Anyone else out there feel like marriage is a prison sentence? Sometimes, I feel like I am marking off the days one bowl of rice at a time.

One of my favorite mantras in life is “Fake it to Make it”. I think one of my good yoga friends gave that to me.  A while back when I was feeling really rotten about being married, one of my best friends since college decided to make it her mission to “save” my marriage. She sent me this DVD called Fireproof. It definitely has religious overtones, but net-net, it’s an excellent example of the “hard work” marriage requires when you are working for it to succeed. If you are having issues in your relationship, and want to try something or feel like you’ve hit rock bottom, I recommend watching it with your husband. It may buy you a couple of years.

Going from almost 10,000 square feet to maybe a quarter of that in living space, there’s no avoiding things. There’s very little privacy and when things are not going well, it is impossible to hide. I’m not going to toot my own horn here and talk about what a great wife I am and what a toad Cliff is because I think all that is pretty obvious and I don’t want to be redundant. I just want to vent. Does anyone else wake up feeling dazed and confused? I wake up and think, why am I not lying next to Mickey Rourke (circa 1980′s in 9 & 1/2 wks). I know what Cliff is thinking. He’s thinking, “Why won’t she let it go?”

Why don’t I just let it go? Wouldn’t life just be easier for everyone? In some ways, I feel like I have been “letting things go”. I’m still here, right? Most of the time, when I finally do “let it pass” it’s because I’m just tired of being angry and scowling. Does every marriage have an argument track on a loop that just keeps repeating?

I have seen a lot of different types of marriages in my life. After moving to Japan, I have never been more conscious of the fact that many marriages center on the kids. Between the over-scheduling and the constant driving hither and thither, the family nests, and entire hotels with twin beds only, it is pretty obvious what is important and what has been deemed not so much. I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know if you feel inner sadness on a regular basis if it is your issue to “get over it” or time for a visit to the doctor and a Prozac prescription. I wish husbands valued their wives more and treated them more like girlfriends. I wish Hollywood and Disney would quite making fairy tales that finish with happy endings, but no one wants to pay $30.00 to watch that movie on a date night.

Sorry for being so sour. I promise to be more genki my next blog. I know every type of relationship has its seasons and this too shall pass. Thanks for reading and hanging in there with me. I’ll keeping waiting for the Spring.

Until next time…