Marriage, thy name is Sisyphus

Lost in the Desert.... I chose that name for my blog due to my then-current obsession wargaming the Italians in North Africa during World War II... but now... I feel that way about my marriage. I don't know what to do, or how to feel, how to act, how to proceed, or what. All I know is that the status quo can't continue.

No one will read this, and at some level I'm fine with that. But I can only take so much of being the passive listener, the guy who takes on the world's problems as Sisyphus of old, pushing a rock uphill for eternity, unable to stop yet never able to make progress. That is how I feel in my marriage, and I hate saying it because if I can admit it, finally, then what does that mean about my marriage? I love Carla with all my heart, but I can't keep doing this.

Carla has a lot of emotional problems and anxiety issues, and I'm fine with that. She had some when we dated and got engaged, but they didn't come out in force until after we got married. Her family abandoned her because she chose to have a life and chose to marry me. Things always seemed like they could be reconciled with her family, until none of them save her step-aunt showed up to our wedding. Not even her mother. A week later, after returning from our cruise, her mother stole their entire joint savings account without so much as a "by your leave," and labeled me a pervert -- and Carla promptly told her to go to hell.

I was saddened, because I knew how hard that must have been.  My own mother could not make that choice, the choice of family over a loved one, and my father promptly left her over it only weeks after I was born. That is something I can never repay. Yet rather than bringing us closer together, something changed inside her. She became angry and hostile, relations between us cooled, and she began to be overcome by self doubt.

I had her in counseling once things with the family started going down, and we had to change counselors before finding one that helped. But Carla oscillated, unsure of what she wanted to fix. What was supposed to help her fix marital problems quickly became oriented on her thesis, and in early 2011, when she was suppossedly "on track" to finish her thesis (already a year late -- and as of today that thesis remains unfinished) and she had supposedly "overcame" the impediments to it, she unilaterlally left counseling -- our marriage having simply fallen through the cracks, not worthy of repair. I was angry, and bitter. I still am. I'm the one who keeps up the house. I'm the one who does the shopping, cleans the place, cooks the meals, makes sure everything is in order. I run the house, and I don't want to! I wanted a partner, instead I got a tag along. She looks up to me like a puppy. Always needing or wanting something, unable to care for herself, and yet unable to give anything but love. That was not the woman I asked to marry me.

By late 2011, as our marriage began to deteriorate, she finally went back to counseling.... where again it became more thesis oriented. Our marriage crops up, but not as much as I think it should. And it is in trouble, and she seems not to care. She says she wants to fix her issues, but doesn't take steps to do it.

I love my wife, more than anything. But I can't live like this anymore. She fixates on issues, worries about them to the point she becomes a nervous wreck, incapable of taking on tasks, and then turns hostile to the point that many of our nights are spent arguing or her becoming angry, hostile, bitchy, and then finally a sobbing wreck. Our latest incident was I wanted to go to Bass Pro down in Oklahoma City, to get some Black Powder to shoot my replica flintlocks. I'm from Tulsa, she's from Woodward. She's driven in the city countless times. We once drove to Kansas on a mini family trip when we were engaged, to see a band she likes. She freaked the hell out Saturday for no reason, telling me "I'm not feeling it today, let's go tomorrow." Ok, I think, I can live with that.

So Sunday rolls around, and now she's so scared (and letting me know) that she's a crying wreck, and the better part of my day is spent consoling her as I would a child. Never mind she's driven by the place numerous times before! What's more is I feel lied to, in that she couldn't tell me Saturday. That's the other problem, there is still a wall between us, all she gives me half-truths, strings me a long, or outright lies to me, and I have to sit and take it.

So Monday, I'm thinking of taking her down there, me driving, to show her it isn't so bad. We planned to go at 4:30, with her telling me "we can go, it'll be fine" We spend until 7:30 with her oscillating between "It'll be fun" "I'm not feeling it" crying like a wreck and all points in between. Finally, we go -- and she loves the trip, proclaims that it was fun, and she wants to drive back. Confused, I think maybe we can move on.

