If you have been married more than once, I don't think you love one husband more than another, you just love them differently because you are capable of loving in a different way when you choose them.
I was very young when I got married the first time. I had been ready to leave home for a long time; I knew my needs were never going to be met there and I longed for children of my own.
In looking back, with wiser eyes, I realize that my heart was not very open at that time in my life. I was agonizingly shy, thought very little of myself and was really only capable of loving a child.
The man I married was full of rage which he expressed for both of us - the rage he consciously carried and the rage I had never got in touch with in myself. One thing I was though was a good listener and I think that is how we bonded - with him talking and me listening. After we were married, we laid awake long into the evenings - him talking - me listening. I never had much to say - not having any insight into myself.
We were both deeply devoted to the two children we brought into the world, even though we unintentionally wounded them through our personal issues that we had not even thought of dealing with.
Pain pushes us to grow by screaming at us louder and louder until we deal with it or be destroyed by it. I was burying myself in my children's needs - something I was really good at doing. My husband was burying himself in the bottle - and eventually it buried him.
I found Al-Anon a couple years before my husband died. My brother Wayne looked into it for me and then told me about it because he was worried about me. (And I have been extremely grateful ever since - everything good that I have in my life today is because of what I learned in that program.) The Al-Anon program helped me to cope with what was going on in my life at that time by giving me the tools to emotionally detach from my husband's behavior and still treat him with the love and respect he deserved as a human being. It also gave me the tools to start looking inside myself, own what was there, and start doing something about it.
Al-Anon is where I found my voice and started using it to protect myself, eventually to express myself, and maybe someday to ask directly for what I need and want from life.
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2 comments:
Wayne......a good Man, is what I think.
Interesting, and most probably true first point. My first marriage, 19, College...not ready at all.....12 years
My Second.....I was Ready, but I was still missing tools.....20 years
Third? I'm afraid That one will have to wait. I can focus on the Real Person inside, instead of the pretty, shiny book cover.
Takes a lot longer to read the Book rather than just the Author's notes......
Durn it, I think I got philosophical agin!
Wollf
Thank you once again for your comments, Wollf. It adds a lot of enjoyment to the blogging process.
You are right. Wayne is a good man and a good brother. (Like the rest of us, he has his faults, too).
Sounds like you are in a good starting place and working on the right corner (the Real Person inside).
That is where our focus needs to be directed to heal us from the pain of the past, bringing wisdom to our choices of the future.
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