I am not sure why, but so far we are beating the odds. (Thank God!) I don't know what makes us different. Why are we able to stay together when others fall apart?
When I first started dating my husband I asked him what he was going to college for and he replied, in a somewhat monotone voice, "I'm going to be a geography teacher."
I looked at him and the sparkle that had been in his eye only a moment before was gone. I said, "Yeah, but what do you really want to be?"
His beautiful eyes lit up again and he said with much enthusiasm, "I really want to be a cop, or work for the FBI!"
The next obvious question from me was, "Well why aren't you doing that?!"
He stated that he had read officers have a high divorce rate. He didn't want to become a statistic.
Now at this point in my life I had been a firefighter, (what caused my injury) and was then working in the medical field. I loved my job. When I was a firefighter I use to laugh when I got my paychecks. I couldn't believe someone was willing to PAY me to have fun. I loved my job as a medical assistant too. I understood the draw to that kind of work. I told my sweetheart that if he had the right person in his life, divorce would not happen. But if he didn't follow his dreams, well then he would be miserable and THAT could lead to divorce....
I really believe that, I wasn't just trying to get him to see what a great gal I am...
but it worked....eventually!
So when I hear that we added another risk factor by our son, I was not phased. We always joke that no one gets out of this marriage alive. I meant it when I said "Til death do us part" And so did he.
Does that mean we haven't had problems? No. We both come from families of divorce, we both have seen what can happen when our friends have separated. We just don't want that. Not for us, and especially not for our kids.
There was a time last year when both of our kids were having medical problems. Things were very stressful in our lives. I became more housebound than ever before so that I could care for the kids...this doesn't fit well with my personality. It was hard. It was hard to see he could leave and go to work every day. I can see how people who deal with a severely disabled child would fall into a pattern, a trap that could lead to divorce.
What makes me so sad is that the one person you should be turning to for support is the person you push away. It happens a lot. I have seen it with some friends and I hear about it all the time. We try to handle things on our own, and end up alienating the one person who understands better than anyone what we are going through....
The web is full of "statistics" about the high divorce rate of any given category. Officer's, parents of children with special needs, chronic pain suffers. I don't know if they are true. I don't see any numbers associated with them to really make it scientific. I do know that we won't succumb to the peer pressure. We will be that annoying old couple that finishes the others sentence. We may live with our son forever....(good grief!) but we will handle that. We will handle all of it, together. That is what the "for better or for worse" part is all about.
If you know someone who has a child with special needs, maybe you could offer to babysit. Let the parents realize they are still a couple....You tend to forget there are two of you in the marriage when you have kids. It feels like there is always someone else there, to tend to, to need you. This is magnified when your child is ill, or disabled. I do understand why marriages fall apart. Trust me I know how it happens. I just refuse to let it happen to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment