Marital Skeletons
You know, there is so much more to love letters than just putting pen to paper. But in order to understand the evolution of love letters, we must first uncover the way they shaped our relationships.
Or at least, how they shaped the trajectory of my relationship with my husband.
My husband and I wrote love letters to each other for DECADES!
As we got older, I felt we lost touch with the art which was the foundation of our relationship. We stopped writing. Maybe it was because we lived together. Maybe we had evolved, maybe letters were just a game for young lovers. And we had grown beyond that….. Except, I couldn’t help but notice, when the poems, the letters, and the art of our togetherness faded, there was disconnect between us.
“Adulthood” got in the way of our world. Mangled green vines grew in the garden of our love, strangling the rosebuds which once bloomed inside.
“I felt we lost touch with the art which was the foundation of our relationship. We stopped writing. Maybe it was because we lived together. Maybe we had evolved, maybe letters were just a game for young lovers. And we had grown beyond that….. Except, I couldn’t help but notice, when the poems, the letters, and the art of our togetherness faded, there was disconnect between us.”
We stopped communicating entirely, stopped listening, stopped sending and receiving. We just….. stopped.
Exhaustion, fatigue, burnout, and stress were at the core of our relationship. So even when we DID finally have time to connect it was met with sleepy eyes and broken thoughts of hope. Our date nights were short and sweet because we were counting down the moments to bed.
What once was a vibrant field of colorful blooming pages, each filled with an eternity of love songs and romantic proclamations, dwindled into hallmark cards and gift boxes of empty gestures marked by bold circled calendar days.
Nothing really meant anything. I felt sad, and tired…. and lonely. Really f*cking lonely.
I figured it was over between us. What could we possibly do to resurrect this love? How do you pump life back into a balloon with a hole in it? How do you rake out the weeds when they’ve choked out the roses?
For whatever reason - be it exhaustion or unwellness - I downloaded Tik Tok in the Spring of 2020. I decided to film us a little each day.
I thought to myself, if I could (re)-capture the missing pieces, if I could expose the vines, the weeds, and expose the truth, I’d be able to show him proof that something was missing between us.
Then he’d see… he’d have to see how ‘bad’ things had gotten.
Every day I’d record one small moment. A simple interaction with each other. From cooking to house hold chores, or a conversation with our children.
For 5 years, over and over I’d hit record…. except it switched from filming him to “catch” us in our spiral… to filming his reactions. His silliness… and his ‘nonsense’. I filmed his smile, and his [SAD] attempts to flirt. I filmed his sweet gestures, and even the grumpy ones. And mine too!
Red button, after red button, after red button …. I kept recording. And found at the heart of our suffering were two people who just really wanted to be together. Two people who WANTED to work it out. Two people who really still loved the HELL out of each other, and would do ANYTHING to support each other.
I originally did this ‘experiment’ to expose the preverbal ‘leak’ in the boat. Except, what I discovered through this experience was how much I fucking MISSED him. That really the soul of my sadness was the deep grief of how our love story evolved into something new and beautiful. And that our love hadn’t actually disappeared at all. It was just being expressed an entirely new way. Ultimately, it took 5 years of adventures, storytelling, and vulnerability to see it all in front of me. Through this tapestry of videos, I was able to reflect on my marriage in a way I never thought to do because I was so consumed with the belief my marriage was already dead.
“I was so consumed with the belief my marriage was already dead”
Somewhere along the way, my Tik Tok account became a living love letter to my husband. A tapestry of our relationship, a testimony to my deep and profound love for him, and my renewed source of commitment to our family.
And I found his love in return.
Right where I never expected to find it, in the closet with the Skelton lovers.
Now I can see why those videos were the missing piece of our marriage. Not because it excavated what was lost, but because they found what love had buried, a story that never truly really left us wrapped in HUNDREDS of love filmed letters.
Sometimes you’ve got to unEarth the skeletons in order to let the roses bloom again.
Sealed in Fire & Fate,
Robin
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