All About Marriage

Pre-script: This was an entry written last July but was not published until now owing to the fact that it was unfinished then and got stuck with the hard disk of my former laptop that conked out on me some time ago. The laptop was in the shop for several months with the assurance from the technician that it is going to be fixed. But after several months of waiting, I got it back, unrepaired haaay :) Good thing I was able to access the files from the hard disk so here goes...

Bee and I have recently celebrated our third year anniversary. That was part of the reason for the Roxas-Boracay Trip – to celebrate my birthday, treat Mama and the olds and well, to celebrate our third year anniversary. Soon after that however, I had the miscarriage. In fact, we learned about the miscarriage right on the day we are celebrating our anniversary. And then, amidst all of that we again had one of those trying episodes in our marriage. Anyway, to cut the long story short, let’s just say he and I are again in the process of working on our marriage. Once again, we are giving it another try and looking at ways on how to make it work this time.

First and the most simple of these things, we did away with his moniker – “Bolo.” Undeniably, the name has a very violent connotation. While it may be true that whenever we call him that, there never really was any conscious desire in our part to influence him to become violent, it is also undeniable that words have certain energies. And while these connotations and energies do not manifest themselves physically, they stick to the unconscious, embed themselves in our subconscious and influence us in ways we are not totally aware of.

It takes several practices though. Until now, I still make the mistake and call him “Bolo.” His friends call him that and while he had told a few not to call him by that name, the name had stuck somewhat. But I am not focusing on that. I am appreciating the fact that we are now making progress where that is concerned. There are now a few persons close to us that really make the effort to dispel with the moniker.

Second, I tried to really make the conscious effort to step out of the situation whenever I sense he and I are getting into one of our arguments again. If before my tendency is to fight back and argue back, now I learned not to play along with his drama. I finally recognized those episodes for what they are. They are not about me. They are about Bee and his ghosts coming to haunt him. It’s him as a little child retaliating at the helplessness he finds himself in. If before I see it as an attack against me and thus feel the need to argue back and to set things right, now I see the situation for what it really is. And so, I made the conscious effort to really remove myself “emotionally” from the situation and to try to view it as objectively as I could.

The “operating premise” is – “At this given situation, here is a person that I love, getting caught up in a situation that is beyond himself, trying to battle past insecurities and hurts that had come to haunt him while being confronted by a “so-now” issue that had nothing to do entirely with that past.” Isn’t that always the case? Often our reactions to situations are often “twinned” with echoes from past hurts?

In Bee’s case, his issues had always concerned the family because of the unique household set-up that he grew up with. And so our very situation – as a married couple and as a family – is really the perfect arena wherein his angst and issues are being tested and brought to the surface. No wonder we always fight. Because, being in a household set-up, Bee is being brought back to his own angst. The situations and the issues we face everyday as a married couple and as a family might be reminiscent of “scenes from the past” that had provided him with so much hurt.

Other than that, given his family background, Bee is in no way equipped to deal with familial concerns. Theirs were a “dysfunctional” family, their set up was loose. And here he is, confronted with a wife who came from an entirely opposite experience who have her own set of expectations as to how a family should be. No wonder how even very early on, our marriage is beset with too much conflict. Partly because, it also took me a long time to realize all these things.

Marriage really is that – a union of individuals with different background, different set of experiences, different agenda and different expectations as to how a family should be.

Marriage then is more than just a union of two individuals but a union of ideals, of expectations, of habits, of conditioning, of notions about certain things… And so the “adjustment period” that every one refers to as the7-year inch (I would like to know who coined the term) is really the fine tuning of all of these things. Imagine that!

Holding the above premise close to my heart at all times is a reminder that Bee and I decided to get married because we felt this undeniable bond and connection. There simply is the love. It is unmistakable and undeniable. And this is glaringly clear every time we try to explore the possibility of living apart from each other. It is the same connection that brings us back together every time we would decide to just end everything and walk away. And so if such is the case, then he and I decided to try our best to make this “being together” really work and be a pleasant experience for both of us. Because, it is simply unacceptable that we are together because one of us carries the burden of trying to make things work. Why should it be just the burden of only one? Because one is more intelligent than the other? One is more insightful and so would only have to understand the shortcomings of the other? Hell no! :)

As “sweethearts” Bee and I have always treated our relationship as that of a team. At that time we had always been teammates – team mates during kayaking contests, teammates in adventure races and teammates in trying to make our relationship work. We were a team when we were seeing to the nitty-gritty details of our wedding. We took Lamaze classes because we decided that bringing Baby into this world should be a team effort.

Somewhere along the way we lost that. We lost that sense of “teamness.” We got so caught up with trying to adjust to each other living together, and trying to make things work. We lost sight of the values that used to cement our bond with each other. We got so caught up in our conflicts, in our hurts, in our disappointments, that we lost sight of the things that we have found “attractive” in each other before.

And that is something we are trying to bring back together – to focus on what is good in each other and to highlight that instead. Bolo is such a beautiful person really. Amidst all his scars he is a beautiful person inside. And I see that every time he and I would talk about the things we should do for the sake of the marriage and for the sake of Baby. Bee is a paradox really – wanting/ desiring some sense of permanence (something he never had while growing up) while at the same time resisting it because he is so used to having such a loose set-up while growing up. He is pulled from two opposite directions – (1) torn between wanting to recreate our family into something he had always wanted for himself; and (2) the pulls of the notions, definitions of “family” he grew up with.

I was about to write that we are very much still at an uphill but I refuse to treat our situation as such. It’s quite a challenge alright. Right now, I’m thinking, some kind of drama I chose for myself in this lifetime but for all I knew, this must have just been another chapter to a journey that was started several lifetimes ago…

I’m thinking, marriage is giving me several materials to write about. Reading my past entries on it and on our relationship sometimes amazes me with the amount of insight I am getting and at the same time, managing to pen down. Well, being in this drama has another fringe benefit after all -- besides molding my character and moving me towards the unfolding of my own truth. It is giving my brain some muscle exercise and turning me into a better writer hehe.