It’s my 48th birthday today.

It’s also my 13th wedding anniversary.

As my husband put it this morning, it’s my Birthiversary.

I gotta tell you, I did not think we were going to make it this far.

My husband and I have struggled for basically our entire marriage.

But the last two months have been hell.

Nobody has cheated. Our problems aren’t because of anything like that.

Ultimately it comes down to one thing: my husband and I do not know how to communicate with each other.

(My husband does not love to be talked about here. I’ve tried to honor that recently. But today I’m not going to. I hope by the time I get to the end of this, he understands).

I have many legitimate reasons to be upset with my husband. Not just upset. Pissed. Hurt. Devastated even.

Yeah. I could explain to you why and how I feel devastated, and by the time I was done, you would agree with me.

I can justify my anger and resentment six ways to Sunday.

Oooh, how I have been holding onto that anger and resentment!

I’ve bashed the shit out of my husband to my family and my friends.

More justification. More validation. And ultimately, more blame.

Susie good. Daryl bad.

I’ve done quite a bit of finger pointing in the last thirteen years. My pointer fingers are fucking strong right now.

I have done such a good job blaming and finger pointing, that more than one friend has told me to leave the marriage. I’d have support telling me it’s the right thing to do if I did.

A couple weeks ago, things were so bad with my husband that we were literally not acknowledging each other’s existence.

There was no eye contact. When one person came into the room, the other person left it. We communicated only when absolutely necessary, and only by text. We didn’t talk. We didn’t look at each other.

It was awful. Worse than ever. I was sure we were done.

And then we found a new therapist.

My husband and I have seen four different therapists.

None of them have been able to help us. For most people, that would be enough of a sign to end a marriage.

I got the name of Therapist Number 5 (TN5) from a friend of mine.

I made an appointment, and I texted my husband. I asked him if he’d be willing to go.

He said yes. I was kind of shocked.

And I’ll be honest. I didn’t make the appointment with the therapist because I wanted to work on my marriage.

I made the appointment because I wanted permission to leave it.

So I did not go into the office that first time with an open mind or with any intention of looking at what I bring to the table. I don’t think my husband did either.

We both went in with our weapons drawn.

But this therapist was different. She uses the Gottman approach.

If you’ve never heard of that (I hadn’t), Google it.

You’ll see this: “The goals of Gottman Method Couples Therapy are to disarm conflicting verbal communication, increase intimacy, respect, and affection…”

I didn’t need to read any further than that first comma.

The goals of Gottman Method Couples Therapy are to disarm conflicting verbal communication.

YES.

That was us. That is us.

We need to be disarmed. Big time.

So it wasn’t just reading this description that was an aha moment for me.

I had another one. I wrote about it earlier this morning.

Number 7 has been struggling with the transition from kindergarten to first grade.

The day of our second appointment with TN5, Number 7 had a terrible morning where I ultimately had to drive her to school while she was crying hysterically in the backseat.

As soon as she was in the building, I had my own breakdown. I was sobbing to the point of almost hyperventilating as I drove home.

And even though my husband and I were at a complete breakdown in communication, even though I was so angry I didn’t know if there was any part of him I liked anymore, even though we had made it clear to each other we didn’t want to be in the same room with each other, he was the only person I wanted to talk to.

When I parked the car in the driveway and walked into his shop in our garage where he was working, when he saw me so upset, he looked at me. And he stopped what he was doing. And he hugged me. It was the first hug we’d had in a very long time. And I didn’t want to let go.

I have said many times that my husband isn’t my best friend.

That I can’t relate to those Happy Anniversary posts people put on Facebook saying “Happy Anniversary to my best friend and my soulmate and the love of my life.”

But you know what?

Maybe my husband is my best friend.

Because while he has said a lot of shitty things to me, I have said a lot of shitty things to him.

I have said A LOT of shitty and mean things to my husband.

And I have said a lot of shitty and mean things about my husband. I have absolutely vilified him to most of my friends.

If I spoke about any one of my friends behind their backs the way I’ve spoken about my husband, I am quite certain they’d tell me to fuck off. Forever.

But not my husband. I’ve been a real jerk to him and he’s stuck with me.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not excusing his jerkiness.

He’s done plenty of jerky stuff over the course of thirteen years.

But I have been incapable of communicating my feelings about it to him in an effective way. I think he’d say the same about me. And he would be right.

So this inability to communicate our feelings leads to us saying and doing stupid stuff, and then the situation just gets worse.

But through all that, he is still here.

All this time I’ve been telling myself that my husband isn’t my best friend.

But when I really needed to talk to someone about something that I was really struggling with, he was the one I went to for comfort and support and perspective.

So I don’t know. Maybe he is  my best friend.

Because he’s still here, he’s willingly going to see TN5, and for the first time in thirteen years, I feel like he’s really, really trying.

And I feel like he’s genuinely trying because this therapist is helping me communicate with him in a way I’ve never been able to before.

Let me tell you a story. My husband won’t like this either, but, well, it proves a point.

The first time I saw my husband I declared him to be the Hottest Guy I Had Ever Seen.

I still feel that way.

But I think he’s most attractive with no facial hair.  When he is clean shaven, he is especially handsome.

He doesn’t like to shave often. But he does it because he knows I like it.

When we are in communication breakdown mode though, the shaving stops.

I joke that you can tell how well we are getting along by the length of my husbands’s facial hair.

When we went into TN5’s office two weeks ago for our second appointment, my husband had a full on Magnum P.I style mustache working.

Clearly things between us were BAD.

But at the end of that second appointment, we were making eye contact, and we even laughed a couple times. TN5 asked each of us what we’d be willing to do for each other in the following week until our third appointment.

I told her I’d be nicer to my husband. That I’d give him a hug when he came home. That I’d acknowledge him with a smile when he walked in the door as opposed to leaving the room as had become the routine.

He told her he’d make an effort to be more available once the kids went to bed.

I looked at him and said, “There’s something else you could do that would be even easier and you’d only have to do it once.”

He laughed. “Maybe I’ll do that next week,” he said.

That night I got into bed after all the kids were asleep. My husband came into bed just a couple minutes later. The lights were off, and I was almost asleep when he crawled under the covers. I rolled over to him for the first time in months. I lay my head on his shoulder and put my hand on his cheek.

And the mustache was gone.

I don’t know if we’re going to make it, but we’re both still fighting. And for the first time in a very long time, I have hope for us.

Thank you for shaving for me, Daryl. Thank you for doing something for me because you knew it would make me happy. Thank you for trying. Thank you for not giving up.

Thank you for still being my friend after all these years.

We’ve got a lot of stuff to fix, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I really, REALLY hope we can figure this shit out.

I love you very very much.

Happy Anniversary.

 

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