One thing that I struggle with a lot is the question everyone (or at least I hope everyone) faces in a relationship - Am I Enough?
For me, this question has re-emerged as of last night at dinner. For approximately 20 minutes, my husband proceeded to play a game on his cell phone while we waited for our food. In the middle of his game, he did go to the restroom, but then went right back to his game. As I sat in silence, the question hit me again, am I enough for him??
This hasn't been a stressing point in my life until the last couple years. I'm pretty sure that it started when we let a family friend's 18-yr old daughter live with us so she could finish her schooling. Said girl decided to quit her job, only do 1/3 of her home school work, then drop out of high school because she knew it was easier to walk all over my husband and I. We fed her, clothed her, provided car insurance for her, let her use our vehicles and run out our fuel, provided her cell phone, and my husband even let her use his tablet. That's where it got shady. I got home every night after working 10 hr days, cooked a meal and our house guest decided she was going to help around the house by doing dishes. That was all well and good until she started complaining to my husband that I dirtied too many while cooking and that I should soak and scrub the dishes I use as I cooked - it was only fair. So I reluctantly agreed. Eventually, I was the one making the food and cleaning after the meals. That's about when I just gave up. But I thought I was imagining my husband taking an 18yr old girls side over mine. Later down the road, I shared a private conversation with my husband about how I felt like he was choosing an 18yr old over his own wife and how having to work 50+ hr work weeks, then come home and cook and do the dishes and take out the trash. And then on the weekends when I slept until noon, I'd get a lecture. A couple days later, a large verbal argument broke out and she mentioned details of the conversation I had with my husband (and my husband only). This conversation was had over Google's "Hangouts" app. I then proceeded to tell my husband that I felt emotionally betrayed and sent him a link to a Focus on the Family surviving emotional affairs articles. My husband then asked me if I told her that she was causing us to need to think about a divorce. HOW THE HELL DID SHE KNOW WHAT I SENT MY HUSBAND?! It wasn't until my husband went to the bathroom that night without his phone that I figured it out. I sent him a Hangouts message, and his phone chimed on our headboard. Then the hangouts message went to "read" while his cell phone was still sitting next to me. The little leech logged into his hangouts on his tablet and was actively (and had been actively) reading our private conversations. My husband took back his tablet, factory reset it and told her she needed to call her father and figure out a new place to live because "his wife and his marriage was worth more to him than her and her invasive, destructive poisonous actions".
YES, my husband stood for me and was not a cheating bastard. But in the time when she knew the things I told only to my husband, when she used it against me and my marriage; that is when I felt small and insignificant. That is the first time I ever entertained the notion that I was not going to be enough for my husband.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
About a month after the removal of our house guest, I was diagnosed with Uterine Cancer (Good Thursday 2014) and I was given the news that the best and most effective treatment at this stage of the game was full hysterectomy. I would never be able to give my husband children. Enter the demon once again. Again, Am I going to be enough? Through the surgery, my recovery, and onward my husband was an amazing a caring man. Hell, he even bit the bullet and wiped my ass for me because after the surgery I just couldn't! That's love right there. But deep down, I have this hurtful feeling that his great desire to have children and my inability to have them will destroy us. That burning question burns deeper - am I enough?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Now a far more present example. My husband and I had made plans to go to the pistol range with our god-children and their parents. It was realized that the time we planned to go was also the last time to sign up for t-ball, so plans to shoot with them were cancelled. My husband began to pout and refused to do anything. I told him we could still go to the range and have fun. He then said he'd drive me there so I could shoot, but he was just going to sit in the car. Out popped the feeling. Going to the gun range with his wife and having some fun wasn't good enough. He wanted to go with our god-children and their parents and anything less wasn't worth it. Going with me; therefore, wasn't worth it. I wasn't worth it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It's a constant and nagging question that keeps popping up. I popped up initially because a marriage crushing leech entered the picture and manipulated the relationship my husband and I had together. It is true that my husband did NOTHING wrong and the little See You Next Tuesday just made it appear that something was wrong. But for 6 months (out of our 42 months of marriage), I felt smaller and smaller, less and less significant, more and more worthless.
Does one small event in a long, long line of events truly cause that much doubt? Can it continue to hurt so much that a simple 20 minute game at the dinner table instead of conversation, makes you feel like you've failed completely?
The question still remains. Although quiet at the moment... Am I Enough?
Does one small event in a long, long line of events truly cause that much doubt? Can it continue to hurt so much that a simple 20 minute game at the dinner table instead of conversation, makes you feel like you've failed completely?
The question still remains. Although quiet at the moment... Am I Enough?
