TL;DR (seriously this a long read and I’ve now decide what I originally was writing about will be saved for another post all together. Extreme personal word vomit ahead, be warned.)

Wow. January 2017 has flown by rather quickly. Already a week away from February. I didn’t realize it at the time but my life was just starting to change in very big (and so far, very bad) ways. 

It was just over a year ago that my wife & I began marriage counseling. The previous holidays had been bumpy and we were into the back half of our first year of married life. We had meant to do some pre-wedding couples counseling but it never happened as we got too busy. 

I was frustrated and deeply unsatisfied with my career. I had chosen this particular job at a time when I had just moved 5 hours away from my family and the place where I grew up and had lived most of my life to be with my then fiance as were planning our wedding which was less than a year away. What appealed to me about this new job was the flexibility it afforded me as an independent contractor I was setting my own schedule and working as much or as little as I wanted to and being able to work from home. 

The toll of working from home for a full year was greater than I expected. I felt isolated at times because I didn’t have forced daily interaction with the outside world, and this place I was living in was still new to me. My fiance and eventually wife worked long hours away from the house and often had to travel out of town as well. For me working from home meant I couldn’t really separate when I was “on the clock” and when I just home. So I ended up working much longer hours than I would have if I was going to an office everyday. 

By January of 2016 I was seriously considering another career change. It was a scary notion, but one that my then wife fully supported me exploring. Early on during our counseling sessions I was encouraged by our therapist and my wife to find something in my life that I could do for myself that would make me happier overall. It was clear to me that meant leaving my job. And I proceeded to move ahead with that with my wife’s full support.

I even waited three weeks after we had made the decision to “pull the trigger” so to speak to give us both time to make sure we were comfortable with this decision. It was not without some hesitation and worry. Mostly she - being such a planner and go-getter that had been on specific career track since she was a sophomore in college on through grad school and now as a rising star in her field - well it was hard for her to connect with my lack of a clear direction or desire for my next career path. 

To her credit she reiterated that often, how she saw it as a very big difference in who we were, a difference that she wasn’t sure how live with. And I didn’t have any easy solutions. I’ve had a lot jobs in my adult life, in a number of different fields, and I’ve had my share of joblessness and unemployment. I’m living that very reality yet again right now. I knew it was a problem for her, and yet I still thought I had her full support at this point.

I should backtrack now to discuss some of the lead up to marriage counseling beginning just over year ago. We were married in late May and the first two months of married life flew by quickly and happily as far as I was concerned. The timing was unfortunate because mid-July is the anniversary of my brother’s suicide. It’s always a dark time for me, and can last a few weeks. 

Again the timing was unfortunate because our relationship started in January of 2013, became a long-distance relationship by June of 2013, and remained an LDR until Sept. 2014 when I was able to move to the same city as her. So it just happened that our Newlywed phase was also the first time we were together through all of my “dark period”. We had spent time together in previous years during this time of the year but only short visits where we were riding the high of being together. 

So on this occasion I made a point to let her know how I was feeling and explained that I would be sad for a while and that it had nothing to do with her or us, and I told her what I would and would not appreciate from her during that time. She was receptive and understanding and I actually felt better and less depressed that July than I had since before my brother died. 

August came around and one seemingly quite afternoon she revealed to me how unhappy she was. I was surprised. She was surprised that it hadn’t been more obvious to me. She didn’t lay any particular blame at me, just knew she was unhappy and didn’t want to be. We agreed that seeing a counselor might help and that we’d both try harder and not let things get complacent or deny when either of us were unhappy. Hoping that we’d find whatever answers or solutions that could work for us by staying vigilant. 

As we entered into that autumn life was equal parts chaotic - taking in a stray kitten to live with us and our curmudgeonly but sweet 15 year-old cat, the tragic death of my cousin in a motorcycle crash, my wife’s continued travel for work - and routine. Perhaps we relied too much on the routine to calm the chaotic storms without taking stock of all that truly entailed the chaos. I admit to mostly being happy during this time or maybe “okay” is better way to put it. She started to distance herself from me which I recognized but didn’t fully grasp or address because I was afraid of what it might mean, because I had hoped that it was temporary. 

I would perceive her unhappiness as being directly correlated to something I did or didn’t do or some defect in me, which is extremely common for someone who was raised in an abusive environment as I most definitely was. I didn’t have the tools to express my own anger, let alone be an outlet for her. Neither of us knew how to handle things, so finally without any more delay we chose to start therapy together in the new year of 2016.

A few sessions in I reached the breakthrough about my work situation as stated in great detail above. Counseling was tough, but it felt like it was helping. We both were taking specific things from those sessions and applying it to our lives, not just paying lip service to the ideas.

One issue was sex. Both of us wanted to be having much more than we were, but we also both kept self-sabotaging ourselves. The desire was there, but trust was not. So we worked on that. Encouraged each other to be more open and unafraid of asking and engaging. And it worked for a short while. 

By the time I had stopped working, she and the therapist urged me to take a week’s visit to see my family and just relax. I wasn’t particularly keen on doing that, especially since I wanted to dive in on my new job search and I was eager to continue the work we had been doing on our marriage. But she urged me to do it and so I did. I came back home a day earlier than planned because I missed my wife and home. As I walked in the door that evening she didn’t even get up from her computer at the kitchen table to hug or kiss me. She was working and on a deadline, but still it was quite disheartening. 

Later that week things seemed to be less chilly. We went out to county fair and visited with people. She had an upcoming work event at a nearby State Park and we made plans to attend together, taking some time for ourselves while there. But a the end of our next counseling session that same week she would state that she wanted a divorce. 

I’ve rehashed this all a million times before and I’m getting ahead of myself now, as I meant to speak more about how it felt for me just one year ago. A mixture of worry and hope. Having no idea what 2016 had in store for me. Not thinking even at the worst that my marriage could end so soon, or at all. And now here it is and 2017 is already zooming by. I still don’t know where I’m headed now, or how I’ll get there, but the only thing I do know is I have to move on from where I am right now.