smile:

These days I feel like everyone I know has lost their smile.
Myself included. I know I struggle thru the winter, I always have..and this winter seems even more intense than others. New job, new struggles new crap - once you boil it all down.
The difference this year is that Lance too seems to be in a 'funk'. Normally we are not both in a funk together, which is good because it makes it easier to get out of IF there is someone there to help.
Lance and I have been struggling to reach a common ground for awhile now. We have never been really great communicators, so when that minimal communication breaks down everything else seems to get lost in translation. Which leads us to where we are today.
Which frankly, I am not sure where that is; perhaps a hazy line between just going thru the motions and finding solutions.
Several factors, I feel are contributing to our distance, and inability to communicate or communicate clearly. One - my sister has decided that she wants to be separated and/or divorced. The realization of this has trickled it way into our house hold and sent our already rocky-relationship swirling a bit. He has verbalized some fear of me attempting to act like my sister. PLEZ is my response. get a grip. He has also tried to limit my time spent with my sister, which only makes me push back. Dude, she is my sister, we are CLOSE. This is nothing new and nothing that will ever change.
He has become semi-angry at the developments between my sister and her husband and he seems to be, from my perspective, taking it out on me a bit. Which does not sit well.
Secondly, my job. Hello folks - remember in June when I changed jobs, per his recommendation. I originally turned this job down, then he told me I was a dumbass and I took the job. Well, now that i am here and it is requiring ALOT of my time and attention he is pissed. I am exhausted, and brain-dead half the time. The last thing I can deal with is him being mad at the fact that my job is requiring a more hours than expected. Once again, as he pushes I push back. And we are left with a greater distance between us than before.
Third, his job. Lets face it folks. He also got a new job this summer and it has for the most part not panned out the way he has hoped. In my opinion he has lost his passion, his drive and even his smile. While on the subject, what about friends. Where are his? I get chastised for wanting to go to dinner, go out for girls nite ect. This is who I am, who I have ALWAYS been. This is nothing new. But by the same token, he was that person too. We found a way to make it work. Lately he has become for all intensive purposes, old. I have said to him and my sisters husband, find something to do - once or twice a week. For ideas, bowling, dart league, shoot guns, cards ect. Find a reason to get out of the house and bond with some boys.
For one if he is going out a bit more he will get off my ass, and secondly I 'think' he will just feel better.
Do you know how heart warming it is to sit with a girlfriend and laugh so hard it hurts. Currently I live for those moments. I have and always have had a great group of family and friends.
He has always lived to work and work hard. Now I am not sure what he is living for and as he attempts to find that we struggle. He has started to not trust me and frankly that pisses me off. It pushes me further away. Sexually it has become a mute point. *I know you totally wanted to know that.* The more he pushes me the less and less I want to be around him and the less and less we work at fixing the obvious broken parts.
The worst part about all of this is that I am a bit emotionally numb about it all. Not saddened, not happy, actually not much of anything. And with each passing day it becomes easier to fill my time with other things and activities. We are still loving our kids and being polite (at times); but our smiles have disappeared.
I keep looking for mine. I keep hoping he will find his. Hoping that Mr. Winter has it wrapped up in a snow flake that will eventually fall out of the sky. I luv him and we all know that luv is tough, marriage is tough. This is not a post about divorce or wanting to leave. It is just a post about our current struggle, which i am sure we will get through - just wondering if we will both better when it is all said n done.
However when we talk (fight) he does not take any ownership. He feels it is all me - that he really has nothing wrong and that I create the situation, push the situation and continue to perpetuate the nonsense. And me being , well me...that does not sit well. I will own my fair share of it, but at the same time I recognize my pitfalls and my own funk and try to fix it.
I don't really think he does that.... and I think it is swallowing him alive. I think it makes it easy to blame it all on me. And normally I would eat it all and try to fix it. I am not doing that this time.
Perhaps that is part of the reason he is in a funk. I am not playing the role I normally play, the fixer role -the I am going to save this role. I feel stronger each day, I am changing and with that comes the need for our relationship to change. I am trying to find my smile, I am looking for the laughter - I wish he would too....
I hope spring brings warm weather and smiles.