Battle of the Influences

Listening to: Allah Alek Ya Seedi (Love me some Arabic music!)

Mood: Wired, thanks to some extra strong coffee today

When I was a young girl (and indeed, a teenager and young adult), things used to excite me. I used to anticipate something fun for days in advance, weeks if it was something spectacularly fun. I thought this was awesome and part of the fun too.

After I grew up a teeny bit and got married (like 23), things started to change for me. My husband is not what you’d call the excitable type. He’s at best Buddhist type calm.

Over the years, I have noticed how his sedateness has worn off on me. A Lot. Or perhaps that’s just a theory. Perhaps people naturally get a bit worn down by life and don’t get quite so worked up by the small things. After a while, I found myself being a bit more guarded about excitement. This was a direct result of some pretty large disappointments and things falling through. I suppose it’s natural to pull back a little from the jumping up and down when the disappointment isn’t worth the excitement if something falls through.

Just one of the things that wandered into my mental space this morning. I’ve heard quite a few people say that spouses rub off on each other. I’ve noticed it quite a bit in myself – I’ve gained some of my husband’s traits over time (I’m much more apt to plan things out ahead of time rather than just fly by the seat of my pants). This isn’t always a great thing (spontaneity – I miss it!), but it does make for a smoother marriage if you ask me.  If you put a planner and a non-planner together, there are bound to be some pretty steady disagreements on how life should be. On the other hand, sometimes it is life that changes you and the spouse just happens to have already traversed that path or was even born like that. 

A little bit of a variant on Nature vs. Nurture. My husband likes to claim that he helped me become who I am today. There is no doubt at all that this is at least partially true. I also think it can’t be the whole story.  I refuse to think that had I been married to someone else, I would have been a completely different person. Perhaps it’s my ego speaking here, but I like to think that the person I am today is a combination of MY experiences. Obviously, a husband will be a pretty regular part of my experiences after I get married, but the core should remain the same.

What do you think? Is it more a person influencing you or just life?

Becky

Re-Acclimating Myself to Someone Else in My Bed

Listening to: Rolling in the Deep  - Adele

 Mood: Veloceraptor-ish. Seriously – duck and cover.

So I’ve had an epiphany. I cannot write anything (blogs, manifestos, grocery lists) with the TV on. My ADD (no, I do not have ADD, more like a micro attention span) brain simply cannot process the two at the same time. I inevitably get sucked into the TV. And then I turn on Spider Solitaire and all hope is lost. Seriously. I am a boss at the Spider and get sucked into that ridiculous game more than I’d like to admit. On the other hand, some of my most brilliant ideas have come from some freethinking time on Spider.  Tough break TV. Lesson learned. For some reason, my ipod doesn’t do the same thing to my brain. I can be listening to (and indeed to my children’s chagrin, singing along) music and it enhances what I’m writing, not the other way around.

My long lost (well, as long and lost as 5 weeks can be) other half is coming home. Did I tell you he was going away? No? Yes? I never remember what I tell anyone, including the masses on the internet. My apologies if I’m repeating myself again. Anywho – the hubby had to go get his citizenship and do some work for the large multinational company he works with. This company will remain unnamed in the event that they actually want to remain unnamed and I’m not looking to get the husband fired here – that would suck.  He has been location-ally absent from our lives for the past 4.5 weeks. I say that because it is 2012, we have these handy things called telephones and Skype, thank the Spaghetti monster. Still. 

He’s coming home very late on Sunday.  I’m not sure how I feel about this, which is freaking me the hell out. I am nuts about my ball and chain. I have missed him sorely. The thing is, it has been 5 weeks – which is an awfully long time to get used to someone not being around. Namely – I have become accustomed to sleeping alone in my bed. I haven’t slept alone for more than a few days at a time since I got married 9 years ago. Its addictive people – you get used to the warm body next to you, even if that thing steals the covers when it’s freezing out and lays on you when it’s 90 bazillion degrees out.  It took me a full week to get used to sleeping alone and it is glorious. I would never wish to sleep alone if I had the choice to sleep next to the hubs – but wow. All the covers are mine, the fan is cranked up as far as I want it. I can sprawl out as much as I want. If I want all 4 pillows propped under various limbs, I can! 

