Question
I've been married over 30 years to a good husband who has faithfully supported us, and four wonderful grown-up children. My husband works hard at his job, and he has begun to work on our marriage. In fact he started a few years ago, and I have seen real changes in how he reaches out to me. He asks me about my day when he comes home in the evening, and this is very different to how things used to be.
I have very hard feelings about the first 30 years of our marriage when he was purposely mean, nasty, extremely selfish, harsh with the children, and harsh with me. He had anger issues. Now he has apologised for all the misery he put me through, and says he doesn't deserve me. He has also joined a prayer group, where he prays about personal issues. And he thinks he has improved a lot.
I think he's less angry because there are less stressors - meaning no young children anymore - here at home, less interference with his personal agendas. I have told him that I forgive him for everything he did in the past, but I don't feel forgiving. How can I forgive him the heartache in the past, and the heartache in the present as I see my children struggle with the behaviour they learned from him? How can I forgive him for the flashbacks I still have from our very early childbearing years?
He recently wanted me to go away with him for a weekend, but really he had his own agenda going on. I didn't want to go with him, or be with him, and I didn't go. But I felt guilty about not wanting to be with him. He's also taken up drinking - a couple of beers a night, which my friends say is no big deal. And he's eased back on his habitual strictness in relation to food, snappy dressing, order in all things. But when we married he never drank. He invites me to go out to bars with him, but I usually decline. I don't really enjoy drinking.
We have different interests and different levels of physical ability. When I would like to go for a brisk walk, he's too tired. Where I'm interested in intimacy, he's too tired. When I'm interested in talking more, he's impatient. When I would like us to work on a project together such as cleaning out the garage, he says he's already done a day's work. When we try to garden together, he gets angry because he has very different ideas to me, and usually just throws up his hands in disgust and storms back into the house. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
I've tried to tell him the things I like to do, and the kind of things that help me feel closer to him, and he vows to try and step up to the plate. And sometimes he does, once or twice. Then things go back to the way they have been for the past 30-odd years. I do not want to divorce him, or leave him. But what else is there to do besides live a lonely life? I feel very disconnected and sad. Is it me? Have I turned into a boring housewife? A boring woman?
Answer
You have a born-again husband on your hands. He's clearly trying. He's also, by the sounds of it, a bit of a born-again human being, facing his issues on all fronts. He wants you to move with him, is asking you to share the more relaxed world of this new beer-drinking guy who has become more laid-back. Yes, he has an agenda. He's trying to initiate change, on all fronts. That's not bad, is it?
You're angry. Not because your husband has an agenda - which is just another word for plan. You feel he's making it too easy for himself. He said sorry, but he didn't suffer. He's trying to create a new life, with you very much in it, but he's not showing sufficient contrition. He wants the two of you to charge into a new world, but without suffering for the nastier world he created over the years - as you see it. Isn't that it? You know he's trying. But you're angry that he hasn't made amends. You and the kids have been left with a hurtful legacy. You don't think your husband is humble enough, mindful enough, anguished enough about that legacy.
You told your husband you'd forgiven him. I can see how that could happen, but it was a mistake, on two fronts. It reinforced his all-to-human inclination to avoid looking at the pain his past behaviour caused. And it left your anger without any kind of clear outlet. So he's carefree, bouncy, delighted with his new self, and you're ready to explode. But you can't, officially, since you've told your husband that you had wiped the slate clean. In the absence of confrontation, you're blocking, as the psychologists would put it. You're refusing to participate, declining to take the hand that's stretched out to you, and concentrating, instead, on all the things that still separate you.
Tell your husband you're finding forgiveness a whole lot harder than you expected, that you've discovered you don't forgive him at all, that you can appreciate his endeavours, but that the hurt is still gnawing at your entrails. Ask your husband to console you. And accept whatever form his consolation takes as the best he can muster right now. Acknowledgment is what we all need, in order to move on, not revenge in the form of some fixed penance.
You are lonely and unhappy and feel guilty. You even think you've become a boring old woman. Resentment, born of dishonesty, is not working for you. It's making you sad. Wouldn't it make sense to try something different? For your own sake?
