We had been married for 12 years when I realized my marriage was in trouble and I needed to save my marriage from divorce. But I was so busy that I didn't notice that my husband had already emotionally divorced himself a couple of years before.
When we got married we both had great careers, made good money and were desperately in love. Life was very good.
Two years later we had our son and within the next three years we had a daughter and another son but I continued to work part time.
Slowly dinner dates gave way to play dates. When we went out it was to soccer practice or dance recitals.
We no longer made love, we had sex. The occasional morning quickie before the kids woke up.
Our only conversations revolved around the children, bills, broken appliances and so forth.
When our youngest began school, my part time job quickly extended to full time.
And when I got home, I'd quickly change into my sweats, make dinner, help the kids with their homework and try to keep the house from falling apart. After the kids were in bed, I'd conk out in front of the TV and my husband would be in another room.
When our tenth wedding anniversary was nearing, my husband came home with a huge grin and handed me two plane tickets to go to stay at our favorite hotel for a surprise weekend getaway. I looked at him as if he had two heads and went into a diatribe about how I couldn't get away because I had a work project due, what were we going to do with the children, why didn't he talk to me about it first and so forth. His face fell. He grabbed the tickets and told me not to worry about it. He would cancel everything.
That was apparently the last straw. He totally vacated the marriage emotionally.
One day, two years later, I had treated myself to a stylish haircut and a new outfit for work because I had just finished a major project and received a bonus. When I came home and showed him my clothes and haircut and told him about my bonus, he looked up from his keyboard and said, "Hmm, isn't it nice that you want to look good at work and that you can find the time to take on such a big project. But your priorities have been so screwed up for a while, I'm not really surprised." Then he went back to his computer.
I was devastated.
That's when I realized that I felt the same way he must have felt when he wanted to surprise me with our anniversary trip.
The next day at work I asked if I could telecommute instead of going to the office every day. Fortunately, my boss agreed.
That night, I sent the kids to stay with a neighbor. I set a beautiful table and cooked one of my husband's favorite dishes. I dressed in a pretty outfit, lit some candles, put on soft music and met my husband at the door with a glass of wine. I said, "Hi, I'm the girl you married and who loves you very much but who has been an idiot and who has ignored you for too long. But that's going to end now. So why don't you tell me about your day while I put dinner on the table."
He was totally stunned.
That night we had dinner and talked, really talked, about us, our marriage, our family and what we both could do to improve things. We actually wrote out a plan for how we were going to make things better.
The changes didn't happen overnight but they did happen. It took a while for him to believe that I was serious about saving our marriage from a divorce.
That was six years ago and today we act like newlyweds. We laugh, hold hands, go on date nights and don't take the rest of the world so seriously. We work together around the house and play together whenever we can. We're so happy and affectionate that even our kids tell us to "get a room." And when they do, we go to our bedroom and lock the door.
Lucy Morgan-Rowe is the main writer of savemy-marriage.com a marriage site that discusses ways on how to Save Marriages that are on the brink of divorce.
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