Marriage counseling again.

So much for NaBloPoMo, huh? I briefly thought about back-dating some posts but then decided to just say fuck it. Still, in the spirit of it, I'm going to at least try to post more often.

Tomorrow J. and I have an appointment with a new marriage counselor. We tried counseling a couple of years ago, and for various reasons it didn’t work out. I decided we needed to give it at least one more go before calling it quits, and he agreed.

I don’t even know how to begin to explain the deadness, the emptiness, and the anger that seems to define our relationship. Those who have known us for a long time will note that we’ve always had conflict in our relationship, and that’s true. Since high school we’ve been fighting and making up and fighting and making up. The difference is that back then, there was genuine affection between us during the good times, and we made real efforts to stop doing the things that pissed the other one off. Now, the “good” times are when we are pretty much ignoring each other but not actively pissed, or maybe sharing a joke or some small talk. It doesn’t go beyond that—there’s no intimacy, no cameraderie…it’s just not loving.

Sometimes it feels very much like we are coworkers, and our job is Bubba. I almost added “and the house” but I am the only one who does any housework, so I guess that’s my job alone. J. has generally been a very loving and involved dad, but lately I’ve noticed that even that seems to be sliding. Maybe it’s because I feel I’m doing a better job at being a mother, so now I notice his shortcomings as a father. I don’t know. J. is very good about taking Bubba out to the park, out to the mall to ride the carousel, things like that. But at home, he rarely does any kind of play with him that requires effort or attention. Usually they sit and watch cartoons together.

Every night, J. has to be reminded to brush Bubba’s teeth and give him his medicine. When I had my sinus surgery, Bubba didn’t get a bath all week because J. just couldn’t be bothered and I was too sick. He got one the day before I went for surgery and got his next one on the first day I was even semi-functional again. This morning, Bubba had to go potty and J. was in the shower. J. had locked the bathroom door because he didn’t want Bubba to open the door and possibly expose J. to my parents, who come out on Mondays to watch Bubba. Like that’s even a big deal anyway—it’s not like they’d be looking, you know?

Anyway, I went to take Bubba into the bathroom and encountered the locked door. Bubba was rattling the door pretty frantically trying to get in. “Bubba has to go potty,” I called into the bathroom. “Goddammit!!!” J. yelled. Then, in response to Bubba’s rattling, he yelled “Stop it!” so harshly I figured he was talking to me. “Bubba’s doing it,” I called back. “I know, I wanted him to stop,” he replied. I was really taken aback that he would yell at Bubba like that for something as innocent as that. It worries me to think of what it would be like if we were divorced. What would Bubba do when he visited Daddy? Just sit in front of TV all the time? Would I have to call every night to make sure he got his teeth brushed and his medicine taken and got bathed once in awhile? Would J. yell at him like that every time he was grumpy and tired from playing PlayStation until 2:30 in the morning (which is almost every night)?

What really got me motivated to make the counseling appointment was the love letter. On Oct. 14, I wrote J. a love letter. It was a page-and-a-half long, and I sent it through the mail for him because in the past he’d complained about never getting good mail. I started the letter out with the sentence “Warning: This is a love letter.”

Now, as mentioned above, I’ve not been really feeling the love lately, but the night I wrote this I was feeling optimistic and trying to count my blessings. This letter was my way of reaching out and trying to get things on the right track again. I sent it to him on Tuesday, and it arrived at our house on Wednesday.

He opened it right away, read the first sentence, smiled, then said he’d read it later. Sounded reasonable, since he’d just gotten home from work and was still in his work clothes and Bubba was being demanding, etc. But three days later, it was still where he’d left it. I picked it up and put it with my stuff. Two days after that, he noticed it was missing and asked for it back. At first I said no, but then I decided to try to be a better person than that, to try to be compassionate, etc., so I handed him back the letter and said “Even though it hurt my feelings that you haven’t read this yet, I still want you to have it because I still feel these things for you.” I handed it to him as he was playing Guitar Hero (he paused it for me—how sweet).

Two weeks go by. I hear nothing about the letter. J. spends his evenings spending hours playing Guitar Hero or indulging in his latest obsession with crossword puzzles. So finally I ask him one night, “Did you ever read that letter I gave you?”

