The Dark Diva Diaries

I took many of your comments to heart, spoke to some of my own close friends, listened to what he had to say and we finally came to the conclusion that divorce is the only solution to our problem.

We went to the courthouse and filed together and  took the parenting seminar as required by law in our state.  In 90 days or so we will officially be divorced.

I’ve been meaning to blog on this issue for quite some time as we had decided on this final solution several weeks ago.  This isn’t my main blog, so I have been neglectful in not regularly updating this one.

I’m on fire, today.  I don’t know why I went and did this, knowing that it would tick me off, but I went to his Facebook page and read what he had to say.  Keep in mind that for months, even though we are clearly connected as married to each other, he has posted about his adventures and his great love for his girlfriend on his page.  Now he is posting about how bad a person that I am for not wanting to stay in a marriage that a) I am unhappy in, b) he has told me that sex is no longer a part of and c) allows him to have an open relationship, while I can not.  Of course, in his  discourse, he skips over his open relationship (despite posts still being clearly seen on the front page of his Facebook) and jumps right into how selfish it is for me to choose to be happy at the risk of our kids happiness.

I have explained to him in every way that I can  that there is no way that our kids can truly be happy if their parents are miserable.

In private, he admits that he’s afraid of being alone and that is the real reason he does not want a divorce (despite already being involved with someone else who will be ecstatic when our divorce becomes final).  But, in public, he’s telling our friends and his family what a bitch I am for leaving him, despite the fact that we have children.

And that is essentially the crux of why I am divorcing him.  For years it’s always been about what his needs were and rarely what mine were.  I’ve had to fight to keep everything together since the day that we got married and had to accept that he was deeply flawed while playing the dutiful housewife despite the constant turmoil he brought to our lives.

Two days after we got married, he got busted by the Army for trying to steal ammunition casings.  He lost his rank and his pay and then what pay he was getting was cut in half for 6 months.  That is how we started our marriage…in financial turmoil.  I had to handle the fallout while he was away and I my job was not enough to complement his loss of income, so I had to rely on my friends for food and gas money while he was gone.  Then, a few months later he decided we needed a credit card that helped put us further into debt.  We were already way behind in rent thanks to his earlier “crime”.  If not for him going overseas, and getting extra income from the Army, we would never have gotten out of debt.  He went away again, two kids later, and now he wants a motorcycle.  I tried to explain to him that we couldn’t afford the expense and he told me that he would take my advice to heart.  Instead, he purchased the motorcycle and the intial expenses from tagging and insuring it AND being in the middle of a big move cost us for years since I had to put off paying bills to cover this new expense.  His being deployed a number of times and me getting a job helped a lot in getting the funds to clean up his and my credit…then he goes out and gets another friggin’ credit card.  I almost left him high and dry after each incident.  But, because of the kids, I stayed.

It took years for me to be able to come and go out of the house as I pleased.  Even today, when I go out, he pouts as I prepare to go out to work or with my friends.  Even when I started working I faced resistance as he would whine about how much time I was spending at work or with my friends and not with him.  I had to remind him that if not for my business and working my ass off, his credit would still be shit and he would have never qualified for the last friggin’ credit card he got.  And, if not for my friends, I would have left him ages ago.

Then, he resorted to invading my privacy, going through my diary and reading my emails and confronting me every time he found something he didn’t like.  Eventually, I was able to purchase a laptop, and stopped keeping a hard copy diary, so he was unable to spy on me any longer.  And, for awhile, we were getting along  just fine, until he decided that he was open to polyamory and then he got himself a girlfriend and I got myself a boyfriend.

I am not sure when the tables turned, but soon he decided that polyamory was ok for him and not for me and then announced that he was no longer attracted to me, he didn’t want to have sex with me anymore, and he didn’t want me to see anybody else.  He sent this to me in an email rather than tell me to my face.  He was angry for almost two weeks and I didn’t know why…turns out his email had ended up in my spam mail so it took that long for me to find it and by then, it was way too late to make any kind of amends (if that was even possible).  If he had bothered to actually speak to me, he would have known that I had broken up with my boyfriend, because his moodiness was bothering me (I didn’t know that he had already taken sex off the table).  Then, I was kicking myself for giving up the boyfriend, because here was my husband telling me that he didn’t want me, while steady seeing and sleeping with his girlfriend for those two weeks (and to this date) and I had no one (which is why I was feeling sorry for myself in the past post).

I reiterated everything that I have recited here to him, along with several other things and begged him to give me a divorce.  I told him I was sorry that he was scared about being alone, but I’m already alone (no sex, no affection…of any kind).  I even tried to bargain with him: I would stay in the marriage, so long as I was allowed the same kind of relationship that he was.  No deal.  His words: So long as we are married, if I find out that you are sleeping with anyone else, I will kill him.

That was the final straw: No sex with my own husband, while he can freely have sex with others.  No sex with anybody else, while availing himself to freely have sex with others.  All the while, I am still cooking and cleaning and taking care of the household, as if I am a slave and not really a wife…earning my keep, without getting any perks AND also working outside the home, but being given grief for merely wanting to spend time with my friends.  It all made sense now…if I want to have any kind of love and affection in my life, I have to get a divorce.  Being miserable for the sake of my kids, just to appease him, is not an option.

We have agreed on pretty much all the issues in regards to the kids, thankfully.  He’s even agreed to some level of maintenance (alimony) including the van, at least, for a short time.  In front of our kids, we are handling things just fine, but on the internet (on his public pages–this blog is private) he is broadcasting his true feelings and now I notice that some of our friends are taking his side, while I keep mum. By being a good wife and mother, I encouraged his codependent nature, making myself indispensable to him.  He has tried everything in the book to keep me and I have let myself get sucked back in every time.  Now he is going to our friends, in an attempt to shame me into staying and it just makes me sick to my stomach.

I am livid.  I’m trying to keep my composure.  I am actually having physical ailments due to my seething anger, but I’m trying to keep it together…at least until the final court hearing, when the divorce is finalized.  I tried calling a couple of my friends, but everybody seems to be busy…so I’m blogging, instead.

On top of all that, since officially filing, he seems to be reverting to his early behaviors that were red flags to me when we first got married.  How I wish I had read those signs and took those clues and ran before two babies came along.  I’m relieved that he’s a good father, but as a husband, he’s been an abject failure, essentially causing me to be an abject failure as a wife.

I will never get married, again, after all this.  It’s hard enough to take responsibility for myself, but for 10 years, I have also taken responsibility for keeping this whole charade together despite the monkey wrenches he has continually thrown at me.  I refuse to let him put the demise of our marriage solely at my feet when he had equal, if not greater part in its ending.

In a way, I must take full responsibility for ending this marriage and I am not ashamed about that.  When it’s over, it’s time to move on.  There is no reason to hold on to something that is not working or that is irretrievably broken. I cannot let him get to me, like I have done in the past.  I have to do this for my own sanity and for the benefit of my kids because if I stay, something bad will happen and I don’t like feeling like, so long as I stay, I have no hope.

I stood strong and tall before him, I will stand strong and tall after him. He may think that I’m a bad person, but I know that he is just afraid and is lashing out in the only way he knows how.  He has a right to his opinion and I need to give him that space to grieve, keeping my judgments private, so as not to embarrass him on the same level that he is attempting to embarrass me.  I am bigger and smarter than that.

We both deserve better and hopefully, within the next 90 days, we will get better.