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| image from gracesgreatgifts.com |
How incredibly ironic that I should discover marital transgressions on Columbus Day... Perhaps it is appropriate - new things always come with some risk or peril, be it exploring a new land or testing the waters beyond the marital boundaries. Discovering your relationship no longer is fulfilling is at least as frightening as taking to open water and setting a course for the unknown. When you push away from shore, the place where you've been berthed for lifetimes, it is impossible to know where the wave is going to take you. Maybe it will be a smooth sailing experience - minimal seasickness before once again arriving safely in harbor. More experienced, eyes opened to both the beautiful and the frightening, ready, maybe even eager, to tie up again in safety. Or, maybe, just maybe, there's no turning back and the new land where your ship comes to rest becomes your new dwelling without the option of ever returning to the placid waters you once called home.
People don't talk about the hard parts of a marriage. How to maintain the flame that originally brought two people together and using it to navigate through times of darkness. The resentment and history and disappointment that builds and becomes increasingly more difficult to throw overboard. The weight of daily life which anchors the soul in a way that is more suffocation than safety. Like other explorations, both literal and emotional, this situation is taking me to foreign lands and I just don't know if I have the correct map in my possession. To be continued.
I'm sorry to hear that. Hoping that you two find a way to work it out.
ReplyDeleteIn theory I could have tried to extend your metaphor further, but whenever I think of boats I think of pirates, and I'm not entirely sure how Captain Jack Sparrow would handle the situation.
Woody Allen has some particularly cheery things to say about life. Mostly about it getting harder and harder, and then you die. I think it applies to marriages too.
I will hope for the best.
No one gets the correct map...no one.
ReplyDeleteDaniel B - TY. I'm thinking rum would have been a part of Jack Black's solution. Perhaps something delicious and dark...Goslings?
ReplyDeleteMelinda - You are wise. We only do our best, right?
This is precisely what terrifies me so much about the prospects of marriage someday in my (far off) future. I know deep down that I shouldn't spend my life worrying so much about future outcomes but I can't help it. I come from a long history of divorces. But it's worth it, right?
ReplyDeleteJMP - Absolutely worth it. Perhaps not every instant of the day, but overall? Yes. No regrets.
ReplyDeleteNot Goslings. That's Bermuda. Mount Gay is an old sailor's favorite, and that's from Barbados. I'm going with that one.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteYou are so brave. In so much as I know you from your writings on here, I have admired how you approach your life. Even here, in your honesty, is braveness.
Being brave is good when navigating the unknown. And it's all a little bit unknown, isn't it?