"A Less Than Perfect Marriage"
In the month that I have been involved with Daily Strength, it has been my honor to interact with nearly 100 souls who have suffered the loss of their spouse or partner in life. Everyone has their own, unique story as well as their own unique means of dealing with the pain, sorrow and anguish that has befallen them.
Very rarely, if ever, have I read of the “less than perfect marriage”. Everyone so eloquently speaks of the loss of their mates with the reverence normally reserved for saints. This is NOT meant to be critical, nor is it meant to be hurtful, which is why this appears in my journal and not as a discussion topic. But I find it remarkable that so many people have been blessed with the ideal marital situation, and I find it necessary for ME to face the fact that my marriage was one of those that was very challenging for me, particularly in the last few years. And far from perfect.
Barbara and I both suffered from the disease of alcoholism. I was fortunate that on April 3, 1990, I reached my “bottom” and managed to seek treatment for this and have remained sober for 20 years, “one day at a time”. Barbara was not so lucky. She continued to allow alcohol to control and consume her. The both of us also smoked cigarettes. In April of 2000, I smoked my last cigarette, and again, Barbara was unable or unwilling to put them down. And cancer claimed her life.
The last ten years of our marriage and Barbara's life were not the happiest, most memorable of years that we shared with one another. Her health was in a steady decline; her alienation from her family and friends, and the end of our intimacy as husband & wife were very difficult for me to cope with, and I am sure, no picnic for her either. Watching the person you love; the person you share everything with, decay and degenerate before your very eyes as you remain helpless, is a situation I would wish on no one.
Oddly, this did not diminish the love we had for one another. It only changed the dynamics of that love. You see, my Barbara could never find the strength, courage, or will to seek the help necessary to ease the grip of the addictions that were draining her very life from her. And although I did, I never gave up in my hopes that she would reach that place where she could begin to heal. She never did.
So, in a sense, I lost my wife years ago, although we continued to live and love one another in a manner that I cannot really explain nor justify. And I do not believe that I need to. None of us need to explain how or why we love. The fact of the matter is that we DO love, and when the object of that love dies, we grieve. And we feel pain. And we need help in order to process the grief and the pain. And that is the reason and the purpose of Daily Strength. And that is why I am here.
While my marriage to my wife, Barbara, may have been “less than perfect”, my love for her was every bit as strong and valid as the love felt by those fortunate souls who were blessed with perfection. Love "is what it is".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlMP1hwXIEs
Replies
Joe,
Our love for our mates is a balancing act like so many things in life.
We are still, nonetheless, individuals with individual right and responsibilities.
For Barbara, Barbara found the mechanism of choice to control her anxiety and pain. You found yours to be unacceptable and you took the strength and courage to make a stand...and make a change.
It\'s hard to say who\'s going to be able to change, but she had the option for change and never took the pathway toward greater examination and enlightenment.
She also never swam in the deep end of the pool with others that could help her...as she apparently couldn\'t or wouldn\'t face her fear and anxiety. Perhaps a sense of dependency, upon a caring professional, echoed too loudly of her emotional dependencies in her childhood. Perhaps she thought releasing herself to care would take her back to childhood nightmares...and repeat for her...trauma of helplessness. Yet, all the while, she was headed toward ultimate helplessness all along.
She was the master of her ship, the captain of her soul, to that extent.
I suppose it\'s good to have both oars in the water as you go over Niagra Falls.
It was her life; her choice...and you are not to blame. You gave her autonomy and that says volumes about your own securities as a man.
Kudo\'s my friend.
Joe ~ I don\'t think there are any perfect marriages, mine certainly wasn\'t...I didn\'t have to deal with the kinds of situations/circumstances you did, but the rough and rocky episodes were definitely there...our FIRST ten years were not the best and I came very close to walking out more than once...but as you said, I loved him and he loved me, no rhyme or reason for it...not that anyone could understand...I didn\'t/don\'t understand why I love him...love knows no reason, it defies logic, and that it what makes it beautiful, and precious, and wonderful, and why it hurts so much when we lose the object of that love. As to why we speak so glowingly of our lost spouses...I think it\'s because we are hurting so much, we cannot bear to inflict more pain upon ourselves by remembering the bad times we endured and the negative qualities possessed by our lost loves...thanks for sharing...your honesty is refreshing...and it indicates a level of healing many have not yet attained...you can look back on the life you shared with Barbara and see it in it\'s entirety...and that is a good thing, a very good thing... Blessings & Hugs ~E~
And who knows...you may start a trend here...
Joe,
I applaud your honesty and insight regarding your less than perfect marriage. Our vows said for better or for worse and you honored those vows. When we love someone their successes make us proud and in their short comings we offer our love and support. It is hurtful to watch the ones we love so caught up in the things that will ultimately destroy them. The end result being left with their memory and clinging to all the good of it.
What is perfection? Compared to my first marriage, my marriage to Rudy was perfect. Were there things I would have different, yes, but life is a compromise and those things that were important to allow our live to grow and flourish were there. At least I was blessed with 15 years with no anger or regrets.
