The Hard Stuff

Apr 2013

I’d be lying if I said things have been easy around here lately. I spent most of last week laid up in bed with a high fever and the better part of the weekend acting out the final scenes from Moulin Rouge, except with more coughing and less corsets/duets with Ewan McGregor. When I’m sick, I become an everything-is-wrong-with-everything pessimist, so I also picked a few unnecessary fights with Michael and had one fever-induced meltdown on the couch while elbow-deep in a bowl of Velveeta. Suffice to say, I needed Amanda‘s post today. Because as someone who tends to get bogged down in all the things going wrong, it’s important for me to remember that it’s in these moments when I usually find myself most clearly. And finding the joy in the little things often leads to being the big things that bring me joy.

—Maddie

The last three and a half years have been full of huge life changes. I became a vet, I moved countries (for the third time in my life), I got married, I lived in a farm, I helped deliver calves multiple times and stayed awake waiting for cows to give birth, checking for signs of labor at regular intervals, which meant almost no sleep. I interned at a small-animal clinic and worked as a research assistant at a virology lab as well as at a call-center and at the web content department of a very big hotel reservations company.

When I put it that way you would not be able to tell that I have been dealing with unemployment or underemployment for about as long as I’ve been in my adopted new country, and how awfully hard it has been. I have two scientific degrees that took lots of work and time to earn. In these three and a half years I have not stopped applying for jobs, and I haven’t been sitting around waiting either. I have been busy with internships or working at the random jobs I have managed to find. Just two weeks ago I heard I did not get a PhD position that was a perfect fit both with my studies and my experience (working with cows, in reproduction, both subjects that fascinate me), and I was told I was among the best three. It’s not the first time I get that feedback. How are we supposed to get experience if no one gives us a chance, takes a risk on us?

A few weeks ago, in desperation, I went to several placement agencies to look for anything, maybe customer service. (I am after all, fluent in four languages and I understand quite well another two.) I was told there are very few positions and employers are getting very, very picky.

I always thought we should fight for what we want. I was taught that if you do what you love, if you do your best, the opportunities will come, that it was possible to love your job, to do what you like, that you should not limit your dreams. Maybe I am living in fantasyland. Maybe it is stupid to keep hoping to work in my field of study. I wish I had a magic ball, I wish I could see the future. I wish someone would tell me when or how this will end. I wish I could know that if I wait long enough I will get there. Or that no matter how long I wait, it won’t happen. I do not mind working a “different” job, though there is a part of me that feels it would kill my soul, and I feel like I am dying a bit already. But this is real life. Continue reading Joy In The Little Things

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife, The Hard Stuff | 46 Comments »

Apr 2013

The Silver Lining

There is a method behind the madness of choosing The Good as the theme for APW this month. It’s not because “It’s spring, and we all need cheering up!” and it’s not to ignore the complex and often painful world that we live in. It’s because, as I touched on in my letter from the editor, seeing the good amidst everything else is what helps ground us in the moment. It’s because, as we go through the complicated process of planning weddings and building marriages, we need to be reminded of the kernel of goodness that we’re building our lives around. That goodness isn’t the perfectly mismatched succulent centerpieces. It’s each other, love, and community. It’s the ephemeral bits that you need to catch as they fly by. I’ll leave Brieanna to bring this idea home.

—Meg

January 20, 2012 was the day that everything changed. My boyfriend was going to a job interview for a line cook position at an Italian restaurant, and we were supposed to hang out afterwards. But we didn’t get the chance because his car swerved off of the road and hit a tree. He was rushed into the ICU with a traumatic brain injury and spent a month in a coma.

The memory of seeing him after he woke up, his big smile when I entered the room, the way he impatiently patted the spot next to him on the bed as if to say, “Well come on,” the way he kissed and held me…it was like he was trying to make up for the month when he couldn’t. As time went on, C grew stronger. He could walk on his own, could tie his own shoes (it had been an area of frustration for awhile), could recount the past (all but his accident). Soon enough he was at home learning to readjust. But anyone who has had a loved one survive traumatic brain injury knows that leaving the hospital is just the beginning, because an injury to the brain changes you physically, mentally, and emotionally.

As he’s recovered, C and I have had to communicate more than before, we’ve had to relearn all our previous relationship boundaries (adjusting them as such), and we both have had to learn to love the new him. (It’s a little harder sometimes for C.) Sometimes the world seems too small and sometimes it seems too big, but C and I have more confidence in ourselves and our relationship than ever.

