Our trip to California was not plagued with fights or, as I pointed out would be worse, boredom. So we passed that test. No need to board the one-way train to Splittsville just yet.
In fact, Rob and I never fought. I can't remember him driving me up the wall even for a moment! Instead, we giggled on the plane, chatted endlessly with our Californian friends who met us when we landed, snorkeled, rode horseback, dined al fresco, and hiked.
But for all that doing, we didn't do IT. Seems not even time alone in a lovely hotel room overlooking the ocean can make us horny. Instead, we read quietly. Yawn.
While we were away, a young couple moved into the apartment above ours. We haven't met them yet, but we already know a bit too much. At 1 a.m., they get randy. And at a pretty good clip and decibel level. The more they moan, the more frustrated I get.
I imagined a trip to the Greek Isles in my last post. I'd like it to be a month-long journey at least, so I could really drop out from my harried city life and revel in a slow life governed by the natural rhythms of day, night, and season.
It's not quite the same, but my Labor Day vacation will be an island getaway of a sort. Rob and I are flying out to L.A. and ferrying out to Santa Catalina, a hilly rock of an island off the southern Californian coast.
This is the first time in months Rob and I are going away together, and it's the first time in a couple of years I'm looking forward to spending time with him. What's different? I'm not sure.
I'm waiting and seeing rather than grasping for an immediate resolution to our discomfort. Rob is still working at therapy, and we're seeing a therapist together. We're both growing and changing. Apart or together? Not yet sure. But why not try to enjoy each other's company in the meantime?
I dream of visiting the Greek Isles and navigating the twists and turns of the road — between mountain, town, and beach — on a scooter. I lean into turns that open toward vistas dotted with bright white villages shining in the intense Mediterranean light. From every vantage point, ocean surrounds.
I can't make my dream getaway happen right now, but I'm not waiting around, either. I've manifested a bit of the experience here at home: I bought a Vespa to get me around the city in a style reminiscent of my dream, and at a fraction of the cost — to my wallet and to the earth (75 miles per gallon!).
I scoot between neighborhoods, from yoga studio to post office to library. My skin soaks up the sun but is also cooled by the breeze I create as I open the throttle. It's...freeing.
A friend of mine who has a life coaching business dropped me a line recently: "Hi, thinking of you, what's up?"
His quick and light email ended with a thud: "Remember, being single is not a burden, it's an opportunity!"
Nice sentiment, but what? I had just made the decision to stick around in my marriage and try really hard to improve it, so the note seemed ill-timed, if not downright rude. I wrote to remind him, maybe not gently enough, of my change of tack.
Well, apparently that line was just his automatic signature, phrased to inspire the bulk of his clientele, and not a message to me personally. Oops. Hee.
We sorted it out easily, but my quick and strong reaction was telling. I'm super-sensitive about my situation, and not always open to advice. Gotta relax.
It's hard, though. When I was young, marriage was made to seem a happy inevitability, a final destination where, having found my one true mate, I would dwell in peace. When instead it's a road pitted with doubts, the going can be rough, and I can get moody.
If life is a journey, it's no weekend jaunt to the beach. It's an around-the-world expedition riddled with dangerous passages and course corrections.
My marriage is a journey, unfortunately quite a rough one of late. My relationship to my ailing father and my siblings who also help take care of him is always under construction.
Like many people, I also grapple with work-life balance: how much of myself do I put into my job or even any given project, and how much do I hold in reserve?
I've added another journey. Crazy, right? But stick with me...this one might be worth the added trouble.
I've embarked on a six-month yoga teacher training, and it's intense. The amount and level of physical, academic, and emotional study only seems to grow, week to week. At one point early on I said to a classmate that this might not have been the right time to engage in such a difficult program. Then we started our course of yogic philosophy.
A while back I traveled in Mexico and removed my wedding band for the duration. I was in search of experiences unfettered by others' assumptions about who I am, what sort of life I lead, and what I value.
I was not looking for any romantic interaction of any kind with anyone I met, but still I knew removing the ring was in some ways unsavory, as well as entirely unfair to Rob, and when I returned I explored the situation and my feelings in a post "Let Freedom Ring."
I had the chance to expound upon that post in an assignment for Tango, a relationship web site — and learned the hard way that not all audiences are alike. The readers, most of whom I assume have not struggled with separation or divorce, were pretty sure I was a vapid, selfish, and idiotic for doing and writing about such a thing.
It may be true. One thing they can't say is I haven't thought about it from every angle. I have. And I don't take any of it lightly.
Last week in "Since You Asked," Cary Tennis's advice column on Salon.com, a young woman in a sad marriage suspects she shouldn't be married at all and wonders how to be happy again. The poor thing is caught between the guilt born of a religious family of origin who believe divorce is a sin, and a self-evident truth that she got married too quickly and simply doesn't love her husband.
She even says her husband is a perfectly nice guy. Huh. Sounds familiar.
Tennis's response blew my mind. It validated her (and my!) discomfort as perfectly legitimate and pointed out that leaving the marriage is not a selfish act but instead rectifies the previous selfish act of marrying for the wrong reasons.
Staying in a marriage that cannot be fixed is continuing to patch something that is monumentally broken.
