Commitment

(Written Monday, December 10, 2007)

More than anything else I want right now is for Sheila to commit to our relationship. She has been teetering on this for years now, going back and forth on trying to decide whether or not she wants to stay married. Right now she isn't sure -- again -- and that is immensely frustrating. Without the commitment all of my efforts seem to fall flat. Of course, all of my efforts to "fix our marriage" are probably doomed to failure. There probably isn't anything I can do to fix it, other than to let it go and see what happens. The only thing that can save it is if Sheila decides to commit to it again and give it an honest try.

I fear that she sees herself as having taken a step down a new path, with no possibility of turning back. The path to the Ya Ya sisterhood of stoic single moms who have finally gotten up the courage to leave their unhappy marriages. To join with the single moms who have left abusive, neglectful, unfaithful, incapable-of-changing-their-bad-ways husbands and forged ahead to the better world of soloing it for awhile, maybe remarrying and joining up with some other Jack. Only, that's not Sheila. She isn't walking away from her marriage to escape from any of those rotten things. She's leaving because she can't see a way to her own personal happiness if she stays married to me. She's romanticizing this path of martyrdom, becoming more convinced each day that this is in her best interest, and curiously, in the best interest of our children, too.

What's wrong with her picture? Well, it's not for me to point out to her the flaws in it, that's for sure. But that doesn't stop me from trying. The problem with this picture is she is actually leaving behind a husband that has been desperately trying to revive our marriage for the past 2 1/2 years, stopping at absolutely nothing, day and night, in the pursuit of mending our marriage and transforming our family into a happy one. We have no conflicts over domestic issues like the kids, money, housemaking decisions, anything. The only issue that lies between us, and has for many years, is intimacy. Yes that often translates to sex, but for a long time now I've been willing to take even that off the table in order to just have some peaceful time together, enjoying each other's company. That is too much for Sheila to bear now, too. And even that is okay for me -- I don't want to pressure her into anything if she's not comfortable with it, though I can't imagine spending the rest of our lives without any intimacy whatsoever. But the fact that Sheila doesn't want to be intimate is for her a clear indication that we're just not right for each other. And that is the crux of the issue for her. We're just not right for each other. Decided after many years of solo contemplation, without ever really trying to engage me in the subject; as if I don't factor into the equation.

In fairness (and while I'm ranting a bit here, I honestly endeavor to know the truth about everything here, which means the god's honest truth ) during my "dark" years -- prior to my "awakening" 2 1/2 years ago -- she did raise the fact that I was distant to her, and that she seemed unable to engage me somehow. I fully recognize that that was a desperate problem for our relationship, and I will go to my grave feeling awful that I was unable to break through during those years and develop that ability to "see". The development finally came -- like a child learning to speak -- like a flash 2 1/2 years ago, and so the history I am most interested in here is the period since that moment. It was that cataclysmic occurence that shocked me to my core and sent me spinning on this crusade to save our marriage. Again, all I want is for Sheila to finally take our marriage seriously again, and commit to its success for awhile. I am so ready.