As fun as it is to rhapsodize about bed space being mine, what concerns me most is readjusting to living like I’m married again. There is something insidious about physical distance while being in a relationship. It worms into your thinking and all of a sudden, you wake up one day and you’re separate entities living separate lives, connected by the tenuous strands of your relationship and your children (if you have them).  One of the most threatening things to a couple is growing apart. How much more easy is it to grow apart when you’re not actually together? The fact that I have not slept with my husband (in either sense of the word) in a long time sits uneasily in my mind. You forget the little idiosyncrasies (both the good ones and the bad) that come with someone else sharing your life. The past 5 weeks around here have been downright hellish as the crazy came out. These have been my battles to face. My husband, as much as he loves and supports me, has not been here to participate. He has been living his own reality in the states; one that only includes me and our kids when we Skype or he thinks of us. 

I compartmentalize what is probably more than healthy. Compartmentalization: The defense mechanism of champions. I missed the husband more than a reasonable the first 2 weeks. I pined, and pouted, and went off into some unhealthy, destructive mental space. The thing is, I still have a life to run here. Engaging in this type of thing when you have kids to raise, live in a foreign country, and have an employee to manage is generally very bad all around. So I did what I’m best at. I shoved it all in a mental box, shoved it on a brain shelf and decided to deal with it later. I believe this is known as putting your big girl panties on and dealing with it. Whatever. It wasn’t the soul crushing type of sad that comes with getting a divorce and being permanently separated…it was more like an involuntary relationship hiatus, only it wasn’t entirely involuntary. It definitely wasn’t wanted, it just happened to come along with a responsibility my husband had.  If there’s anything I’m really, really excellent at, it’s putting one foot in front of another and just moving on. So that’s been the mentality here. Just get through the day. Tomorrow will be one day closer to this being done. I’ve become exceedingly used to the dichotomy of noise at our house. During the day, I listen to nonstop monkey chatter from the girls. At night, it’s silent around here.  I have the feeling it will be odd to have my husband around, even though he’s not much of a chatterbox anyhow. It’s almost like we have to realign both of our separated lives back into one.  I’m really quite puzzled as to how military families and those who choose to live separately for whatever reason (career, etc) do it.

I know, I know, it’s only been a month and 1 week. I’m pretty sure this pervading sense of anxiety and  separate-ness  would only increase as time went on and make it hard to readjust to being a team again.

Hopefully we’ll never have to find out.

Becky

Flying Solo...For a While

Listening to: The Lumberjack song – Monty Python

Mood: On

I’ve been married for just shy of 9 years now. Every year since Daddy G and I got married, we have spent about 1 month of the summer apart; sometimes a week longer, sometimes a few less. It wasn’t a negotiated, or even decided thing, it just kind of evolved. I took the kids back to my mother’s house for a visit. We socialized with my family and lots of old friends. I have always loved my visits, but by the end of the 4 weeks, I’m missing Daddy G a lot and aching to be in my own house again. I never thought much about how he would feel about it because it was vacation and I had too many things to do to sit around thinking.  I’ve since come to realize that he hated it. Daddy G spoils me quite a bit in that he encourages me to do things I want to do (like visit my family) and he does it selflessly for the most part. Likewise, if he wants to go out with the boys (or on a boys weekend even) I’m the last person in the world to complain.

Recently, we’ve had the situation reversed a bit.  Daddy G has gone back to the US for 5 weeks to wrap up his citizenship (Finally!) and obtain a US passport/Indian PIO card.  We’re halfway through it now, and I hate it. I know part of it is living in India and feeling a bit isolated without the person I count on most, but it’s been rough.  I’ve come to the conclusion that I would really rather not spend another vacation in this way. Anyhow, now that we’ve moved to India, my days of disappearing off to my mom’s house once a year have come to an end.

I’ve heard a lot of propaganda about couple’s taking separate vacations and how it can be a good thing. After all, it’s great to have a bit of a break from someone you’re around ALL THE TIME, even if you do love them. I suppose for some couples this is true.  If you have no common interests, it may be rather boring to vacation together.  It is easier to remember what you enjoyed and appreciated about a person after you’ve been away for a while.

