My husband walks across the kitchen floor. I hear a crunching noise and look down, and he has tracked in big clumps of dried dirt on the bottom of his shoes. I say, "Hey, hang on, you're dragging dirt in here." He looks down and says, "Oh, sorry about that," and then picks up a couple of pieces. He then hightails it out of the kitchen, leaving me with several clumps to pick up for him.

Look out; here comes a metaphor.

One of the biggest problems I have with my marriage is the fact that it feels like my husband really did a number on the relationship and essentially screwed everything up, and then once he decided that he wanted to work on the marriage he did his little mea culpa and then left everything for me to clean up.

I'm the one who needs to get over the resentment I have from his behavior. I'm the one who needs to work toward healing my heart enough to trust him to be a loving husband again. As far as he's concerned, everything is peachy because he apologized and decided he wanted to make the marriage work.

But what about those clumps of dirt he dragged into the relationship?

I hate that I'm the one who is left to pick up the pieces. I'm the one who needs therapy to "reopen my heart" — which, by the way, is the phrase our therapist used — but as far as I can tell my husband doesn't have any problems with opening or closing his heart. For a while he didn't seem to care whether I lived or died as long as the kids were taken care of and there was food on the table.

Now he's Mr. Let's-Make-This-Marriage-Work. He wonders why I can't just rejoin the marriage with the full gusto that he displays now.

It's probably because I'm too busy picking up all the dirt he tracked in. 

Do you ever find yourself staring at your wedding ring? I remember when my husband first proposed I worked in a store that had great lighting so I would sit and stare at my engagement ring whenever I had the chance. It was so beautiful and sparkly and it represented such a bright future ahead of us.

Before we had kids I fantasized about my baby someday staring at the sparkles in the ring while wrapping his or her little fingers around it. When my babies came along, they didn't get to see much of the ring because my fingers were so swollen that I couldn't wear it. 

This was around the same time the marriage started to face some real trouble. When I lost the baby weight and got the ring back on my finger I hoped it would renew something. Maybe we could reclaim the love we once had just like I had reclaimed the right to wear my wedding ring.

I know I put way too much emphasis on symbolism. I don't know why my brain works that way. By the way, he presented the ring to me when he proposed while we were watching The First Wives Club on television. I'm pretty sure there's some irony there.

I find myself staring at my wedding ring a lot nowadays, too. I think about what it felt like to put that ring on my finger for the first time and how I never thought in a million years how our relationship would someday evolve (or deteriorate) into what it is today. I wear the ring because I'm married, but I don't see it as a symbol of a bright marital future.

I know many women in my situation don't even bother to wear their wedding rings anymore, but I do. I'm married. No matter what my heart says I'm still married. The ring announces this to everyone, and I'm fine with that. I just can't make the claim anymore that when I stare at my ring I'm thinking about all the glorious years ahead of us in wedded bliss.

My husband and I are supposed to start marital counseling again this month. You may remember that the last time we went to counseling it didn't turn out so well...our pastor had to refer us to a professional because we were just too wacky, and then the professional guy got way too fascinated with me and stopped helping the marriage while he tried to wrap me around his finger.

No, things don't happen easily for us.

I asked my husband to try counseling again a few months ago and at first he was insulted, then he was apprehensive, and then he was agreeable as long as I waited until October. September is a really busy month for him at work so he didn't want to have to deal with marital counseling while working overtime. Okay, fair enough, so I agreed to wait.

It's October and he hasn't brought up marital counseling. I'm not going to wait for him to bring it up; I'm going to make an appointment for us whether he brings it up or not. Let's face it; if I didn't take the reins in this particular task I don't think it would ever get done.

I'm excited to see if counseling helps this time. Really, I would love nothing more than for counseling to show us how to be a happily married couple again and to save our marriage. The last few times we went to counseling all it did was give us an hour to get mad at each other, and then a week to simmer in anger until the next session.

Maybe this time it will be different. Maybe this time a light bulb will go off and we'll fall madly in love with each other again. Maybe we'll have a stronger relationship than ever because we've overcome our difficulties and came out of it all stronger.

...Or maybe we'll just find out that it's not going to work. 

I went to an art gallery last night with some friends and was having a nice time looking around at all the paintings and sculptures. 

All the art was by local artists so there was nothing there that I can reference that you might recognize, but some of the pieces were pretty impressive while some of them were relatively forgettable.