Some members of my family have said that they worry that this has all been so stressful on me. I can almost hear the “Things would be easier if you were single” tone in their voice. In a way they are right. It would be easier, but I wouldn’t be nearly as happy. A lot of the time you have to pick the harder road to get the better pay off. The funny thing is that leaving never popped into my head. It was never an option, not because I felt I had no choice, but because I had already chosen. I am already committed, and no matter where this relationship goes, I love C irrevocably. Continue reading The Silver Lining

Posted in: The Hard Stuff, Wedding Undergraduates | 36 Comments »

Mar 2013

Halfway Home

This is the last week of “Decided” month, and on Monday we move into a (much needed) discussion of “The Good.” This month we’ve talked quite a bit about the fears and decisions around deciding to have kids or not, and these conversations have all take place within the context of marriage and of having made a decision to get pregnant in advance. So before we go, I thought it was important to add another voice to the discussion. Today is about what happens when you get unexpectedly pregnant with someone you don’t want to spend the rest of your life with, and you decide to keep the baby. This story isn’t finished, but the journey to finding peace within the decision is so important for all of us, whatever our circumstances.

—Meg

I am twenty weeks pregnant today.

If you’re anything like me and don’t have a clue as to what all those mysterious numbers that soon-to-be-mamas are always talking about actually mean, it is just a simple way of saying, “I’m exactly halfway to the finish line.”

Looking at it now, the evolution of my pregnancy can also be divided into two distinct chapters by today’s ambiguous marker. Simply put, the first half of my pregnant experience can be only be categorized as an emotional, physical, and spiritual holy-hot-mess. However, the second half, which I clearly have yet to experience, already looks decidedly more awesome.

One of the most painful things that I have had to go through these past four-and-a-half months has been the complete desecration of my ideas about how this was supposed to be. When you set yourself up with a plan, an expectation, a hope, about how you think it all should be and then realize you actually have no control whatsoever—it can lead to serious feelings of failure, shame, and eventually a total rebuilding of your outlook on life.

The easiest way to get into the details of all of this is to start with how I actually became pregnant, and that part is very simple: I became pregnant on birth “control” (insert irony here) after dating a new dude for one month—and from the moment the display on that little game-changer read “pregnant” it has all been a total shit storm up until now, mostly thanks to said dude.

I had always hoped to have a baby some day with a healthy, supportive, loving partner whom I trusted implicitly and who was an innately kind, self-sufficient, respectable human being. This is a laughable hope now in comparison to whom I found out I had become pregnant with. Throughout this process, it has become very clear that our moral and ethical characters, our responses to life’s adversities, the stuff we place value in, and ultimately how we treat ourselves and others make for incredibly juxtaposed personalities. And what all of this made even more crystal clear is that while opposites can attract long enough to create a baby, this attraction becomes unsustainable once responsibility pops into the picture. Who knew!

In making the hardest decision of my entire life to ultimately keep my pregnancy, I have had to contend with numerous pleas and the pathetic tears from him begging me to have an abortion (even into my second trimester). I have allowed my self-worth to dwindle in tolerating his coldness, cruelty, and emotional abusiveness. I have experienced unmatched loneliness and epic discouragement from even asking for help, being told, “I’ll give you love and affection when I want to. Not when you ask for it.” Needless to say, all of this negativity, exhaustion, and stress had me drowning in an emotional tsunami that was made even more impossibly horrible due to the physical morning sickness that occurred twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for Four. Straight. Months. Let me be very clear: it was a straight up battle every single day to remind myself why the choice I made was the right decision for me. Continue reading Halfway Home

Posted in: The Hard Stuff | 49 Comments »

Mar 2013

Choosing To Stay

Today’s post from Heather is about possible infertility and about deciding to stay. It’s about the ways that our relationships are often not as simple as we hope, about how we can’t give the right answer just to give the right answer. But to me, it’s also about that fundamental issue that we often don’t discuss: that each of us makes the choice to stay every day in a marriage. That marriage is as simple and as profound as that. It’s about the fact that none of us know what the future will bring, and marriage means holding hands and jumping in, deep.

—Meg

I’m going to write to you about the night that a major decision was made, and that decision wasn’t mine.

Colin and I aren’t married, we aren’t even engaged. But I can confidently say that…we’re there. He’s it. I’ve almost never had to question it, not even in the midst of three years of long-distance dating. But this story is about the one night that I did.

There’s a back-story here—I am a cancer survivor. Most people don’t believe me when I tell them—I’m twenty-five, I’m healthy, I ran a half marathon last year! But the truth of the matter is that when I was nine years old, I lost an ovary to ovarian cancer. I was lucky, I didn’t have to get chemotherapy and I was back on my feet (albeit, slightly bent over) within a month. But, in the end I lost an ovary, which is why it was so devastating to find out that there is a tumor in my remaining ovary right now.

