A dear friend pointed out to me recently that perhaps my husband left the marriage - both emotionally and physically - because he couldn't keep up with me. At first that comment made me smile and think "she's just being kind". But, now I think maybe she had a valid point.
I'm a mover and a doer. I do not sit still. No grass grows under my feet. When I don't like something, I rarely just accept it. I'm always looking for solutions, work arounds, better ways. I'm never satisfied with what is in front of me. It's not greed or restlessness that propels me. It's curiosity. It's a sense of "I can do better than this" or "I am interested in that and I'm not going to let the status quo stop me from at least exploring it".
My husband is a passive, quiet, reserved man. He is extremely intelligent, introspective, kind...but very passive. In many ways, he is blessed with a sense of satisfaction with his life, the gifts in his life. He doesn't think much about expanding his world. Oh, he might make an occasional comment such as "I'd like to work as a curator in a museum." But he'd never take it even one step further. He doesn't follow dreams. He maintains the status quo and he is quite satisfied with that.
The status quo works for me for a little while. Then, I'm done with it, ready to move on to the next interesting thing I might cook up in my head.
Getting a boy into college with a sucky GPA and years of academic frustration behind him? No problem. Borrowing a ton of money to pay his tuition and make repairs on my house on one inadequate salary? No problem. Talking the cable company into doing the impossible? No problem.
My friend's point was that perhaps he felt intimidated by me. Left in my dust, so to speak. I don't mean that in an unkind way. But while I was moving ahead - both in my career, in my personal life, and just in my head...he was sitting still. Perfectly content. Dealing with life as it came at him.
The notion of opposites attracting isn't really appropriate here. We're opposites in the way I just described, but in many other ways we are on the same page. I thought we understood each other and that was one of our greatest strengths. Maybe I was all wrong about that. Maybe we didn't understand each other at all.
Maybe this divorce is the right thing to do.