I was by myself when I stumbled upon a painting that was a flower with a phrase scratched into the side. I don't know if this is a famous quote or something the painter came up with, but it said something to the effect of "There came a time when the strain of staying safely wrapped within the bulb was harder than letting go and blossoming." If I'm horribly misquoting your favorite quote then please forgive me, but it was something like that.

So here is this thing. There I am, standing at this painting with people walking past me and I want to cry. It just hits too close to home. I'm not saying

I'm some delicate flower, but the idea that sometimes we stay nestled within a confining situation because we're afraid to see what happens when the bloom occurs is all too familiar.

I quickly composed myself and returned to my friends, but I was mad. It was a lovely piece of art, but I hate how I am at a point in my life where a phrase scratched into a painting can reduce me to tears. 

I'm not usually the boo-hoo type, but lately it really doesn't seem to take much to hit me with something poignant that makes me get all self-reflective — and in some cases — a little weepy.

It would have been nice to have just been moved by the art instead of touched in such a raw way by it. I'm starting to wonder how much worse things will get before they improve.
 

A friend of mine recently wrote a post on her personal blog lamenting some article she read about the prevalence of women who are secretly unhappy in their marriages and who would get a divorce in a heartbeat if it wasn't for the financial issues involved.

Her take on the article was pretty smug...essentially she took the position that women who want to get divorced but don't are just a bunch of whiny women with too much time on their hands making them miserable.

Obviously I'm not her target audience for this particular post.

Her stance is basically one of, "Well, excuse me for actually being happy in a marriage. I guess I'm not cool like everyone else, blah blah blah."

Apparently — at least, according to her — being happy in a marriage is a choice that women can make and everyone who doesn't just doesn't try hard enough.

It blows my mind that people might actually think that I prefer to be unhappy in my marriage. I cannot fathom the thought that there are people out there who assume that I can turn on some mysterious Happy Switch and suddenly have the perfect marriage.

If there is such a switch, for God's sake someone please tell me where it is because I would have flipped the stupid thing years ago.

I'm glad there are people in this world who have fantastic marriages. Heck, I envy them to no end. I doubt, though, that the majority of them are happy simply because they "decided" to be happy. My guess is that there is some mutual love and respect in those marriages that pulls them through  rough times.

Being unhappy in my marriage is not a choice I've made. It's something I fight tooth and nail every stinking day. I can't simply pick up some "happy marriage" at the grocery store. Anyone who thinks I prefer to live this way is either naïve or is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you know what I mean. 

There is a new trend arising in my house. Every few nights before falling asleep, my husband will roll over and sigh, and then look at me with the whole, "We gotta talk" facial expression.

He'll then start telling me that this isn't working, when am I going to stop being mad at him for the past, what does he have to do to get his wife back, etc, etc.

That one is my favorite:  "What do I have to do to get my wife back?"

It's not what he should be doing now. It's what he should have been doing years ago. He should have taken a more active role in parenting instead of leaving it all to me. He should have helped me out when I had post-partum depression instead of just waiting for it to go away. He should have spent some time nurturing our relationship when we became new parents instead of just dumping everything into my lap while he spent seven hours a night playing video games.

He shouldn't have resisted counseling when I begged him to go.

What is he supposed to do now to get his wife back? I haven't a clue. Does he want the same wife he had before kids...the one who had tons of energy and could spend inordinate amounts of time making sure everything was just right for her husband? Does he want the wife who trusted that her husband would always have her best interests in mind? Does he want the wife who didn't stick up for herself when things weren't right?

That wife is gone, baby, gone.

One thing is evident. My whole tactic of waiting everything out to see what happens next seems less and less effective nowadays.  My husband and I have both said out loud that our relationship isn't working. What happens next is anybody's guess. 

There's something about contemplating divorce that a lot of folks don't realize.

The fact is that — at least in my particular situation — my husband and I aren't at each other's throats and hurling insults at each other. One of us doesn't walk out of the room when the other one walks in. We can have a family outing and have a genuinely good time, laughing and joking with each other.  It's not like we're faking our merriment either...we're really having a good time.

That's what's so stinking confusing about the whole thing. The constant sense of underlying marital unease is once in a while tempered with bouts of compatibility. The problem is that the uneasiness never goes away.

