8 Mistakes I Made that Nearly Ended My Marriage
A few years ago my marriage nearly came to an end. My wife and I hit a point where we had to make a decision to either stick it out or go our separate ways.
My wife, Casey, has been rather open on her blog about the marital problems that we faced. I, however, have tried to forget that that phase of our relationship ever happened. Since that is impossible, I now just try to avoid what got us to that point in the first place.
I was shocked when my wife finally admitted just how bad our marriage had become. It was a Sunday, after she returned from a trip to Utah. We went to church and sat in a pew together as we listened to the speakers. She had been struggling through the side effects of Lupron, a drug to help her with PCOS, and that day's side effect seemed to be anxiety. She put my arm around her shoulders and she leaned her head against my shoulder.
We stayed in that position for the entire first hour of church, and then we went our separate ways for the remainder of church that day. A short while later, my wife pulled me out of whatever class I had been attending and took me into a room that wasn't being used.
It wasn't the first time that she had pulled me into a vacant room at church. Those conversations were usually about struggles with depression, and that's what I expected her to want to talk about. Instead, she had me sit down and she told me that she was leaving me.
We both made mistakes in our marriage that led us down that particular road. I've thought a lot about what our marriage was like and what I had done wrong. These are the mistakes that I consider to be the biggest - mistakes that I wish I had avoided to make us happier throughout those first nine years together.
Supporting vs. Loving
I confused supporting my wife with loving my wife. Throughout our entire marriage I worked odd hours and lots of hours. Our first year of marriage involved school during the day and work during the evenings until well after she went to bed. The next year involved working a full time job during the day and a full time job overnight. Then I worked overnight while going to school in the day for the next four years. By the time I got to law school, staying away from my wife while I was at school for 20 plus hours to study didn't seem all that bad. All the work I was putting in was for her and our daughter, Addie--proof that I loved them. They'd understand why I had to be away so much. I began to believe that working long hours was all I really needed to do to show love to my wife. I rarely spoke the words, "I love you" to my wife.
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Getting Lazy
I let things slide. The times I was at home during my last two years of law school, my wife and I gradually drifted apart. My wife got more and more involved in using the internet, and that meant she was online all the time. In the evenings I would practically beg her to close her laptop and spend some time with me. If she wouldn't close her laptop in the evening, I would beg her to at least close it when it was time for bed. Eventually I decided to let her stay on her laptop to see if she would notice how little we communicated anymore. Big mistake. A year later we really only interacted in passing. I would come home from school to watch Addie, and Casey would go to a cafe to write or go visit friends. We began requesting certain nights away from each other until every night of each week was scheduled away from each other.
Forgetting Compliments
I didn't compliment her. I don't know why I didn't compliment her. I've always struggled with telling girls that they look pretty. Most of the time when I said it early on in our marriage, it came out in a mumble and was usually pretty ill-timed. Towards the end of our nine years, it didn't come out at all.
Not Listening
I couldn't recognize her pleas for help. I have never been good at understanding her difficulties. I've never been good at communicating with her. The distance that grew between us made that hurdle even more difficult. A few months before that terrible day at church, my wife wrote me a few emails while she was staying in North Carolina. She wrote in one, "I miss you." I didn't respond to the email. Those types of pleas for help happened more and more frequently, but I ignored them.
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Avoiding Affection
I avoided physical displays of emotion. I've always felt awkward holding my wife's hand in public, or giving her a kiss in public. I actually worried on our wedding day that I would struggle to kiss the bride. For the first few years of our marriage, I worked on it and it wasn't a problem. But I got lazier as time went on, and eventually affection didn't happen anymore at all.
Turning Our Marriage into a Competition
I turned our marital roles into a competition. My wife spent all day at home with Addie while I went off to law school to study for hours. Sometimes when I would come home, my wife would tell me how difficult her day was and that I didn't have it so bad because I got to spend time with adults all day. Those conversations turned into arguments over who had the more difficult life. Truth is, we both had difficult lives and we should have been more understanding of the stresses we were dealing with. I could have adjusted my schedule a bit here and there to help my wife have more adult interaction during the day. I could have been a better listener to the things that were troubling her. Sometimes just being willing to listen to her struggles was all she really needed to help her through those difficult times.
Lack of Understanding
I refused to understand the things she struggled with. One time, my wife came home from a trip and learned that her internet friend's daughter had unexpectedly passed away. My wife was devastated. The friend lived in California, and for a reason I didn't understand, my wife had to get to California to be with her. She made arrangements to get on a plane the next day, and I was frustrated. The trip came in the middle of finals and left me stranded with a child. I wasn't just frustrated, I was furious, but I didn't have any reason to be furious. My wife had taken care of everything. She had arranged for Addie to stay at a friend's house while she was away so I could focus on school. Her trip to California didn't inconvenience me in any way, but when she got back from California, I didn't let her finish grieving before I made the whole thing into another parking lot argument.
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Learning from Our Mistakes
After I realized my shortcomings, things got easier. We've both learned from our mistakes, and none of the mistakes that I have listed have really been a problem since that day at church. I still work on some of the things I struggle with, like complimenting my wife on how beautiful she looks, showing physical affection and recognizing her pleas for help. I can understand if some people reading this post wonder how my wife could still be married to me. You're not alone; I wonder the same thing sometimes. Thankfully, my wife decided to give me another chance, and we've become far happier than we ever were before. I love my wife and I'm glad we both chose to learn how to be a happy married couple.
- By Cody Coombs
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