Opening of a New Chapter

I was sitting at the bar at my favorite hang looking into the mirror on the back wall. Featured in the reflection, was a person I barely recognized, as he was happy. After the initial shock wore off I thought back to where I was 2 years ago and how far I came to get to this point. It took lots of work to walk away from a life that never suited me and became literally unbearable the last 10 years as I became aware of that fact. In my past memory, I would have been home at my old house with the first of the 4 quadruple Evan Williams and Pepsi's I drank each night. This time of night dinner would have been made for the family (ex wife and kids) and everyone would have retreated to their corners leaving me alone. It was strange as house with 6 people sure was a lonely place and nobody wanted to hang out together. In hindsight, I realized everyone was hiding from my ex wife and her nasty comments about what was being watched on tv that night. You couldn't even tell she was watching as she was either doing homework or staring at her phone.

On the surface it looked we had an idyllic marriage, high school sweethearts and 3 kids. My ex was jovial, funny and put on a good mask in public. At home, she was incapable of completing any task without summoning me and frequently abused me with the silent treatment. Pretty much the whole marriage she was never on my side and always pushed me toward everything I wanted nothing to do with. It seemed like things would be good for a while, then she would ignore me/or emotionally abuse me and when I would get mad and have enough so she would be nice again. The rough part was, I could never have a disagreement with her that ever lead to resolution of any issue. Every argument was hours long and always was my fault never apologizing for any misdeed ever.
Looking back now I realize I gave up a lot just to have a few days of her being nice to me again.

I feel a hand on my back and the flashback subsides. My new girlfriend shows up meets me at the bar and as I turn around to face her I see the beautiful blue eyes I fell in love with. One thing about her is she looks me in the eyes and never with holds affection. 6 months in and at times I still wait for the other shoe to drop and the games to start. The learning about true love and trusting is difficult after being conned for a quarter century. Maybe I knew deep down I knew was just staying in it for the kids with my ex, but I know I had delusional hope that things would get better one day. Now I don't have those concerns with the new woman in my life and I needed to figure out how to settle down the low hum of thoughts about the past that won't go away.

A Day in my old Life

I am writing this as a reminder of how my old life was while I was still married to my ex wife.  This will be a nice reminder if I ever start to wax nostalgic about the past and set things straight. Every day was lonely and extremely dissatisfying. She would ignore me most of the time and choose to interact with me only when she needed something. The entire time, I drank to cope with the lonliess, abuse and infidelity. In the last 4 years we were together, we had like 2 days where we hung out and had fun. The rest of the time was being ignored and ordered around.

I think about now and how I know the waitresses at several restaurants I like to dine at.  Not possible then as she was always on some stupid diet where she was weighing peas with her scale. I am guessing too she knew I wanted to dine out and spend time together. Of course doing anything I liked wasn't allowed as she got off on my misery. It must be so exhausting for her now to actually have to go out and hunt for her next victim. Now she has to stay out late instead of going to bed at 8pm on a Saturday night.

A day in my life then was waking up between 4 and 6 am. Then I would get out of the house and get to work to avoid her in the morning. In the evening , I would get home and fix dinner. She had homework which she conveniently started as soon as I got home. Good thing she got to nap all afternoon/sext her affair partner. After dinner I would clean up and start mixing some drinks to cope with the anger and frustration of my life. Then I would retreat to a room opposite of her and watch netflix till I fell asleep. Then wake up early and start again early. 

Flashbacks and Dreams

I am growing wary of processing the trauma from my marriage. It comes back in dream form or it overtakes me during the day and I am left reeling from it. I think it all started when the ex approached me with a fake apology and promises to change. I was doing really well with gray rock technique for several months and was moving forward. That conversation with the non apology reeled me back to how awful I felt during the marriage.

I wonder if the trauma processing came up as a defense mechanism to finally allow me to feel anger toward her and distance myself for good. Now after many nights of bad dreams and flashbacks I feel the anger others feel when I tell them my story.  For so long I denied myself the right to feel anything just to make time go by. Also, I had to still deal with her for a year after filing for divorce to get my youngest graduated from high school. 

I even went back twice to try and reconcile with her. That meant forgetting about all the pain she caused me and pretending like nothing happened.  She still talked to her affair partner the entire time and I felt gross and used again. She always had a perfect excuse to justify her actions too, so once again there was no getting her to feel any empathy for me. 

