Work in Progress... by T

I recall my first year of marriage. When they say you learn something new everyday, you learn about 5 new things about YOURSELF in the first year of marriage...if you're paying attention at least. I remember thinking, "I'm doing really good at this marriage thing..." and before I could even finish my thought, my wife wanted to talk to me about how I don't open up and that she's not really sure if she knows who I am. It was one of the most confusing statements anyone had made to me. I know I can be a bit difficult (maybe that's an understatement), I know I can play the "semantics game" with the best of them, and I listen to people so closely that I've mastered how to answer a question without revealing any substantial information at all - which was probably part of my problem. I didn't want people to know too much about me. I don't know why, but that's how I felt. That was a big problem about myself that I brought right into my marriage. See, I grew up and didn't have the highest self esteem around. With all that said, I talked to my wife more than anyone and shared more of myself with her than anyone else, so I thought I was good to go. She knows things about me that no one else knows. It wasn't that I didn't trust her or that I didn't want to share; the issue was that I wasn't used to thinking about how I felt and never shared ALL of my thoughts. I think all the time but sharing my every thought was crazy talk to me. Why would anyone do that? Furthermore, who would want to know all of these crazy, sporadic, unrelated thoughts? My wife. I don't think I believed it at first but now...now I know better. If only I could go back and tell a younger me, "She's serious. She wants to know every thought", I would. Instead, I found it really easy to get upset and angry when she brought it up. I look back and see I had problems that came from my childhood. I carried them and never saw a problem with not opening up. Although others complained about it, I just thought, "they didn't ask the right questions." There was a wall up that was invisible to me and maybe I didn't care if it was up because I recall telling my wife, "If someone really wants to know what I'm thinking, they'll ask enough questions." I don't know why I thought that was okay, but I did - I've always thought that way. To this day, sharing is not easy for me. At the same time, I realize how important it is that my wife feels like I trust her enough to share the thoughts and feelings that I have, so I make an effort to share those things with her that I thought weren't worth sharing before. Sometimes I forget - after all, I'm human. But I try, and she knows I'm trying, so she's not critical of me when I do forget things. Now I'm surprised when I don't tell her something. I find myself saying "I told you about that", only to realize that I hadn't, more than I'd like to but...I'm trying. I feel like that's what a lot of marriages are lacking and it seems so simple...trying. I've seen a lot of marriages and I've performed a few marriage ceremonies and the advice I feel is the most important is 1) divorce is not an option (unless it's dire like you're being abused or something extreme like that) and 2) don't ever stop trying to make your marriage better. Even when you feel your marriage is strong, work on it, because that's when it's easy for problems to come in and be ignored because "you're good". Treat your marriage as a day by day challenge to be a better spouse. That's what works for me. It's what's working so far. ;-)