19 Years Of Ups And Downs In A Big Nutshell

[railman]

Come October 22 my wife and I will have been married for 19 years. Sounds like a long time in this day and age until I remember how long my mother's parents were married until grandpop passed away in 03. Try 74. Grandma will be 101 in September. I look forward to spending many more years with my wife. We've seemed to adapt to each other. We are married as a married couple. We've coexisted like business partners and we believe we've come to terms with our differences the longer we've been married. But it is far from perfect. The relationship has seen its share of rises and falls like any relationship does.

I've spent a lot of time on the forums (not just here, sorry) for adults and I've come to a conclusion based on my observations of what the authors are saying. It's not a total lack of communications or a total lack of concern or a total lack of understanding. It's a large pot filled with a little of everything from communicating effectively to listening effectively. I've seen some really dumb people refuse to change because of the most stupid and petty reasons. While one person won't compromise because they aren't the problem to not willing to compromise because they aren't the problem.

Human beings are extremely complicated because of the values they hold. It gets worse when people stand firm in the idea they're right and others are wrong and they are in the same relationship. Like two magnets with north poles, they won't attract, they will repel. Compromising isn't the only answer nor might it be the right answer at the wrong time. So much stress and pressure is put upon us all by the very society we live in that we become our own worst enemies.

I had a few lady friends from work and through other friends. My wife then worked 2nd shift leaving me home alone when I got home. Horny as hell. After we purchased our first house it was still a freeforall around the house. Then all the sudden, she wasn't interested anymore. Something changed in her environment or herself. She knew I would go and visit my lady friends on occasion as I usually was the only person they knew that could fix computers. I was their computer guy. Nothing came of it. But I always wondered if my wife thought otherwise until I asked and she denied the notion and said she trusted me. Ok. But the sex fell off very quickly. Money, stress, first house and the stress in maintaining it? I couldn't tell. After several months of this I really wanted to know and she didn't have anything to say. Enter our first and only "co-habitation" phase of our lives.

In a year we made love maybe a half dozen times. I'd intiate and she'd refuse. That was the norm night after night. So after a year of this bad script and sounding like a skipping record or loop tape I figured it was over. I said maybe we should get separated but she didn't react or say anything. She did that often. Never speaking her mind. In 1994 I went to school and trained to be a professional truck driver. Finished third in my class of 30 and went to work for a flatbed carrier out of Des Moines, IA. I was employed for two months when I decided I'd had enough. I went back to my old computer job and to my wife. She went on as before as though nothing happened. I tried to engage her to find out what was on her mind and as expected, she wouldn't. I liked the trucking work but couldn't handle the time away from home. Right job, wrong reasons.

Skip forward three years and we've decided to have a baby. She lit up like a roman candle. Going from zero to sixty in a flash. I asked her if this was what she felt was missing from our lives. She said she felt there was something missing. She never said it until I initiated the conversation. She wanted a baby but didn't voice her desire to have one because we both decided before we got married we wouldn't have children. Times change. We adapted and we were happy again.

I illustrate this because communication (or rather lack thereof) was a problem but not the only one. My reaction to what I perceived as a marriage that was over really wasn't over. It was stale. She didn't confide in me what she thought was missing in her life until I expressed it. We married in October of 1988 and getting her to override her upbringing to be more open was very difficult when not impossible.

So we move to a bigger house with a fenced in back yard, detached garage with loft and a fireplace. Wife has the baby, I'm looney with excitement and can't concentrate at work as a transfer looms on the horizon. She's an AHM for two years. Getting her to tell me her feelings is difficult but no longer impossible. I'm stressing because the money problems start because I underestimated our income to expense ratio she now has to go back to work a year earlier than planned. Sex isn't.....again.....in her plans. Only this time, mine either. But we do for each other when we can but we've not regressed back into a co-existence as we can tell. What little love making there is, it's wonderful.