The thing that bothers me most about this idea is longer vacations. A month is a long time to be apart from someone else. When Daddy G and I were dating, his job took him to a city 6 hours away from mine. He could afford to fly over and visit me every 5 weeks. I can still remember how exasperating those 5 weeks were and how long they stretched out, even with daily phone calls. I can distinctly remember the point when I realized that I didn’t want to live this way any longer. I was actually contemplating a move to his city when I found out I was carrying my elder daughter. We obviously got married and the rest was history. The thing about living apart from someone else is that you drift apart, even if you’re trying your best not to. Times have changed quite a bit since those phone calls. We have Skype and the girls and I try to talk to Daddy G every day or two so we all feel connected. It’s still hard though. Unless you make a distinct and heroic effort to include the other person in your life, it’s easy to feel like you’re leading 2 different lives, which leads into dangerous territory. In my opinion, some of the best and happiest marriages are where people feel that they have a common path and goals. This is pretty hard to do when you’re not actually spending any time with the other person.

Then there’s the question of getting back on the same page after your spouse or you return. I’ve talked to quite a few people who have told me this is a problem, as well as experiencing it firsthand. There’s a bit of awkwardness that appears as you try to both get back on the same path together.  It can definitely put a space in your emotional and sexual connection. I’ve found that the longer two people are apart, the longer it takes them to sync back up when they are back together.

Another thing to consider is how your children will react to the situation if you have children. My children have been unsurprisingly unhappy about the whole situation. They are very close to their dad, which I am very thankful for. There has been a bit of acting out though. My hat once again goes out to single parents. I’m not exactly sure how you do it without a partner backing you up. For all we talk, it’s hard for Daddy G to be involved in managing the kids. Because we are both in separate time zones, it’s not always easy to have him help with something going on with the kids. He can’t be there to back me up or discipline the kids when a problem is happening.

We’re wandering into sappy territory here, so you’ve been warned. As I get older, I find myself wanting to spend time with Daddy G.  We don’t’ have all that many interests in common, but I do enjoy spending time with him and talking with him. That’s pretty much why I married him, so why stop now?

I don’t think I’ve reached any conclusions right now about separate vacations. If it works for you, fabulous. Do it. If not, why make yourself and be miserable. I will say this though. I think families function best when they are together unless they have some divorce worthy drama.

What are your thoughts on separate vacations/spending time apart?                                                    

Becky

The Dry Spell

Listening To: Metallica

Mood: Mellow

Disclaimer: This post is about sex. While there’s nothing all that graphic, if you are easily offended or related to me, it’s probably best if you skip this one.

The husband and I have been married for 8.5 years now. We have run the spectrum from making jackrabbits jealous to the Sahara desert, which is totally normal from what I hear.  Through it all, we’ve always had either a mental connection or a sexual one and most of the time both. My brother came to stay at our house recently. It was rather unexpected and he stayed for quite a while. While it was wonderful for me to spend time with him, for the first time in almost 12 years, my relationship with my husband went completely to pot. I don’t think we’ve ever had all conversation stop and sex become impersonal before at the same time. The connection just wasn’t there. At all. There are multiple reasons why this happened but I really don’t want to get into it in this entry. 

For the first time in my life, I found myself barely holding on to my marriage by my teeth, fighting for something broken that I had no idea how to fix. I had no idea really who or what I was supposed to be fighting against either. Something was not right, but it was completely unclear to me what it even was. We weren’t really mad at each other from what I can figure out. Unfortunately, neither my husband nor I really know how to fight fair when we’re upset. We do try and usually act like adults, but this time we just couldn’t figure it out. My husband’s tactic is to clam up tighter than the Federal Reserve. It didn’t’ matter how much I asked/begged/nagged, the door was shut except for the occasional snarky salvo fired before he quickly retreated back into another room. This of course led me to fire my own snarky comments, and generally act childish too. I may have skin like a rhinoceros, but I am still a girl. I love sex, and I love my husband, but if we’re not clicking, I don’t feel like having sex. At one point I had this brilliant idea that having sex would bring us a bit closer because that has worked in the past when we’ve both drifted a bit. Unfortunately, this time it completely backfired. Not only were we completely awkward and mechanical with each other, it made things worse. It really throws you for a loop when you feel cheap and lonely with the one person in the world who you shouldn’t ever have to feel that way with. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that numb about my husband before. He could have been a stranger and a one night stand at that moment. I was so desperate for the connection and it didn’t just magically reappear. I think the next day was even worse. I felt like I had traded my body for approval and connection that never appeared.  The ice was not ready to thaw yet. 