Even as I busted my ass to get the house sold, my son moved to his apartment and keeping up with my job she was no help. She went to a biker rally one weekend to escape responsibility, took a shower while we moved furniture to her mothers house and when she was painting the living room at the house she left to go shopping. At every turn she was worthless and contributed nothing to the household. Getting away from her has been a net gain in every way for me. 

So if I know empirically that she was awful for me why do I think about her all the time? Its so frustrating and I want this all to pass so I can focus on the present which is awesome btw. There were so many things I buried over the years and it seems I get to feel years of trauma in less than a month. Surely this has to be ending soon.  

Nightmares

I have been having nightmares where certain traumatic events from my marriage come up and get replayed. It goes back 6 years to when I still had hope that things were salvageable and I feel like I did back then.  The sadness, emptiness and lonely feelings come back and wake me up. Now that my present is good, I realize what a hell my old life was and it scares me that I tolerated that treatment.

I want to move past this trauma and feel normal again. I did everything in my power to get away and improve my life. Just tired of these dreams bringing it all back. The main theme in these flashbacks is the hope I had that was foolish. I thought one day things would finally be good with my ex wife and there was something I was doing wrong that kept derailing that.  

In this case, my hope was a source of trauma for me and kept me bound to an abuser. The things I hoped for are freely given in my new relationship and I don't have to feel like my needs are a pain in someones ass. When I go back to how I used to feel, I want to hug and counsel my old self. How tragic this was and how much I suffered trying to have a relationship with a toxic person. Hoping now that I know my hope was toxic, I can start to let go the past more.

My Post Abuse Life

As part of my healing process I am supposed to write about what my life will be like post abuse.  Kind of late to the party on this as I have taken steps to get beyond the situation. I have divorced my ex and cut contact with her down to a minimum and don't miss her at all. I recently bought a house in one my favorite neighborhoods in town and got engaged to a loving woman who is amazing. So the last 18 months I have toiled to get out and away from my former life with the ex. Now I can think about where I want to be in the future.

The first thing I want is to move on from the emotional flashbacks from the pain I avoided over the years of my marriage. Constantly being emotionally manipulated and treated like shit caused me to avoid my feelings and now that I am safe they have all come flooding back. I want to be in a place where the past is in the past and I can enjoy the present more. 

I fell and broke my leg 2 weeks ago and have 2 more months of down time. Once I have healed from this injury, I am hoping to get some house projects done, us moved under one roof and a vacation planned for the spring. 

Career wise I hope there are opportunities for growth and advancement. I hope now that my personal life isn't so stressful, I can be more effective in my career and coach up my people to take on more responsibility.

Learning how to love in a healthy way is a blessing and uncharted territory for me. Hoping my relationship with my fiance grows in depth and becomes better with time. Its such a blessing to be heard and loved for who I really am. 

Health wise I am hoping for improvement too. With less stress and avoidance drinking I am hoping the need for prescription meds goes away. 

Looking forward to getting to be me and having the space and support to do so. I looked in the mirror the other day and see the dude there is happy and flourishing. 

Finally, just living under one roof and getting settled into a new normal. Been a long haul with the old house, apartment, new house and fiances house. Ready for things to settle down finally. Even with all of the changes, I have hope for the future for the first time in my life and love the present. I know this will make me stronger and in a way saved my life. 

Postmortem From Talk

When I talked to the ex for the non apology from her she said some stuff that stuck with me and made me really angry. It has been churning in my brain and I am hoping to let go of it if I type it out. The first thing I noticed was the splitting I experienced during the talk. She was either totally happy to be single now or she was devastated that she was alone and crying all the time. Also, to her the marriage was all bad and then she would change and say there were good times too. Just UGH..

Then she started telling me she is making strides in therapy and is all better now. When I asked her if she had told her therapist about certain traumas in her past, she said she didn't, which makes me wonder if there is accurate information shared to make progress. It was a valiant effort on her part to try to give me hope that she might change and be able to have a healthy relationship. Cruel really as I was with her for over a quarter of a century and suffered mightily under her regime.

I was able to get her bottom line for the apology though, she found out I was moving on with someone else and wanted to offer her advise. She hoped that I was going to stay single for a year, learn to love myself and choose her at the end of said year. This was really rich on her part as all I have done is wait for her to show up. Let's see I supported her through 6 years of school and a month of going to work with her affair partner in Ms. So what prize am I gonna receive for living like a monk for another year? I have learned through all of this that if it isn't good now it never will be.