September 11, 2001 happened. December 24th, 2001 I get downsized. I'm part of the third round of layoffs IBM makes. The wife is now working full-time cleaning houses while we move what we can to a mini storage complex we can afford on her income. We move to a rental house, declare bankruptcy, losing two cars, the house and thousands in furniture and appliances. I spend 2002 scouring the nation for a job. Even McDonalds won't hire me nor the Quick Mart's. Sex becomes a rare activity as we realize things are really falling apart. We both make some effort to lead a normal life but the stress is getting worse and we're getting on each other's nerves until we start talking about things and what to do come February of '02. Life sucks royally at this point. But through understanding, we can have an intimate relationship strained as it may be. Sex is good when it does happen. Now the unemployment money runs out in November of 02. Dad and Mom offer us their extra room and we move in with them. Her parents have already passed on years before and she seems to have nobody to turn to and feel alone. She won't lean on my parents for support and there's nothing I can do or say to help. I can't imagine what she must feel to have to move into her husband's parents home. She all but shuts down. With encouragement and fumbling support, I manage to get her to engage my Dad and she does open up a little. She is amazed at how much my Dad and Mom knows and opens her shell up more.

Sex does happen even at this point in time. We found ways to get around the "full house" situation. My younger brothers are still at home but working and saving to move out. My wife and I still find some time to ourselves once in a while to share a little passion and compassion. It's been two years in a 12x12 room before I'm regularly employed again. Instead of beating my head against a wall trying to get through a door that will never open again for me in the computer networking sector, I once again go to school and retrain to drive an 18 wheeler. I finish second in my class of 28. My wife is proud of me and I feel like I can do it this time. But new, unforeseen problems arise.

We were able to move into our own apartment and get back out on our own in only three months. The time away from each other is hard. Especially for our daughter. She hasn't known me to be gone anywhere because I was an AHD during her earliest memories of me. Now I'm gone for three to four weeks at a time and she hauls off and hits me one night before I have to back on the road. She's five years old and I understand why she did it. She gets to crying and I'm heartbroken about it but can't do anything except tell her I love her and hold her until she falls asleep. I'll be gone again before she's up for school the next morning. My wife has similar feelings but now holds me as I doubt my decisions. She says no. This was the first time she'd offer her thoughts to me without asking her to and her answer was a green light from her that what I'm doing is right even though it's hard.

Fast forward three years to the present. I'm sitting here in Salisbury, NC waiting for tomorrow so I can unload this rig and head home only two hours away. I'm anticipating time with my family. At 41 I realize that sex isn't the basis of our relationship. But it is a fundamental piece of that foundation. It fits right in there with communication, love, appreciation, values, beliefs, compassion and understanding to name a few. After an eight week run over the road just finished last month, we didn't go at it like animals. She was tired from an extra long day at work and I was from driving. The next night reversed our conditions being too tired to wake up the morning after because we spent a few hours of intimate pleasures with some hot sex mixed in. We miss each other and look forward to time together as a couple and as a family. Our life style change to trucker/trucker's wife with children has been dramatic. Equally dramatic is our ability to adapt and still find ways to entice and please the other. As a trucker, I get ribbed and accused about the women that truckers are associated with while away from home by those that don't know me. I talk to my wife every other day/night and we talk. We get things done and say sweet nothings to each other. While on the road a lot-lizard will once in a while approach me looking for a good time. I tell them I promised my wife the first affair. It gets a good laugh by other drivers sometimes but I live by it because I cherish my wife that much. She and our daughter are my beacon to where home is.

Almost nineteen years after we married, we are in love, do love and want to make love to each other. We don't get to have a romp in the sack as often these days even though financial stress has abated and things are much more stable. I'm simply not there as often. She takes longer to get her motor running now but so what! I make foreplay take longer to give her time to warm up with some toys bought from TooTimid.com in the last year. But it is nice to know that once her motor's running, at 50 she can go like a runaway truck down a steep grade and strip the gears out of this 41 year old trucker. It seems this woman gets better with age and I wouldn't trade her in for a newer model to save my life.

So folks, read what you will into or out of this life experience. Even in a perfectly good marriage, things can go wrong, poor decisions made and feelings get hurt. Then anger and finally divorce. Nasty stuff. But if you truly believe in your relationship, take the bad with the good and work things out. I said our marriage was far from perfect. It still is and my wife and I still work at it. There is no "...happily ever after." That only happens in fairy tales. Ours is more like "happily ever onward we work to better our lives together." It's not a blissful marriage but it is a healthy one.

[krisleightate]

Very good for you, I can only hope that one day I find this for myself.

[firegal]

At 41 I realize that sex isn't the basis of our relationship. But it is a fundamental piece of that foundation. It fits right in there with communication, love, appreciation, values, beliefs, compassion and understanding to name a few.

We need more men that think the way that you do! Your wife is a very lucky woman!