Love What They Love

It had been a rough couple of months with the wife and myself, but just when I thought we were on the downward spiral of doom, something amazing happened. We had been drifting apart slowly but surely. Neither of us were happy and we were both withdrawing from each other. I played on my xbox and computer all night while she watched TV in the bedroom. We had discussed these problems and agreed to change our behavior, but within days, we reverted back to form.

I finally had enough, and she did too. This past weekend we discussed seperating and the 'd' word. Then her uncle died and we got some perspective. One of the speakers at the funeral said something that really clicked with us both. The true test of love is that a person will love what you love and who you love. We both realized we had our own interests and hobbies and we were tolerating each other, but not attempting to enjoy those interests ourselves. In short, we saw that we needed to try to love what they love.

Somewhere in there, when we were at the point of divorce and thought we had nothing to lose, we actually talked about what was really bothering us. I'm not going to get into specifics here, but we said things that we had been holding back. Amazingly, this discussion has opened both of our eyes and we have been doing so much better since. We are connecting again and to be honest, getting things out in the open has made me feel so much better. We are also sharing activities and being more open about our needs. It has been fantastic ever since. I suppose that sometimes we need to just speak our mind and not try to spare the other person's feelings, and hopefully we won't need another funeral to remind us of that.