Something miraculous happened during the weekend. I and Mr. Cranberries haven’t been doing very well lately; in fact, I have recently set myself a deadline of trying to give a 100% to bettering the marriage for a year, and if that didn’t work out, start the divorce proceedings.
We had dinner guests Saturday evening, and preparing for that visit turned out to be quite stressful as the apartment hadn’t really been cleaned by Mr. Cranberries during the ten months I’ve been mostly living in Jockstraptown. Biting words were exchanged, and when I noticed that someone had obviously slept in our guest room but Mr. C had mentioned nothing about that, I remember thinking with some relief that this is it, then – excellent: if Mr. C has had an affair, it will mean that ending the marriage will probably go without tears and that it won’t be just my fault. (Not an affair, as it turned out – his bohemian oldest friend had forgotten her keys home and had called the grumpy Mr. C at 3.30 am to beg for a place to sleep.)
Anyway, at one point I had tears in my eyes while mopping the floor because of the sheer hopelessness of it all, and was questioning the point of trying another 11 months. But then the miracle happened. The guests became seriously drunk for some reason, had an (to us) amusing quarrel with each other about which of them was least supportive of the other, and eventually left. And then my husband started talking. He had read the book on communication I had asked him to read several weeks ago but had given up hope on that he’d ever read, and he had thought about the monologues I’ve held these last few months about marriage and life though he’d never said anything at the time (so I had concluded he just wasn’t that interested). We talked like we haven’t talked in seven years, since after the very beginning of our relationship. We talked until 4.30 am about the difficult stuff, and about our different communication styles, and about whether there was a way towards shared ‘shining’ for the two of us. We talked about something very difficult that happened during our wedding that has been a problem for us both. It turned out he actually had a file of things I’ve done wrong on his little Palm PDA like I’ve always suspected (talk about passive-aggressiveness). And we talked about how his complaining and negativity is connected in complicated ways to him actually having a very good sense of basic security though not so good self-esteem. And we talked about how I manage to make him feel nothing he ever does is good enough. We have different styles and rhythms of being in the world. But he assured me that ultimately, in the end, he always does what’s needed and what’s the right thing, though in my perspective he may be a day or a week or a year late.
Our problems have certainly not dissolved overnight. That’s not the miracle. The miracle is having suddenly been transformed into two people who really communicated; who could talk without accusations and anger about very difficult things. If we get a divorce, I know now we’ll make a good decision together about that. But now there is a chance that we don’t necessarily have to. We were both trapped in a paradigm that wasn’t good, and now the chains have been lifted and we are free to choose again – to choose each other or not, but still out of bondage in some fundamental way.
