Changes...

About a year and a half ago Kirby and I decided it was time to do something with the big front room of our house that we had intended for our children. We needed to let go some more. We needed to be able to walk through our house without constantly picturing our kids playing and sleeping safely in their beds in that room.

We ended up dividing the room into two, with one part being a dining room and the other a small study for me. It was rather exciting as we didn’t really have a dining room and now we could have friends and family over for meals more often. We painted a feature wall in an almost apple shade of green and put a lovely picture of trees in the centre of it.

The room looked good. We used it. We didn’t forget that we had intended it to be our children’s room, but it made it easier to see it being used differently.

Then we moved house.

We moved mainly to be closer to our nephew, but also because our old house was eighty years old and needed a lot of maintenance. We bought our lovely new home further out of the city near some beautiful wetlands. It was literally love at first sight when we found it.

As we anticipated moving into our home we though about the different things we could do with it, how it would be our home as a couple…

We were very, very excited.

The six month anniversary of our move has come and gone and to be honest the house is pretty much the same as when we moved in. It is our home, but it is not really reflective of who we are as individuals and as a couple.

Recently I thought that perhaps we needed to live in the house for a while before we could decide what we really wanted to do with the rooms, the colours, the textiles… I figured if we gave it time we would see what we wanted to do.

It’s only really been in the last few weeks that I’ve truly realised why we haven’t made any changes yet. Kirby and I still have work to do as a couple. I mean, we always will have work to do for the rest of our lives, but we have work to do in terms of clarifying what works for each of us (colour, sound, light, smell), sharing those ideas with each other and creating common goals that we can work towards. We need to create a vision together – that doesn’t include anyone else, and doesn’t include children.

I’ve been busy in my little mind creating the house of my dreams, but what I like and what I want may not be what Kirby likes and wants. After eight years together and almost seven years of marriage you would think we would have our likes and dislikes permanently imprinted on each other’s brains, but not so!

This weekend Kirby and I will be sitting down together to have a bit of a brain storming session. I’m looking forward to it, but I think Kirby is looking toward it with some trepidation! I have promised that I won’t be stubborn in my ideas – well, not much…

Bye bye, baby, goodbye...

This is going to come as a complete surprise to our friends and family. A few years ago, for about six months, I thought about leaving our marriage. Kirby knows about this, so it won’t come as a surprise to him. I thought about leaving and being on my own – of having a life where I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, and could define it any way I pleased. I could have my own house and my own things like I did before I met Kirby – I had a gorgeous little apartment for a while there – just me and Minerva.

These thoughts interrupted me quite significantly, and, basically, scared the you know what out of me. I felt so guilty, and I didn’t know who I could talk to about it. I didn’t want to talk to our family or friends because I felt like such a bad person. I didn’t want to talk to Kirby about it because I didn’t want to hurt him and I wasn’t sure what I really felt. At times I wanted to leave, and at times there was no doubt at all that I wanted to stay as Kirby was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Eventually there came a point where I couldn’t deal with these thoughts and feelings on my own – so I fessed up to Kirbs. You can imagine my surprise when he told me he had had similar thoughts and feelings. It was relief that I wasn’t the only one, coupled with fear that perhaps our marriage was going to end.

Kirby and I talked and talked about how we felt, and eventually came to a realisation. For our entire relationship we had pictured a large part of that being parents to our kids. We were going to be a team raising a couple of children – sharing the highs and lows, teaching them, caring for them, standing together for them. We expected this would happen from the first day we met. Now that this wouldn’t happen – what were we? There was a black hole right where the parenting bit of our relationship would have been, and running away from it seemed the only way to deal with it, except that this also meant running away from each other.

We had relief with the realisation that what we needed to do was redefine our relationship as a couple. We needed to work out who we were as individuals and as partners in life, and that is what we have being doing since. There is certainly never going to be a point where we have it all sorted (where would be the fun in that?), but we are pretty damn happy with our relationship now. To be honest, since opening up to each other about our thoughts of leaving, it’s almost felt like we dated again – getting to know each other again. And that was kind of cool.