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| Thu, 01-26-2006 - 2:43pm |
I know many of you have told your story about what has brought you here. Being a re-newbie I would like to hear yours (if you're so willing).
Thanks!
Thanks!

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Jessica
Isn't it funny how later we can say "when I was ?teen and didn't know better", yet when we actually were ?teen we knew that we knew it all.... and already "knew better"?
I thought I was all grown up at 18.
Karen ~ wildlucky4me ~
I am pretty new to this board. I have been divorced for a little more than 2 years. I started reading posts here to get an idea of what other's experiences have been - especially now that the xh is engaged to be remarried. It feels like the last two years were so hard and my family thinks I should have been over the divorce by now - but I feel like I am just barely coming to grips with the end of my marriage.
I thought I had a good, decent guy. I think he does still have some good qualities, but he had some pretty bad ones too. We were married for 8 1/2 years and I think the first three were not too bad. It wasn't until after we had been married three years that my xh finally told me how unhappy he was in the marriage. I really hadn't seen many clues at all and was very shocked and surprised. The things he said he didn't like about me were things that were not very changeable and what he said he wanted out of life was pretty different compared to what I wanted. It appeared at that point that we were not very well matched in some regards. I seriously thought of leaving, but he said he still loved me and wanted to stay together - I think mostly because he didn't think he could find another relationship - his words to me were "No other woman will have me".
I tried to work on things and it seemed like things got somewhat better - but my trust had been shaken - who was I really married to? If he had kept so much hidden from me, did we even have a healthy relationship? I starting really looking at the past and realized that we didn't communicate very well and didn't have much depth in our emotional intimacy. I recalled how so often when I'd try to talk about what I was thinking and feeling, he'd shut me down and that he never talked much about what he was thinking or feeling. I had recurring nightmares that I wasn't really married to him.
We had been trying to conceive, and I finally came to the conclusion that we ought to work on the marriage more before we had a child, however, right before I was going to go back on bc, I got pregnant. The xh had sometimes felt distant to me and that intensified the further along I got in the pregnancy. At about 5 or 6 months he made the comment that pregnant women weren't sexy and he didn't touch me again until after our son was 1. He didn't feel like a husband at all - he felt like a friend who was helping another friend get through a pregnancy because the guy responsible had taken off. Several years later, he told me he couldn't bond with our son because he didn't feel bonded to me at the time because I "wasn't romantic enough" - I'd let the romance die in the marriage.
A few months after our son was born, he began isolating himself and spending huge amounts of time surfing the internet or watching TV. He'd rarely interact with us. I thought if I gave him enough time, he'd come around so I rarely got after him about any of that. Things kept deteriorating - he'd blame me for many things he didn't like - when he bothered to talk to me. I got pretty sick (lost more than 30 pounds in a few months time due to being ill) and he just didn't handle it well. All he seemed concerned about was how my illness was affecting him and "what is going to happen to our relationship if you can't do the things I want to do." At about the same time, I was realizing that our son was significantly delayed in his speech and needed help - I took on all the responsibility for getting it for him.
One night, I woke up in the middle of the night because I heard the xh in the pc room messing with himself. I realized then that something was going on and recalled that the pc history was getting deleted often. I did some snooping and found he'd been looking at pornography on the internet on a fairly regular basis (he didn't wipe out all his tracks) for more than two years. Some of it was really nasty stuff. I was totally blown away. I left for a weekend to think about things and decided to come back and work on the marriage. While I was trying to get a counseling appointment set up, I saw an escalation in his porn use - but I didn't confront him about it until the second counseling session.
We went to counseling for awhile - but he didn't think he had a problem. He also said he didn't want to go to counseling anymore (after five sessions) because he wasn't getting anything out of it. He said he loved me and would do anything to make the marriage work. All talk - I saw very little in his behavior to support what he said. He said he'd stop looking at the porn - "no problem". Nine months later, he got back into it. His explanation - he didn't think I'd mind and that if I had a problem with it I'd let him know. I said I did have a problem with it since he'd promised he wouldn't do it, but I wasn't going to tell him what to do or stand over his shoulder and keep watch on him. He then said he just had a 'more liberal attitude' about sex than I did. My gut told me to get out of the marriage - I told him I didn't think I could get past all of it. We decided to divorce.
