually, we moved out of that house, the yard was still undone.

He's moody.  I often don't know what kind of reception I'm going to get when I talk to him.  He's never intentionally hurtful, but if he's in a bad mood it's dangerous for a sensitive person like me to talk to him.  We end up fighting.  (And yes, he actually is moody, by his own admission.)

He wants to be a rebel.  He has a deep seated hatred of authority.  Unfortunately, that often gets directed at me.  He gets very angry if I try to help him, or if I get upset with him because he's done something that I consider to be detrimental to our life together.  I think he may even have a mild case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (my brother, who also has ADHD, has it).  He has trouble with the idea of doing a job just for a paycheck.  I actually understand that.  I do.  But, I wouldn't be willing to compromise our financial safety by impulsively quitting my job.  He would.  Thankfully he's never done that, but he's threatened to.

He's not always emotionally astute.  Shortly after we started dating, I began hemorrhaging one day (yes, in my girly bits).  He raced me to the ER and I went right in with my closest friend, G.  I was very freaked out.  I have a serious phobia of all things gynecological and this was just so incredibly traumatic.  It was a many hour ordeal, the outcome of which was that I'd had a spontaneous hormonal D & C.  About a year later, he got drunk and berated me for not bringing him into the exam room.  He said he was angry because I didn't give him any info and he was worried.  While I was touched that he was that worried, I was also livid with him for making such a big deal about something that was so traumatic FOR ME!  Not him...ME!  We'd only been dating for a month at the time, and I really didn't feel comfortable including him in something that medically intimate.  I also didn't want to begin associating him with my pelvic exam phobia.  I had my reasons.  I also sent G out to tell him anytime we learned something new.  He was no more in the dark than I was.

This is the sum of my issues with Scott, the main reasons why I become frustrated with him.  I'm sure there are other things, but this is enough to be getting on with.

How things went bad...

In January of this year, I had a life altering visit to the doctor, as a condition that I've had since I was a teen suddenly progressed into a much more serious issue.  I've had many health trials over the years, leading me to go to extreme lengths to attempt to take care of myself.  Despite this, by my mid thirties, I'd managed to pick up no less than 4 moderate to serious chronic illnesses, which I've weathered with a stiff upper lip (my scottish grandparents would be proud).  This last one, though, was just too much for me.  I had a little breakdown.

Unfortunately, my wee breakdown coincided with Scott's untimely mid-life crisis (we've been a fun couple, oh yes we have).  All of the petty grievances, minor annoyances, well nurtured grudges, and day to day marriage disasters came to a head.  We were fighting almost every day, and our relationship became strained and unhappy.  He felt trapped and miserable, stuck in a job he no longer likes because I need health insurance and can't work.  I felt abandoned and betrayed, because at the time when I needed him most, all he could think of was himself.

To be abundantly clear, our marriage had been disintegrating for some time.  I'd completely lost my libido (mostly due to those pesky illnesses I mentioned) about 6 years into our marriage, leading to infrequent encounters.  This, of course, caused a lot of friction.  When you're used to having sex 4-5 times a week, having sex once or twice a month doesn't cut it.  There were times when we would go 1-2 months without getting busy.  He was not a happy boy.

And I was frustrated with him because he'd stopped being gentle with me.  He'd begun snapping at and being short with me a lot of the time.  I felt stymied in my pursuit of emotional intimacy because every time I'd go in for a cuddle, he'd go in for a grope.  I couldn't deal with the pressure and pulled away.

Of course, there were many other issues, but these are the big ones.  Neither of us was really happy.  But, I think I can speak for both of us when I say that we really do love each other.  He's my favorite person.  I still want to spend the rest of my life with him and I think he feels the same.

That's why it was so surprising to both of us when one of our fights led one of us to bring up the  D word.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E find out what it means to me...

I sat on the porch afterward, feeling frail and broken, and realized that I couldn't keep living this way.  I was worried about my emotional health, sure.  But it was my physical health, which was taking a massive hit with every nasty word between us, that really concerned me.  I thought a lot about what had gone wrong.  I thought a lot about what I wanted.  I thought a lot about who was at fault (of course I did, who doesn't).

