Love is not a spectator sport.

I’ve been writing around the topic for a while now, and avoiding the words I need to write is not helping me be the best writer I can be. If you pay any attention to my writing, you might have noticed. I’ve been holding back from important, concrete words. The primary relationship in my life, my marriage, is dissolving. It hurts like broken glass in my fingertips. It aches in every joint, sours my stomach, and closes my throat.

No matter how often and how deeply I review the issues at hand, I can’t make this work. I can’t make this relationship into something it isn’t. There’s no point in laying blame and trying to exculpate myself from fault, because I know that I am at fault for a lot. However, relationships have to be partnerships, and partners negotiate, constantly. When partners stop negotiating, relationships stop working. Eventually, the time comes when there is nothing of what brought you together anymore. You find that you’re no longer looking in the same direction, and you’re just marking off days on the calendar. You’re just watching the days pass, not living them because the life that’s in them, well, it’s painful.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. I used to love Valentine’s Day, especially the run-up to it. All that anticipation, the waiting, the build-up. Valentine’s Day is love’s answer to Christmas. If you were to ask me, and you probably shouldn’t, Valentine’s Day is for couples what Christmas is for children. The problem with Valentine’s Day is that, if you have no valentine, you have just another day when all around you, people are hugging it up. The day is even worse if you are in the middle of a floundering relationship. You are bombarded with everything you are not. Your failure accosts you.

Love is not something you “do” so that other people, people outside of your relationship see how awesome and amazing you are at love. Love, like character, is what you do when you don’t have an audience. When it’s just the two of you in the house, that’s when you know if there’s love there, or if it’s just an endurance contest.

There’s no question in my mind that marriage is a marathon. In a marriage, there will be the highs and lows spoken in vows. Maybe it’s the highs and the lows that are the easy parts. We can be cheerleaders when goals are achieved, we can open the champagne, give hugs, and raise a toast. We can equally hold a hand, dry a tear, and give a different kind of hug when times are tough. Those times aren’t actually the tough times – we have a purpose in our partner’s life at those times. Whether we’re cheering or consoling, we have a focused purpose in the relationship.

The other days, those are challenge. The doldrums of the relationship when there’s no rallying cry needed to get the kids to school, the bills paid, and the lawn cut. When life is just another day on the calendar with no special event inked in the box. Those days will make or break the relationship. Those days are the ones when, if you cannot pull up a kind a word, if you cannot find a reason to be grateful that you are in each other’s lives, if you do not see a reason for a hug…those are the days on which the partnership begins to erode.

Once the reasons for being together begin seeping out of the relationship like water between rocks, the cracks expand quickly. Fissures open wider, ice dams form, and the rocks split and fall. Nothing built on this fragile foundation will stand; and, when the structure collapses, it hurts like hell. Inside, there is always a ripping sensation. A slightly nauseated, yet compelled to eat to keep myself from talking or crying, urge.

There’s a part of me that wants to walk up to strangers and say, “Please, just listen to me; I need to talk.” That’s probably the part writing this post. In opposition to the attention-starved lonely girl who wants to talk is the scared, private woman that wants to shut everyone out and not let you see this shame, this failure. That’s the part responsible for writing circuitously around my life. This is a difficult dichotomy to resolve, but I don’t want you to solve my problems, or even offer advice. I find myself saying to those who keep offering their wisdom, ‘that’s not going to work for me.”

I just need to get these words out of me. The release is cathartic, therapeutic. I need to write them down and let them be what they are so that I release them and the emotions associated with them. You can turn away if you want or need to; I’m fine with that. Your turning away doesn’t add to my pain, nor does your watching and reading make this loss easier.

Love is not a spectator sport.