Was it all bad?

 As I look back on my former marriage, I am trying to see the good in it. This is hard for me as I still see it all bad except for the kids and the memories associated with them. About 18 years in, to my 27 year relationship with my ex I changed and started putting boundaries up at work. Little did I know that when that made my life better there, it would end my marriage. I started seeing how life could be better and I didn't have to put up with unacceptable behavior from people.

My ex had been doing a home daycare for several years and had poor boundaries with the parents of the kids she watched. She let them show up late for their children and expected me to help her when I came home from work. I got burned out and pulled away from her and instead of coming to me to work things out, she chose to cheat.

It was painful for both of us as I changed and unfortunately, it was the end of our marriage. While she got more consumed with the affair, I let the pain motivate me to grow and move on eventually 5 years later. On the eve of our 20th anniversary she told me she wouldn't date me if we were both still single. That is when I knew it was over and I decided to stay until our youngest finished high school.

Looking back now, I realize that even though I was kind of happy with her before I got wise to the unhealthy dynamic in our relationship, that I would have rejected her if I knew back then what I now know now. Even though what she said on the eve of our 20th hurt me deeply at the time, it was true and insightful on her part.

So the trick now is how to put the past in a less resentful perspective. Of course it's all bad now in my eyes, especially that I see all the years of manipulation and abuse. I did get 3 awesome kids out of it and it all wasn't bad either. There were some times when I was happy with her during a love bombing phase and had hope things would get better in the future during the devaluation/discard parts of the cycle.

I am glad the affair happened as it caused me to have the motivation to change my life and live more in line with my values. In some ways I want to leave my past behind me, but I know I can't fully do that.

Stayed way too long

 As I grow tired of continued nightmares and flashbacks, one thing is becoming painfully apparent: I stayed way too long with a toxic person. I felt all of those years like I was trapped financially, also wanted to be able to see my kids and she couldn't take care of herself. All of which were legitimate concerns and by waiting for the kids to grow up and her to finish school, I don't have to deal with her any more. The problem is when you stay, you are being traumatized by having the toxic person in your life. Their demands, the abuse cycle, and the lies and the fact they are stealing from you by betraying your wedding vows, makes for a lot of harm. Now that I have healed a bit, I can look back and see what a mistake I made by staying.

I think a lot of my suffering was due to a lack of emotional intelligence by primary caregivers as a child. I was conditioned to being treated poorly by a woman and sought that out in my marriage. Also, the Christian faith I was raised in gave poor counsel regarding sex and marriage. I had the understanding that if someone was a Christian they would become more Christlike and they had the ability to become a new creature. All of the marriage seminars we went to never addressed emotional abuse, or toxic controlling behavior. In my opinion, the church condones it, as it is the hook that keeps believers devout and narcissistic leaders from having unhappy spouses leave them.  I always found it amazing that as a man, I had the same issues in my marriage that the unhappy women were having. It took years for it to dawn on me that my ex was probably on the cluster B spectrum and so were most of the men that these seminars and books were catered too.

I knew fundamentalist Christianity was false but still tried to get it, instead of just trusting my doubts and leaving for good. I knew early on dating my ex wife that she had issues and I stayed and tried to make things work. Both were toxic situations that traumatized me and still haunt me today. The take away from this is, is to leave a toxic situation and not try to fix something that doesn't work for you. It's unfair I had to waste so many years of my life realizing this and terribly expensive lesson. I get it now and hope my body is done with processing all of the trauma it stored over the years.

The Toxic Saleswoman

Toxic/controlling relationships never start out that way. At first they love bomb you and you think you have found the perfect partner. After a while though, the behaviors start to show up during the devaluation phase. You wonder why they are flirting with or talking to other men, why everything you used to do together is now bad and the silent treatments start. Just when you have had enough, they spring back into character and reel you back.

The tragic part of this for me is, I lived this cycle for 27 years. I was always angry, bitter and resentful toward my ex and didn't know why. After ending the relationship with her, I was able to feel all of the feelings I suppressed and have some closure as to what happened all of those years. The sad thing is after all this time and processing of feelings, I have no positive memories with her. There were times when I was under her spell and she was nice to me for a brief period, but those were few and far between.

How do I come to terms with the sheer loss of time and living most of life to date so miserable? One thing now is my life is 100% better and happier. It seems to shine a light into how dark and miserable my time was in the past. Grieving the fact that I was never loved and gave to someone who could never have enough is a tragic process.

Maybe through all of this my ex showed me my childhood wounds that needed repair. These toxic types create a perfect hell for you and use your baggage as a way to control you. I know I played a part in this and stayed way too long. I guess I needed to learn a lesson from this. It has been the most painful one ever and I don't wish this hell on anyone. 

Valentine's Day From Hell

Rewind to 2014, my ex wife had started texting penpals and left our marriage. At the time I thought I was stuck and had to keep it together for the kids and did so another 4 years until I couldn't take it any more.

She had grown distant from me after I put some boundaries up with her about the in home daycare she had. There was an expectation on her behalf that I come home from work and help her with her daycare. I was exhausted from my job being stressful and home was never a refuge. So once I put some distance between us to get some rest, she decided to meet penpals online, which in hindsight were just sexting partners.

I came home on Valentine's Day 2014 and had hoped to take her out to dinner. Earlier that day, she told me one of her pen pals in Arizona's wife went psycho on her and she had to create a new email address. Then we were getting ready to go out to dinner and my daughter came into our bedroom and said there were pictures of my wife at the time, on her social media in lingerie. After that, my wife was super pissed and was a bitch to me the whole evening. I know she had gotten busted for sexting a married man and possibly got hacked or had a bad setting in her phone. We went to one restaurant and there was a long wait and I couldn't stand being with her. I had us leave and went to another restaurant without a wait just to get dinner over with. Then we went home and I poured a stiff drink, and went the opposite part of the house from her. I slept that night and many others going forward in my recliner.

A couple of weeks later, I took her out to dinner and told her I knew she was cheating. She denied it, even after I recounted the facts to her. I also said she never sent me the pictures, so I knew they weren't for me. It would take me another 4 years for me to realize what a pathological liar I was dealing with and how she had no conscience. Pretty soon after that, she would find a more permanent long distance affair partner and I would be in hell for a while longer.

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.