So feeling the feelings of disgust, sadness, frustration and grief are what I am doing with this. For too long I avoided them and now I have to sit through them as they come in waves. With a living person, grief is a tricky situation. I am grieving the loss of the marriage that could have been and the person would probably take me back. Then there is the knowing that if I went back it would never be good and I would be miserable again. Coming to terms with this loss and the projection of my good qualities on a bad person tells me I am grieving a figment of my imagination.

Facebook Memories are Not Your Friend

Yesterday a picture came up on my feed with my ex-wife in it. I had unfollowed  her on Facebook and didn't want to see her posts any more. This post was with her at a brewery we were at with cowboy and was seemingly harmless at first glance. Then I remembered the time and place it was in. She was in the midst of the affair and this was one day she hung out with me in 4 years that was exceptional only for that reason. There was no connection that I was longing for, and I took whatever scraps she offered me at the time. The grief kicks in as I have it so much better now and I know how short changed I was at the time. She was never a good partner and was using me for financial security, but back then I thought it would have been a great day.

The insidious part of emotional abuse is just this, your expectations are managed down to the point you accept literally nothing while giving everything. Its a wonder I survived and got out but I still grieve the loss of the marriage. This seems crazy as I empirically know I was abused emotionally and she never loved me. Maybe I am mad at myself for still caring and feeling the loss. Or am I pissed that I wasted so much time hoping things would change.

So yeah, facebook memories suck for those who have left an abuser.

The Apology

The second try at reconciliation wasn't working and I walked back in April. I kept my boundaries strong, life is good and I am moving on. In mid September she tells me she has something she wants to tell me that just won't work over text. After a couple of weeks, I cave and talk to her. She offers what I feel, is a non apology. She says something like " I know I acted terribly and hurt you. I am sorry." I got mad at her and we argued for over an hour rehashing the past. When I cooled off for a moment, I asked her "What exactly did you do to me?" she said she had some ideas but forgot.

During the conversation, she told me she was going to therapy, growing and working on herself. For an instant, the hope came back that she might be finally the person I always thought she had the potential to be. So some sadness came over me for a split second that I had walked away for good knowing change wasn't possible and I was done with her. Now maybe I was too harsh, but I know this was all a scheme to try to get me to come back.

Not seeing her for a while was the best thing I could do to get some perspective as I could see her trying to manipulate me with false hope. Just like she did when she lured me back the second time. I felt angry, misunderstood, gaslit and back to where I was in April after 2 hours of talking to her.

I know what started all of this was me telling her I was moving on with someone else. I felt I owed it to her to be honest about my future plans since she was a part of my life for 27 years. She wanted me to be single for a year or 6 months and get to like myself again and come back to her. What a crazy delusion she is under, as she was so awful to me for all of our marriage, especially the last 7 years.

My guess is the consequences of her actions are finally catching up with her now that she is 100% on her own now. She wants the old life back where I was trapped with her and she could treat me as poorly as she pleased. I was expected to bring my A game as a husband while she did nothing but alienate me from affection and cheat on me. How she can think I would wait another year for her is just crazy and delusional. The old me might have, but fuck her for being that arrogant and thinking she is worth that.

So the call took me back there and it took me a couple of days to process and calm back down. Lesson learned and I saw how miserable she made me when I saw her every day. No wonder I hated life and was stressed out when a 2 hour call made me this upset.

Back to my new life I went and was amazed at how easy it is. I am validated, loved and understood. Also, reality is on the same timeline with the new partner and I don't feel gaslit. Boundaries up going forward and this blog post will remain a reminder to do so.

Why I can never go back to my ex-wife, a short list. She apologized recently for hurting me and doing devious things, but for some reason she couldn't tell me what she did when I asked her. So basically, it was a non apology and just fucked with my emotions.

