When Life Doesn’t Turn Out As You Hoped

I was having ice cream last night with my friend Erica and my daughter. Erica was telling me about her boss and how he doesn’t live with his partner. The boss and his partner have been together for 20 years, but they live separately in their own houses. 

Erica incredulously asks me, “can you imagine living like that?”

I don’t answer right away since I’m swallowing my ice cream, but in my mind I’m thinking yeah that sounds amazing. But I would never admit that out loud, especially in front of my daughter.

My daughter answers for me, saying, “I think she would like that.”

Erica and I burst out laughing, kids say the darn-dest things and all that. 

I tried to correct her by exclaiming, “no! I would hate not living with daddy.”

But it hung in the air between us all. 

Erica said, “imagine how your anxiety would be?” Presuming she meant I’d be anxious living alone.

To which my daughter said, “it would be gone.”

Fuuuuuuuuuck. 

I know our marriage isn’t the best, but I didn’t think it was that obvious to the kids.

Truth be told, my relationship isn’t really turning out to be how I hoped it would be, it really never did once the honeymoon phase was over. 

I’ve always been a hopeless romantic. I’ve always wanted dancing in the kitchen, cooking meals together, binging shows together, taking long walks and holding hands, reading books snuggled on the couch, playing cards or board games together. 

But we aren’t like this, at all, not even a little bit. There is no intimacy and very rarely any affection. We care about each other, but we are just two busy bees maintaining our hive. We are very business-like. We have so many boxes we’re constantly checking - pack the kids lunches, take the boy to hockey, take the girl to softball, take out the trash, put the laundry away.

Check, check, check, check. 

When all the boxes are checked, there’s nothing left but resentment and exhaustion. There’s no box for our relationship because there’s no desire to create one.

I thought it would get better as the kids got older, but it’s getting worse.

I don’t want to get a divorce, I want to have the relationship that I dreamed of, with him. But he’s just not that kind of man. So how do I get what I need from him? What does he need from me and how can I give it to him?

Where do we go from here? We’ve done therapy, I don’t want to do it again. I don’t want another thing I need to schedule and be at. And I’m not sure if it’ll even help.

Are we too far gone to fix things? Is this the way our marriage is going to be? Can we change it?