When stars collide like you and I, no shadows block the sun...

My identity is inextricably bound up with my marriage. My husband and I are partners. I don't know who I am without him. Which is why my world seemed to stop this past summer when, for one terrible moment, it seemed entirely possible that our marriage would not survive. I'm not sure if its a bad thing that I can't really conceive of life without him. It simply is true and so it seems that if I want to be sure of who I am and happy in that, working on my marriage is part of that. A little background here might be useful.

I met my husband (who from now on I'll refer to as DH, the widely accepted email intials for dear husband) when I was 17 and a freshman in college (yes, I was a very young freshman, but that's beside the point). We lived in the same dorm and without going into tedious details I will just say through a strange set of circumstances and people we were involved with, DH and I started to hang out on a regular basis. We were dating other people on and off but were spending more and more time getting to know one another. It was clear we were heading in the direction of being more than friends. And I clearly remember the lightbulb moment I had when I realized that if I wanted to date anyone else ever again, I had better do so, since once DH and I started down the relationship road, there was no turning back. This was the man I would marry and I KNEW that beyond a doubt. I believed then what I still believe now, that he is my soul mate. (I do read entirely too many romance novels {historical England only thank you very much} and I've been in enough women's studies classes to know this has influenced my romantic view of life, but I like it that way.)

We were engaged in a year (much to my family's chagrin), and three years later, two months after I graduated from college, we got married. We were so young and idealistic and going places. He was a year into a PhD program and I was off to get my Master's Degree (not in the right area mind you, but well what did I know at 21). I thought it would always be that wonderful and for the most part, that easy.

Here's the thing - it is so easy to take your marriage for granted. Life gets in the way of your idealism and things get very busy and suddenly you find your self at the dinner table trying to have a conversation but you can barely hear each other because the kids are screaming and and the house is in chaos and you have stopped listening. You give up and stop trying to tell your spouse what excites you and interests you and fulfills you and makes you want to cry because there's no time or the kids never let you talk or you think the other person already knows. And you start to drift. In my case it was a very slow drift that I barely recognized. Thinking as I always have that DH and I will be married until way past our 50th anniversary and that our marriage was unshakable, I was totally blind to the fact that we had become less like partners and more like roomates.

I never for a moment stopped loving my husband. I simply got so sidetracked by life that I stopped trying to make sure he knew I still loved him. When we hit our breaking point this summer, he said that he no longer knew if he made me happy. That sometimes he felt like I only saw him as another pair of hands to help with the kids and not as the man I loved who I was thrilled to see walk through the door because I missed him. And never was that the case. But it was the case that I had stopped trying. We were coasting and it seemed we were heading downhill.

Faced with the all too real possibillity of the end of our relationship, DH and I took a good look around and decided it was time to make some major changes. We revamped our schdeules to spend more time together. We created a date night every week where we eat after the kids are in bed so we can have real conversation. We started communicating more during the day. We both blog and read each other's blog and talk about the issues we're working on in our lives. We have truly rediscovered one another. He isn't the boy I married way back when, just as I am no longer that girl. But he is still my best friend in the world and the person that KNOWS me and loves me anyway.

This came home to me when we were having a discussion recently and I was angsting (is that a word?!!) about the fact that though my life often looks like the middle american suburban stereotype, I didn't feel like that was me at all. DH pointed out that that wasn't me. And he shocked me by saying that some pastimes that I thought helped define who I was, I didn't even like. It totally rocked my world and that realization is a whole other entry. But what is important is that he KNEW me enough to know something that I didn't even know about myself. And that is exactly what I expect from my soul mate.

And I learned that if I wanted my marriage to thrive I had to live into it the same way I am trying to live into my body and my beliefs. One thing I know, my life continues to be defined by my realtionship with this incredible man. I wouldn't have it any other way, because no matter what, his presence in the world and by my side makes me very happy.