I don’t talk a lot about my romantic life, but I did a littl..

I don’t talk a lot about my romantic life, but I did a little bit in my vlogs over my time here so here it is written down. My husband and I have been together since we were 17. After almost two decades, and several hard years in a row of no one really sleeping, financial stress, ten hour days of work with two hour commutes, pregnancies turning into babies turning into kids turning into older kids, sports and homework, figuring out what to make for supper every day, family and friend deaths, aging and controlling parents, struggles with mental health and realizing our own mortality, it came to a point we stalled and made no more progress. It was hard to connect and everything felt like a dig at each other, or like neither of us could do enough, to get back to a point of where we were. I knew we were both trying our best, but it seemed at the point not even the best could fix how crushingly overwhelming everything felt. We decided to separate. Then covid happened.

Instead of moving out, I moved downstairs. We signed a separation agreement, but also knew it would never lead to divorce. I didn’t believe in divorce for the problems we were having and definitely didn’t believe in the need for lawyers to sort out our situation for us.

We lived together like friends, and after being together for the entirety of our adulthood felt it important to help each other navigate the world apart. We’d sit in the garden in the morning drinking coffee and rehashing where we went wrong. I felt unloved and uncared for and he felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. We didn’t have the life experience apart from each other to understand or see these were normal problems for couples to have. It felt like we were so alone. Many mentors came out of the shadows with stories of their own…I had no idea all of the couples, and I mean this when I say ALL, that I had looked up to and tried to model my own relationship after had gone through their own split ups and reunited. It truly had felt like we were the only ones failing.

We both suffered more than I can say in that first year apart. I ended up on SSRI’s and checked into a mental house (“mental health care facility”) and he started smoking again. We both each saw someone else. We were both doing that out of revenge. Loneliness. Low self esteem. Boredom. Coping.

2021-2022 we trialled a nesting separation. Where the parents each rotate who is at the family home so the kids don’t have to be uprooted. I’d spend a week at the other house and he’d be home with the kids, then we’d all have Sunday dinner at home and then he’d go for a week.

This gave us a chance to see what life would be like if we continued the separation. Covid was still holding the world hostage and tensions were high everywhere. I did not enjoy my time away from my family. Not hugging the kids and reading them stories before bed, not waking up to their footsteps in the halls, and taking that away from him felt more like a nightmare than solving any problems. I realized that many divorced people are no happier without each other, they just have this whole different type of sadness.

In the spring of 2022 I had to get off the antidepressants. I had to figure out how to heal myself and the parts of me that had led to the problems in my marriage to begin with. I wasn’t confident in myself, I had gained a ton of weight, my skin wasn’t good, my hair had become frail and thin and I was constantly seeking validation from others. I put my focus back into repairing that. I started fishing on my own, exploring on my own, adventuring into the backcountry on my own.

This is where things turned around. After the first 18 years of my life were under extremely controlling and watchful mother and grandmother, and then the next 17 years with a husband, I had no trust in myself. I had always let everyone else make the decisions for me/around me and I would go along, they knew best. But out there in the wild, with no cell phone, and no people, no one else to rely on and no one coming to protect or save me, I had to do it alone. I’d always gone off into the woods and escaped from the chaos of a busy childhood home to find peace and solace. But I knew my way around those places well. Familiarity reduces growth. By January 2023 I had so many campouts and adventures under my belt I no longer felt insecure. I felt like a marvellous ass kicker.

I decided to go to therapy, to deal with a few of the questions and remaining tragedies/traumas I did need support through. I also wanted to understand men.

I went home and spent quality time with the important men in my life: my dad, my grandpa, two of my uncles, my brother, my nephew, two of my cousins. I had always known their wives stories but never really heard about their lives from their own private perspectives. One of them said to me that he’d always thought me and my husband had it figured out, and if we couldn’t make things work he didn’t see how anyone could.

It was inspiring. It was heartbreaking, it was enlightening. These men who I trusted and idolized my whole life had so much more to share than they ever let slip out. I had a better understanding of the burden of being the breadwinner. Of the weight they carried from their own father’s accomplishments and failures. I had never comprehended before how to have big feelings and just….not act on them….how could someone feel something and not speak it? I had no idea they even HAD feelings…they never shared them with anyone. But they did have them. They had powerful feelings and legitimate feelings and they were never anyone’s priority because life doesn’t stop for your feelings, and feelings aren’t facts of life. They were just experiencing them in the same way women do, but not acting on every emotion or allowing it to stop life for them. Shit still needs to get done even if they felt bad. Or anxious. Or sad. Or scared. Or worthless. Or any of those things.

As stupid and selfish as it sounds, I didn’t realize my husband was doing and feeling the same as all the men I grew up admiring most, and it was then his strength over all those years together really hit me. I had never appreciated him more than in those moments of reflecting on our years together. Everything he put aside to just keep himself able to handle things.

I went to therapy weekly for months, and then every second week, and by September I felt I had enough knowledge to make a big decision in my life. We knew Covid was over, and could no longer use that as an excuse to keep us together. We had to move forward somehow. We never stopped loving each other, even though by all measures the marriage felt over. He was still the person I confided to when we were focussed on friendship and co-parenting rather than romance. We decided to make our marriage a priority. I moved back upstairs. There was a awkward phase of relearning each other. We’d both been through some different things and were not the same people as before. Six months later we put our wedding rings back on. A few months after that we took a trip alone together (first time since 2012).

Every discussion or debate or disagreement we have committed to being the best by each other. He understands I have feelings that I need to talk out and I understand he has feelings that he doesn’t need to talk out. He is everything I could have hoped for in a love and I try to be everything he could have ever hoped for. Every day the ability/strength and compassion of this man absolutely inspires me to be the same.

Most couples separate. Either temporarily or permanently. The world isn’t made for strong unions these days. Everything is recyclable and temporary and replaceable. Everything is convenient and no one cares to do the hard things. Feelings are lost so easily, and before they are found again, the damage is often done and we have way too much ego and pride to admit we made big mistakes based on temporary emotions, or that we might’ve got it wrong.

We lack grace and forgiveness, for others and for ourselves, so when that happens people fall into their own pits of self pity and despair, not realizing other people can’t create the light inside you, you have to do that first and then let it flow outward.

I have never been happier in all of our years together. I have always been a pretty good wife, and he a pretty good husband but we are amazing in ourselves now, and that allows us to be amazing for each other. I am grateful for the experiences I had and the people I got to know, that I wouldn’t have otherwise. They taught me more about life and myself and my husband than I could have ever understood without them. For that, I am a better woman, and the best wife I could be. I am grateful for the experiences he had, because without them I’m not sure he would have been able to see me for what I am either.

Every couple has their ups and downs and even though some things may feel permanent, nothing in life is. You can simply sit through moments that you can’t do anything about until life shifts and a new way is made. Or you can actively and intentionally seek to make new roads.

This summer we celebrated 21 years walking through this life together

and I know for the rest of my life, for what we’ve been through and accomplished and survived together, it’s him or nobody. They say “never marry the one you can live with, marry the one you can’t live without”