Marriage As A House

This last and final time that him and I went to marriage therapy the therapist (who I will be forever grateful to) gave us an illustration of a house and said that the marriage relationship we had built over the last seven years was much like building a house. Complete with footings, foundation, floors, and furnishings. (Isn't that alliteration fun?)

The idea of home building was not a new concept to us because during the months that we were in counseling we had undertaken a massive home remodeling project where almost all of our 2700 square feet of house changed in some way or another. Some of it was cosmetic...some of it mechanical, some of it brand new and some of the house we completely gutted.

The term "gutted" and its connection to the analogy that my therapist used of a marriage being a house is important. The term gutted is this idea that you take all the innards of something and rip them out so you have a clean slate. This is what we did to the kitchen, the master bath, and the living room.

In my marriage house gutted takes a whole new meaning because instead of a blank slate I experienced the term as it is used in more contemporary speech - that of being completely and utterly devastated. This gut-wrenching feeling came as a result of the realization that the house (marriage) that needed fixing and updating would not get that...because at the end of the day the house that was built by two people couldn't be remodeled and fixed and worked on by just one.

That conversation and subsequent conversations started happening in September of last year....when my therapist with a bit of sadness in her eyes, looked at me and said "you are on a runaway trolley and now you just have to decide when the best time for you is to jump."

I walked out gutted...my house gutted...and felt the emptiness of an unfinished marriage relationship of a house that would no longer be worked on together.

It was only a short two months later that I would experience an emptiness in my real home as I put my kids to bed every night by myself...all the while the remodeling projects put on hold because I didn't know what the future would hold for me or my kids.

There was still talk of a rebuild during this time...but our marriage therapist reminded us that the footings of our relationship was understanding, and the house's foundation was built on trust...but like so much in our marriage house, those things had been damaged and broken without any consideration of repair for awhile by that point.

So what is the point? For a long time I fought so hard for this house...and I believed falsely two things: first, that if I shouldered the bulk of our "marriage remodeling" projects and make it easier for him that our marriage could work. (Ironically enough I shouldered the bulk of our real home renovation projects too!) The second that all our marriage needed was love and we would be fine...there is even a song that shouts that supposed truth!

But partner projects require the work of two people not one, and at the end of the day the song lies...you need more than just love to make a marriage work...because as much as I wanted to pretend that just four walls is all that we needed to make a relationship last, anything without footings and a foundation crumble the minute turbulence hits... and nothing - not even my stubborn stick-to-itiveness could keep it together. 

And maybe that was the miracle... that I finally came to the point that I realized I just needed to let go...and let God.

Sincerely,

Madeline


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