The topic of emotional intimacy came up in therapy yesterday evening - the ways I look back at intimacy in my relationship with nostalgia that I might want to look for if I ever got in another relationship and the ways intimacy was lacking. And the discussion got me to thinking about how (perceived or real) intimacy may have been what kept me in the relationship for so long. I realized that perceived intimacies were so intertwined throughout the entire relationship with times that intimacy was really lacking. The really good was frequent enough to convince my mind to ignore the inconsistency.
In the first three years of our marriage, we had a pretty consistent date night Wednesday nights during the school year at the Mall of America. We would eat Cousin's Subs in the food court in the park area - this was the years where we watched it transition from Camp Snoopy to Nickelodeon Universe. Then we would play in the arcade before spending some time walking the mall and talking. We went so frequently, we even had a favorite spot to park.
The conversations we had, the connection I felt, the routine time spent together created what felt like a really nice intimacy. These nights at the Mall combined with all the date nights we had trying out all the amazing Mexican restaurants in the Twin Cities are times I look back on with a lot of nostalgia. It's interesting that I had to go to my journals to remember the arguments we had in those early years yet this part of those years is as clear in my mind as if it just happened yesterday.
I also remember a time at the Minnesota zoo. We visited the zoo all the time. We were at the tiger exhibit, our favorite exhibit - I must have thousands of photos of those tigers. He was around the corner, out of my sight, at the glass where a tiger would often lay. I was in an area where I could photograph them without having to shoot through the glass and one tigers suddenly got up and charged towards where I was. There was fencing and a moat between us so I was in no danger at all but he came running out of concern. Why does such a little thing stick so clearly in my mind?
Fast forward to about 7 years in our marriage, when the doctor suggested that the birth control I was on could be a contributing factor to my pelvic floor pain, without a hesitation, he went to his doctor and got a vasectomy so we no longer had to depend on hormonal birth control. And then when in trying to treat my pelvic pain, I developed constant, at times debilitating back and hip pain, I was prescribed an opioid but I mostly avoided taking it because it made me so foggy and I wasn't comfortable driving while on it. But there were a few nights were the pain got so unbearable but I really didn't want to miss choir practice and so he drove me to practice, sat in the back to wait until I was done, and then drove me home. It just seemed like he was really there for me during this time.
With the benefit of hindsight, I suspect my pelvic floor and subsequent hip and back pain were my body's way of trying to tell me he wasn't good for me so there is a lot of conflict in me thinking about how much I really appreciated and loved the way he took care of me while I was dealing with a problem that might have been created because of our dysfunctional relationship.
I was still holding on to the way he responded so well to my pain issues when we separated last summer. It was something that meant so much to me that I allowed it to excuse a lot of in the many years that followed. I remember it actually coming up in a discussion we had last summer, although I don't recall the whole context of that discussion.
The other way I felt intimacy was the way we so seamlessly did life together. Whether it was trying to sell our condo in the Twin Cities just after the housing crash, facing his Dad's illness, picking up and moving across the entire country, or one of the other countless challenges we faced together, we cooperated and communicated so effortlessly. That was even true as we divided our assets and debts in the divorce. There was an intuitiveness in how we solved problems together that always felt unreal to me. Isn't that intimacy? To know someone so well you can work through big things together so effortlessly? To feel that in synch with someone?
When it was us against the world, there was no stopping us. It was only when it turned into him (with or without his mom) against me that we crumbled. I had never thought of it this way before. When it all fell apart so abruptly last year, I kept telling myself "but we did life so well together." There was this huge disconnect between all the times we had faced the world together with the times it felt like we were battling each other.
As long as intimacy wasn't a threat to his own insecurities (and I suspect shame), he was right by my side. The second he perceived something as an attack on him, a wall went up. I think I believed that the relationship couldn't truly be bad if we were so in synch that it felt like we could conquer the world together (as long as I didn't trigger his insecurities).
I don't ever want to be a relationship again where there is that conditional "as long as I don't trigger them or their ____" attached to all the good. And I don't ever want to tolerate a them vs me mentality even if it is just some of the time.
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