Then comes today. We go shooting. I have a lot of fun, but she doesn't shoot that much. She spent $45 on ammunition for herself last night, then only shoots 10 rounds of it claiming she's having more fun watching -- not like her. I inquire but she says that she's having fun watching the workings of a flintlock. So we get home, me, her, and a friend who went with us. We order a pizza, and they watch Doctor Who while I clean my muskets: they shot new made ammo, so didn't need to clean. I didn't even get a say about what got put on the TV, like I wasn't there, so I don't say anything -- Carla was at least nice enough to ask if I wanted a drink.

Suddenly, by the time pizza got here, there's a definite hostility in the air. Part of it deals with communication. Carla's counselor says she needs to communicate more, because she doesn't talk about what she's doing with the often result she does things wrong, doesn't follow direction, is clumsy, or things like that. Often I have to be like "Carla, C-word" when she does something, well, childish such as bumping in to me or coming around behind me in the kitchen without telling me. Now, I'm not asking for a report on everything she does, but a little communication goes a long way. Well, I got some powder residue on the carpet, put some soap on it, and left the soap by the stains. She comes in, right behind me and wipes it up, and then acts surprised when I'm like "why did you do that?" She's in the same room, sees the soap by the stains, and it never occurs to her to ask if I had taken care of it. I think that's when it started.

Anyway the tension between us grows, and after we finished eating, and the Doctor Who episode was over, I suggested a 20 minute youtube video, a comedy special with Rowan Atkinson parodying Doctor Who. Carla pulls it up on my laptop, and her friend sits beside her. I'm cleaning my muskets on the floor, and I say "hey, why don't you put it on the TV so we can all see." Carla replies "It's ok," and then proceeds to watch the video.

At this point I'm livid, because this is the common theme of our marriage. I pour my heart and soul into our marriage. She goes to pieces, and I have to spend my life picking them up. She has a bad day at work, guess who gets to console her. She wants to worry herself physically sick over a trip to the city, guess who gets to console her. She decides to get angry, guess who gets to console her. But she treats me like dirt, and not in any way overt but instead acting like I'm on the periphery, out of sight except when she needs something. She needs consoling last night, by God I'm right there. But hey, can I watch that too and "faggedaboudit."

Our relationship was off to a rough start, she treated me like crap when we dated, we talked when she wanted, and she had no trouble making it known that I bothered her when my presence was not requested. Unable to go home for Thanksgiving after moving to Stilly, she promptly left me here by myself and didn't so much as call me on the day. I called her Christmas Day, after being with her three months and promptly got chewed out for interrupting her. I'm sorry, I didn't know making egg noodles was more important than a "Merry Christmas, I miss you" from your boyfriend.

Things got better once she started letting me in and we got intimate, but things feel like they are headed back to how they were. When she melts down, I gladly give my time, listening to stuff, telling her it's alright, I'll help you change, what can I do, yet she often ignores me, runs roughshod over me, doesn't bother to ask what I want, or things like tonight where I get excluded from what is going on.

And what I can't understand is the seemingly random and chaotic nature of it all. One minute she treats me like an annoyance, the other I can't pack her off with friends, because she has latched on. I've tried to get her to go places with friends without me, and except for one time she hasn't done it -- I've even been accused of having too much control over her, and not letting her do things.

With this woman there is no happy medium, and I'm not sure I can handle that. One minute we're having a great day, the next she's in tears and the night is gone as I'm consoling her over an issue that is pointless and nonsensical. One day she'll come through the door from work with snowcones to surprise me, the next comes through angry, crying, and acting like she can't stand me.

