Speaking of personal growth, here we go. Rob and I are heading to the Kripalu Center in western Massachusetts for a weekend of yoga and meditation. While I wasn't willing to do a workshop specifically for couples, our time there will no doubt bring transformation of some sort. Everyone who goes comes back changed.

I'm already dreading it, which is weird, because I'm a yogi who usually welcomes the opportunity to study with new teachers. I love how the steadiness and equanimity cultivated on the yoga mat make meeting life's challenges off the mat easier, and how each teacher brings unique insight to that process. 

But I have big resistance toward growth with Rob. I guess that's what I was getting at in my last post. If you can muster enough compassion and forgiveness for a difficult or mismatched partner to get over your most serious conflicts, does that mean you have rendered moot the reasons you should not be together, end of story? 

Can you forgive your way out of marital strife and into martial bliss? 

Sure, but my question is: Is that the ONLY path? It's the only one any therapist has seen fit to send me down, and that has been bugging me. How about forgiving but still breaking up anyway? What about those couples who are like best friends and divorce without an ounce of acrimony? (Forget Date my Ex: Jo and Slade. There really are couples like this out there, right?)

That seems more like the path before me, though readers of my blog know I'm dragging my feet, too attached to my cozy life, fearful of separation.

I'll be back next week. Hopefully the Kripalu Center will be fantastic. I'll take the advice of a friend who said to have fun, just don't drink the Kool-Aid. 

I promised a report on my latest trip to upstate New York to take of my father who has Alzheimer's Disease, and the level of support Rob mustered around it. In a nutshell: Dad is much sicker, Rob is more supportive.

My father isn't the only one transformed by his disease. I'm enjoying spending time with him, the man who made my childhood miserable. And Rob is stepping up with phone calls to me while I'm away, flowers upon my return home, and the composure of a good listener and sincerely concerned friend.
Maybe being needed brings out the best in us.

My father's need opened my heart and allowed me to see things between him and me in a new way. I no longer resent his past mistakes or withhold my assistance.

Rob sees me sad over my father's messy decline, and he bolsters me up.

It's a ripple effect — the waves gently wash over our resistance, softening us toward each other.

There are moments when Rob is just the husband I need. 

By September I had tuned out the rehashing of the campaign's policy stances and the reporting on insignificant campaign minutiae as if each detail was an important political development. I made up my mind months ago who I would be voting for. So had all of my friends. Who were these "undecided voters"?

In an October Daily Show skit Jason Jones and Samantha Bee scream at a focus group of them: "Obama wants to socialize healthcare, McCain wants to buy your house. Tax cuts for seniors, or tax cuts for the middle class? One uses a Sharpie, one uses a ballpoint pen. One's black, one's white. One's young, one's old!" Clearly, totally different.

Sam Bee finishes: "Why. Can't. YOU. DECIDE!"

It's comedy, not political analysis. But the point remains: It's not like they are similar. They are nothing alike. Why, then, the waffling?

When is comes to choosing life with or without Rob, the vast differences in circumstances paralyze me. Change is scary, and familiarity comforting. But clearly, sticking with the status quo is not always best. Just ask the millions who elected Obama! 

When times are tough, there's nothing better than a trusty pick-me-up. No, I'm not talking about partaking in vino or vodka — though a glass of Chardonnay is always nice — but using the power of film to empower you.

I'm serious. By flicking on my DVD in my comfy PJs, I have been transported to exotic lands, met hunky men who made me forget the jerk du jour, solved mysteries, and laughed so hard that my tears dried up and poof, my problems were put on pause.

Instead of a shrink, my therapy has always been movies. Not only is it cheaper, but hey, laughter really is the best medicine.

Let's face it. Late night S.O.S. calls to friends can't be too frequent. But feel-good movies are reliable pals any time of day or night.

Putting on — ok, I admit it — Rush Hour and watching the madcap adventures of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker just cracks me up. My mood immediately improves.

Sometimes my movie cocktail is a doubleheader of any Harry Potter film — what can I say, I'm a kid at heart and believe in magic. On dateless Saturday nights when I felt sorry for myself, You've Got Mail sent the message that love was a click away. And it was. Soon after that film, I met my true love and married him.

Other friends have different films they rely on as their trusty pick-me-ups. I just love hearing which ones because my mind has so much piled into it that I forget some of the good ones — like Notting Hill. Loved that one.

With that in mind, FWW has devised a contest for you to share the movie that most helped you through the rocky days of your divorce before you found your happily ever after again. We want your list.

I'm getting ready to leave for a few days...and dreading what this trip will do to our relationship. As I've mentioned previously, Rob doesn't do well when I leave him home. He drinks. But I didn't mention the lowest blow of all.

Last time I went away to take care of my father for a few days, we made it a topic of couples counseling. I was nervous about the potentially difficult days ahead, and our therapist felt we should figure out how Rob could support me during that time. We decided on a standing phone call every morning and evening.

Rob and I talked a few times that week, and the days passed quickly. I was relieved to get home, to see the guy whose phone calls had kept me sane and grounded. But it went like this:

It's midnight. I come into our apartment — after the seven-hour drive — laden with heavy bags. Rob is on the couch watching television, just a few feet away.  

