Watch Out for Land Mines

Last week W and I tried marriage counseling. Tonight we will go again, this time to a different counselor though. My therapist had recommended two to me, and we decided to see each one once, and then decide where to go from there. I really like the one last week, but you never know, I might like this one even better. Actually, I'll be happy to work on things with whichever one makes W more comfortable.

I feel increasingly like I'm walking on a tightrope. I am, as I so often do, trying to keep everyone as happy as possible. If that means not telling my family we're separating then I don't tell them. If that means placating W and going along with shared sleeping arrangements then so be it. Yet increasingly I find myself wanting to shout at the top of my lungs "It's my turn to be happy! Somebody do something to help ME be happy for a change!" So I walk the tightrope, trying to keep everyone happy without making myself too unhappy.

If it weren't for N, this would be easier, much easier. I wouldn't worry as much about W's feelings. But as it is, I do want W to be able to maintain a relationship with N. I want to help (yes, I always want to help everybody, I'm just a little helper) W develop better ways of interacting with N. I don't want W to go completely away. W, though, uses all of this against me, as a way of holding onto me. W tells me that if he and I have no chance of reconciling then he will refuse to go to counseling because there will be no point to it. When I try to explain that it is the only way for him to have access to N to work on changing certain things, it just deteriorates into angry yelling and crying and nothing gets resolved. He is trying to use N to blackmail me into staying, and I don't like it. He is right that I don't want to hurt N and take N completely away from W so by only being willing to work on things under his conditions he keeps me from making the break completely. Yet, emotionally and spiritually I'm already gone. Only physically are we still together, and even then we are only together in the sense that we inhabit the same house. We do not touch anymore. We rarely speak. The mood at home is bleak and depressing and the weight of it feels very heavy to me.

We are at a point where we are both afraid to speak to the other for fear of unsettling the uneasy truce that exists. At some point, something has got to give. When it does, I'm afraid the explosion is going to be huge, with much fallout. I don't feel things getting better from here, only worse, until we finally make that final split. This is agony, and I fear that I am drawing it out longer than I should by trying to "play nice," to "make things work," to "minimize the hurt." Maybe in all this I am actually maximizing rather than minimizing the hurt. Maybe I need to come clean tonight in counseling and be really honest that I don't want to turn back and make this marriage work. I want out. I want out, but I want to be able to work on making things as good for N as they can be with parents who live apart. Why isn't that a reasonable request? Why does it have to be that if I insist on a split, that W will not work with me to make things good for N?

Okay, this is my last whiney post for a while. I'm going to take things in a different direction with tomorrow's post. Unless something big happens at counseling tonight.