How Do You Know If Your Marriage is Really Over?

Today is my wedding anniversary. Hubs and I have been together for 6 years, married for 3.

Our marriage, however, has taken a hit.

We’ve been having serious problems for over a year.

We’ve been in couples’ therapy for two months.

Things have...unraveled.

It’s sad around our house.

We look at each other hoping for breakthroughs, always a little disappointed with each other for not understanding. For not quite ‘getting it.’

We try to rip the wall down but it gets higher and higher.

We swallow the hurt for our lovely child, and then explode when we have time to ourselves. Or worse, there’s just silence. Smiles. Nods. Passive kindness. Apologetic jokes about who’s going to get the car or the toaster.

How did we get here?

My posts here about fertility have trickled to a stop.

I tried to stay on topic even though we weren't ‘trying’ anymore, but after each mechanical article was written I’d delete the file. It felt hollow and strange to recite facts that were now simply trivia to me instead of a way of life.

I wanted to reach out about the issues Hubs and I were having—I wanted to write about them and somehow clear the air around it all, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready to admit that something was wrong. That my marriage was failing. He wasn’t willing to admit that things had progressed as far as they had. Then scary, foreign words started to crop up in our conversations and in therapy.

Separation.

Custody.

We’ve both cried in each other’s arms trying desperately to get back to the place of understanding where we were when we first fell in love. But we can’t. I can’t.

Sometimes you have to accept that you’re not the one driving the car.

Sometimes you have to accept that you’re the one driving off course.

What happened?

When I am not lost in an emotional mist of sorts, my ever-analytic brain starts intellectualizing the scenario. I’ve never been that great at sitting with my feelings. Conducting a forensic investigation seems like the productive things to do.

Was it the miscarriages? Was it the stress of parenthood? Renovations? Being entrepreneurs? Illness and loss in the family? Lack of intimacy? All of the above? Is there nothing else I can do?... Nothing?

I wait for something to resonate; some defining reason; some gentle shove that will have me wake up from the problems in our life together.

Nothing happens.

Up until a few months ago, I was hell-bent on getting back to ‘normal.’ I booked weekends away for us to connect. Date nights. Doubled up on therapy. Read Harville Hendrix like it was the gospel. I was trying to recreate the person I was before I went through some pretty life-changing events. I thought that’s what I was supposed to do.

Then, as part of my therapy at Women's College Hospital’s Reproductive Life Stages Program, something finally clicked.

I’ve been going to this program as part of my recovery from the trauma of the multiple miscarriages and to wrap my head around my current fertility issues. Last session, my doctor said:

“I appreciate your intentions...but you can’t get back to normal. ‘Normal’ is what got you to where you are now. You have to grow now, and make changes…learn how to do things differently…by yourself, and with your partner…even if you aren’t together.”

So here I am.

As far out of my comfort zone as life will let me get.

I have no idea what’s about to happen. Or why.

Trying Times seems to mean something very different now, but I’m ok with that.

A special note to my Hubs,

I am so proud of the six years we have had, the three years of marriage, and the limitless future I know we’ll have as best friends.

Even though the thought of separate lives is a scary one, it doesn’t mean that our joy together is any less.

It doesn’t mean that we will never smile together, laugh together, or cry together again.

It doesn’t mean that we will love each other less—just differently.

And yet,

Some things will always be the same:

Whatever the road holds for us,