The divorce was final in about three months time. He wanted to stay friends, but I found I couldn't. I look back over the past two years and it really feels like he wanted to stay 'friends' so he could keep on manipulating and controlling me. At least that is what it felt like. I am in therapy now and changing how I interact with him dramatically - I can look back and see that the way he'd sometimes interact with me was verbally and emotionally abusive. He doesn't appear to be handling the changes I am making very well. He is going to marry again in the fall and I hope it works out - for my son's sake. He has improved as a father, but he is basically a Dad when it is convenient for him. I view him now as a fairly selfish and emotionally-closed-down person who is not very capable of sustaining a healthy relationship.
Back then, he had me pretty convinced that most of the problems were my fault. It took a long time for me to not feel so responsible for messing things up and to not feel so guilty for ending the marriage - I thought maybe I should have tried harder or given him a second chance or did something different. I still loved him for quite some time after the divorce was final. It took a long time to get my head, heart and gut in sync. I do not think he's changed much and I don't think he learned much in all this. He thinks he's changed dramatically and that he is now attracted to a totally different kind of person now - but I have a hard time believing that he changed that much in the four months he spent alone before he started dating again and I doubt he worked that much on things after he started dating.
I didn't want to get divorced, but I look back now and I can't imagine being able to save the marriage at all. I think he'd checked out a long time ago and didn't want to work on it at all.
Hope that's not too long a story....
Abby
Hello Kat - it is really a great idea to initiate this thread. It is sad to see how many different reasons and situations exist for the same "exit". Yet, after reading the stories, I can only congratulate all the girls and ladies for being so strong, so brave, such wonderful women and mothers. All of them.
I am not a regular here, but have been "kicking around" in iVillage since 1996, on different boards. I have been coming here on this one since perhaps 6 years now...
Met my ex while fully "grown up", mid twenties. Got involved, then eventually engaged and married, one kid now 10. Just as all, we had to come to term with the curve balls that life throws at you, but we have been lucky mostly. However, tensions eventually built up, mostly because of different life styles and life choices. Loneliness, etc, you all know that. I would say that faults were on both sides, during that time, for lack of efforts for more open communication.
Eventually, I figured out that he was scr***** the nanny since several years, unbeknown to me but seeing our daughter (then 5yrs old) all together and asking her to lie to me about it. Imagine that.
Within 3 months, I moved across the world, found an apartment, a good job, kept a good talking relationship with him by not needing his money (to this day he is not paying a penny, but still got his cards for emergencies). this was 4 yrs ago. They are still together, however to this day my ex does not want to formalize a divorce.
I am doing well, but quite lonely. My girl lives with me, and I have little time between work and her to do much else... I guess there is a time for everything in life, and if I am meant to meet someone else, it will happen. In the meanwhile, I try to compose a life with what I have, and to overcome the anger that sometimes still surface - with time, less and less.
If anybody has the idea to publish a book with all our stories, I do NOT give rights. Just to be on the safe side... sorry girls. It would be a great book though.
I have been seperated since January 05 and have been posting here since then. I've copied a letter I wrote to a distant friend who questioned if x and I should try to work it out. My story is so long and many of the women here have heard it over the year +, but here it is in a nutshell.
We were in counseling twice and things improved both times. In the end X told me he was like an obese person who loses weight only to slip back into old patterns unable to stop himself. There were so many problems that I can’t even articulate it all. X was always depressed and always had low self esteem and I continually believed that I could cheer him on and keep him going. He threatened suicide from time to time and I would forget about how much that scared me in the saner times. We hardly ever fought and I felt so comfortable with him. After DD was born he began to treat me differently. He would be sarcastic and cold to me. Once DS was born things deteriorated rapidly. He drank a lot, hated his job, and would often stay up late at night playing video games or looking at pornography on the computer. Years later I would realize he was addicted to all of these things and he was not interested in stopping. When he wanted a new job, but couldn’t think of a single positive thing to say about himself on his resume we went into counseling for the first time. The therapist immediately suggested X take anti-depressants. He started the medication, got a new job and seemed to be happier than I’d seen him in years. I thought we were so happy and we decided that we were ready to end our counseling sessions. X was so enlivened that he went to his new job, met another woman and fell "in love" with her. She turned him down and broke his heart. He in turn blamed me and told me I was selfish for not nursing his broken heart while he had torn mine out and stomped on it. He drank and drank and was practically only sober when he was at work. He told me he never loved me and that he was never attracted to me and we went back into counseling, with me firmly optimistic and sure that I could show him that he did love me and our family. He told me that in order for him to stay with me I had to lose weight (I still hadn’t lost all the weight from my last pregnancy) and grow my hair long. He wanted me to wear a certain type of clothing and look a certain way for him and while it wasn’t my style, I was happy to do it because he was after all my husband and I loved him and I would do anything to keep him happy.
