Marital stress
Got your attention? : )
Just was talking with my sister this weekend about grief between parents over the death of a child. She and her husband lost little Ellie of SIDS about 22 years ago. She agrees you never get over it but she also said she had to accept that she and her husband would almost never be in 'sync' with their grieving. She'll have a hard stretch and he is oblivious and then (less often) he feels a sad grievous loss of their daughter and she says, "I know, it's hard when it hits." But if she's not feeling it strongly right then, they feel disconnected. It's a statistic that a good percentage of marriages fall apart after the death of a child. I can see why. Feeling misunderstood or unsupported in grief is unbelievably lonely. ANd being lonely IN marriage..... well, been there, got the t-shirt, no thank you. I give her huge credit for accepting that this would be their lot and that they'd do the best they could and accept the disconnects as part of the grief package.
My new husband and I are going to have this work forever, different than my sister's though, since it is a second marriage. Although he loved Andy and felt some pain, I don't think he thinks about it often. I think we need to talk about it more often. I need to ask for time on it... to ask for space and safety around my feelings and wonderings so that I don't retreat into a lonely "you don't know even a fraction of my daily thoughts' kind of place.
What have some of you found helps the marriage to survive? Get even stronger? (Optimism may be insane here but I'm open to the possibility.) Having only gotten re-married 20 months ago, and it was 4 days before Andy's diagnosis, and we were on our honeymoon no less, we have had a serious challenge to our marriage. I think we're basically ok but we have to really check in with each other regularly -- I don't want to lose this wonderful strong man by presenting myself as a wonderful strong person every day... ok some of the time but I also want to be REAL... a big mess sometimes... and I need to trust him with who that person is and how soggy and weak I feel sometimes.
Collective wisdom would be deeply appreciated here. :o)
xoxoxo Sarah
Just was talking with my sister this weekend about grief between parents over the death of a child. She and her husband lost little Ellie of SIDS about 22 years ago. She agrees you never get over it but she also said she had to accept that she and her husband would almost never be in 'sync' with their grieving. She'll have a hard stretch and he is oblivious and then (less often) he feels a sad grievous loss of their daughter and she says, "I know, it's hard when it hits." But if she's not feeling it strongly right then, they feel disconnected. It's a statistic that a good percentage of marriages fall apart after the death of a child. I can see why. Feeling misunderstood or unsupported in grief is unbelievably lonely. ANd being lonely IN marriage..... well, been there, got the t-shirt, no thank you. I give her huge credit for accepting that this would be their lot and that they'd do the best they could and accept the disconnects as part of the grief package.
My new husband and I are going to have this work forever, different than my sister's though, since it is a second marriage. Although he loved Andy and felt some pain, I don't think he thinks about it often. I think we need to talk about it more often. I need to ask for time on it... to ask for space and safety around my feelings and wonderings so that I don't retreat into a lonely "you don't know even a fraction of my daily thoughts' kind of place.
What have some of you found helps the marriage to survive? Get even stronger? (Optimism may be insane here but I'm open to the possibility.) Having only gotten re-married 20 months ago, and it was 4 days before Andy's diagnosis, and we were on our honeymoon no less, we have had a serious challenge to our marriage. I think we're basically ok but we have to really check in with each other regularly -- I don't want to lose this wonderful strong man by presenting myself as a wonderful strong person every day... ok some of the time but I also want to be REAL... a big mess sometimes... and I need to trust him with who that person is and how soggy and weak I feel sometimes.
Collective wisdom would be deeply appreciated here. :o)
xoxoxo Sarah
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