Getting the Love You Want

We have been in many desperate places during our marriage. Our church offered a course Marriage: A Spiritual Journey, for couples (considering marriage, happily married, married with problems, etc.) based the book, Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. We had sought the counsel of one of the pastors and he invited us to join the class.

The book and the class were great and I devoured the book in no time flat.

In one of the early chapters, Harville talks about the different ways the brain (specifically the old brain) interprets and stores memory and experiences. In the old brain (also known as the primitive brain) we store our old memories that we can't instantly recall vividly anymore. Birth, infanthood, life as a toddler, etc. We store the memory and experience of our early caregivers and are drawn to mate with person(s) who embody their characteristics, personality traits and behaviors. Even those of us who say "I'll never marry someone like my mom/dad/grandma/whoever raised me" inevitably are drawn to someone who early on doesn't appear to resemble them but down the road becomes very much like them. Dr. Hendrix explains that this is part of an internal desire to fix our childhoods. Crazy weird and fascinating, right?

I've heard that many or most of the couples who took the class walked away with a greater understanding, love and respect for their partner. In the sessions and in the workbook, we would talk about our early years, the effects that they'd had on us, practicing 'dialoguing' (a super technique for feeling/being heard/understanding your partner.) I had so much hope that this class could change us, make us relate to each other better. I put my heart and soul into the workbook excercises and the sessions and was uncommonly vulnerable.

Unfortunately, we didn't complete the eight or so sessions.

Jeff was spiraling down into a deep depressive state at the time and I was completely unaware. I just thought that if we took this class, read that book, undertook a new method, listened to good advice, etc . . . I tried and tried and tried.

He showed up for the classes but wouldn't do the homework. We were asked to practice the dialoguing technique at home and Jeff would flat out refuse or ignore my attempts and requests. I would pour my heart out and into the workbook and try to get him to do his and he just. wouldn't. try.

The first couple years of our marriage were intensely painful and hard. I am not proud of my own behavior, reactions and responses. I cried so many tears, made so many empty threats. I internalized so much. I started to believe him when he said that I was the problem.

Looking back, I can see where I was part of the problem . . . it definitley takes two to tango, right? But what I didn't know at the time was that my husband was suffering from bipolar disorder and unwittingly taking all of us down the drain with him.

Where it all began

Once upon a time, I was a single mother of an almost two year old and had devoted the first two years of my sons' life to being his mom. As my sweet baby boys' second year was about to come to a close, I remarked to a co-worker (Mel) that I finally felt ready to date. Truth was, I was tired of being alone.

A week later, Mel approached me at work and told me that she'd thought of someone to introduce me to. "I think you guys would have a lot of fun together . . . but I don't think he'd be interested in anything serious." His name was Jeff and he was her husband's best friend. I asked her all kinds of questions: "Is he cute? What does he do? How old is he?"

We met at our mutual friends' home several weeks later. He was so good looking and I was instantly attracted to him physically. He didn't ask for my number that night so I figured he wasn't interested. Later, he told me that I had made him nervous, and that girls didn't usually make him nervous. A month or so later, we met up at their house again and Mel forced us to exchange numbers. Jeff handed me a piece of paper with his number on it and underneath it said CALL ME, underlined. I wrote my number on a piece of paper with 'You call me FIRST.'

Our first date was at his best friends' dad's surprise 60th birthday party somewhere north of the town. Apparently, I still made him nervous. When he dropped me off at my apartment that night, I asked him what he was doing the next night and said we should go to the movies. And then we lived happily. ever. after.

Not really.

The last six years or so have been a rollercoaster of sorts and this blog is my catharsis . . . I'd like to use this space to recall and replay the events, identify red flags and early warning signs.

I don't want to use this space to bash my husband, but I do plan to be completely honest about everything.
Currently, we are living with our three children in the aftermath of the effects of mental illness and trying to recover from damages done and make changes in order to keep our family intact.

Here goes . . .