Interpretation Considerations
My Realization
Some background before I give you what I realized. For the past three months, since I became pregnant in fact, my husband and I have been sleeping in separate beds. This arrangement started because I could not get a good night's sleep and had been struggling to sleep for over a week. I needed to sleep to be able to function at work and home and with the added exhaustion of pregnancy the lack of sleep had been making me a very unhappy and irritable person. I found that when my husband slept in another bed that I was able to fall asleep quickly (unheard of!) and stay asleep throughout the night. If I got up to use the restroom in the night I would fall back to sleep quickly as well. It was as if all my sleep issues were resolves overnight!!
Recently my husband has been hounding me to allow him to sleep in our bed again. I am not against him doing this but I worry that my wonderful sleep will disappear and that I will be back to square one. Thus far, every time we have tried to sleep together I have struggled to sleep. Either I can't fall asleep or I fall asleep but when I wake up I can't return to sleep. My heart pounds and I am very aware of my husband's energy. Something about it unsettles me and I can't sleep.
Last night we tried again unsuccessfully to sleep together. My husband fell asleep instantly (he always does) and I sat reading my book as normal. Then, when I tried to settle down to sleep I couldn't. I was wide awake. Two hours passed without my being able to fall asleep. I asked my husband to leave and he did. He had told me that he would if I asked. So I fell asleep within 30 minutes of him leaving. Then at 5:30am this morning he returned to the bed. Within moments of him getting into bed I woke up (I am a light sleeper). Once I knew he was in bed I got irritated and could not go back to sleep. He was not suppose to come back to bed! When I asked him to leave he slammed the door and went for a run. Of course I could not go back to sleep after that, so sat thinking about everything.
My husband is convinced that if we don't sleep together our marriage is doomed. He keeps saying it and has said it so much that I have begun to wonder if he is right. But I know that statistics say that 30-40% of couples sleep in separate beds, so it can't be true that it means doom to the marriage, right?
The End?
As I contemplated this, I began to remember something from a while ago. The memory just kind of popped into my mind. A couple of years ago, after the birth of my son, when I was contemplating having another child, I took some time to feel out the idea. When I say "feel out", I mean that I intuitively looked for the feeling that accompanied the idea of having another child. This is what I had forgotten and was now very much aware of - the feeling I had back then was of death. The feeling was an ominous one. When I felt the idea over, the feeling "baby" had was "death". I shudder to think about it even now.
Then it all began to click. Remember how I kept feeling that I would lose this baby? How I thought that this baby would be ill or deformed or die? Well I felt that way because the feeling is there, still present, even after all these years. It is the same feeling I had when I initially considered having a third child.
The final aspect of the realization I had this morning is that I recognize that it is possible, even likely, that I misinterpreted the feeling. This is not unheard of, especially when it comes to interpreting one's own life circumstances. We tend to jump to conclusions and those conclusions tend to be the worst case scenario. In this case, the death or ill fate of a child. In my universe this would be the worst thing that could happen to me in this life. To lose a child is just unimaginable to me. So naturally that is what I concluded from the feeling. Death must mean death, right?
However, when tuning into one's intuition feelings can be deceptive in that our fears come into play. The feeling of death, or a finality to something, can mean many things. If I had been giving a person a reading, encountering that feeling would have led me to interpret that that person was about to experience a conclusion or ending to some aspect of their life. This doesn't necessarily mean death, and in most cases, 99%, does not mean death.
So in reevaluating my initial feeling associated with this child I realize that this child is associated with an ending of some aspect or cycle in my life. What cycle is only speculative. It is yet to be known. But this morning, after all my husband's considerations about us not sleeping in the same bed hit me, I thought that the end must be an end to our marriage. In my universe this ending would be almost as devastating to me as losing a child.
Of course, it could mean the end of us living in this house or the end of my career as a teacher or the end of a host of other things. To jump to conclusions that it means the end of my marriage is simply just me being fearful. BUT it is possible considering the turmoil my marriage has been going through since I found out I was pregnant. In the past I did not put much thought into ever having to confront the death feeling because I had a solution: don't get pregnant. Ha! What a fool I was!
The Future?
Of course, as analytical as I am, I must go through the possibility of an end to my marriage in my mind. Overall it is not totally abhorrent to me. There are some areas of my life that would improve and then some that won't. For example, to be able to sleep alone and thus well means a whole lot to me. Only someone who has experience some form of insomnia for any length of time will understand why sleep is so important to me. It ranks way up there in my list of life necessities to be happy. I am not a very nice person when I have not slept well. Since sleeping alone I often wake up feeling rested and feeling content. This is completely unheard of for me!
On the negative end of the spectrum is that I would lose a wonderful life partner and father. My family would be split apart and so much unease would result. My kids would be the most affected and most likely negatively, especially this unborn baby.
And so I have to wonder, is getting good sleep really worth it?
But then, sleep is not the sole issue, it is just something my husband wants to fixate on for now. Our marriage isn't perfect by any means, even when sleeping in the same bed. Once the issue of sleeping apart is past and my husband has his way, what then?
I hate to think of my partner, the person I considered "The One" my whole life, would suddenly become "The Ex". I intend to make sure that doesn't happens but I don't know how to do that. With all the other issues I have been dealing with - mainly work issues - and all the responsibilities of motherhood, I am left with so little energy at the end of the day that I have no energy or patience left when it comes to marriage issues.
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