After 25 years of marriage, I thought we had pretty much weathered everything life had to throw at us. We had been a relatively-semi-for-the-most-part-happy family. We are extremely involved in our 3 children’s lives and both of us are very career oriented. My husband with owning and running our 4 restaurants and myself as a teacher. We are both intelligent and for the most part insightful.

Things were running as smooth as bubble wrap when, the disaster happened!! Our children all grew up and moved out. I dont think we had any idea that the children were the glue that held our family together. They were the centers of our universe and our common ground. We had no one that needed our daily guidance, discipline and support. What the hell do we do now? Who was this stranger in my house and bed?

No matter how perfect you think your marriage is, I am here to tell you, this will take major adjustment. This coming from someone’s whose marriage was no where near perfect, but this will rock anyone’s world.

My husband and I started off on a bad path by getting married because “we had to.” or at least that was what was expected back then. Especially for a good Catholic boy such as my husband. The first year was a little rocky but then we settled in for the long haul of complacent mediocrity. Neither my husband nor I took our vows lightly. It was not the ideal marriage but we somehow seemed to make it work. We both have a love for travel and that seemed to carry us along. We had children who were very involved in music and sports that required our mutual presence on a continuous basis. So, we settled into a routine of comfort with occasional ups and downs, not unlike many other marriages. We basically learned to love and tolerate each other but Im not sure that we ever learned to truly like each other. We had complete polar opposite interests except for travel and our children. Our children were a daily activity but travel was only when we could afford and set aside time for it. Still we pressed on.

The trouble began when our children slowly started to go off to college. I had major issues with this because these children had always been the center of my world! I had always felt that being a mother was the most important role I would ever have on this earth and I took this very seriously. This was my first mistake. I had always claimed that my marriage came first. I truly feel that it did, but somehow the children would sneak in and steal that title away. As my children slowly started to move away, little pieces of me were torn off and packed in their boxes. I lived for their visits and slowly withdrew even farther away into myself. My expectations for my husband moving into their place didn’t quite work the way I had anticipated. Our differences became more and more apparent and began to drive a wedge between us.  We were complete strangers sharing a home.

I withdrew into myself and he turned to his friends. He felt isolated and so did I. I have issues with confrontation and therefore took the passive/aggressive approach with a heavy emphasis on the passive. I assumed he knew when and why I was upset and that he didn’t love me enough to change all of the things he was doing wrong. He assumed I was a cold hearted bitch who was in a perpetually sour/ uncommunicative mood and therefore avoided our home at all cost. When it became apparent that we were heading towards cataclysmic disaster, we turned to a counselor.

This is an experience that takes me far out of my comfort zone. I feel/felt shaky and nauseous before every appointment. I DO NOT LIKE TO CONFRONT ANYONE OR ANYTHING!!! And our deviously sadistic counselor, takes pleasure in putting me in the spotlight on every visit. So apparently communication is important..who knew? So slowly in each session she attempts to draw out of me, 25 years worth of un-phrased anger, disappointment and hurt.

I went through many stages of feelings about our counselor. My expectations of how she should run the meetings apparently weren’t in her “psychology” books! We were there because my husband has been screwing up for years and I needed her to let him know, make him stop, and then fix him. Makes sense to me….. But she has this bizarre way of twisting and turning everything around so I can’t even tell who is winning.  She obviously has no idea what she’s doing. He’s clearly wrong and she wants to know what “I,” could have done to change things in the times where “He,” does something wrong….REALLY??!!

Then I start to think….wait a minute….maybe she is playing a role, therefore disguising her quiet brilliance.  By always turning everything around, she fools him into believing he’s not the bad guy, thus keeping him coming to the meetings and slowly using her ninja ways to fix him!

Then finally reality sets in and I realize that she has actually been using her ninja moves on me. No matter what the circumstances, it’s always up to each individual to decide how to react in any given situation. If you are in a bad relationship, either do something to change it’s direction or get out. If you choose to stay, its not the other person at fault, because you have chosen to allow yourself to be treated in an intolerable manner. You will be treated the way you allow yourself to be treated. We each make our own destiny. The only aspect in a relationship that you have control over is yourself! We can choose to quietly stew about something and telepathically convey our message to the offender (my personal method of choice) or we can confront the situation head on and stop a pebble from becoming Mount Everest over time. (This comes from personal experience. I have a mountain range that would make the Rocky’s weep with envy.)

Well done ninja warrior, well done.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not taking all the blame. I have major issues but, we both pretty much stink at this marriage thing all by ourselves. He has major issues too…I just can’t list them because he may read this. I am just trying to figure out how to get our counselor to move in to our house with us. With her guidance we actually have “meaningful conversations”.  We only have them at her office every other week with her prodding and poking, but I have hope and faith that one day we will be able to actually have a full blown uncomfortable discussion all by ourselves. The thing that helps and is key, is the fact that we are both fully dedicated to making this work. After all was said and done, we realized that we really have grown to love and care for each other. But most importantly, we really like each other too… for the most part, most of the time.

We are now currently learning how to administer CPR to our marriage. This has not been a fast road to recovery either. We have had some major code blue moments. We have really had to work hard to find common interests. We discovered that when both of us are taken out of our comfort zone in a situation we lean heavily upon one another. This has forced us to become extremely creative and try things we never imagined.

I can’t honestly say for certain what the road ahead may look like. But I do know one thing for certain, we will walk down that path hand in hand pushing, shoving, tripping, laughing, and crying but we will still be holding on when we reach the end.