Just when I think I have it all figured out, I look away for one minute and when I turn back an alien is looking back at me. I call that alien Husband.

Marriage seems to be like a scientific study in distance. How is it possible that one week we could be separated by hundreds of miles and feel closer than ever, and the next week we are lying next to each other and feel like we are three thousand miles apart?

There doesn’t seem to be any glaring evidence as to why or how this happens. It just seems to be a part of the natural ebb and flow of marriage. Whether I like it or not, marriage is a series of blissful highs and devastating lows, and all kinds of in-betweens. And sometimes, when the stars align just right, you feel the breeze through your hair and a lightness in your heart and you take a ride on the perfect road for as far as it will take you.

Sometimes that road lasts for months, sometimes for just one perfect day. Then, before you know it, you hit a pothole that throws your alignment off and suddenly the person you thought you knew so well takes on unrecognizable features.

When that happens, all that I can do is wake up everyday, hopeful that today will be the day that we find our way back to each other. That the marriage struggles end. That the distance is closed.  In these challenging times, I always find myself back at the drawing board, figuring out new ways to help. Using old techniques that have worked in the past.

Then one day, after an unexpected kiss, a steamy look across the room, or maybe a little time away, the bickering comes to a stop, the connection returns and all is right with the world again.

Until then, the alien in my bed with the beautiful blue eyes looks at me like I have turned a shade of green and sprouted antenna.

Who knows, maybe he is right. Maybe I am the alien. A strange being that took over the body of someone who is kind and loving only to be replaced by something ugly and indistinguishable.

The truth is, we are both aliens, at times, living on planets far and distant from each other.

I look forward to returning to Earth. Until then, I sit in comfort knowing that the gravitational pull will bring us together again.

It always does!

 

Tammy