Things seemed to be on the right track until he got fired from his job (quite possibly for harassing the above woman). He then refused to look for a new job, spent his days drinking, sleeping on the couch, playing video games and surfing the internet for porn. In the meantime I sprang into action, determined not to let our family lose our home. I got a low paying, but fulfilling job as a before and after school program director with our park district. I loved the job, but the hours were terrible, I worked a split shift and left for work with my children at 6am to return with them at 6:30pm. I would come home to terrible messes and X would literally refuse to help me with anything, from maintaining our household to caring for the children. He needed help, but was still in therapy and was also on medication and he felt he was on the right track. I was exhausted and my children resented ME because I stopped being an at home mother and was now working so much. X would threaten to kill himself often at this point and I would worry that one day I’d come home with the children and find him dead. Nothing I did would please him and he didn’t want to have anything to do with the kids or me. It was like living with a ghost. He was here, but not here and we were all miserable.
One day in January ’04 while the kids were at school he packed his things and left. I was there as he did it and on his way out he told me he was glad he wouldn’t have to break it to the children that he was gone. They were devastated of course and a few days later he called crying that he wanted me to let him come back home. He and I met for dinner and he explained to me that he was a changed man, that he saw what he was missing. I wasn’t ready to allow him back right away, but within two weeks he was living with us and things were going well again for a short time.
He got a job at Target and walked out one day (he’s an engineer, but wouldn’t even look for that type of work). He lay on the couch so much that it is still dented from his body and once again it was like living with a shadow. I felt very much like I was a single mother to three children –one of them surly, messy and rude. One day after he refused to come get DD from my work (she was having a very bad day and wanted to go home) I was angry and insisted we have a conversation about what was going on. He refused. The following day I tried again and he told me point blank, “This is the way I am and if you don’t like it you can call a divorce attorney.”. I seriously had a physical reaction to that statement. You would think I would be sad to hear that he was giving up on his family yet again, but instead I felt like a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. It was honestly one of the best days of my life. I no longer had to give and give while he didn’t care.
If you asked him to tell you what happened you would get the same story. He admits that he only took and took and wasn’t willing to give anything to keep our family going. I once asked him what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten a job so quickly after he lost his and he told me we’d have become homeless. When asked why he told me because he didn’t care.
I know in my heart I deserve better. I was a giving caring wife who would have done anything for him and he never returned the love and affection. He had very little to do with his children who to this day admire and worship the ground he walks on, yet he still forgets to call them and bounces child support checks. He lives in Connecticut with his mother now because even after living in the Chicago area for 18 years he didn’t have a single friend. I know he regrets it all, but I can never ever trust him again. I can only have the rug pulled out from under me so many times before I stop allowing it. My life is more full without him in it and while the ones who suffer the most are our wonderful children I know that it’s better for them to see us split up than to see their mother taken advantage of. I could never live with myself knowing that I portrayed a terrible example of what marriage should be to them. I want them to receive love in their future marriages in addition to giving it. I know without a doubt in my heart that I tried as hard as is humanly possible.
Long enough for ya? LOL
Melanie
I guess I'm a newbie. I've been lurking here for a while, just reading and taking everything in, so here goes.
I filed for divorce on Aug. 29, 2005 after an argument in which he told me he cheated, TWICE, with the same woman. I think I could have handled one cheat (followed by counseling), but two is a dealbreaker, so I filed. My 20th anniversary fell on Sept. 7, 2005.
It's now the end of January of 2006, and we're close to the six-month date in which we should be finalizing. I hope it's soon, as I'm tired of the waiting game.
The reason I filed? Well, I know him pretty well, and I now seriously doubt the whole cheating thing. However, I have been miserable for the better part of 10 years, and with me being a SAHM from 1990 through 2000 doing minor part-time work to get out of the house, I knew I needed a better paying job in order to support me and my two children (DD, 15, and DS, 11).
