Getting to look a lot like It's Over

Mrs. Ray told me tonight she is moving out in the next week or so. Somehow "control" pops up on the conversation, as in "You don't have control over this situation, and it drives you nuts!" OK, I don't have control. And it drives me nuts. But not from a control freak point of view, but from a My Marriage Is Ending And I Don't Want It To point of view.

I pray nearly all the time. I'm "prayed out" or exhausted or out of gas. No, not "or", but "and" all these things. I so desperately want my wife to be with me, but this seems to be a decision she's made that she won't revisit.

She characterized mornings, as we go about our business of going to work that some days I'm "fine" and other days "moody" and tense. Well, I told her not to use such a micrometer on my feelings. I asked her just how I should act, since I did feel more or less the same every day. I think Mrs. Ray was surprised that I felt about the same on a day to day basis.

Once again, she told me her financial arrangements. I am to help pay her apartment rent. I cannot agree to this. I cannot support someone in something I so extremely disagree with It's her decision, she needs to make her own arrangements. I don't know if she can legally compel me to support her. She has a fine job in her own right. (I think she actually makes a few bucks more a month than I do now.) She has a vested Education retirement. I can't see where there would be any required support here.

As she told me the moving-out news, I sat on the couch and began, I don't know, shaking and cringing. Sorry, I wanted to say words to her that would actually be more inflammatory for her. Like "I don't really want you to go" kind of things.

I pray that there is some end to this - particularly that Mrs. Ray will return to me and we can get serious about fixing things up. I pray that I can find enough energy to continue myself, should the worst case happens (she leaves). Realistically, that looks like that's the way it's going. But I cannot stop praying and desiring that my wife will come to my side. Not in a controlling way, but in a way we can share life together equally.