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| Picture of me that the Ex Boyfriend took one night. I tossed most pictures after I got married. |
I found out later he told his best friend he was only physically attracted to me. Very much so.
But .... it was a lesson in my life. I learned from it. It was my first real heartbreak. I might not have handled it well at the time, but I did learn from it.
Then I met my ex husband, literally days after the break up. We went on a first date and I thought "yeah, I don't want to go out with him again." But he was relentless and he got his hooks in me. He was the first guy to propose to me, and my self image was pretty bad. I thought .... no one else will probably ever want me, and he just seemed to love me so much. Seemed being the key word. He was looking for an escape... from his bad childhood. He was looking for me to save him, in a way, I think. I was kinda looking to be saved myself, in a way.
It's funny to look back now and realize it.
One day he came home from work and he was all .... accommodating. He wanted to take me and our son out shopping to get "whatever we wanted." ... and he told me he had something to tell me - but he was afraid that if he did, I'd want an divorce. We had been married for 5 years at the time. Maybe 4. After he finally spilled it, he had told me that he was having feelings with someone he worked with. His manager. She reminded him of his highschool girlfriend (who he had told me he had gotten pregnant and had a daughter with, and that the girls parents had raised the baby as the girls sister. He kept a picture in his wallet. Later on down the line, after we split up and were almost divorced, I said the picture was his cousin, and he confirmed. The story of the daughter was a lie.) He had such strong feelings for her, he wanted to profess them to her. Basically.
I told him that he needed to figure out his shit and I wouldn't sleep with him again until he was committed to our marriage.
He cheated on me with his manager at work. I dreamed about it the night it happened. How weird and disturbing. It was upsetting to me. Extremely. So when he got home from work and I went to talk to him about it, I couldn't. He came home screaming and completely irate. He put me down to such a low level, I was curled up on the kitchen floor with him yelling at me. Even then I didn't realize how he was mentally and emotionally abusing me. I knew it, I think, but I had no idea.
The story went, he went to work - he did maintenance. He'd go in and work overnight, deep cleaning, maintaining, etc.... but when he'd get there - there would still be staff there finishing up work. The manager would be there for a few hours. So - he went to work that night and I guess they started flirting back and forth. Then started making out - and eventually - they left and went back to her place. He showered there, and they went back to work. There's more details I was told, but I'm not going to put them out there. That's the jist. He basically gave me every detail.
Later, he denied it ever happened. He told his family that the only reason he told me that, was because I wouldn't stop pressing him for details. (Added a few months later - apparently his story as of 2006 was that he completely made it all up to see how much I loved him.)
Which I admit, I wouldn't stop pressing for the details. But it was after the fact that he told me he had cheated on me. I needed to know the details to move on. Some woman don't want to know - some women, like me, need to know all the details in order to work through things.
I am a writer, I need to see the story in my head to make sense of things.
Fast forward a bit, she started to treat him differently at work after that, started to bring around guys and flirt infront of him - and it drove him insane. So he quit his job and picked me.
Like an afterthought.
He didn't want to be alone.
So he went out and to "make things right" got a tattoo of a rose and my nick name on the back of his shoulder to show how devoted and in love with me he was.
I told him it was the stupidest thing he'd ever done. He branded my name on him because we were fighting and he knew I was thinking of leaving him. This was his idea to fix things? It wasn't a profession of love, it was guilt.
We ended up trying to work on things .... and ended up going on our first Honeymoon .... to Vegas.
*
I loved the trip. We had fun. But everything seemed a bit awkward.
Especially the following year. He did something and it doesn't really pertain to this, so I won't really discuss it other than to say .... I was going to leave him. It was so awful. Though, loved ones were all "he couldn't have done that" ... etc. He was arrested and when he got home - he went off on me for even THINKING he could have done it. Again, mental and emotional abuse to the point were I was saying I was sorry I didn't believe him and I'd stand by his side. I found out I was pregnant with Noah, and I just became numb and lost.
Fast forward a few more years. Noah had been born premature and I had met someone in the NICU who had become a best friend to me. It was more of a one sided friendship though, I did things for her and she'd ignore me in my time of need most of the time.... but would do just enough to keep me stringed along.
So in 2005.... just before out tenth wedding anniversary ..... my best friend came up to me and told me some stuff. She thought I should know. Mostly she told me he was pursuing her. She told me about conversations they had and I was pissed.
Huge blow out fight happened, with him, not her. He accused me of lying, claimed she was lying and it never even happened.
I was finally starting to grow some balls. I had been beat down for so many years by him. I couldn't deal with being with someone who so blatantly didn't love me.
This is when the abuse REALLY started because I started to stand up for myself.
