Wildlife Refuge Date

As a part of our commitment to healing our relationship from the slings and arrows of Gerick’s earlier emotional abuse, my husband and I have decided that we’re to have regular dates to go out together alone and do fun, positive things. For too long, most of our interactions were either business of life stuff or negative discussions revolving around what was wrong.

Its been cooler for the last couple of days. We’ve had cloud cover and even sprinkles. That streak was to end by this afternoon, but the morning was still to be cool, and since I wilt in heat we left at 8 am to drive to a wildlife refuge along the Columbia River. It was a bit of a drive, but not too taxing, and traffic was very light. We talked about how recent issues are affecting us and where our goals are and suchlike as we rode and then later after we parked and walked around.

Its all very low level land with many small ponds or lakes and water canals. Its mainly a bird-watching place with great blue herons, geese, seagulls, robins, swallows, thrushes, gold finches, and many others. They’ve planted trees all over, but most of it is either by the river or wide swaths of thick grasslands. The whole thing is by rolling forested hills and its quite picturesque. I’m guessing its spectacular during autumn’s bird migrations!

Gerick and I walked at least 6 miles just exploring all the paths and roads. It looked like parts of it were a 2-lane highway once upon a time, but that got moved further inland, away from the river. But it left all these roads… now nature was being allowed to reclaim parts of it again.

I was grateful for my husband’s newly found mature and peaceful attitude. He’s usually extremely tense and defensive unless he’s engrossed in happy socializations– he takes life far too seriously far too often, and especially with me in the last year. Just a few weeks ago I told him I couldn’t take living with him like this anymore, he had to shift his behavior in some fundamental ways and stay consistent in his improvement or we were going to have to start working out other living arrangements. I had enough misery and stress, and easily 80% of it or more was coming from him.

He seemed to have heard me at last, and shifted his attitude, approach, and delivery. Things are much more mellow and now we’re focusing on healing things between us because his douchebaggery over many months frayed nerves and left me feeling worn out and bitter. I am cautious, because he’s improved before for a few days or a week or two and then gone right back into being a massive dick. However, its going on weeks now and there does seem to be a deep change. Hopefully this excessively long episode of negativity is over.

I don’t have room in my heart for another. I’m exhausted.

The rest of the day was pretty mellow. The sun came out and it began to heat up so we drove home. I played Skyrim and the guys took over the kitchen making a big pot of chicken marzetti and two cheesecakes. Then we sat down to eat dinner and desert and watch a movie. Lovely way to end the weekend!