My Debt Reduction Blog » Off Topic

Can txt’ing save a marriage?

Chad — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:09:22 +0000

Please forgive this majorly off-topic post, but I don’t want to start another website to showcase additional turmoil in my life.

There are a few reasons why this website has seen so much neglect over the past few months, but the major reason has been the fact that my marriage has been on the brink of utter disaster. So many factors have played into why our marriage is teetering right now, and I won’t go in to all the details, but I will say that our financial situation isn’t one of the factors. There have been mistakes made by both of us. There have been things said, that both regret. This has been something that has been in the works for a couple of years. It came to a head September of 2007 when I was awoken to just how bad it was.

In October we both agreed to start seeing a counsellor and we continued to the end of January of 2008. During that time we had ups and downs, but overall nothing improved. We mutually agreed that this particular counsellor wasn’t doing anything for us. After we stopped going to counselling, things continued to get worse. So much so that on February 15th I packed my bags and told her I would not be coming home after work that day or ever again and I wouldn’t tell her where I’d be, but I’d be reachable via cell phone. She asked that if we could talk face to face after she came home from work before I took off. I agreed to that and ended up calling in sick to work and just staying home to try and relax.

Something that I should mention is that because of all of this I was under extreme anxiety and had feelings of depression. One of the last things our counsellor suggested to me was to try some anxiety medication to help cope with the marital issues we were facing, because I always dwelled on the current negatives and never on the positives. So I saw my doctor and explained what was going on and he prescribed me something called Paroxetine. It came with the warning of a lot of side effects that I would probably experience during the first three weeks. And I had them all. It was a miserable 3 weeks, and my packing up to leave happened right in the middle of all that. I was also prescribed Xanex to help me relax at night and to help me sleep. That stuff works great.

Ok, on to the point of this post as we’re starting to get up to date. On the 15th when we had our talk, we both agreed that neither one of us wants to call it quits, but with her student teaching, going to school one night a week, and working a part time job, that she just can’t give much to the relationship right now. I never left, and my medication is working in full force now without the crappy side effects.

We’ve just been taking it day by day. I’ve backed off on the ‘always wanting to talk about us’ approach that never seemed to do anything other than drive her away. And the medications have helped with that. Just last week, we started with a new therapist, and right away, her approach seems way different. She recommended a book, called The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work, which I ordered right away from good old Amazon. I’m about half way through the book already and it’s really good.

There is still plenty of tension between us, and when we’re in the same room together, it’s still somewhat uncomfortable. We do a ton of text messaging with each other though. And what’s really cool, is that we have normal, good conversations via our phones. Something we haven’t been able to do face to face for a long time. I really think that all the text messaging has helped us in a non direct way.

Over the last week, she has been talkative and will actually sit down by me. As weird as it sounds, that feels really good when she does. I’d really like to think that some stuff is turning around for us. It isn’t an earth shattering turn around, but it is something. And I also think that all the text messaging that we do, played a major role in getting us to start communicating again while we’re in the same room.