Nope. He hadn’t read it. He knew he was in deep shit because he actually uttered the words “I’m sorry” but then told me he’d just forgotten it was there. I asked him where it was because I wanted it back for good this time. He wouldn’t tell me, so I started rifling through his stuff, for some reason thinking maybe it had actually made it all the way back to his nightstand or something. Finally, angrily, he went and got the letter—off the kitchen counter—and handed it to me, snarling at me that I should “cut him some slack” because it had been a “crazy couple of weeks” with his bad cold and my sinus surgery.

When I pointed out that he’d had plenty of time to play games or do crosswords, he didn’t say anything. Then I asked him how he would feel if he’d given me a present and I just left it on the counter unopened for two weeks. “That’s not the same thing,” he said. “This wasn’t a present.” That hurt me quite a bit, because I really do consider a love letter to be a gift, and one that’s way better than a popcorn popper. “Just because I didn’t go out and buy it at a store?” I replied. “Well, it wasn’t in a box, wrapped up in paper and with a bow on it,” he said. It just seems so cold and heartless and insulting to me. It seems like he really just doesn’t give a shit about me or us.

This weekend we went to LilCherie’s annual Halloween party, which is always a blast and which we always really get into. We’ve gone for 12 years or something like that and only missed one; we’ve had some awesome costumes. This year I decided to be Britney Spears, and had a hilarious costume that I’d spent a lot of time getting ready. J. didn’t know what to be, so I came up with some ideas and he picked one. While I was recovering from surgery, and still feeling pretty crappy, I went out and got him all the stuff he needed for his costume, going to three or four different stores and shelling out probably $30 to $40 bucks.

Saturday came around and by Saturday afternoon, J. was acting kind of mopey. When I asked what the problem was, he said he’d been invited to too many things that night, none of which he’d told me about. Apparently, another friend was having a party, and his sister was having a little get-together. I told him, nicely, to do whatever he wanted to do, to just be happy. He decided he would drop me off at LilCherie’s, go to his sister’s for awhile, then come back to the party. When he dropped me off at 4:30 p.m. he said, “I’ll be back in a little while.”

Somewhere around 11 p.m. he came back to the party, only I didn’t know it because I was in another room of the house and J. didn’t even bother to find me to say hello. He just went straight down to the basement so he could play PlayStation with some of the guys. I didn’t even know he was there until 12:30 or 1 a.m., and by that time I’d taken off my costume. He never even got to see me in it. And he never even took his costume out of the bag. Later on, I just said to him, “I wish you could have seen me in my costume. It was kick-ass.” He said, “Well, you can show me later.” I declined.

I don’t know what’s going on. He seems so uncaring and distant. He sits outside of work and smokes for half an hour before coming home, so he doesn’t get home now most days until 6:20 p.m. or so. We don’t have sex at all, haven’t for months. We don’t sleep in the same room. Our friends notice he’s moody. My parents think we should get divorced and are actively starting to get angry at how he treats me and how he doesn’t do jack shit around the house. I can’t hold it together much longer.

Some of you might be thinking, “It sounds like he’s depressed.” He is, I’m sure. We both are. He’s on antidepressants, and recently, got diagnosed with ADD so he’s also on meds for that, which, in my opinion, have just made things worse. He feels they are helping, though, so he won’t quit them. He does go to therapy sporadically, but “doesn’t feel like sharing” what he is working on. Maybe that’s because all he talked about with his previous counselor, whom he saw for about a year, was current events, movies, and music. Gee, I wonder why it didn’t help anything?

So that’s the story of why we’re going to marriage counseling. If this counselor can’t get to the bottom of things, then I really think it’s over. It’s just hard to make the move to actually get divorced. I wrote in my journal the other day that it's like doing CPR on someone who is clearly dead: You don't know if the very next breath you give might be the one that saves the life, so you don't know when to quit, but in the end, you're still stuck with a corpse. I am afraid of what my life will be like financially because we have a lot of debt, and I’m afraid of how it might screw Bubba up. But I think this situation could screw him up too, and I know I can’t live the rest of my life like this.

Today I walked back from lunch and it just hit me what a mess my life is. I hate my job, my marriage is essentially ending three years after we finally managed to bring a kid into the mess, I’m depressed and old and fat and my sinuses hurt and I’m in debt. How did I get here? I can’t believe I’ve failed so spectacularly. I have always tried to do the right thing and make the right decisions, and this is where I end up. It feels very overwhelming right now, like I’m buried under a pile of shit and I can only claw my way out turd by turd.

So how was your day?