How I Got Here

As I write this, it's early August, 2011.  In a few months, I will be 49 years old.  Despite the fact that I am regularly told I look much younger -- and that's really just due to some luck in the family gene pool, not any artificial assistance -- on January 10th of this year, I officially reached menopause.  And on March 4th, during my lunch hour, I sat sobbing in my therapist's office across from my husband of almost 16 years and told him that I didn't want to be married to him anymore.  He took this news stoically, without resistance, and walked out of the office shortly thereafter, leaving me to collect myself and go back to work, where I somehow miraculously managed to get through the rest of the day.  When I walked in the door of our house that night, his only words to me were "I guess I made another mistake," referring to his brief, early 20s disastrous first marriage.  That's it.  No pleas for us to try again, to be better, to work harder.  I was reduced to a Mistake.

The story of our marriage features no horrific fights, no threats, no throwing things.  There was no shocking betrayal, no cheating, no violence, no addiction.  In the end, there was simply a deep and abiding loneliness and sadness in the core of my being, living with a man who at age 52, and by his deliberate choice, had become a virtual recluse, with no friends, no interests, and no desire to be among people.  Our entire conversation had become little more than casual chat about the minutiae of the day, and our physical relationship had dwindled to the bare minimum required in my mind to keep the peace.  And yet, he insisted in counseling that he was happy and couldn't understand why I was not. 

Ultimately, I could not bridge the chasm between his perception and mine, and I realized with stunning clarity that to spend the rest of my life this way would be unthinkable, impossible.  We lived under the same roof but in different bedrooms for another month, and then in early April he moved out, back to our still-unsold house in another state.

Of course, there's much more to the story, much more to examine on this journey.  But in a nutshell, that's How I Got Here.