"I'm home!" I say.

"Hi!" he says.

He doesn't get up. He sits there, staring at the screen. I come over for a kiss. Apparently he's watching something earth-shattering, because he keeps his eyes on the screen and doesn't notice me. I go unpack.

And that's it. I felt horribly neglected. I cried over it as I unpacked, in fact. It seemed to me he might have made a show of effort, to let me know he was as glad as I that the trip was over and I had made it back in one piece. But I got nothing. I'm hoping this trip won't end up in a repeat.

I leave in the morning and neither of us has said word one about a phone plan. What does that tell you? It doesn't look good.

Two months into the school year and every week Roxie's homework is due on Friday. She gets these four-page packets on Monday, has all week to work them. This is the routine. It does not change.

Ten-word spelling list, journal page, math page, reading log, and a page to practice her 10 spelling words. Never mind that I think this is a ridiculous amount of work for a first grader.

Never mind that Roxie has visual processing stuff — like everyone in my family has processing stuff — and it makes writing a bear for her. This week she did so much by Tuesday, I gave her Wednesday afternoon off.

Plenty of time, and not much to finish with Sam Thursday night.

Accept they didn't.

Maybe this should not infuriate me. We do this every single week, this homework routine. It does not change.

Sam and I work with her 50-50. I told him Wednesday exactly what needed to be done Thursday. I get home late Thursday night, kids are in bed and it still needs to be done.

I want to be furious with him, but I remember something. Sam has an auditory processing disorder. He does not learn by ear and he does not retain information given verbally — he does not think this is true. But it is.

Most of his family is this way. I've never sat at a quieter dinner table.

And here's impact of learning/processing differences on a relationship — my relationship. Because me, I'm just the opposite. Just like Roxie. My ears are everything.

How I understand the world is conversation and I need lots of it to thrive. Reading is tedious, I'm slow and remember almost nothing.

Sam knows the world with his eyes, it's all visual. The way I get little from a book and don't remember it anyway, that's what conversation is for Sam.

I know these things. If I don't write it down for Sam he will not remember. It's completely counter intuitive to me though, so I forget. And I'm not angry with him, but...

My husband walks across the kitchen floor. I hear a crunching noise and look down, and he has tracked in big clumps of dried dirt on the bottom of his shoes. I say, "Hey, hang on, you're dragging dirt in here." He looks down and says, "Oh, sorry about that," and then picks up a couple of pieces. He then hightails it out of the kitchen, leaving me with several clumps to pick up for him.

Look out; here comes a metaphor.

One of the biggest problems I have with my marriage is the fact that it feels like my husband really did a number on the relationship and essentially screwed everything up, and then once he decided that he wanted to work on the marriage he did his little mea culpa and then left everything for me to clean up.

I'm the one who needs to get over the resentment I have from his behavior. I'm the one who needs to work toward healing my heart enough to trust him to be a loving husband again. As far as he's concerned, everything is peachy because he apologized and decided he wanted to make the marriage work.

But what about those clumps of dirt he dragged into the relationship?

I hate that I'm the one who is left to pick up the pieces. I'm the one who needs therapy to "reopen my heart" — which, by the way, is the phrase our therapist used — but as far as I can tell my husband doesn't have any problems with opening or closing his heart. For a while he didn't seem to care whether I lived or died as long as the kids were taken care of and there was food on the table.

Now he's Mr. Let's-Make-This-Marriage-Work. He wonders why I can't just rejoin the marriage with the full gusto that he displays now.

It's probably because I'm too busy picking up all the dirt he tracked in. 

Ha! Figured out my new blog goal. Turns out it's the same as the old: to have a place to be to-the-bone honest with myself to constantly keep moving forward.

Sometimes I get so caught up in looking for the problems to write about, that it feels like if I'm not working through the problems, I not being real with myself. Feels like it's what I'm supposed to do. But, the thing is, right now the relationship is smooth.

Good even. Better, in a lot of ways than the best of it ever was before, even before I started hating Sam right down to his pinky finger. And, give thanks for that, right. Maybe, just maybe, we'll store up enough good to boulder through the bad when things shift.

And things always shift. Of all the couples I know well enough to know the truth, I can't name a single anyone who hasn't gotten so far out of their grove that divorce was a real thought. A brief thought for some, but everyone, everyone I know has contemplated divorce.

This morning I woke up empty, they way I do when I get too much sleep (read: eight hours).

Mornings are like that for me, everything wrecked in my head and the big empty hollow in my body. When I wake with Sam and feel that all over empty, I think "Oh my god. It's the marriage. I've made a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mistake and I am stuck in my decision."

A few in breaths and I remember. Felt the same in the morning without him. Felt it before him, after him, and with him. It's always been there. It's not discontent with the marriage. It's just plain discontent.

Here's what's changed.

This morning I woke up, and before Sam's eyes were all the way open I was deep into listing off all my middle-of-the-night worries: Not enough time. Not enough money. And how can we do this?