Changing Relationship

Had an interesting experience with my husband today.

He'd gone down to make breakfast, and after awhile came upstairs with tears just rolling down his face.  He came in and said, "I need to talk to you," and we sat down on the bed (while I tried not to have a mini-coronary, 'cause I was convinced he was going to be 'confessing' something that was going to break my heart or piss me off or both.  Seriously, him walking in with tears streaming down his face pretty much had me convinced that he'd looked at porn for the first time in 15 months or so.)

He sat there crying and finally said, "I am so tired right now, life is SO relentless, I just feel like everything is coming at me and I'm drowning and I hate it."  Basically, life is crazy for us right now -- our kids are dealing with expensive and uncertain medical problems, money's draining out of our savings account, J's HATING his job right now (which has never happened before -- he's worked for the company for 7 years and liked it until 3 months ago), we never spend any time together right now 'cause we're just constantly putting out fires and when he does come home if there's not something super pressing going on, I run away and escape and leave him with the kids for awhile 'cause I'm so stressed and overwhelmed.  Add to that J's been sick for about four weeks now (although he's on the mend, in theory).  Our kids, for whatever reason, this last couple weeks have been IMPOSSIBLY grumpy and whiny and fight-y and SO hard to deal with.  J never, ever, ever loses his temper with the kids, and I've seen him yell at them like three or four times this week.  I've NEVER seen him yell before this week, ever.  EVER.  I'm at my wit's end with them right now (my 18 month old is the world's grumpiest, clingiest baby right now, and I can't do ANYTHING without him hanging on my leg and crying, so I'm getting nothing done and my mounting clutter and disorder at home is stressing me out even more), and that stresses him out 'cause he feels like he's doing everything he can to help me out, and I'm still frustrated and tired and exhausted and annoyed and just so DONE with life piling everything on right now.  ANYWAY.  He talked about how he hates how he feels like he comes home and he's 'in charge' of the kids so I can get my part time work done (but before I could bristle much, he added that he knows I'm just doing what I need to, to get my stuff done -- and he realizes that if he's this worn out by the kids in 2 hours in the evening, that being with them all day must be exhausting, so he turned it around before I could even get miffed), and how he feels like he gets no 'me time' for himself (also, before I could bristle again, he acknowledged that he goes to LifeStar once a week and SA once a week, and how those are both time away and with other adults, something I don't get much of, and he realizes he gets time to himself, it just isn't recharging him like he wants it too.)


He basically just said he feels so overwhelmed and stressed.  All the time.  And it's hard.  I know it is, 'cause I'm feeling it too.  He said he was doing dishes after breakfast and it all just hit (while the kids were fighting and screaming at each other, they've seriously been crazy lately), and he just started crying.  The fact we were leaving for Church soon played into things to, as he admitted he feels like he gets nothing from Church right now.  He said he goes to SA and to LifeStar and gets something from every single meeting, but he goes to Church for three hours and wrestles with kids and feels like he gets nothing out of meetings, is making no real connections, and if he stopped coming altogether nobody would even notice.  (This actually led to a great discussion about how the biggest difference in these two situations is how he's interacting with others -- basically that he's totally open and honest and real at SA/LifeStar, and is therefore making real and genuine connections -- and I don't remember the last time I saw him make a comment in Sunday School, as he doesn't put himself out there at all.  And that he is the one with the most power to change him experience at Church.  Also, that he doesn't take four kids with him to SA -- that'd probably make it a lot harder meeting to get anything out of too.)  :-)

Basically, this is a hard time in our lives.

There's not much we can do about it right now, but just work through it.  It's not going anywhere anytime soon, and as we're learning, 'hard things are not bad things'.  And even the bad stuff teaches us something.

A few things came to mind:

1.) How defensive it made me feel at times, and HOW HARD it was for me not to throw in stuff like, "If you think you're frustrated after being with them for a little while, imagine what it's like for me all day . . ." or "If you feel like you never get a morning off 'cause you have SA on Saturday mornings and I 'make you' make breakfast on Sunday morning, realize we already split the weekend on making breakfasts, you're just gone on Saturdays. EVERY Saturday."  I bit my tongue well though, and we had a good discussion, and he did a good job acknowledging the other side of everything without me really having to point it out.  I realize how focused I am on me -- that life is hard for me right now, and I want that acknowledged even when he's sharing with me how painful it is for him right now.  I should probably jot this down in my Step 4 Inventory journal or something . . . :-)

2.) I know this sounds SO stupid, but I realized how HARD it is for him to not 'numb pain'.  And I feel for him.  I mean, it's better this way, but I feel for him.  For someone who's had a porn addiction for 20 years, he's talked recently about how he's had to learn to feel his emotions, and how it's REALLY hard and how he sometimes thinks, "Wow, things were easier when I didn't have to 'feel' all this."  I realized how much I numb my own pain -- getting online, watching TV, working on my computer, eating Chocolate Covered Macadamia Caramels from Coscto . . . and I realized that he, on the other hand, has replaced his addiction with nothing but healthy working through of emotions.  And what a huge change that is for him, and how freaking difficult it must be sometimes.

3.) I realized that although I really, really, really want him to get all healthy and deal with his emotions and all that -- that when he actually does, it makes me defensive and feel slightly attacked or judged (not that he was doing that, I'm just awfully used to a husband who complains about NOTHING and has no problems with ANYTHING, 'cause he was just numbed out and that's how he dealt with things -- now he's coming to me in healthy ways to express what he needs in life and in our marriage, and I'm having a hard time with it, with the feedback from him, even when he's right on and I totally see he has a point.

4.)  Life is hard right now -- I don't want to say 'it sucks', though I often do in my head right now, but it really doesn't, it's just hard and relentless feeling right now.  On one hand, it's reassuring to see him actually seeing that and living that and being WITH me on that (whereas I used to feel like he never stressed about anything, and I was stressed about something, and there was 'obviously' something wrong with me -- when it turned out he was just blocking out all the stress with porn binging) -- on the other hand though, I miss having someone who doesn't ever get rattled, who wasn't ever scared or nervous or upset or angry or frustrated or overwhelmed, who never seemed 'done' with the kids or the chores or life -- it was some weird anchor or rock or something, that I could get all stressed out, but he'd always be calm, rational and even.  Having him ride the waves of emotion and uncertainty with me is unsettling at times, even though it's preferable to him just numbing and zoning out.

So basically, I'm seeing how our relationship is changing, and although I'm getting 'everything I ever wanted' (a connected husband with actual emotions who doesn't just think he has to stay 'even' and 'cool' and 'calm' all the time, and isn't looking at porn), that after 9 years of marriage, this is a difficult, and at times unsettling, change for me.

It's for the better, but it's an adjustment.