I need to backtrack just a bit: At the end of 1999, that's when things for me began to unravel. I blew up an ovarian cyst on the right side and woke up in the middle of the night thinking a bomb had gone off in my gut. The pain was intense as labor. I took Advil, and spent the night feeling awful. He was mad that I kept him up half the night, and when I finally told him I was ready to go to the hospital, he refused to take me because he was upset I hadn't had sex with him earlier that night because I didn't feel well (probably before the cyst ruptured).
At 5:30 am and in fairly great pain, I drove myself to the hospital. They ran all sorts of tests and stuck an IV in my arm thinking I had appendicitis and were prepping me for surgery. I called him at work and told him I might be going in for surgery, do you think you could stop by? ;) He was actually mad that he had to leave work to be with me! Grrr...
Anyway, his obsession with money, his job, his golf, his Lions Club and porn pushed me pretty far. The absolute final straw came when I found porn DVDs under my couch where my kids could find them. He finally moved them somewhere else, and I started sleeping on said couch. I filed in August '05, he moved out that October, and frankly, I couldn't be happier. My childen and I no longer walk on eggshells for fear of pissing him off, they both made the Honor Roll, and we're pretty darn happy.
If you got this far, thanks for reading!
Lisa
I've already survived divorce. So I lurk here and post whenever I feel I can help someone else through it.
Quick version.
Met my exhusband when I was 19, he was my first boyfriend. He joined the navy we got married at 20. In 1998 he started acting weird towards me, stopped wanting to have sex, made me practically beg for it, would act like everything I said annoyed him, when I would ask what was wrong he'd say he was just tired, I noticed other changes in his behavior whereas a year prior i would have to practically kick him out of bed to go to work in the morning and make sure he brushed his teeth because he was so tired and it was so early all of a sudden he was getting up, shaving, showering, putting on cologne, again confronted him asked him if he was seeing someone, no, just tired with work etc. Finally one night tired of the eye rolling and him being mad at me for some unknown reason I pushed him to tell me and he said he didn't love me anymore and wanted a divorce, he left that night. I got him to come home to discuss it with me, we agreed to work on it, the entire week one of his coworkers called every single night...suspicious, obviously. Then on the 4th day he said it's over. Didn't want it anymore and wanted a divorce, of course he told his father that same morning we were going to try and work it out but I guess having someone yak in your ear all day at work, helped that process along.
He moved out. I started counseling. When I saw my couch drive by one night and his mistress in the truck with him I flipped my lid. I called an attorney and started the ball rolling, I'm pretty sure if I had never called an attorney we'd still be married but living seperate lives because as much as he claimed he wanted a divorce apparently he felt tinkerbell put it all in motion and he didn't have to lift a finger to do anything for it, so my last act in our marriage was to find an attorney to end it.
I went to counseling for a year, I put myself back through college working full time and going to college full time, full 18 credits a semester, it was grueling but I graduated on my 30th birthday. Got a better job, moved to a better apartment and life is good.
There is life after divorce, it seems so awful and difficult to remotely imagine while in the hell of it all, but I'm here to say that it's beyond better, my divorce was a blessing actually, my life is not only better but I see things in such a better way now.
Hang in there to anyone just starting the process.
Thank you all for sharing.
I guess maybe I should tell you my story too (duhhh)
I met stbx when I was 19. I wasn't looking for a serious committment but due to a string of events we ended up living together. Next thing I knew I was pregnant. At that time I was ready to leave him (drinking, drug use, being a dolt) but I decided to do the "right thing" and tried to make it work. After 5 yrs together, while pregnant w/ 2nd DD we married. There were ups and downs for our years but his drinking and drug use as well as mind-game and verbal abuse got worse. There were a few incidents of physical abuse but so isolated that I never saw it as anything more. I became very unhappy in our relationship as I became his surrogate mother and sex toy. Not his partner. To make a long story short I was unhappy but determined to make a go of it when I found out he cheated. Not only did he cheat but he brought the woman in to OUR house and "did the deed" in OUR bed. I slept in that bed for a year after this before I found out. He claims it was a one time thing but deep in my heart I KNOW that's not true. I can read that man and I absolutly know he wasn't telling me everything. I want to be the woman I want my girls to grow up to be. I don't want them to be with/stay with a man like him when they have their relationships. I want something more healthy for them. We are now in the process of divorce. The final date hasn't been set as the docket is very back-logged her for family court.
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