Unfortunately, we had the extra pressure of outside family with us too, making things impossible to solve at the time. As is usually the case, I did eventually find out what was eating at my husband.  We got out of the house for a walk and the ice cracked a tiny bit.  We eventually have worked through the problem that was there, but it took a long, long time for things to be normal with us again. It took a long time for sex to be spontaneous and encouraged again. I’m actually terrified of this happening again because I seriously thought that my marriage was going down in flames and I had no idea how to save it. It’s rather hard to put out a fire by yourself. So how do you deal with the problems in your marriage that just seem to be impossible? How do you deal with a spouse who would rather just pretend they’re not there?

Becky

If You Don't Know Me By Now

Mood: Calm

Listening to: BBC talk about George Bush

The other day, my husband told me that he is smoking. Again. Over the almost 8 years that the husband and I have been married, this has been one hot button issue that never seems to go away. He smoked heavily in college, but quit long before he met me. The agreement after we got married was that if hubby wanted to smoke when we had guests from out of town (it often goes hand in hand with alcohol) then I wasn’t going to be the wife to nag him endlessly about it. Just not my style. Over our marriage, he has had a very difficult time keeping his end of this bargain. Much to my chagrin and worry, the smoking has been happening on and off since then. Stress seems to trigger it, and he works in a pretty high-pressure environment. 

So the question I’m left pondering is how I didn’t know.  I like to think I know my husband pretty well. I can read his mood just by looking at him. I can always tell when his mind is 1,000 miles away, even if he is nodding and doing the usual “uh huhs” when I’m talking to him. I can tell when he’s been out to a happy hour with colleagues before he even gets 3 steps in the door. I always know when he’s feeling guilty. A more troubling idea to me is what steps he took and how many to keep it from me. He doesn’t stink like a smoker (thank god!) and I never smell it on his hair or clothes. I never find cigarettes around the house either.  

I hate playing the insecure wife. I’ve never been one to see an affair around every corner. This being said, I can’t help but wonder what else my husband would be able to hide. We’ve had this discussion before. I claim I’d know if he ever had an affair and he claims that if he really wanted to hide it from me I’d never know.  Which, I admit, is probably true.  I don’t pry into every detail of his life. Again, just not my style. There’s a big 10 hour black hole when he’s at work that remains a mystery to me aside from the fact that he’s at work. I have to admit there are things about me that my husband doesn’t know, and probably never will, although nothing as extreme as smoking. I value my privacy quite a bit, as I’m sure he does too. What really gets my goat is that smoking is pretty much the only thing I ever raise a stink about, and that’s only because it’s so bad for his health.  I’m not too tolerant of self indulgent destructive behavior. 

All of this leads to this question: How long, if ever, will it be before people don’t get blindsided by things like this in their relationships?  Do we every really know our spouses well enough to know when they conceal stuff from us? I think a great deal of trust has to go into a successful marriage, and that includes trusting the other person not to keep important stuff like this hidden.  A person can’t live his or her life constantly looking over the spouse’s shoulder wonder what they are hiding. On the same token not trusting everything is rosy all of the time is a good self-preservation strategy, even in the best marriage. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, my other half needs his ass kicked back into quitting.

Becky

Things They are a Changin

Mood: Calm

Listening to: Dora. Ugh.

Recently, my husband and I had a grown up play date (think lots of food, wine, and drunken laughing) with some friends.  They are very good friends of ours that we have known for quite some time, and overall it was a very nice weekend.  After they left, my husband and I got to talking about how people change when they add an addition to their family because we had noticed that our friends had indeed changed after an addition to their family. I’m not necessarily talking about a bad change per se, but something about adding another person or animal to a family can definitely change the dynamics of interactions with others.

