- Thread starter
- #49
Lady Moonlight
Confident
A new day.
Both my boys are home sick today from school. But I'm still at work. They stay with the ex and his wife when they are sick. I wish they didn't. I am grateful that I don't have to call off work when they are sick. But it really sucks to have my babies cared for and nurtured by that woman. She's part of the reason that Ex and I are not together anymore.
I spent so much of my time in that marriage feeling alone and unloved. We had the kids and through all my depression issues and other things I never felt supported or cared about. I wasn't allowed to do things I wanted to do. We never saw my side of the family. And I mean never. I think I can count on one hand the number of times we ever did anything with them. Ex was only concerned with seeing his family and that was it. I felt so isolated. It's not like I had much of a family anyways, but even seeing my mom was rare. I don't think that he really took me into consideration at all. But as I am a go-with-the-flow person, I just allowed it to happen. And it sucked.
Being trapped in a lifeless marriage was so empty. I did enjoy his family though so I made the best of it that I could. Ex has Asperger's. He has never been officially diagnosed, but when we took my son for his autism testing, we basically found out then that Ex has all the signs and symptoms of it. It all made sense then. Why couldn't he love me? Why couldn't he be considerate? Or contribute around the house? Because of the Asperger's.
Nope. Wrong.
My Daddy died in 2010. And after that, I pretty much took to grieving by drinking. That's when I started smoking cigarettes too. At 26 years old, it's pretty late. I started partying more and going out more and spending more time with friends. And so I found that I got a lot of male attention. I started waking up from my depression and my isolation and realizing there was a whole world outside of the way I had been living. I started getting drunk and making out with strangers. And then one night I went out with a coworker who I really had a thing for. We slept together. I knew then that my marriage was over.
For being a person who believes so strongly in doing the right thing, I was absolutely, positively doing the WRONG thing. And I knew it. And I lied for a long time to cover it up. Of course, Ex finally found out.
This is actually really hard to write about, so bear with me.
Ex found out. And we were fighting all the time anyways. I just stopped trying. And when I stopped trying to be his wife, our marriage fell apart completely. I have to say that it takes two people to make a marriage work. But our relationship was not working already. I think when I stopped trying, it simply ceased to exist because he wasn't trying either and hadn't been for pretty much the entirety of it.
So, this guy that I started seeing. Turns out he was a major narcissist. All the classic signs: gaslighting, manipulation, lies, etc. He was also an extreme alcoholic. And by extreme, I mean like drunk by 10am and stayed that way for the day. Straight vodka all day every day. He paid attention to me. He "loved" me. But he really didn't. I know that now. But whatever mental capacity I did have for sanity before him, it was completely destroyed after him. He played on every insecurity that I had. And his girlfriend helped. And then she turned around and was angry at me (though she had participated in a good deal of our...interactions). So these people I thought were saving me from a lifeless marriage...they were really helping me destroy myself.
And then, after all that, he married his woman thereby breaking all his promises to be with me and so forth.
Now I had no marriage, no friends (because I had to lie to all of them), no job (I had to quit my job at the Ex's family company to find another job because I knew we were at the end. And then I got fired from the job I found)...
Enter...the other woman. The wife now. She just traipsed in all unassuming. She'd been living overseas and I found out later that Ex and she had been talking online for a very long time. I can't tell you how long. But it was long. And she came in and started spending all this time with him. At first, I was okay with it. I thought it could even work out because I was so busy destroying everything I loved (I felt like I was drowning and pulling everything down with me). But then I really saw her intentions. And Ex's. And I started realizing that maybe I didn't want to drown. Maybe I wanted to save that life still, as awful as it had been.
I quit seeing the narcissist and his woman. I quit going out. I started working to save whatever I could of my life.
But SHE wouldn't go away. It was too late. And she would cry if I tried to fight against her. And I don't mean physically fight.
Her friend called me one day to b*tch me out saying that I was mean and to leave her friend alone because she was crying. Uh, hello? She is trying to steal my husband away!
As much as I destroyed it and hurt him and cheated myself, it still didn't make what she did right. She played the victim and she played it very very well.
I did everything I could to save my mess at that point. But it wasn't enough.
And so in August of that year, we separated.
I went back to my binge drinking. I found a few part-time jobs to pay the bills. And I just existed. Partied and found guys and clung to them until they all ghosted me. And my insecurities and broken mind drove me crazy. I slept around and got an STD. I got drugged one night, but somehow my friends happen to be where I was and kept me safe while I was blacked out. I was coerced into sex (which some people tell me was rape because I definitively said no about 1000 times before I just gave in). I was touched by someone (a story for another day). I had no money, even working 3 jobs. I scraped by, paying bills when I could. I was always getting shut-off notices. I got a repo notice on my car. It was so hard!
It was a very dark time in my life (among many). Somehow though, by the grace of God, I got through it.