And the worst part is I can tell I'm not happy -- at least not as much as I once was. When I got married, I dreamed of a partnership, I help her, she help me. We could trust and depend on each other. Most of my life is spent playing her counselor, while she's proven that if I tell her ANY issue going on in my life -- even something such as feeling overwhelmed by comps -- she turns it into something about her and melts down, to the point instead of dealing with my feelings and issues I have to deal with her. She doesn't help around the house, unless I specifically ask or she sees me cleaning. I chauffeur her to work constantly, she leaves messes around all over the place -- include used feminine products in places other than trash receptacles, forgets things all the time, and, well, I feel like I have to do everything around the house or micromanage it to the point I feel like my father ordering my mother about -- something I never wanted and something I can't handle.

Then there's her thesis-- her God ****ed thesis. Just get the FUCKING THING DONE IT ISN'T THAT HARD FOR FUCK'S SAKE. WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM HONEY! SHIT OR GET OFF THE GODDAMNED POT. DO IT OR STOP PLAYING AT BEING A HISTORIAN! I'm sorry for that outburst but I can't take it any longer. It's not even that she has a hard time doing it, she just doesn't do it. We were both supposed to write them in Spring of 2010. I wrote mine in 3 months, she played Star Trek Online then slammed out a crappy bibliography the last week. I took classes the summer we got married, she did nothing. She jerked off all Fall 2010 and got out a revised bib the last week. Spring 2010 (or was it Fall 2010) she changed topics, so she took classes and did no actual work. Then, having become a computer game addict, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim came out on November 11, 2011, and she said -- no, she promised -- that she would get it done by then. That would be a reward. I promised her I would wait to play the game until she got her thesis done. She got a couple chapters done, but in May 2012 I broke that promise, because she was back to barely working on it. So she finds out she has to do only a couple of chapters and she'll be done. The finish line. "I'll get it done by July!" she promises. It's now August, and no more work has been done than when she played with it in May. She promises to finish it this Fall, but I've heard that song and dance twice already.

And what burns me, what really pisses me off, is why does she have that right? Every year she takes out thousands of dollars in student loan debt to pay for a weeks' worth of work. My adviser wanted me to sit comps a semester early to ensure funding, so I'm doing 9 and 10 hour semesters while studying for comps. She gets to waste thousands of dollars pretending to work on a thesis while I get to work myself into a grave trying to save the family money. What gives her the right to screw off and add money to our family's debt? Why do I have to be the one who works harder to have something to show for it? And on top of that, she now has the Assistant Coordinator job at German Online, which is fantastic, it's what she has always wanted. But that has become a point of drama. First she worried she wouldn't get it, now she compulsively worries she's always on the edge of losing it; and all the while her thesis doesn't get done, which adds still more drama.

All the drama, the ups and downs... I know I said for better or for worse, and I believed that. I don't believe in divorce. But what no one ever told me was what do I do when a spouse gets you stuck in the worst part and makes no effort to get out of it? I've tried all I can -- I help her conquer her fears, but when she replaces them with others almost instantaneously, what am I to do? I listen and be there, but that changes nothing. She tells me "help me" but forgets to tell me how. Or, more often than not, she doesn't tell me what she's thinking, leaving me in the dark. I know I should give her some time, but again no one said how much. I've waited 2 years of marriage, how many more? How many more before it's obvious she won't change.

This deals with sex, so feel free to skip if you aren't the wife reading this. Once one of our friends said we were the horniest couple she knew. There would be days that we would do it four times a day. One weekend that's all we did was sex, shower, rest, sex, shower, rest, sex shower, rest and so on from the time we woke up until we passed out from exhaustion and lack of bodily fluids that night. Carla, a virgin when we met, wanted to try new things, learn, and be an active partner in the bedroom. Now... she just lays there, saying she enjoys it but at the same time not doing anything. And me? I love her, I think she looks gorgeous, but anymore I find myself, shall we say, having headaches more than I used to. It's just not as fun, it's stale, and, well, with all of the drama and problems, I can tell my level of attraction -- physically always higher than hers towards me -- decreasing. And that scares me. There was a time when I didn't notice other women, now thoughts of "Damn, if I were single" pop into my head. There was a time I told people I married Carla because I couldn't live without her, but when I talk to people dealing with relationship issues after only a few weeks, and thinking that they needed to leave, I envy them. I've begged Carla to get on birth control, but she refuses to do it. In one fell swoop she says that she doesn't want to limit herself but then is adamant she doesn't want kids right now.

