Perspective

After a weekend away, visiting with friends (and drinking entirely too much), I feel more balanced. I was ready to come home from this trip and I’m starting to get to a place where I’m accepting my reality. Before, I focused on the hurt, in disbelief that this is now my life: 2 failed marriages, a daughter that’s going to grow up in 2 homes, and trying to figure out how not to take the cheating personally.

Now that it’s been about a month, I’m a bit further removed from the hurt. I’m gaining perspective. (*I know this is how I’m feeling today, right now, in this moment and that these jumbled emotions are ever-changing. I also think I’m getting pretty decent at embracing the flood and riding the waves.*)

Today is one of those days where I think my (ex) husband and I will be pretty darn amazing friends one day. Perhaps sooner than later. When I got home tonight, he asked me about my weekend. I shared the ridiculous stories and then he shared his ridiculous evening he had on Saturday. Then, somehow, we found ourselves navigating through a conversation about his infidelity. This isn’t all that uncommon.

For years, we were not the spouses to one another that we should’ve been. When we moved to Colorado, my (ex) husband became quite depressed. With his depression came anger. He was so mean and mad and short-tempered. Rather than have compassion, I became colder. I remember driving home one day, talking with one of my BFF’s, and complaining about how awfully I was being treated. She called me out and said I wasn’t being a supportive wife. Well, of course I wasn’t because I wasn’t liking how I was being treated. Rather than respond with grace, class, and understanding, I turned angry and dismissive.

Because all I wanted was a husband who cherished me.

I wanted to feel loved and since I wasn’t, I started to withhold my love. I’m sure it wasn’t a conscious decision at first. Though after being called out, I didn’t try to improve either. I was so frustrated with how I was being treated that I felt justified in my actions.

Hearing my (ex) husband talk about what transpired is interesting. He knows he did a terrible thing. He knows he is going to have to deal with the consequences for the rest of his life. But during those difficult years, he also just wanted a wife that cherished him. He also felt unloved. He also chose to respond to me with more anger and more frustration.

We were caught up in a terribly vicious cycle that has brought us to where we are today.

We were two people, sad and frustrated for pretty much the same reasons. I think that he knew I wouldn’t quit the marriage, I wasn’t going to throw away the family. Back in September, I decided to give it an honest go, to quit being so angry and stubborn, to be the one that tried. But my efforts went unnoticed because he was already long gone. I was too late in shoving my stubbornness and hurt and anger aside. He’d already done something so awful that, when I found out, quitting the marriage was the only option.

Please don’t misunderstand my message here. I’m not blaming myself for his infidelity, nor am I justifying it. Rather, at least up until last May, we had many missed opportunities to fix what was broken.

I was screaming 6 while he was screaming 9. We were both right. We were both hurt. We were both pretty terrible spouses. Neither of us wanted to take a moment to walk around to the other’s side. Had we taken an honest look, perhaps we wouldn’t be filling out separation paperwork right now.

If there’s anything to learn from this, it is to desperately try to not judge a situation or a person’s actions. Take a walk around and visit it from their angle. Why are they behaving as they are? What do they see from their perspective? Every single person has their own viewpoint, so why is it so hard for us to try and see the world from their view? How arrogant I was, to only have seen my side.

I thought I was an understanding person. I thought I was non-judgmental. But this whole time, for well over the last 5 years, I was giving the person I was supposed to love the most the least slack. I let his actions harden me.

I’m not doing that anymore. At least, not consciously. I want to lead with grace. To come from a place of understanding. To live assuming the best in others.

I hope that if you’re reading this, if you’re connecting to these words in any way, that you reach out to the person who doesn’t deserve your grace. It’s so much easier to judge than it is to understand (as my dad says), but wouldn’t you want to know that you gave everything you had to fix what’s broken? I have no fault in the infidelity, but I do have plenty of fault in being in a difficult marriage. I could’ve been the bigger person. I could’ve stopped being stubborn. I could’ve shown an ounce of compassion to my husband, who was struggling immensely with the move. I didn’t.

I just kept shouting 6.

Get out of that negative cycle that perpetuates a difficult relationship. Be the one to step forward with love, no matter how angry and justified you are.

Stop shouting 6.