Miserableness

I found a new (to me) blog that I've been reading for a few days now, To Love, Honor and Vacuum.  There is a prompt up on her Facebook page from a 2013 post to discuss the following question:

What do you do when your marriage is just rather miserable?

I have only been married for two weeks and three days (!!) but I've been with my love for over 11 years.  There was a period of time about seven years ago where we just were cohabitating instead of showing love and accepting love.  There are a million different reasons for why we hit a rough patch and yes, we were miserable.  But the problem was, we were each miserable for different reasons and weren’t communicating those reasons to each other.

What brought us back together was physical intimacy.  It had been several months of no lovemaking, no sex…I was sleeping on the couch just to avoid him and he was working long hours down in his office in the basement to avoid talking or dealing with me.  To the outside world, we were fine but in our own little world, we were falling apart.

One night, I was laying on the living room floor watching television and he came and laid down next to me.  I know it sounds cliché but one thing did indeed lead to another and a switch was flipped inside me..inside my bruised and aching heart.  I realized that I did love him…and he did love me. 

We never spoke of our past troubles after that night.  We just seemed to somehow fix ourselves with that one evening.  We became close again.  We made the time to be a couple and to enjoy each other’s company again..in and out of the bedroom. 

Seven years later and we are married.  We have finally talked about the period of time where things were so bad.  He brought up the subject.  He told me that he was sorry for the emotional lean times and why he had behaved the way he had.  Turns out it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with my ex coming back into the picture from Louisiana and taking me to court for visitation rights with our son.  Court took a lot out of us as a couple and a lot out of my son and it was difficult to balance the hurt and anger and fear.  Because he was hurt, he shut down and because he shut down and I didn’t know why I became resentful. 

I’m grateful for the bad times we have gone through though.  I don’t think our relationship would be as strong as it’s become if we hadn’t come through that storm.  Storms are sometimes necessary to show you what’s truly important and to prove that with open and honest communication and love, the miserable times won’t last.