And the sad thing is, I want kids. I really do. But I'm not sure she'd be a fit mother. I hate saying it, and feel like an asshole saying it, but she can't even handle herself right now, and I can see the situation where I have to babysit both her and the kid. That, and she gets herself so worked up, I'm not sure she could have a child safely -- I'm sure her blood pressure must be through the roof. I've seriously considered getting a vasectomy and not telling her, just to prevent an "oopsie." Not for fear of raising a child, but if her stress caused her to lose the baby, what stress and pressures would that then bring. And the very fact this thought has entered my mind shows there are serious problems.

And I don't want to feel like that. I really don't. But I feel trapped. I love Carla, with all of my heart, but I can't deal with the ups and downs with no apparent reasoning, or the sudden, almost bipolar like attitude changes. I can wake up to the woman, as I did this morning, and I want to tell her "stay home from work, let's make love." Not have sex, but make mad, passionate love. I look into her eyes and think my God I am the luckiest man in the world. And then by nightfall that changes to us barely speaking to each other, me at 2:31 in the morning telling how i feel to the world for the first time while she's sleeping. And I don't get how it can be like that. If there was a reason, something I did, something she did, just SOMETHING I could understand it. But when I'm constantly told that I didn't do anything, and she doesn't know why she acted differently only that she did, I don't know what to believe. And every night it ends the same way, apologies, promises to seek help, promises to change behaviors, and all of them inevitably are broken.

I once thought the secret to a happy marriage was to throw yourself into it wholeheartedly. Put the other person on a pedestal. Show them they mean the world to you. Love them unconditionally, and remember that this is it. No divorces. No second chances. Make it work. And that's what I did. But that's not good enough. As I'm learning, you can care for another person's needs so much you overlook your own. I don't know what to do. I got to counseling with her everytime. I beg her to open up. I WISH it was something I did, so I could fix it. But as her counselor has said, she has to create drama and chaos because that is what she knows, and by being so supportive I've robbed her of that, giving her a measure of stability. He says she has to create the drama to achieve her comfort zone. At some level, I did my job too well, trying to give her the stable, happy marriage that neither of our parents ever had. And what has it got me? She cries every night while swearing she's happy with me, and I'm getting less happy by the month.

Bill Engvall once said marriage is like being followed by a moving grassy knoll, with a sniper taking potshots at you. But being married to a woman who has to create drama to have chaos in her life is like being followed by a B-52 dropping nuclear bombs -- there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no way to stop it.  And against that, what can I do? If she needs drama, then no matter what I do, she can always counter it. When I took her to Bass Pro last night, and she became happy and overjoyed, within 2 minutes of leaving she seized upon being afraid of fear and of feeling ashamed -- in essence replacing one bad, irrational fear with another one. Trying to combat her issues is like playing "whack-a-mole," you knock one down, and it pops up somewhere else.

And what am I supposed to do? Her counselor asks what she needs from me, and all she ever says is for me to love and support her, which I do. He gives her tips to combat her anxieties, which she doesn't follow. I can't make her work on her thesis. I can't tell her to write journal entries as a coping mechanism. I can't say "SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP WORRYING ABOUT EVERYTHING FOR CHRIST SAKE. GET A FUCKING GRIP." So what am I supposed to do? Sit and take it, I guess... that's what I've been doing, and that's what I'll continue to do.

