when is a marriage over?
Today, I said something to hurt my wife.
I love my wife sometimes. At other times, no one frustrates me more than my wife. Between parents, siblings and friends too close for comfort, it's not even close. My wife walks away with the grammy for the most frustrating person in my life every year. No one can tug at your nerves with the same level of intensity as the person you love. The honeymoon highlights, and extended baecations, eventually give way to the trials of companionship.
The worst thing is it's never that deep, not competing moral ideologies or sociological conflicts about raising children. Instead, it is forgetting to turn on the washing machine or debates on how wide the window should be left open before we retire for the night.
Today, I said something to hurt my wife. Deliberately.
Was it beneath me? Yes.
Did it help the situation? No.
Did it make me feel better? Temporarily.
Did I regret it? Fam…
The same things that make you laugh can make you cry, and the fire that brings you light will frequently find a way to burn you. Why do we allow people close enough to find the things that hurt us, and in moments of weakness, let them tiptoe over lines that should not be crossed? Maybe, it's the story of being human; we live with the legacy of fallen angels and fruits picked from forbidden trees.
She'll get over it.
Most husbands take for granted this phrase, never considering that one day maybe she won't: equally, wives push their partners to the brink of their patience with no thought that one day their favour might expire. Does the well of forgiveness eventually run dry, along with the tears?
There is a naive notion that marriage can survive anything when we have seen the greatest empires reduced to dust, even the Spice Girls broke up.
It's a scary thought. We erupt at each other and retreat to opposite sides of the bed when the sunsets, never wondering if this is it? We don't know it's the last argument until it is. You swim so far into the ocean; it's only when you turn back that you realise you can no longer see the shore. I don't think people realise how fragile and delicate relationships are. You can literally ruin decades of hard work and commitment in a couple of minutes. Every relationship is one word or action away from irreconcilable damage.
Ain't that some scary shit?
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