It’s a Sex In The City-style poser, but one that’s troubling me at present, and I guess I’m writing this so I can trouble you as well (at least for your perspective on this!).
A little background. This is my second marriage (my wife’s first), and my second relationship (strange in this day and age, perhaps, but true). We’ve both recently turned forty and we both hold down top-flight professional jobs. We’re the real DINKYs deal (Double Income No Kids Yet). Or is it DINJYs (Double Income No Joy Yet)?
Things have been rocky for two to three years of our five-year marriage. We still love each other (and I think we both know the difference from when you’re in a relationship and the love dies), but we’re also deeply unhappy. Now, I could go into all the details: the baggage, the dwindling sex, the arguments, the resentment, the control freakiness, the moroseness but that would take a website and I don’t expect anyone to easily disentangle the complexity of our relationship from just a few short paragraphs. But if I can pinpoint one thing, it’s the fact we are both ambitious, head strong people. Ok, let’s face it: self-preoccupied. We have quite separate individual pursuits, dancing, music, writing, but few we share in common. We like different music, but like the same films. We share the same sense of humor; we like different things in the bedroom: me more kinky, she more traditional. Standard stuff, I hear you say. But I have the feeling we actually may be too similar in some key aspects of our nature. Both of us having to cut it in tough professional environments changes who you are and challenges the relationship stereotypes we’ve been brought up on and maybe come to expect. It’s all income and no joy. It seems like we’re both vying for supremacy in some way over the other as have to do at work, and that has only led to a stand off! And of course when the relationship is frustrating and unhappy it only pushes people to focus more on their work. And so the vicious circle turns.
Are there fundamental differences between us too? Some, yes. But I suspect these are more the differences of our gender than of our individual personalities: I don’t think either of us are ‘odd’ in that respect and so likely we’d find the same differences in any relationship.
But whatever the reasons, is it just possible that we’re not capable of making each other happy, despite the love we still feel? Do we each need someone that balances us better, or are we just so far up our own blow-holes to compromise enough to make any marriage work?
So is it a clean break, painful though that might be, to try and find our original selves again? Do we just take a break and see how that leaves us feeling (seems a dangerous option to me). Do we change our work and our life rather than change our marriage or will the compromise that involves lead to more resentment and bitterness (someone will have to keep paying the bills, the other will have to give up a career they love and have worked their whole life to reach to the top of)? Do we go for counseling? Do we stick it out because love is so hard to come by you should to try everything before throwing it away? Or have we been trying long enough?
Stop whining! you say. You’re well off, healthy, and in love. Stop complaining and snap yourselves out of it! Fair point. Though that never seems to work does it?
