There have been no more fights between Will and I. We aren’t fighting. We have had a couple of discussions that were intense, yet they did not turn into fights. That is a good thing, and I’m grateful for it.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t tension.
There was one night where Will slept with me and we were…conjugal. Horny from ten months of no sex, hungry for the touch of another person. I was hoping sex would help although the rational part of me knew it wouldn’t. My old fantasy that sex made everything better, that sex “should” make everything better, is shattered; I shattered it some time before Will came home.
I guess the worst part of having sex with Will that night was that he felt like a stranger. Now, I have my fantasies about sex with strangers (fantasies, people…not “plans”), but when the stranger is my husband, sex was …nothing. It certainly didn’t comfort me in any way. There was nothing there except the pain of knowing there is no easy way out for Will and me.
Will is being open and (I hope) honest with me. He is hurt. He is concerned that we are not going to make it in the end. He says, “Logically, I can’t see this ending well,” and it isn’t a threat, it is his truth. He told me he feels hostile toward me, and I’ve told him the same thing.
Sitting there, looking at him, feeling his pain (“what” pain and “where it came from” didn’t matter), I realized something. Because we’re both hostile, neither of us are wanting to extend an olive branch. Neither one of us want to give up our positions, and so long as we’re both holding tightly to our own “ideal” there is not going to be any peace. And if there is no peace, there can be no healing.
My mother’s phrase, “Fake it ’til you make it,” kept running through my head. At first, I was annoyed because “faking it” is the very thing I’m trying to free myself from. I do not want to fake my identity in hope that Ill hit on one that he’ll like. That is my ideal, whether he feels I need to fight for it or not.
But then I thought of something else. I am focusing on actions as proof. So what actions have either of us taken to show that we want to make it work? What olive branch has been extended? There are none.
But what if there were? So I told Will about the fake it ’til you make it thing, and asked, “What is one nice thing I can do for you?” I told him that so long as we were acting hostile, we wouldn’t get anywhere and he agreed. I repeated my question, and he thought for some time and then said, “I don’t know. What about you? What can I do for you?”
I told him that I would like it very much if, when he came home from work, he came to me and gave me a big, long, loving hug and asked me how my day had been, asked me how I was doing. He said that he could do that.
I asked him again what I could do for him, and he again said that he didn’t know.
Next day, when he came home from work, he took the time to give me a warm, long, loving hug. I love him for that. We had been to a conference at Marc’s school only hours before, and he said, “I think I know how your day went, but how do you feel?” And I loved him even more.
I told him how I felt, and he listened. I said, “You haven’t told me what I can do for you yet,” and he said that he didn’t know what I could do for him. I asked him to tell me when he figured it out.
Last night, he fell asleep on the couch. I assumed he wanted to stay there, but I didn’t want to go to our bed alone. So I shoved the loveseat over to the couch and slept on it, uncomfortable as it was, without waking him. I wanted to be near him.
This morning, he kissed me before he left for work. Maybe tonight he’ll tell me what nice thing I can do for him. I think the fact that he cannot come up with something speaks volumes. I think we have a long, hard road ahead of us; but yesterday was a good day.