To be clear, my doctor found this second tumor when I was sixteen years old, and we’ve been monitoring it since. It hasn’t grown very much, it’s not cancerous and, until recently, it’s been much too small to remove without a significant chance that I would lose the ovary, and with it any chance that I would be able to have my own children “naturally.” This is why it was a big deal in October of 2012 when my doctor told me that the size of the tumor was large enough that it should be removed and that the surgery should be scheduled soon.

I came home from the doctor’s office that night sobbing and called Colin immediately, telling him the full story. In the midst of my panic I asked him a question that I hoped he would answer to my satisfaction—answer it “correctly” and help me feel better about what was happening. I, in my panic and fear, forgot that I am dating quite possibly is the most earnest and logical person on the planet and I asked him, “If I couldn’t have kids, would you still want to be together?”

You also must understand that Colin is going to be one of those amazingly naturally good dads. Kids and babies love him, and he doesn’t even have to try. The first time I took him to meet my friends at a cottage in Northern Ontario, he ended up showing two six-year-olds how to throw a football instead of partaking in the drunken debauchery of May Two-Four weekend (ask any Canadian what that is, they’ll understand what is expected on Victoria Day). I’ve seen him make a face at a crying infant on the train that silenced her immediately. Colin would not measure his life as a success without having his own kids, and I have always known this. And, more importantly, I should have remembered this before I asked him the question that had been swimming dangerously in the back of my mind ever since we started dating, and I especially should have remembered this before asking him this question at the absolute worst possible moment. Continue reading Choosing To Stay

Posted in: The Hard Stuff | 64 Comments »

Mar 2013

The Journey Back: Healing After Infidelity

Two weeks ago we ran a post about the loneliness of overcoming infidelity in a culture that tells you that “wronged women kick those men to the curb” (the narrative is pretty gendered, I’m afraid). The outpouring of responses in the comments made it clear that this was something we needed to discuss. And no surprise, right? Sexual infidelity is pretty common in the human animal (see a past APW discussion about the potential difference between infidelity and non-monogamy here). So today Leela is here talking about the decision to save her relationship after infidelity and the ways that the experience made them more ready to get married. This conversation is important for all of us, since (shocker) no relationship is unflawed.

—Meg

My fiancé and I sit in our kitchen, folding countless origami flowers and chatting about wedding plans. As it sometimes does lately, our conversation turns to an incident that once threatened to end our relationship. This event fundamentally changed the way that we work together as a couple. However, it does not define our relationship—nor will it define our marriage.

I discovered it by accident. He had left his email open. I opened a folder marked “jokes” thinking I could use a laugh. Instead, I found an email to another woman. I recognized her name as a friend from back home that he mentioned on rare occasion, usually in conjunction with her blog. The email was sexually explicit. “Hmm,” I thought, embarrassed by what I’d seen. “I never knew he was interested in her that way.” Then I saw the date on the message. At the time that he wrote the email, we had been dating exclusively for almost two years. A pinched, panicked feeling began to spread through my body. I took a deep breath, walked into the kitchen, and confronted him.

My world began to unravel. I was devastated to learn that my kind, thoughtful, loving boyfriend—the man who had stood by me through prolonged unemployment and serious illness, who helped me to learn to cope with my chronic anxiety and depression—had been involved in a sporadic online and texting relationship with another woman for over a year. That first night I insisted that he end it immediately, and he did. He blocked and deleted her phone number, blocked her email, and gave me full access to his email account. I threatened to throw him out of our apartment but agreed to let him sleep on the couch while I thought things over. The thoughts turned over and over in my head; a million questions without answers.

The next excruciating twist of the knife came a few days later. A visit to her blog revealed that she had written about him by name on several occasions. When he cut off all contact with her, she retaliated by posting screen shots of their sexual emails and texts. It’s hard to think clearly about the state of your damaged relationship when so much intensely private information has been made public. I had no idea what to do in the face of this dual violation. I screamed, cajoled, wept, begged, threatened, and berated. I sobbed on the bathroom floor. I fell asleep crying every night while he listened from the couch. My anxiety symptoms worsened. Ashamed to talk to my friends, I slipped into a deep depression.

I thought I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to triumphantly kick him out of the apartment that we had shared for two years. I was supposed to toss his prized possessions out the window. I was supposed to tell all of my friends what a horrible person he was, so they could tell me that they never liked him anyway. After all, I am a strong and independent woman. I had invested three years of love and trust, and I had been betrayed. So why wasn’t I staging an impromptu stoop sale with all of his belongings?