Needless to say ....... according to him ..... they started to have relations. He would not come home some nights and be at her place. She denied there were any relations between them, she was just trying to be a friend to him. I didn't care. I didn't know WHO to believe - but I just didn't care. Gave him the ultimatum one night when he was over there, I told him if he didn't come home, I was filing for divorce. He didn't come home.
Took a couple months, but I filed for divorce.
But that ultimatum started 8 of some really disturbing months of my life. I grew so much in those months though. I learned I had a voice, I learned I had some balls. I learned how to stand up for myself. I learned how to stand up for my kids.
I lost some weight, I went back to school, I was separated, I started school, I started dating (one person)...
I told that boyfriend, that he could tell me anything. So at the worst possible time (we were naked and sweating at the time) ... he tells me that he wants to start dating this chick he's had a crush on since highschool.
Wow... thanks.
I asked him to leave. He was like "you told me I could tell you anything." I calmly said "And you did, doesn't mean I don't have the right to be upset or need time to work through it, process it." I didn't yell or raise my voice once.
Turned out he was already dating her. And he'd keep coming back to me. One day when I was at school he called me up and he said .... "Is it bad to be with someone just for the sex?" I knew he was talking about me. I think I hung up on him.
Theme of my life, I'm good enough for sex, but that's pretty much it.
I am a one of a kind. I truly try to understand everyone's sides ... I want to understand why people do things. And I do ... I have the gift of being able to put myself in other people's shoes and it may not mean I like their choices or agree with them, but I can understand. That's the writer in me. Desperate to know the whole story and understand the situations.
And a lot of the time, it makes it easy for people to walk on me because I might get mad and upset, but I eventually learn to deal with it.
I am talking vaguely about these experiences, not going into a lot of detail, because there is still pain there from this stuff and it too easily comes to the surface. Some of these experiences were soul crushing for me.
It wasn't easy for me to give up on my marriage. To walk away from ten years. I thought I would get married once and stay that way, like my grandparents. But I have to say, when my divorce was final, it was like thousands of pounds of weight was lifted off my shoulders. Truly. I didn't realize how much baggage I had put on myself because of my first husband. I felt free.
But the pain from all of that (put together), doesn't even compare to the pain of last year with my husband.
Three times I had been cheated on. That's not counting the first boyfriend. He broke up with me before he cheated, have to at least give him credit for that. Twice with my first husband, once with the boyfriend after my marriage. (Now: Note here.... if you are TOLD that your husband cheated on you, by your own husband's stupid lying face, YOU STILL PROCESS THAT AS CHEATING. You still go through all the emotions of a spouse who's been cheated on. You still have all the baggage that was created from that. It doesn't matter if you find out YEARS AND YEARS later - every single word out of his stupid lying face was a lie, including all the CHEATING - you are STILL damaged by it.)
At that point, I just felt useless.... and like no one would want me. Gave up on men. Focused on me and my kids. But I was still out there on dating sites for fun.... I liked the attention and the friendship.
Then I met my husband. Whirl wind that it was.
Never forget our first kiss ..... it was like in the movies .... it was this classic famous picture.
That was our first kiss. I had gotten off the bus (I took a bus down to meet him) and I was looking for my luggage, and all of a sudden his hands were on me, spun me around, he planted his lips on mine and tilted me back.
That's ........ that's a first kiss.
The connection between DB and I was mind blowing. That once in a lifetime thing. I knew that. But.... on the same token, he was telling me he wanted to marry me and I could tell he was terrified to do that. I wasn't going to force him into something he didn't want to do .
And he came with some baggage, and some demons. I didn't really know that when I married him, I knew some of it, but it was all a whirlwind. Met, moved him up to WI, moved in together, he met my kids, I got pregnant, 3 1/2 months later, we were married.
Before we got married he was having conversations with his Ex (and baby momma) ... telling her he missed her (which I'm sure he did - they were together for about 3 years give or take) ... he regretted getting with me, and that I was just a "convenience" ...
I had told him before we met face to face that I felt like my ex husband had just stayed with me because I was convenient and the last thing in the world I wanted was someone to be with me for that reason again. So that was the absolute WORST thing he could say.
On the other hand, I also know that in moments of sadness, anger, etc and so on - people can say things that they mean at the time, BUT don't mean generally.
So his computer was going nuts with someone messaging him and I turned on his monitor and looked and saw the message between them. I was floored, and hurt.
But I told him if he didn't want to be with me, that was fine. I wouldn't keep his child from him like his ex was doing. He could go be with her if he wanted.
He fought to stay.
After that he didn't want to get married - or at least was putting it off until the original date we had picked out. I told him that was fine. Like I said, not going to make him feel like he HAD to marry me.
But one day, he left for work and literally 2 minutes later he called me. He said "Hey, let's go ahead and get married next month" ......
......... wow....... every girl's dream proposal. Especially when claiming on taxes is brought up.
