I I'm Married Sometimes Happy Sometimes Not

Perhaps this will relate with those to whom the name of this group speka a most fully.

"So why are you still married?"

This question, or variations thereof, has been posed to me often over many years. The answer lies in a curious puzzle I can not entirely unravel, much less articulate in terms that have any hope of making sense to snotherv.

There are aspects of our lives that can become so complex as to rail against contemporary notions of a binary outlook. For so many, sad to say,life is yes or no, black or white, plus or minus.

Happy or sad.

I feel that much of our pent up anger and frustration stems from this perception toward which most are conditioned from birth. If things are not good (in a marriage in this case) they can only be bad by definition. The reality is that "middle ground" is often so expansive as to have a horizon.

So it is wiring such middle ground I find my marital relationship. Loved dearly yet taken for granted and ill-respected, loving and caring yet long absent feeling in love, happy yet profoundly sad.

For years I would speak to common ground shared with my wife, while at once exploring aspects of myself she sought to repress or ignore. The dichotomy of a marriage of friends is the nature of the beast in my case.