When I'm spastic with my blogging, I also tend to be spastic with my blog reading. It's like an internal check point; it somehow seems less than fair to poke about in my blog friend's lives when I'm disinclined to share my own.
Silly? Maybe. But it happens, and as it happens, my reader feed screams at me in bold faced type, "You have 17,000,426 unread items. FAIL." And sometimes, just to ease my conscience, or maybe just to ease the nagging sense of leaving things undone, I click the handy little "mark all as read" button and go on my merry way.
I've been trying to be a better blogger, and in turn, a better blog follower. Catching up with the lives of friends I've made here over the years, or re-investing in the inspired lives of bloggers I wouldn't mind making friends with, has been illuminating in ways both good and bad.
For starters, it's sad to realize how many of those in the former category have given up the blogging ghost altogether, and I never said good-bye, or thank you, or let them know they'd be missed.
Mostly, though, I've been staggered by how many huge life changes I've allowed to come and go without comment of commiseration or encouragement or empathy. And I can distill this down to an even finer point: I've been absolutely blindsided by the number of couples calling it quits, even just since the beginning of this year.
It's shocking enough to wander through Facebook and notice how many friends have reverted to their maiden names, or changed their relationship status from "married" to "single" and realize how distanced I really am from so many people I used to know well. People who, in some cases, I remember buying wedding gifts for not so long ago; people who seemed, at the time I did know them well, to have found a perfect happiness, two halves of a spectacular whole.
But it's equally shocking to roam through blogland and discover the news that marriages I long thought of as shining cities on the hill of matrimonial harmony are no more. For some reason, reading back through the pages of bloggers I've never met, never will meet, and never personally interacted with in any way and discovering their lives aren't the pristine, perfect bubbles of marital bliss I'd long imagined them to be has really shaken me awake this week.
That seems a tad bizarre to admit, but its oddness doesn't make it any less true.
Their stories have made me think, and made me question.
Do I take too much for granted, too much of the time?
The uncomfortable answer is yes. I probably do. It's human nature to fall into a sense of complacency and allow relationships to rumble down the tracks on auto-pilot, filled with some strange, ill-conceived confidence that as it was, it shall always be, just because.
And that's just not true.
Relationships require work. Investment. Give and take. Grooming. Care and feeding. Attention. Love and affection. Selflessness.
Assuming a thing that's lasted thirty years will endure for thirty more because it's too entrenched in its existence to do anything but is wrong-headed, short-sighted, and a clear path to the edge of an undesirable shaky precipice. It's an all-too easy trap to fall into, one nearly indiscernible step away from solid ground at a time.
I feel like I've been doing a lot of that wrong-headed assuming lately, however unintentionally.
Too often in recent months, I've allowed myself to sink a bit into the self-serving wallowing that comes with the navel-gazing examination of one's own life as a stand alone entity. Too often, I've taken the freedoms and generosities offered up by my better half, and failed to repay them in kind. Too often, I've been selfish in my interests, my actions, my inactions, and too distracted by me, the person, to wonder, much less notice, the impact on we, the couple. Too often, I've allowed this most important piece of my world to tend and mend and fend for itself.
Too often, I've taken this relationship - and my partner in it - for granted.
That's not a comfortable or nice or happy making realization.
But realizing it is the first step toward changing it.
My relationship with my husband is my most precious treasure. Maybe there's some conventional wisdom out there that says after all these years, he should just know this.
The wisdom of my heart tells me it's a truth well worth reminding him of, every single day, for the rest of my life.
And that's exactly what I plan to do, starting now.
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*Title quote by Aldous Huxley.