We ended up getting married when I was 18 weeks pregnant with Nathan. On December 13.
The weeks leading up to the wedding involved a lot of going out and drinking with my brother-from-another-mother .... and I really didn't think he'd go through with the wedding. He seemed to have icy feet (not cold feet).
He had been married twice before, both of them didn't even last a year. He had sworn he'd never get married again ..... until he met me. I know it scared him a lot.
He said the moment he saw my picture, he knew he'd be with me forever.
But I'm jaded ...... I believe in true love, I am a hopeless romantic, and I believe love can concur it all. However, on the same token, do I, am I?
Things were great for awhile, other than the occasional blip from the Ex (baby momma) that made me FEEL LIKE she was trying to get him back still.
I realize that there were things that they both missed from each other - you can't discount a long relationship. But it sucked on my part, ya know?
Then I got pregnant with Kaedyn. And he had this whole online relationship with this chick through a game. We'll call her "N" ... he down played it but it was obvious (at least on her part) that things were a lot more than that. When I called him out on it, he gave me the whole "I can't control what she does" line (his favorite) ... and down played it more. A few years later, I found out I was right.
Just a month after he ended things with her (because I was crazy psycho pregnant hormonal beating him in the head verbally jealous) .... he was at work IMing his Ex (baby momma) ... telling her this and that, complaining about me, talking about how he wanted to leave and various other stuff. He wasn't happy, but I didn't know. This all went on in February, and in May she sent me the 15 pages of IMs between them.
I was heartbroken.
He obviously didn't leave. This was a few months after the fact. We were happy. But this was the first time I told him where the door was.
Again, he fought to stay.
I was pregnant, having contractions, and I didn't need this shit.
We worked things out. It wasn't instant, this one really hurt. The things he said, I'll never forget.
Then there was one night in the ER with him, he was getting an MRI and his phone was going off, so I picked it up thinking it might be his family wondering how he was doing and I didn't want them to wait ... so I was just going to reply to them.... it was a scary time.... and when I was doing that, I noticed "N's" name in his messages. I clicked on it.
I'm so glad we are reconnecting, I missed you, blah blah blah ...... I had been in the hospital with Nathan when he was writing this to her. Nathan had been in there for a surgery, and yeah.
That was the last time. Until this year.
This year ...... he reconnected with his (2nd) Ex Wife. I don't want to even write about it because it's still too fresh and we are truly trying to work things out. "I love you" was said. That hurts the most. Right there. He was making plans to be with her. And he was deleting messages. I just happened to go on his facebook to do a FB game thing, and the message popped out. Just three lines.
... but the words that were the hardest was "I love you too" .....
He had deleted everything else. He messaged her "did you get my text" .... she responded. I cried.
No relationship is perfect.
We fought .... he told me he wanted to be with me and work on things and that it was a 5 minute thing with her.... that was it 5 minutes of nostalgia.
Then for the next month - he was working on things with me, and talking to her behind my back.
He was always so defensive of her. Anytime it was a her or me situation - he picked her. She's my friend, I just want a friendship with her.
And then one night - we fought and I walked out into the kitchen and he was on his computer talking to her. Or on his cell. I called him out on it. He threw something in my face like "She told me to work things out with you" ... I'm like, bullshit. I found out that he was planning on (or at least saying so) going to live with his family in NC. Then after he got his back fixed, moving in with her because that was her stipulation.
They were calling each other, having conversations on Google Plus, video chats maybe I don't know. All I know is ......... my whole world came crashing down around me.
I'm not innocent in all this either. I must have picked up on his not being happy because I was being bitter towards him and condescending at times. When I was hit with my extreme relapse of my CFS I just stopped being me. And I just gave into the pain, I suppose.
But he didn't know how to communicate that to me, so all he would do is yell at me and say things like "do you like living like this?" ....
I wasn't happy either.
We are struggling so much just to make ends meet. The only entertainment we have is inside out place. We can't afford to go to the movies, to the zoo - anything. It takes a lot to be able to do anything like that.
Not to mention, my health issues and his health issues - neither of us feel well right now and we're depended upon so much. Our lives revolve around our kids. His biggest thing at the time was it was always go go go (DRs appointments, etc) and he never got a chance to just relax.
And that's the hard part of having kids with medical issues.
It's the hard part of HAVING medical issues.
So when he told me he was going to (or thinking about) going to see his family and I told him he wasn't going anywhere. He needed to get his back fixed and why start somewhere else??? I told him we could live like roommates, and somehow in that conversation - something snapped inside of him.
He realized for the first time in his life he was with someone who wouldn't just kick him out. And that's a lot of the problem. Every relationship he's been with - everyone he's been with - he's always been expendable ...
I was the first person to say - even though we're going to not be together, I'm still going to be here for you and make sure things are taken care of so you can be happy.