1. She lied to me and cheated for 5 years before I found out.
2. She tried to get me to quit my job and move with her to be closer to her affair partner.
3. She admits to not loving me the last 8 years of our marriage and just using me for financial security.
4. She admits to purposely throughout our marriage acting like she didn't like what I did to make me feel rejected and unloved.
5. She admits to doing the abuse cycle in our relationship the whole time. Idealization, Devalue, Discard. It seemed to be on a 3 month cycle.
6. I felt so alone and abandoned in early 2018, I wanted to die.
7. The 2 times I went back to her and tried to reconcile after filing for divorce she kept talking to her affair partner.
8. The 2 times I went back to her she denied me affection, and nothing changed.
9. Her work life balance sucks and she is never available. I always thought it would get better when the season of life changed, but it just carried over to the new realm.
10. She only apologized when I finally left her for good and hadn't seen her for a few months. The thing is it wasn't sincere at all.
11. Throughout the 27 long years of our relationship, she projected her own self hatred on to me and acted like it was my fault.
12. The marriage was one sided and I always felt tired and unloved.
13. The marriage was going to kill me, through self-harm from drinking or suicide.
14. When the kids found out about the affair she gaslight and denied it. This caused them to carry the burden of knowing before I did.
15. She deliberately with held kissing me for 5 years and never initiated any physical affection.
16. She was unable to fully function as an adult and relied on me to do everything.
17. When I had a crisis of faith and needed her support, she abandoned me and chose to have an affair.
18. The marriage was over in 2009 when I made some changes in my life and quit doing everything her way.
19. She emotionally abused me the entire time and took a sick pleasure in my pain,
20. She told me on the eve of our 20th anniversary that she wouldn't date me if we were single. Then she later gaslit me when I confronted her about how much it hurt me.
21. She accidentally sent her affair partner an "I'm horny" text to our family group text instead. Foolishly, I thought it was for me.
22. When she and my daughter went on a trip to Texas she sent me a random nude pic. Come to find out later, she gave her phone to her cousin to take a picture of them and she saw the photo. She sent it to me to cover her ass as it was for the affair partner.
23. I took her to dinner on Valentines day 2014 after pictures of her in her lingerie showed up accidentally on social media. She never sent the pictures to me and when I confronted her later she lied to me.
24. After repeatedly asking her to fix things between us over the years, she blew me off.
25. She used the guise of having penpals to carry on an affair and abandon me.
26. She controlled me and I lost my social network and all of my friends.
27. Whenever I needed her help she was unavailable. She would take a shower to avoid moving something.
28. She never took the time to know me. All conversations were about her and there was no time for me.
29.I could never rest on evenings and weekends with her. We always had to be doing something or I would escape to get away from her.
30.Vacations were exhausting and I did all of the driving. One time when I wanted to take a nap she woke me up and made me meet with her relatives after telling me I was on vacation and could do whatever I want.
31. She was very controlling and I never had a voice in the relationship.



I know I did all I could to save our marriage and she was the problem. Sure, I wasn't perfect and acted poorly at times after repeated mistreatment. I can never go back to that and am fearful for any one who gets tangled in that womans web. Good riddance to her.

Met Her

I was at a local punk rock bar with my friend in 2016 and I was introduced to her. It was on the cusp of my wife going out of town to spend a month with her unbeknownst to me affair partner. She was wearing a blue dress and there by herself dancing to the local band playing that night. I was interested and impressed that a woman liked punk rock music and wanted to get to know her better. Unfortunately, it would be a year before we would meet again and I would see her at the film festival office when I was there for screenings. I wanted go and say hi when she would walk by the screening room, then I remembered I was married and why would I do that?

Fast forward a few months and she ends up coming out for a late dinner and drinks with several of us after a screening. I got seated next to her at the bar and we ended up talking for that evening. I was still pretty raw from my religious deconversion and  very lonely in a loveless marriage. The conversation with her was so fulfilling and like rain on a parched desert. She was so smart, funny and empathetic. When we went to leave, she hugged everyone since she knew them better than me. I asked if she would give me a hug and she did; wow, it was amazing and something I hadn't ever felt. 

I would see her on occasion over the next few months but then I got her to come to trivia night with our friends. From there our friendship would blossom.

What Happened?

My biggest fear was my marriage failing. I heard stories of friends through the years that were going through a divorce and it absolutely terrified me. I saw how my wife and I were never on the same page and I couldn't win no matter what I did. There was a lack of affection and alienation throughout our marriage and I took the blame for all of it. If only I could do something different and avoid her getting mad at me, then I would get frustrated and act out then feel worse. I tried to reason with the unreasonable and stayed in misery. Even as the obvious signs of infidelity were creeping in on her part, I still tried to save things. Even as I met someone who finally loved me as I wanted, I rejected her twice and went back to my wife and the shitty treatment.

I realized I was addicted to the highs and lows of an abusive relationship. I finally realized the hope I had that my wife would actually step up to the plate and be the partner I deserved was a fantasy. Everyone around me saw the mess it all was and I had to be strong enough to move on.