The sad thing, is when they said "For better or worse" I assumed they meant spots -- good spots would be replaced by bad spots, which would in turn be placed by good spots. But what do you do when it's in a bad spot, and the person won't do what is needed to get out of it.  For me, it's like the fat guy bitching about losing weight while shoving a Krispy Kreme doughnut in his pie hole. I've been that guy, and let me tell you, so long as you embrace the behavior that made you fat, you don't lose weight. No one can take the doughnut from him -- if he is going to lose the weight, he to put it down. No, he has to WANT to put it down, and then he has to ACTUALLY put it down. Right now Carla just wants to put it down... but as she says she needs to, she's happily munching away. And what am I supposed to do? Her actions affect more than her, but she doesn't seem to care...

It's like we talked about fears the other day. My biggest fear is letting her down -- if she needs something, I make it happen. I don't care what I have to do. But her's is simply not screwing up, and to placate that fear, she will let me go by the wayside everytime. I've been understanding. I'll continue to be. But it's been two years, how many more before I can be justified in feeling I care for her more than she does for me? At what point is enough enough?

And when I reach that point, what the hell am I supposed to do? I'll never leave her, I'll never cheat on her, so what do I do, busy myself in my work and become a publication machine? Go through 3 pounds a week of black powder always being at the shooting range? Losing myself in computer games to escape the crapiness of my life as I did when I was a teenager and my parents' marriage fell apart (Dad left mom 6 weeks after I was born, then they got remarried when I was 5, and had a rocky marriage until about 6 years ago). I've seen my father walk out on my mom, my mother dangle a knife over her heart, and my father and I came home once to a failed suicide attempt with my mother attempting to OD on pain pills with a suicide note beside her. I don't want that for us. But what can I do? If Carla has to manufacture this stuff to be happy, there's no way to combat it. If I ever left her, it would destroy her. Does marriage truly mean the crushing of one person's happiness to give another one stability? It cannot be.. I refuse to admit that. But what if one person's comfort zone means another ones pure hell. What then?

At this point, one might ask "why the hell did you get married, then?" The sad thing is none of these issues cropped up until after we tied the knot. We were close before hand. We went on trips. My wife, too scared to drive to OKC last night in 2009 as my girlfriend flew to Michigan twice by herself (without inviting me), the culmination of the last trip being when we got engaged. My fiancee once helped me drive to Kansas, where we got lost, had a blast, and made many a fond memory. My wife truly is NOT the woman I married. A frequent topic is how do we get her back, and I have no idea.

Well I do have one. Everything started when her family fell apart, but it was not until her mother stole her money that our lives started going to hell. I want to take Carla to Woodward, and let her have it out with her family. Fight that battle that never got fought. Get things out in the open. Get some closure. That's where the self doubt originated from. That's what began the chaos. That's where the drama came from, maybe there it can be ended.

But, alas, she says no. And much like current politicians, has no plan to replace it. My questions, begging, and pleading are often met with "I don't know." Against that, what can a man do? She won't tell me how I can help, and she won't help herself, and so we just plod along. And I'm tired of living like this, I feel suffocated and trapped, and yet I know I will endure. For her sake, not mine, for she means more to me than my life. I once thought that meant I would die for her, but now I see it means something more. Marriage, I think, is when you love someone so much you will accept unhappiness, anguish, and eternal frustration to make another person happy. It doesn't always mean that, but it can. And if things don't change, I think that's where we might head. Things are not that bad yet, right now we have tastes, but as I see her continue to not actively work on things, I don't know if I should expect a different outcome or not.

To Carla, should I tell you of this and let you read it, know that I love you very much and want to always be with you. But baby, you have got to stop treating our marriage like your thesis and thinking idle promises will make things work. Help me help you. Help Trevor help you. Let your friends help you. We all love you. But there's a better way, a better comfort zone beyond chaos and drama. A better life waits for you other than crying every night. Once our relationship was such Stephanie called us "disgustingly cute," that can be more than a public facade again. You didn't always need chaos, and you don't need it now. Stop letting it be normal, and let the happiness that once dominated your life become your new normal. I've proven to you that you were worth waiting for, now prove to me that I am worth pushing your comfort zone for. But no more idle promises, for God's sake no. Losing trust at this vital juncture of our marriage is the last thing we need.