And it was during this time that I met DH.
Both my boys are home sick today from school. But I'm still at work. They stay with the ex and his wife when they are sick. I wish they didn't. I am grateful that I don't have to call off work when they are sick. But it really sucks to have my babies cared for and nurtured by that woman. She's part of the reason that Ex and I are not together anymore.
I spent so much of my time in that marriage feeling alone and unloved. We had the kids and through all my depression issues and other things I never felt supported or cared about. I wasn't allowed to do things I wanted to do. We never saw my side of the family. And I mean never. I think I can count on one hand the number of times we ever did anything with them. Ex was only concerned with seeing his family and that was it. I felt so isolated. It's not like I had much of a family anyways, but even seeing my mom was rare. I don't think that he really took me into consideration at all. But as I am a go-with-the-flow person, I just allowed it to happen. And it sucked.
Being trapped in a lifeless marriage was so empty. I did enjoy his family though so I made the best of it that I could. Ex has Asperger's. He has never been officially diagnosed, but when we took my son for his autism testing, we basically found out then that Ex has all the signs and symptoms of it. It all made sense then. Why couldn't he love me? Why couldn't he be considerate? Or contribute around the house? Because of the Asperger's.
Nope. Wrong.
My Daddy died in 2010. And after that, I pretty much took to grieving by drinking. That's when I started smoking cigarettes too. At 26 years old, it's pretty late. I started partying more and going out more and spending more time with friends. And so I found that I got a lot of male attention. I started waking up from my depression and my isolation and realizing there was a whole world outside of the way I had been living. I started getting drunk and making out with strangers. And then one night I went out with a coworker who I really had a thing for. We slept together. I knew then that my marriage was over.
For being a person who believes so strongly in doing the right thing, I was absolutely, positively doing the WRONG thing. And I knew it. And I lied for a long time to cover it up. Of course, Ex finally found out.
This is actually really hard to write about, so bear with me.
Ex found out. And we were fighting all the time anyways. I just stopped trying. And when I stopped trying to be his wife, our marriage fell apart completely. I have to say that it takes two people to make a marriage work. But our relationship was not working already. I think when I stopped trying, it simply ceased to exist because he wasn't trying either and hadn't been for pretty much the entirety of it.
So, this guy that I started seeing. Turns out he was a major narcissist. All the classic signs: gaslighting, manipulation, lies, etc. He was also an extreme alcoholic. And by extreme, I mean like drunk by 10am and stayed that way for the day. Straight vodka all day every day. He paid attention to me. He "loved" me. But he really didn't. I know that now. But whatever mental capacity I did have for sanity before him, it was completely destroyed after him. He played on every insecurity that I had. And his girlfriend helped. And then she turned around and was angry at me (though she had participated in a good deal of our...interactions). So these people I thought were saving me from a lifeless marriage...they were really helping me destroy myself.
And then, after all that, he married his woman thereby breaking all his promises to be with me and so forth.
Now I had no marriage, no friends (because I had to lie to all of them), no job (I had to quit my job at the Ex's family company to find another job because I knew we were at the end. And then I got fired from the job I found)...
Enter...the other woman. The wife now. She just traipsed in all unassuming. She'd been living overseas and I found out later that Ex and she had been talking online for a very long time. I can't tell you how long. But it was long. And she came in and started spending all this time with him. At first, I was okay with it. I thought it could even work out because I was so busy destroying everything I loved (I felt like I was drowning and pulling everything down with me). But then I really saw her intentions. And Ex's. And I started realizing that maybe I didn't want to drown. Maybe I wanted to save that life still, as awful as it had been.
I quit seeing the narcissist and his woman. I quit going out. I started working to save whatever I could of my life.
But SHE wouldn't go away. It was too late. And she would cry if I tried to fight against her. And I don't mean physically fight.
Her friend called me one day to b*tch me out saying that I was mean and to leave her friend alone because she was crying. Uh, hello? She is trying to steal my husband away!
As much as I destroyed it and hurt him and cheated myself, it still didn't make what she did right. She played the victim and she played it very very well.
I did everything I could to save my mess at that point. But it wasn't enough.
And so in August of that year, we separated.
I went back to my binge drinking. I found a few part-time jobs to pay the bills. And I just existed. Partied and found guys and clung to them until they all ghosted me. And my insecurities and broken mind drove me crazy. I slept around and got an STD. I got drugged one night, but somehow my friends happen to be where I was and kept me safe while I was blacked out. I was coerced into sex (which some people tell me was rape because I definitively said no about 1000 times before I just gave in). I was touched by someone (a story for another day). I had no money, even working 3 jobs. I scraped by, paying bills when I could. I was always getting shut-off notices. I got a repo notice on my car. It was so hard!
It was a very dark time in my life (among many). Somehow though, by the grace of God, I got through it.
And it was during this time that I met DH.