My Story :: oneconfusedlady

Bad from the beginning

How Did You Meet?

I was working part time at a friend's deli as a cashier. "C" had been coming in for months trying to get up the nerve to ask for my number, and he finally did. He knew I had 3 children, and said one of the things that attracted him to me was the fact that I was already a mother.

Describe your marriage before the problem.

We had no marriage before the problem. I started dating him, and got pregnant (all I can say is that I had 1 abusive marriage before him, and I was STUPID about birth control! In my first marriage, I usually used abstinence, and when C told me that "pulling out" was safe, I believed him.) I am not the type to get an abortion, and told him that he could not just live with me and my other 3 young children without marriage. C was forced to make a choice of either paying child support for his soon-to-be-born son and never living with him as a father, or marrying me and being part of a blended family.

Tell us how you first realized you had a problem.

I knew we had a problem from even before day 1 of the marriage. I wanted to marry him, partly because I loved him, and partly because I was scared to have a baby on my own with 3 children under 10 to take care of already. I really did want to make it work, but knew he was not the marrying kind. Very commitment phobic.

What did you do about it or if you have not done anything yet, why?

I did not stick to my guns very well, and let him move in with us while I was pregnant. This was after I practically forced him to ask me to marry him. He was a reluctant part of our family from the beginning. He put off our marriage until our son was 7 months old, so I was the bride with 4 children. Very embarrassing!

My first husband stopped paying child support after the first year, and C was left to foot the bill for us all. I worked throughout the marriage - I even worked on the day our son was born, and had him that night. I was back to work within 2 weeks, and have not stopped. I never finished college, though, and C definitely made a larger salary than me.

I really love taking care of a man, and being taken care of in return, so I tried to make our home a real haven for him. The children were raised well, the house was clean, I worked, and I am a very physically passionate person, so I thought that he would come to see that we had all the benefits a great marriage could offer. He definitely loved me in bed, but as he said during one of our recent talks, he was always looking for something better, someone better. We did not go out in public and do things very often, and I think it was because of his subconscious desire to appear single still. I'm not ugly - I even modeled at one time, and I was back down to a size 4 even after our son was born. I am at ease speaking to people I don't know, and enjoy doing things, so it wasn't that I had some kind of defect that made him ashamed to bring me out in public. He just never wanted to be married.

He really did not want my love and care, he wanted me to be grateful to him for taking on the family. His mother hated me, and still does, and is sure I was the one who somehow made him get me pregnant. For years she kept up a steady stream of comments to C' 'Oh, you poor thing! You are an absolute saint to do what you do for that girl! She should be so grateful to you!'

I guess we never wanted the same things out of the marriage. I thought that just because we had a bad start didn't mean we had to have a bad life! We had a lot going for us.

It takes two, though, and all he wanted from me was gratitude for the great sacrifices he made on a daily basis for our family. I was his ongoing charity case.

He would talk all the time about others women, and how he could tell that this one or that one was flirting with him and coming on to him. Maybe he thought it would make me find him more attractive, but it had the opposite effect. It made me feel ugly and in the way. After many confrontations about how hurt I was hearing about it, he finally stopped that kind of talk.

He was a good father to all 4 children over the years, and we had some fun times, great vacations, many milestones, etc. He and I never did grow closer, though. Our relationship was more that of two coworkers on the same project. I had stopped doing a lot of little things for him. He didn't really care for me to show love in that way. The only show of love he wanted was sex. I love it, too (not as often as he does, but we are so physically compatible!), so there was barely enough interaction to keep the marriage on life support.

We talked about divorce on and off for the last 5 years or so, and we finally decided to go ahead and do it. Our son, the baby, is now 17 and going into his last year of high school. We have the house on the market, and have to stay together in it until it sells. The day it goes under contract, we will file for divorce, which takes around 30 days here in Georgia, so we should be able to close on the house right around the same time the divorce is final.

His reasons for wanting a divorce are so he can "find a partner in life that wants the same things he does; travel, the best restaurants, etc." He makes a very good salary now, and will be able to afford it once his charity work is done here.

I want one because I am lonely. I want a relationship where my partner and I both feel a sense of permanency. It's been so humiliating for so long to know that he's been stuck here, waiting for the time he can leave and his life can really begin! I guess this is definitely one of those "we stayed together for the children" stories, and I think we did the right thing, but it has left me very emotionally weak.

If you're not yet divorced, what is your greatest fear?

My greatest fear is that I will be poor. I signed up for college today, online, and will begin in 2 weeks, so I am doing something about that now.

My second greatest fear, I'm ashamed to say, is that I won't have great sex anymore. I am definitely not a one night stand!

If you're not yet divorced, what two tips would you share with others?

Don't let your spouse hold all the cards. Mine has held money over my head for years. Do something so that you know you can take care of yourself if you need to.

Find out what your greatest weakness is toward your spouse. Mine is sex, and it keeps me from thinking clearly about the rest of the marriage. See the marriage as a whole picture. I have let the one good thing we have be a substitute for everything else we lacked.