What we Forgot to Tell You

Did we forget to tell you?

The number one reason we married you wasn’t for your sparkling wit or your dimples either, those certainly caught our eye but they weren’t number one. It wasn’t for your six-pack, neither the one you proudly show off at the gym nor the one you pick up from the corner store on Monday nights. It wasn’t for the TGIF dinners you bought us or the occasional Chick Flick movie you suffered through on Saturday night. It wasn’t even that you make nice with our girl friends to make a good impression or that you try hard to get along with our family.

What we must have not told you when we agreed to spend our lives with you is this.

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We married you because we saw something in you we didn’t see in all the other boys that did all those things during their hot pursuit.

We agreed to marry you and spend our life with you because of all the opportunities we had we thought deep down in our hearts that you were the one. The one that would step beside us, not in front of us but beside us.

You made us laugh, you made us feel safe, you made us feel smart, beautiful and mostly you made us believe together we would achieve greatness. Does that make sense? When we walked that aisle after being pronounced husband and wife we didn’t meekly follow you we walked side-by-side and that was how we expected to live our life with you. We married you because we thought we would be your partner.

Did we forget to tell you what we wanted?

This is the only explanation there can be for the strange and utterly inexplicable changes our marriages seem to take after the vows. Being women we tend to look to our own failures first rather than any of yours, we gather into ourselves for deep examination anything we might have done that would cause this baffling change in the dynamic of our relationship.

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Where once you were our White Knight, our romantic hero and our friend, now you are something entirely changed from the man we said yes to what seems to be an eternity ago. This change can only be due to our failure, we think. Our failure to communicate to you our desire to keep the person we married at least somewhere we can find him. More importantly even to keep ourselves from disappearing too.

We ask ourselves countless questions during this time of examination. Questions that hurt us deeply because there are no real answers.

Why aren’t we laughing at the same things anymore? Did we forget the fundamentals that brought us together or is it that we forgot to tell you they were important to us in that forever sort of way. What happened to the man who would laugh when we forgot the punch line, not at us but with us. Where did that man go, the one who was willing to tell us about his foibles and fears, the one who was willing to be vulnerable with us now and then? The guy who would sit for hours and share intimacies as if they were invaluable gifts between us to be handled with great care, where did he disappear to?

Did we forget to tell you before the vows were read, before we said yes that we wanted there to be an “us” not just a you and an I.

How did we suddenly end up on opposite ends of the couch? Did we forget to tell you that part of what made us so happy was touch, just that random snuggle that didn’t lead to anything else.

How did the bed suddenly get so big? Why have you moved to Siberia? Why is there your side and my side now instead of us piling into the middle of the bed like puppies randomly wrapped around each other. Did we fail to tell you that was the way we wanted to wake up with you, wrapped around you and in your arms? The air conditioner isn’t broken so your excuse that it is to hot can’t be right. I am certain you aren’t suffering from hot flashes, what has happened since we said “we do” that we don’t unless it is part of the post-coital moment and even then it truly is only a moment till you roll over to your personal Siberia, your side of the bed.

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What have we forgotten in our march to the alter of forever, what did we fail to say to you?

It wasn’t “I love you”, those words tripped off our tongues thousands of times, perhaps to easily to thoughtlessly. Conceivably we didn’t tell you what that meant to us, when we said “I love you” did you understand it meant all the parts of you, both what we see and what you thought was hidden, that we are in it forever even when it feels like we are on top of Everest and we can’t breathe?

Did we fail to tell you there will be days we don’t like you much, we still love you.

Did we forget to tell you in our breathless joy at becoming your wife what we already knew about marriage and you didn’t; marriage is hard work, never easy. That it takes two strong people willing to go the distance every single day to make it work. Not one person willing to go half way most days but two willing to bust through all the hard stuff every day.

Did we forget to tell you even though we love the White Knight we don’t need him. Even though we love the idea of the Romantic Hero, we don’t really want to be married to him every day just once in a while we would like for him to show up and sweep us off our feet. Did we fail to tell you what we really wanted is for you to be fully in the moment, all of them every single day. Everyone changes, everyone grows we just want you to change and grow with us not apart from us.

When you say to us, we have grown apart our hearts break, all we can think is we forgot to tell you something important.

We forgot to tell you we love all the bits and parts of you. We forgot to tell you to be part of something you have to stay in the moment and stay part rather than apart. We forgot to tell you it was important to us you stay so instead we watched you drift your own way. Once you had us we became less vital to your and we forgot to tell you we were still here.