It's because of these times that I get really confused and start thinking to myself, "Well, gee, why couldn't this work? If we can get along and enjoy each other in this moment in time, why not always?" The relationship is steady; it's sturdy; it's stable.

But the uneasiness never goes away.

There is always the feeling of, "What am I doing here? What am I waiting for? Is this really how marriage is supposed to be?" It's like walking through a really muddy path, and every so often there is a really pretty bush of colorful flowers that I can stop and admire.

I start to wonder if this muddy path is worth the trouble because of the occasional flower bushes I encounter because after all, the flowers are beautiful.  I just hate having to trudge through the mud the majority of the time in order to stumble upon these flowers.

Plus, there's the fact that the mud really never goes away, even when I'm admiring the flowers. 

I haven't been to a therapist in a while. I stopped seeing the last guy I was going to because he got a little too fascinated with me and gave me the heebie-jeebies. So I rid myself of the one person in my life whom I freely chatted with on a regular basis about my thoughts of leaving my husband.

I used to talk to my pastor about it quite a bit but my therapist talked me out of that.

I confided in a few friends and soon afterwards it felt like an awkward pity party.

I told my mom and now she dislikes my husband.

If I didn't have a blog to write I would be a big bucket of nerves. At least I have one outlet.

I don't know if I'll go see another therapist. I don't know how the last guy managed to do it, but he got me so wrapped around his fingers that I would save up situations throughout the week and only form an opinion on them after my therapist and I had a chance to mull them over together. 

I went to therapy trying to figure out a way to save my marriage and instead got roped into a codependent situation with the therapist. Why can't anything ever just be easy?

If I do go see another therapist I think I'll find a woman who has such a thriving practice that she won't cling on to one patient in particular and decide to become some sort of puppet master.

I feel like a real idiot for having fallen into that pattern with my therapist, and now I'm scared to see anyone else. Really, it's not like I need another complication in my life.

What would happen if I just made up my mind to leave? How would life change for me and for my family? Would I find the inner peace that I lack right now? Would everything magically get better?

I'm not delusional. I know that it would be ridiculously hard. Most of all, I know that it would be a really difficult transition for my kids. They're young and as far as they know, mommies and daddies stay together.

Did I say it would be "difficult?" Maybe I should change that to "horrible." "Tragic." "Life-altering."

"The end of a secure life."

Am I being dramatic? I just try to think of what it would be like if a life truth was suddenly changed for me. What if my house burned down? What if I lost my arm? I can only imagine what it's like to suddenly have everything change.

I know that I would recover just fine. I know the process would be painful, but in the long run I think that it would make me happier overall. Then again, how can I be happy when I cause so much pain to my kids?

What a tangled web.

If I one day suddenly blurted out, "I can't take this anymore. I need a divorce," then it would be a bizarre combination of a huge weight lifted off my shoulders while also opening the door to a bunch of new drama and turmoil. It’s like I know what I want the eventual outcome to be, but I don't want to deal with all the stuff in between.

So what happens if I just make up my mind to leave? The world will be turned upside down. My life will never be the same again. The question then becomes, will the new life be better, and worth the effort?

My husband and I haven't been to marriage counseling for quite some time. I think it has been around six or eight months.

It's not from lack of trying on my part, but my husband's work schedule changed at the same time as our therapist's office hours changed, so it just became impossible to all get together at the same time.

In the meantime, our therapist became more and more interested in me. He didn't even attempt to see my husband anymore, but scheduled me for weekly visits.

I started to back off from seeing him because I got the distinct impression that he either a) had the hots for me, or b) thought I had some intriguing mental issue that he was going to cure and then write a PhD thesis about.

So I'm talking to my pastor about how I would like to get back into marriage counseling and he offers to see my husband and me for sessions. Those of you who have been reading my story for some time may remember that my husband and I started out with our pastor for counseling but wound up with the new therapist when we went beyond the scope of our pastor's counseling capabilities (translation: I tried to leave the marriage and my husband threatened suicide).

I was excited at the prospect of getting back into joint counseling, but when I told my husband he was not too thrilled.

In fact, if anything, he seemed really annoyed that I had asked our pastor for marriage counseling. It's as if our therapist's fascination with me meant that there was nothing wrong with the marriage...just something wrong with me. That means my husband's work was done. As soon as our therapist "fixed" me, everything in the marriage would be fine.

Guess what? I'm not "fixed."