I am sure there are those among this community who\'s marriages were less than perfect but in grief we tend to overlook the imperfections until we are as bit farther along in the journey and can accept the short comings into the equation of the whole of the relationship.
It is so sad that so many people rely on drugs or alcohol to the point of destruction. I have seen so many of my friends caught up in the bondage of this addiction. Even my husband had a time with it but had broken the bondage in favor of life. I am sure it had an impact on his health and some how contributed to his death at the young age of 57. I thank God each day that it has not been in my nature to have this affliction and that he keeps me strong and guides my way.
Now about that Pot Roast...I\'d make enough so we would have left overs but when he saw that we were having it for dinner he\'d be on the phone inviting his kids to come over to eat, usually his ex would join us too SO rarely did I have left overs. Perhaps I will cook one on Oct 21 and have them over to honor the one year of his passing.
To you I say, May God bless you as you continue on in this journey. You are wise.
Hugs Linda
I for one have never been able to put across an image of our marriage having been perfect. For one thing, it was a later-in-life remarriage and we both came to it with baggage and hurts. For another thing, I am a seriously flawed individual and should probably never have entered into a relationship in the first place. Years of therapy and really trying here. Finally, we weren\'t even married for 3 years when Craig died, so we were still in the awkward beginning phases of jockeying for position, learning each other\'s reactions, becoming able to trust each other fully, etc.
All of our memories were in the future - so many plans.
My biggest regrets are over having that life ripped away from us, because we did love each other more than anybody else either of us had ever known and were probably in for a glorious long-term marriage if we\'d been given the chance. There was so much good in him. I would have liked the chance to celebrate that and to have continued to work on our becoming a team or a unit more and more through the years. As he said, he was hoping for increased intimacy as time went along, but it wasn\'t to be.
Hugs, Gail
By the time Jim and I met we had managed to put our hurts and baggage behind us because we had both been single for a long time. My first marriage was terrible and long and, quite honestly, horrible. When Jim and I got together we were long past raising children, balancing careers and both secure emotionally and financially. Like we used to say........we simply didn\'t have anything to disagree about. and so we never did. Our union was perfect for us period. That being said, there is still a small part of me that regrets that I couldn\'t have found what I found with Jim in my first marriage. I still consider the breaking of my family unit as my fault (I was the one that wanted out of the marriage) and there is a black check mark in my life score because of it. Like you said.....whatever the trails and tribulations of your marriage you stayed together through all the good and bad until the end still loving one another. My hat is off to you......and I sincerely mean that.....I wish it could have been the same for me.
Hugs, Dianne
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Joe,
My friend you hit home with this post. Kallene and I were married for 41 years and it was by far from a perfect marriage.
Kallene and I both drank and smoked. I gave up the drinking in 1983 and smoking before that, she was not as lucky as I.
She comment that she wondered why I could quite and she was unable to. I did not go into treatment and maybe you could call me a dry drunk. I still kept many of my bad habits.
After going through treatment with Kallene and our family 3 different times, I learned that I was a control freak. We went to a marriage counseler and I learned how to deal with my control issues.
Later in life Kallene confided in my that she had been molested by here Grandfater. She never brought it up to the counseler and I don\'t know why.
But her drinking as bad as it was, she was still a wonderful Mother and Grandmother.
She was the most unselfish person I know, except when it came to her drinking and smoking. It was always the lies that hurt so much, because it just wasn\'t the kind of person she realy was. It was the dependence on drinking that would cause her to do things she would otherwise never do.
Our last 20 years together were the best years and they got better with each year. We were looking forward to be retired at our farm and having the grandkids stay with during the summers, but it wasn\'t meant to be.
I have many regrets when it comes to Kallene. I ask myself why I didn\'t try harder to help her stop smoking and watching her overall health. I may never have been able to help her stop drinking, since it ran deep in her family (both her father and grandfather died of drinking).
No one could be harder on themselves than she would after she drank and many times she would tell me that she just wished she could die, so she wouldn\'t have to fight it anymore.
Now,I have started to drink again to dull the pain of loosing her and it is getting me no where. I\'m fear that it causing me to more depressed and I know that is not what shew would want.
I should be happy that Kallene is with Our Lord in heaven and should not be feeling sorry for myself.
It\'s just seems that life has no meaning anymore.
Thanks for listening.
Your Friend
Dan
Joe - I don\'t believe there are many \"perfect\" marriages. Mine was almost 51 years, and there were some hard years in there. However, I never reached the point of wanting out ; plus, in the later years I suppose we mellowed and our relationship was really better than ever. The fact that you loved Barbara enough to take care of her in her final illness is proof that you were there for her no matter what. This is a good thing.
Doye
I would be so very surprised if there was a perfect marriage...being as how two humans enter into living life, with all its vicissitudes as well as their own, how could there be? That said, there are better and worse matches and better and worse times. Accepting the ambivalence is so very very brave......
May your courage and your incredibly hard work lead you forward into the light.....
\" Love is patient...love is kind...\" When you grow so strong in the caring sense, you feel as safe as a driver riding the rocking chair between 2 eighteen wheelers.Safe,fast,invincible.It takes courage to speed up and pass the truck ahead.You have done that ,Joe, and are well on your way .
