I've been hesitant to blog about certain things and I don't know why. It's not like I have this huge readership (hell, I don't think anyone reads this effer!) but I just feel self conscious about certain topics. I think it has to do with tainting the waters; if I post about something negative and someone actually DOES happen to read it they'll get a certain image of me that may or may not be correct. If I'm angry and I post about something that makes me angry at that moment, I'm sharing something that may be totally temporary. I may not feel that way tomorrow, you know?

As an example...I belong to this email list where one person shared lots of negative details about her spouse. So of course we all got a negative perception of him. So when things were rosy again, it was hard for us to see him in anything but a negative light. I'm still not sure what happened with her; I really liked her and felt a certain kinship with her. I guess I was just too lazy to keep the friendship going.

But that's beside the point. I just hate to share too much, just in case. And the really dumb thing is that I've shared negative stuff before, it's all in the archives. I read over them from time to time to see where I was compared to where I am. Interesting journey.

Suffice it to say, I'm having a rough time lately in my marriage. Nothing earth shattering, nothing union shattering...just your basic we're-annoying-each-other, I-don't-feel-loved crap.

It seems like I know so many people, both irl and online, who have recently or are going to be going through divorce. I wonder what that final straw was, what sealed the deal? For some it's obvious, intentionally or not. There are the blatant affairs where someone is caught or admits to it. Then there are the ones where there was another person but nothing had happened yet.

It seems there's also the ones where someone "isn't happy". I hear that a lot. I guess I'm wondering what that means to many people. At what point does your not being happy become unbearable? I guess I haven't hit that point yet. And to be fair, I'm not really unhappy with my marriage 90% of the time, so there's that. If I was unhappy more than 50% of the time, that would probably be a breaking point for me. I will say that during some of those ten percent times I have fantasized about divorce, not having to deal with it, not having to wonder what another person thinks of my decisions or the size of my bum. Sometimes that sounds pretty good. But I think I idealize it, as with everything in my life. The grass is always a more brilliant shade of green one pasture over. I try to tell myself it's greener because there's more shit over there, but I'm not sure.

Another thing I do when I'm feeling unhappy is that I forget the good things. I realized how much I do this last week. For a long time, I've thought my husband wasn't "there" for me during Mason's birth. I remember him getting upset with me a few hours after I'd given birth about something stupid. I remember him kind of shushing my emotions right after Mason came. So I've had this idea that he wasn't "good enough" during the whole process. Fast forward to this week when I was going through our videotapes and labeling them; I was watching them in bits and pieces to get an idea of the dates for the labels. I get to 2004 and I happen to fast forward to some video of the birth. As I watched, he brought me water, he rubbed my back, pushed my hair out of my eyes, played the music. He really was there for me. I had seemingly forgotten all the good things and crystallized the bad things. And if I'd done that with this birth, I was likely doing it with other things as well. I'm trying to keep that in mind when some of the "bad things" spring to mind. To paraphrase Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, the bad things are always easier to believe.

I think it's part of the work of marriage to remember the good things.

And now if he reads this he's going to think I'm intellectualizing again and he'll ask why don't I live these lofty ideals? Oh well. I'm pretty flawed, that's all I can say. Just remember the good things!! :)