Introspection

Nothing is ever static. All things in life change and evolve. Change and evolution follow different arcs and cycles, sometimes cresting and ebbing like the tides of the ocean, or looping back into perpetual cycles, accelerating or declining along an asymtope, or abruptly ending in some step function.

Marriage and love between two people isn't static either, and is subject to the arcs and cycles of change too. It is my own belief that the human will can influence, and maybe even control to a large extent, the arc and cycle of change in the relationship between two people.

I thought about starting this blog with Angie as a sort of diary to celebrate our own relationship, and our new journey of revitalizing our relationship. After having been in slow, subtle, emotional decline for a rather long time we are now arcing upward along a cresting wave of fulfillment that I can only describe as feeling like the days when we were in college, dating and beginning to fall in love with each other. We never stopped loving each other over the years, but now we are feeding the energy of passion into our relationship as a deliberate decision to direct its course over our remaining lifetime together.

But really, it had to start with me. I did not know exactly when things started to feel different, but they did, and one evening, about a year ago, while walking our dog I started to pray to God to help understand why I was feeling so down inside. My life was pretty good at that point. So why was I feeling so low? The answer did not come to me in a flash, but slowly in bits and fragments like pieces of a puzzle floating in air to collect and fit into a clear mosaic in front of my mind's eye. The realization that I was unhappy because I let my relationship with my wife fall to the vagaries of indifference was there before me with greater crystalline clarity as I pondered the matter for weeks and months. Each time I looked at the matter I saw more detail to what had transpired over time, and where things were possibly going.

I started to research “relationships,” “marriage,” “divorce,” “parenthood, ” numerous books on male-female relationships, and all sources and subjects to try and get a hold on what I was realizing.

The article that did it for me, that was the “aha!”, was the Worshipping Your Wife article in the website of the same name. I have included that website link among those we read. This article was the kernel of my own transformation and the impetus for me to do something about my marriage.