Nothing says "Love" like V.D.

Okay. Deep breath.

I didn't post yesterday, and it was a purposeful not posting. I have some mixed feelings about Valentine's Day, some mixed feelings about the nature of love at all, to be truthful.

My husband and I came through a really rough 2007 scarred and fractured, as near entering a divorce court as it gets. Now it's 2008, a new year, and we're doing what pretty much every marriage does at one point in its existence. We're giving it one more shot, throwing ourselves into it and trying to save it in a sort of last-ditch effort to keep the family together.

We've been married 18 years now, dating four years before that. That's a lot of history/herstory, a lot in common, and also a lot of fetid water under the bridge on both sides. We also have three children who may not always be model kids, but they are at heart really worthwhile human beings. It's not that I think kids can't adjust to a divorce situation, because I believe it's possible they can. But I also know it's ideal to keep the family unit together. Ideal, though not always possible.

The whole subject of marriage depresses me in a whole lot of ways. It isn't what I ever thought it would be. It's disappointing so much of the time. It's boring, it's routine, it distinctly unromantic. Between two people with stubborn dispositions it can also go South and stay there a remarkably long time. It's possible to get in a rut so deeply you can't dig out of it on your own. Sometimes you have to look outside for assistance, and that's what we're doing, going the counseling route.

It isn't that we argue. It's more a problem that we don't, that we haven't ever. We don't fight outright. We bury our anger, couching it in passive-aggression. In case you're wondering, that's about the worst thing married people can do. It's better to duke it out, to air your grievances in a fair and civilized way. That's in the ideal situation. In our case deep depression was involved, disabling depression, to some degree on both sides. That makes the rut even deeper, even harder to dig out of on your own.

In an environment like this everyone suffers. It may not be as obvious how they do, but they certainly do.

But we're going forward, with a little help. It's going okay so far, but I'm not sure we've really been tested in this "new" relationship yet. It'll come, and that'll be the true measure of how things have changed, and if they have.

So far, so good.