In Love with the Dream

I was home sick today, which left me with lots of time for reflection. Here is what I realized… There is a distinct difference between loving someone and being in love with them and honestly, I don’t think I have been “in love” with my husband for some time. (Incidentally, I no longer like referring to him as “my husband”, so let’s call him “Soon To Be Mr. Ex”.) Let me be completely clear, I believe strongly that marriage is about a commitment and I was and would have remained 100% committed to my marriage and Soon To Be Mr. Ex until the day that I died. I am not ashamed to say that I wholeheartedly wanted to work things out with him and I was committed to doing so if he would have agreed. I would have never done what he did and, while I am no longer angry I am not yet in a place to say that I can forgive him for his actions. However, I have gained the ability to step back and look at the situation for what it is. At some point you have to ask yourself when do you stop wishing your significant other would act a certain way or be a certain way. When do you realize that you either accept the person for who they are/have become or you move on. You cannot force someone to be a person that they are not, that’s not fair to them or to you. In college Soon To Be Mr. Ex and I made a great couple, we had fun and life was easy. But as the years have passed we have become less and less of a “perfect match”. Quite honestly, I often found myself wishing he were someone else – not in the way that I had a certain person in mind, but in that there were certain characters and actions that I longed for in my mate as I got older, which he simply didn’t possess. If I can say I feel this way, I have no doubt that he's had some of these same feelings as well.

I have realized that, while I may no longer have been in love with Soon To Be Mr. Ex, I was in love with the dream. It’s no secret, I am a Type A personality – I always have a plan and it’s hard for me to deviate from that (while “new me” is certainly trying to embrace spontaneity and realize that it is OK not have a plan for everything in life!!!) I was in love with a dream that I thought we were both living, but in truth that’s not the case. I was in love with something that didn’t truly exist and admitting that makes me feel very powerful! I can tell you with absolute certainty, while this was not “in the plan” I now am beginning to believe that it was the best thing that could have ever happened.