Part of it was unbridled fury. I was in agony, and I wanted him to witness every minute of it. Part of it was love. Despite everything that had happened, I could not forget the love that I still felt for him. Part of it was embarrassment. Was his terrible judgment a reflection of my own faults? Did my illness cause this? Was I so woefully inadequate that I had driven him to someone else?

Continue reading The Journey Back: Healing After Infidelity

Posted in: The Hard Stuff, Wedding Undergraduates | 52 Comments »

Mar 2013

Dealing with an Emotionally Absent Parent

A few years ago we ran two pieces: one on getting married after your mother has died, and one on getting married when you have an emotionally damaging relationship with your mother. Right after we ran the second piece, Nicole wrote me a note that she wanted to write about coping strategies for when you have a parent who is simply emotionally absent. This often happens when you have a parent dealing with illness, as well as for people whose parents are not that interested in planning or are otherwise distant from the wedding planning process. The article Nicole took two years to write is, no surprise, brilliant. But perhaps more surprising, I found it profoundly helpful reading for dealing with a variety of complicated relationships, married or not. This one, with tons of wisdom Nicole figured out in therapy, is pretty much a must-read for everyone.

—Meg

My mom and I have a challenging relationship, to say the least. Though it has been improving over the years, it probably hit its peak of challenging-ness when I got engaged and began planning my wedding in 2009. I had this fantasy that though we had always butt heads about the most minute and mundane details, we would suddenly plan this wedding in perfect harmony, and it would be the most incredible bonding experience for us. It would lead us to have that mother-daughter relationship I had envied amongst my friends for my entire life. It just took me getting engaged for it to happen!

We all know what comes next.

The first instance of realizing this would not be true was at the very beginning, about five months after my husband proposed. We wanted to get a firm grasp on our budget and guest lists so that we could begin making plans. That two-hour long conversation ended with my feeling flabbergasted and my mother feeling angry. It ended with my mother telling me to do whatever the hell I wanted and she would just write the checks. With her saying that she didn’t want to take control and thus was leaving everything to me to do on my own.

And she was completely true to her word.

My parents paid for the wedding, but my mother was as removed from it as any one person could possibly be. She was completely emotionally absent, and I was completely emotionally drained. I tried and tried to get her involved (Want to go dress shopping? What do you think of these centerpieces? Can you help me make the invitations?) and nothing ever worked. To be fair, she has a load of problems that have nothing to do with me (a chronic illness and her own disappointments with her wedding, just to name a couple), but, even as I write this, I can vividly remember the pain of all those quiet glares and eye rolls and leaving rooms and unanswered questions. My dreams of a wedding bonding experience were never going to be realized. And that’s the case; they were never realized.

But this isn’t necessarily about venting those stories. What I really wanted to write about is what it was like for me to have a parent who was emotionally absent from my wedding process. Especially having a mom who is emotionally absent.

Think about all those perfect wedding images that include parents. The mother and daughter giggling as the daughter is trying on the dress. The mom clasping the pearls around the daughter’s neck right before the she walks down the aisle. The mom and daughter tearfully smiling at each other after the wedding. And when that didn’t happen, when that perfect relationship didn’t exist, all I felt was shame. Absolute shame and fear that there was something deeply wrong with me and that it was completely my fault. At the same time, I had so much anger because I knew, I knew, that this was not my fault. She was making her own choices and that was not my responsibility.

But somehow, that knowledge doesn’t seem to fix it. The knowledge and the emotions don’t fit together. And, because I didn’t have anyone to talk about it with, or anywhere to get help figuring it out, I wanted to share with you some of the things that helped me.

Boundaries. These were so important. I can’t even tell you how important they were for me, even if I failed to utilize them all the time. I had to figure out my boundaries with my mom, and I had to set them with her. So, for example, I learned that asking my mom to help with the invitations was going to be rebuffed every. freaking. time. So I stopped asking.

Rely on others. Because of a whole other set of issues around my wedding, this was really hard for me. But, I had a great maid of honor who stepped up and helped me even if I didn’t really know how I wanted her help. I trusted her, and I used her. I “let” her help me with those invitations. I tried not to shut her out because my absent mom refused to be a part of it all.

50/50. My therapist helped me figure this out about two weeks before my husband and I were heading back to Texas to get married. She pointed out that in my desperation to have the perfect relationship with my mom, I was putting about 95% of myself into it and my mom was only doing about 5%. Continue reading Dealing with an Emotionally Absent Parent

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Planning, The Hard Stuff | 70 Comments »