So he showed me the conversations between them, he blocked and deleted her off his social media, deleted her phone number... and honestly started working on things.
However, apparently - things still weren't okay.
He got a crush on someone he worked with .... someone I would have never thought he would, but my gut knew it. He wouldn't stop talking about her. It was almost like the whole thing with my ex husband and the manager.
But I let it go.
Then I saw this message about her coming along with him and our friend out to a bar one night. It wasn't that she was going - but it was a "wish you were here" type of thing.
Not me.... her.
So ... fast forward a few months, we're fighting again. One morning he wakes up and decides to tell me he doesn't love me. He wants a divorce.
Fine.
He went and spent the night at our friends. I took the kids to their Halloween Boy Scout party ... I sent him pictures and posted some videos of the night so he could see them. No matter what, I didn't want him to miss out.
I cried, a lot. I was pissed. I couldn't sleep for days.
He admitted he had a crush on this chick from work.
What do I do wrong? Why do these guys just think all this shit is okay???? Why can't these guys just love me for me? Why do these guys have to sniff around for something better? What am I doing wrong?
It came down to the fact that we couldn't financially live apart at that moment in time. We discussed things, we split bills to figure out who was responsible for what...
With in a week, we were starting to mend things. Although it has taken time to get to where we are right now, and it's not solid yet, I don't think.
During that time though ... I had a bit of an epiphany ...
1: My CFS reared it's ugly head in the worst way about a year and a half ago. I got a relapse or flare up - whatever you want to call it - and it wasn't going away. Although I had small flares before, nothing that hung around and caused many problems as it was now. So the sick me, he wasn't used to. But the way he was seeing it was that I was being lazy and not taking care of myself. I told him when we first met about my CFS, but like a lot of people, I think he just thought it was a mental thing. It's not. But I wasn't going into the DR and I wasn't trying to get help (because I'm so used to people not listening to me or telling me nothing can be done.) ... So now, as of recently - he has heard it from the DR that not only do I have CFS but I have Fibromyalgia too. And because my body is so worn down my psoriasis has given me the biggest middle finger ever.
2: I realized that DB has really never had anyone stand by him. People have put him down all his life... the way he explains to me how he grew up was ... hard. He didn't have good role models as parents (let's be honest) ... he loves his parents but .... he says that they tried to hurt each other on purpose. They would argue and fight and cheat on each other to punish the other. So he admitted to me that he has never been faithful to anyone he has been with.
All I want is a stable relationship where I don't have to worry about my heart being broken. Where I don't have to worry about finding companionship again.
3: DB is a gypsy. Always said it. He's not used to staying in one spot, and he gets the urge to go. I'm a tree, I plant my roots hard and deep. Not that I don't enjoy the travel, I love to travel, but I need a good foundation of home.
I thought we were so alike, when we met. Like, identical. He was the male version of me.
But he's not. He has morals, we have a lot of the same beliefs, but he's so different too.
Now, DB has never physically cheated on me, only through the internet. Emotional cheating. Mental cheating.
Even that is enough to crush my soul.
I am a natural flirt. I flirt a little with guys - but I know 100% I would never pick someone else over him. And I think he knows that too.
However, it upsets me when he flirts. How fair is that? I don't like seeing him or hearing him compliment another woman, but it's natural ....
And I realized this.
I would jump his case at the slightest thing, and .... yet.... sometimes, I do the same thing. I may not go to the same extreme he does, but I do flirt. I flirt with a friend, I chat with an ex boyfriend who flirts with me heavily and I like the attention - but I feel it's okay because..... I would never step away from the marriage. It's just fun flirting and feel good attention.
So why can't he do it?
We had a lot of long long long discussions. We love talking to each other but the sad thing is - is we ONLY have these deep conversations when we're having marital issues.
Why can't we have these discussions regardless?
So we're trying something new. He can flirt, as long as that's all it is. There will be no "I love you" with anyone else.
But it's still hard for me.
I meandered on his facebook the other day and saw some messages. One he was wishing some chick he slept with way back when a happy birthday and he has a big gift for her <evil grin> ... and that her profile pic was HOT. And I got upset.
I kept it to myself - and later on in the day I was joking and laughing with him about it.
I don't know how I can work through this. I really don't.
Then something happened with someone close to me and she saw her fiance kissing a long time friend of his, she was on his facebook while he was having a conversation with this chick, real time, reading it all.. she's heartbroken and I can sympathize ... and it brought it ALL back up for me.
All of it. Insecurity. Feeling ugly because of the psoriasis. Broken hearted. I feel like crying. I feel like questioning and snooping and giving myself that sinking feeling of the all time low.
But I have grown, I'm handling all this crap better and he hasn't done one thing I haven't told him he could do. He hasn't done anything I haven't done ....
So why do I feel so bad?
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