Joe,
I understand why you feel that most people here had \"perfect\" marriages. Most talk about their marriage as though it was the most wonderful marriage in the world. To be fair, I\'m sure it was, maybe even more so in retrospect.
There are a few that have stated some things that they wished were different, etc., but, mainly, things were good until an illness or sudden death took them away. I\'ve noticed that ever since I\'ve been on here, but I know marriages aren\'t so perfect. Anyway, I seldom say anything about the difficult years that Joe and I had. We went to marriage counseling for almost a year, (10 yrs. before he died) and managed to stay together, because we loved each other. I still love him. There were things that happened that I don\'t want to discuss here, but, my heart was broken into a million pieces. W/o my sister, 2 nieces,a couple of friends, Joe and the marriage counselor we went to, and a private counselor that I went to, we would not have stayed together. Well, we may have stayed together, but, things would have been even more difficult w/o the counseling and all the time I spent reading books about his/our problem.
I don\'t regret staying in our marriage. I never truly wanted a divorce, because when I married, I believed in the marriage. Joe didn\'t want a divorce either, but, he assumed that I would after a discussion we had about something he had done.
Let me put it this way, I went into shock and a downward spiral that I never thought I would have done. I\'ve always considered myself a strong woman, so, falling apart wasn\'t something I ever considered that I would do. Once the trust you have in your spouse is shattered, it takes a LOT to be able to maintain a marriage.
We had a lot of very good years though before his great confession, and that outweighed the not so great. The last few years were pretty good too. As Joe would say, he didn\'t think we could live apart because we cared way too much about each other, even if our marriage wasn\'t perfect.
Hugs, Joely
Joe,
I would like to think that I did have the perfect marriage but in reality I agree there probably isn\'t a \"perfect marriage\". Buddy and I had both been married before and learned from our bad marriages what not to do this time around. When I first met Buddy he was a smoker and a drinker. He quit smoking a year after we married because I made his life a living \"hell\". I had smoked for many years and quit. Then when we found out he had Hep C we both stopped our social drinking because every drink he had was very bad for his liver. At that point our marriage was a wonderful bond between two people that loved and respected each other as well as life. For the next 15 years he fought his the Hep C giving it everything he could. We wanted so badly to grow old together because it took us so long to find each other. Sometimes I think you have to go through the bad times to truly appreciate the good times. And we both had that with our first marriages...Hugs Ellen
I admire your honesty and you are absolutely right that there is no such thing as a perfect marriage. Regardless of circumstance, it takes work to make a successful marriage and I believe you had a successful marriage. I believe my marriage really was about as close to perfect as one could get. We met in our teens, grew up together and were very much one person. We were together practically 24/7 as we ran our own business together and did everything else together. In fact, some people in our small town would get worried if they seen one of us out without the other and would always have to question us about why the other was not there. That just means I didn\'t have to work as hard, be as willing to give, or struggle to remain committed to my marriage. I applaud people like you who chose to work to make your marriage a success. I think it takes a very strong person to overcome serious struggles in a relationship and I don\'t know that I have that strength.
But back to no perfect marriages. This is true because there are no perfect people. Dan certainly had his faults as do I. This was one thing that concerned our oldest son at the memorial. He said he can\'t stand it when people get up there and eulogize a person as if he were a saint in life. So, my boys shared open and honest memories about their Dad - the good and the bad. The preacher who has known us for 20 years was quite shocked to learn about Dan\'s temper and foul mouth, but it was part of who he was and we all accepted that even when we wanted to punch him in the face for it.
Best wishes
Angie
Joe,
Obviously you touched many people with your journal entry, me inlcuded. Janelle and I selected and attended a church of our choice together for over 10 years. We came to know many spirit filled Christians. Our pastor was I am sure the most godly man I have ever known. His name was Rick. Rick loved God and he knew the Bible better than I know my driver\'s license. But, even Rick admitted it took hard work to sustain our faith. Satan will indeed throw every possible obstacle in our way to prevent us from growing spiritually and keeping the faith. Satan is shrewd and powerful, he knows our weaknesses and exploits them as much as possible. Joe, if it was easy to maintain our faith in God and follow where He leads, we would not have needed Jesus. There were men like you and I who actually sat and talked with Jesus and shared meals with Him. They saw Jesus work miracles, and yet their faith wavered. Several time Jesus referred to his disciples as \"ye of little faith.\" Jesus\' journey to the Cross for you and me started a long time before Bethlehem. Jesus\' journey to the Cross started in the Garden of Eden
because God foreknew that we could not do it on our own. Jesus knew as He hung on the Cross that you and I would be sinners till the day we die. That is why He stayed on the Cross, because He knew He was our only hope. So my dear friend, do not be dismayed that you must work to keep the faith. Do not be so hard on yourself when you fail to meet your own expectations. Just do the best you can. I think you have already given your life to Jesus. And Jesus tells us in John 6:37 \"All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.\" Thank God the battle is already won if we have accepted the free gift of grace from Jesus Christ. I don\'t know why I wrote all this to you. I am sure you already knew everything I said. Maybe I had to say it for myself. Peace unto Joe.
Eddie