And I came to realize a number of truly surprising things.  I realized that I really do want to spend the rest of my life with my husband.  I realized that I was willing to do whatever I could to fix whatever had gone wrong.  And therefore, it mattered not even a teensy bit who was at fault.  It only mattered that we stop placing blame and start taking responsibility.

But, I still didn't know what to do, so I turned to a steadfast friend for advice.  I turned to Google.

It was a Dark and Stormy Night or That's Not Thunder, Sweetheart, God Just bowled a Strike or Pardon me, I Believe Your Overhead Projector is on Fire

Everyone remembers those moments in a relationship.  The moments when you realize that it could possibly be that the battle for your heart has been lost.

For me, there were three moments in my relationship with my husband that are true standouts.  I met my husband while I was in college.  I was older than most, graduating at 25 instead of the usual 22.  He was 8 years my senior and one of my supervisors at my student worker job.  When I'd gotten the job, one of my friends gushed enviously about my luck in getting to work with Scott.  I'd met him, and frankly, wasn't all that impressed.  Sure, he was kinda cute, in an indie/skater/Ramones kinda way, but not really my type at all.  I dismissed her lustful yearnings and began my new job.

I worked with him for almost a year before my first "moment".  We'd been chatting amiably as he was performing routine maintenance on an overhead projector.  I have no memory of what we were talking about, I just remember making eye contact with him and receiving that electric shock down my spine that was so telling for me.  I was instantly disoriented and a little freaked out, that had only happened to me once before, and it had been a doozy of a crush.

My crush grew from that day on and I enjoyed the very mild flirtation and growing friendship that we had.  About a year later, everyone from work was out bowling, and I had another "moment".  Scott has a very long, very curly, very red, and very glorious mane of hair.  As he was striding toward the lane with his bowling ball in hand, his hair streamed behind him in a russet wave.  I had a very fleeting, but very intense vision, of Thor, the God of Thunder.  I became so weak in the knees that I practically fell over. That's when I knew I was in serious, serious trouble.

How we started dating was something of a miracle, in my book.  I won't go into that now, as it's all touchy-feely romantic-like, and I'd have to tell you a little more about myself than I'm willing to at present.  But, let's just say that we kindled, caught, and blazed fiercely the summer that I graduated from college.

My last moment was something that might have come straight from the dog eared pages of a Harlequin romance.  It had been an oddly stormy summer.  We don't tend to get much in the way of thunderstorms in the NW.  Scott and I had been out most of the day and had gone back to my house to BBQ.  It was late and the sun had disappeared behind a high wall of thunderheads.  We stood at the side of my house, grilling and chilling (sorry, I couldn't resist) and he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me in for a kiss. And then the sky opened up, and buckets of rain began falling from the heavens.  Streaks of lightning lit up the sky and thunder rattled our bones.  We stood in the middle of this violent cacaphony of wind and weather...and made out.  It is the most amazing memory and it's when I fell in love with him.

I'm telling you all this so that you understand where we started.  From the first, our relationship has been one of fireworks and passion.  We are a very odd couple, but it has always worked for us.  And, to this day, 12 years after we first got together, I still love my husband to pieces.  He is still my favorite person and the one I trust most.

I'm not sure how we got to be where we are today, but I'm working on it.  But, that's a tale for another time...

Who am I and what am I doing here?

To be honest, I was hoping that you could tell me.  Well, obviously I know who I am.  I'm a 30 something woman, with 3 furry children (2 kitties and a puppy), married to a wonderful man.  I live in a place I love and have many amazing friends.  That is who I am.  What I'm doing here, however...that's another story.

I find myself at a very strange point in my life.  Circumstances have forced me to wander down a dark and winding path into a forest that I don't know.  I'm not sure how comfortable I am in this mysterious wilderness  That is, I suppose, why I'm here.  I'm hoping that someone has a map to guide me, or at least be able to tell me which way is north.

Yes, I'm aware that I'm being vague.  I need to reveal all of this at my own pace.  This would be an appropriate time to mention that in this blog...

some details have been changed to coddle the embarrassed.