What hasn't been said

This year has been a real struggle as I have alluded to and detailed here. I haven't shared the biggest thing behind it until now for a number of reasons. I wasn't sure how things would turn out, and it seemed premature to tell people about it until I knew what was going on. I didn't talk about it out of respect for the other person involved, and we wanted to tell as many people in person as possible.

My wife and I have been separated for much of the year, and we are now on our way to divorce. The too-simple explanation is that our marriage suffered from neglect. I think we have both been down and depressed for some time, and in struggling to deal with our own demons, we turned away from each other. It is of course much more complicated than that, and I am still trying to understand it.

We went through counseling, both together and separately. It was a mixed bag. It felt good to finally get things out in the open, and honestly, I never felt closer to her. I did not care for our marriage counselor, and wish we had gone to someone else, but in the end it may have been too much, too late.

People have different feelings about what is appropriate to write about online. Some folks share every emotion while others simply describe their day. I have been walking that line all year, not sharing the biggest thing going on in my life. In the past, my way of dealing with emotions has been to not deal with them at all. I have buried them deep inside and put distance between myself, and my family and friends. Continuing to leave out what is in my head and heart seems both dishonest, and a slide back into a bad way to live my life.

By sharing more of my journey, I am trying to do a few things. First and foremost is to work through things and try to make more sense of it all. Talking about things with friends has been helpful, but I am still having trouble keeping my emotions in check. In the past, writing is where I have found meaning, and I am hoping to find it here again. I am also trying to be more honest with myself and others, and not be a live as a shell of a man.

What I am not here to do is to trash on my wife. I still love her and making her feel worse will not make me feel better. We are doing our best to remember that we still care a great deal for each other through this process. I will simply say that this was not my idea. I have not used her name in the blog in the past, and I don't plan to start now. I will not be calling her my 'ex' either, as it isn't technically true yet, and it makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. I'll simply call her J.

I probably won't describe many of the details here. I am planning to write on a more deeper level on a different blog. I am hoping it will be interesting enough to read, but I will leave this one a little more clean. The divorce is certainly the biggest thing going on in my life, but I don't want it to define me. Mostly I will stop leaving out the background information when I describe what is going on. And I will stop saying 'we' when I mean 'I'.

I am fortunate to have wonderful friends and family who have been very supportive. It will be some time before I make it out the other side of this tunnel, but I have never said "why me". There are plenty of reasons why me. And of course that is what I will continue to work on.