of the marriage you don’t have.
Someone posted on FaceBook this little joke video of a husand and wife texting one another regarding her going out for a “girls’ night out.” The joke was you first saw text of what each was really thinking and then backspacing/erasing and the more approrpiate response actually texted.
For example, he would text “when will you be home?” And she might start to write, “I am never coming back…” but then actually text “Around 11.” He’d then start to reply somthing like “so you’re just abandoning your family for the whole night” but erase that and say, “have a good time…”
It was cute and lots of people commented, “exactly” and “so true…” but what I was thinking was,
“My husband and I never text one another.”
We have no running inside jokes.
We don’t talk about the kids or our frustrations with them or our joy and pride for them.
We don’t share what we’ve seen on FaceBook or the news or happened to hear from someone else.
We certainly don’t dream outloud about retirement or a mountain cabin or the grandchildren we will be eager to have both visit and go home again.
We’re just here, in this house, in this life, together but barely doing more than co-existing beside one another.
It might be hard for someone outside such a marriage to understand how profoundly stressful such a marriage is. Afterall, if there is relatively limited fighting and screaming for an alcoholic household; if there are no calls from the police or jailhouse; if “all” I have to deal with for the most part is his emotional and mental absence, shouldn’t that be “not that bad” compared to the “really bad” alcoholic marriages?
Maybe it’s not “as bad” but it’s still bad. It still rots your soul. It still destroys you. It still erodes your sense of self despite it being his drinking.
Exactly. I saw that same thing and truly thought the same!! There is no texting. Hardly any communication at all. No he’s not abusing me , he’s not hanging out in bars or getting arrested. But here we are Sunday afternoon and he hasn’t said 3 words to me all weekend. He doesn’t even know when I leave the house to do an errand or go for a hike. We live separately in the same house. It’s the same thing day after day —week in and week out , year after year. I Definitely see and feel the reminders every day of the marriage we don’t have.
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Seems that EVERYTHING reminds me—- just last night I got a text from a coworker that read – hey what is the name of that mountain near you? My wife and I want to hike it tomorrow! Of course I answered him back graciously but it hurt a bit— just another reminder. My husband and I would NEVER hike together. I’d go hiking with a pal or by myself while he sits at home and drinks.
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So many of us (sadly) living parallel lives! Once I was mentioning something that was going on with one of my kids at school – not a huge issue but a concern – and she asked what my husband said about it. I hadn’t talked to him about it – or even THOUGHT about talking to him about it!! I was embarrassed actually because her question so caught me off guard that I could’t even “cover.” Just so much nothingness.
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Absolutely. I don’t discuss much at all anymore regarding the kids or house. I forget sometimes that this isn’t normal. Just normal for us. 🙃
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