When our family was young (read when I was young and we had just gotten married and then knocked up), we moved about quite a bit, so we didn’t have many friends that we had known for a long time. While my husband had his fair share of partying in his youth, I was never really into that.  I’m sure some of our rather new found friends noticed a little bit of a change after my first daughter came along, but you never seem to notice these things yourself. I tried very, very hard to not let this totally take over our lives, as I'm sure it did to a degree. Babies just do that, it's not really optional. As our kids got a little older, we got more into entertaining and having people over, but I still feel that we try to keep things pretty consistent.

I guess it just comes down to what you like and are comfortable about in the group dynamic. Attention shifts, what is important changes, and things just feel different.  You obviously can’t dump good friends for a stupid reason like normal life progression, so how exactly do you deal with the change? True, some friends do drift apart when they are different places in life and can’t relate anymore. This happened to my best friend and I when she went to college and I got married and had a baby, but we’ve since caught up with each other since we both now have multiple little beings in our houses. That is one of the ways to deal with it – giving it a little time for things to even out. Any time you have something so new and important and new, attention will shift, as it should.

I think the best option though, is changing your expectations of the people and interactions that you will have with them. If you both get back to the dynamic you once had, great. If not, you can always hang on to them as friends for a different purpose. Almost everyone has friends for different occasions (the party friends, the other couples with kids, the couple you go out with just to get out of the house,  the people you’ve known for just about forever, etc.), there’s no reasons why the type of friendship can’t change if it becomes obvious the dynamics won’t revert to what they were – and chances are good they won’t. Life goes one direction, and if one or both of you grows out of a situation (partying together for example) chances are you aren’t going to revert back to previous behavior.

So I guess we just treasure our friends for what they are and gracefully accept where they are in life. Friends are a blessing even if things do change.

Becky

Evolving Thoughts on "The Big D"

Mood: Thoughtful and pensive

Listening to: Wonderwall Live (Oasis) and the beautiful silence that is one child in school and the other asleep.

I was reading Cosmo last night (ever notice how many of my posts start with “So I was reading _______ last night and …”? Almost all of them.) and found out that divorce rates have fall to about 40 percent, contrary to the popular believe that divorce is holding strong at about 55% of the married population. In fact, it has been falling for the past 15 years. Wait, what? So all of the fear mongering about marriages being destined to fail was all false? That’s it, I’m having an affair. Kidding, kidding. I was really heartened to see this as marriage has been portrayed as a dying institution ever since I can remember. Apparently, members of my generation (late 70’s – early 80’s kids) took a lesson from many of our miserable upbringings and have decided that marriage should be thought through before entrance and that once you do get shackled, you better make an effort to make it work or you will be paying for your kid’s therapy when they get older. I like it. Not only that, but our generation has much more information at our fingertips (Google, I am looking at you and thanking the stars) to help us through the inevitable rocky times that come with spending your life with another person.

Up until just very recently, I believed that my husband and I are rather unusual in our views of marriage. (Then again, I love being unique, but am constantly reminded that no one is all that unique. It’s all been done before.) We are both rather old fashioned about both marriage and divorce. My husband comes from a wonderful, stable family. I come from a very dysfunctional divorced family. Being of the old school Indian mind, my husband finds divorce a very unpalatable solution in all but the most awful situations. Me, having multiple issues and hang-ups from my home life growing up feel the same way. Just about the only situation that I find divorce acceptable for myself would be if my husband lost his mind and was beating me or my kids. Now, my husband is so nonviolent that he has difficulty killing cockroaches, so I think we probably won’t be dealing with that anytime soon, thank god. And really, my aversion to divorce isn’t really about myself that much, even though I love him and that would put the icing on the cake of my insanity, it’s more about not watching my kids having go through some of the more awful fallout of divorce. This also gives me a lot of hope for my group of friends. As previously mentioned, I occasionally think of the odds of me or my friends getting a divorce solely based on data facts (like parental divorce). I’m sure I will encounter a friend or two that will get divorced in the future, but it gives me hope that people my age are giving serious thought to ending a marriage, rather than just jumping off the train because it’s occasionally uncomfortable.

So here’s to long, happy, worked at marriages.

Becky