We all know the classic story of the ugly duckling that grows to be a swan.  It is a great story to tell kids, girls especially....

The other night my wife and I were having yet another talk about us...oh I should add that it is yet another talk that I started.  I find it weird that in 24 hours we go from a situation where she storms out of therapy and drives off w/o me and I have to get a ride home, to where she has no real desire to talk about things and wonders what there is to talk about (huh???) .  I guess if she meant there is nothing more to talk about, it is over, she is moving out this weekend...that I would get.  But this was there is nothing to talk about because ....well there is nothing to talk about and I have CSI:Miami on the TIVO, wanna watch?

Well I thought there was so I started
What this seems to be all about is a classic issue in marriages but in reverse.
Many women marry a man, he is great raw material, he is cute, funny, not bad looking, had earning potential and you love him.  Listen, before I get a million comments saying that I am making women sound cold, men size up women to on if they are a goos potential girlfriend/wife also, so I am not saying you women only do this.
Anyway....
They meet this guy.  And then they try to chnage things in him that need changing.  That old beat up chair has to go.  His t-shirt collection from every bad heavy metal band of the 70's, it gots to go!
He needs to curse less...whatever it is.  Some men fight this hard, some change, and some marriages die because the guy does not want to change.
Again in the intrest of equal time, men marry a woman and think she will stay exactly as she is till the day she dies.  So we are not innocent.

But I did the woman's mistake.
I met a woman that had a few bumps and bruises in her past, life had not treated her well in some ways, and she had not seen some of things I had seen and done things I had done and read the books and met the people I had.  I am not saying I am some international playboy jetsetter, but I have a curiosity for things and I have discovered that I like to collect certain things and one of them is experiences.  Trust me, there is a part of me that even thought for a bit that my whole desire to leave my wife and get a divorce might be me saying "Marriage, check. Divorce, check. 2nd wife, check ".  I since see that is not the case. So I meet this woman and expose her to things.  To art, plays, places she may never have been to, in the knowledge...or so I thought, maybe it was just hope....that this would all make her bloom.
It did nothing of the sort

So now we are years down the road and my wife seems to have decided she will never bloom, she has no desire to bloom, and she is who she is.  She says that I must have been wrong when I saw this woman underneath all the junk that life had piled on her.  
I still am not sure I was.

The thing is this, I would have taken being wrong about who was under there. I will not take that there was not someone.
Maybe I was wrong.
When I married this duckling...she was never ugly...I thought I would nurture and feed and pet this duckling and it would grow to be a full fledged duck.  Maybe even the duck could fly, some can, some can't.  But it would be a lovely aduly duck.  That is what I planned.
But what if, all this good stuff came and got into the duckling and I was wrong !
What is instead I got a swan!
But I wanted a duck, I married a duck!
I must have been wrong and I really married  baby swan.
Ok, I'll take that. I will even take that maybe the swan might look at me, a duck, and say what the heck do I need to be married to a duck for, and waddle away.   That was the chance I took.
PS: TO REALLY GET THIS ANALOGY YOU NEED TO SORT OF NOT SEE DUCKS AS LESS THAN SWANS, IF IT HELPS, MAKE IT A GOOSE.  JUST SO I AM CLEAR THAT I AM NOT SEEING A SWAN AS BETTER      
But the problem is that I married a duckling that likes being a duckling and refuses to become a duck, a swan, a goose or a '52 Buick!  She seems to think that ducklings grow into ducklings.

The other day online I was reading a list of 500 places everyone needs to see or experience.
As a test I checked off all the ones I had been to.
Then all the ones I wanted to see.
Then I checked all the ones my wife and I had seen together
Then went to her and asked if she had any that I had missed, that she had seen on her own, none.  Then of the ones we had both seen how many had she seen before she met me, one.
We had both, together, been to 50 I think.(I had been to 200)
So 49 places more than before, 49 bags of feed for the duckling that it never would have had had I not been in her life, and she is still a duckling.  

I will accept I was wrong that this was not a duck but something else and all this attention made her become something different than I planned, but it amazes me that all this has brought no growth at all.

Shame is she did not even get this analogy when I tried it on her. I know I can get convuluded at time so I tried it on KP and she got it.

PS : she is back next week for sure
 
They try to make me a duck and I said NO NO NO