S
SadPanda28
A little backstory-
My husband of almost 18 years is a retired marine. He took the early retirement and has been out of the military for 4 years now. He did 5 combat tours as an infantryman, some deployments worse than others. I’m fairly certain he’s had PTSD since about 2004. Once his early retirement was approved he started the ball rolling on his medical stuff and was immediately diagnosed as having PTSD. Since then, he’s used the VA as his mental health care where they’ve prescribed him about a dozen drugs at various dosages. After about 2.5 years he stopped taking them all together and quit any therapy as he said they make him feel like a zombie and gave him side effects that required even more drugs. He felt the therapy wasn’t worth the time required. Now all he is using is prescribed testosterone for energy and medical marijuana at night to help him sleep. Things, mood wise, seemed to be going ok-ish, in relative terms. His impatience and short temper were exacerbated, but he didn’t seem very depressed and hadn’t started drinking or anything, so I remained hopeful that he would come back around to therapy once things calmed down at work.
In January he and a few partners started taking over his parents company. I work there too. His work days became consistently longer and longer until he was working about 12-18 hrs a day regularly, taking maybe 1 day off a week, if that. He worked on vacations. His partners were not doing the same, which I actively expressed my concern (bitched) about, as he was shouldering most of the work load.
Fast forward to this May. I noticed some concerning stuff, but May is generally a bad month for him (Memorial Day, etc.). I had been trying to give him space...doing the bulk of the household duties, etc. He had gone out drinking with some friends every weekend, which isn’t typical. I ended up going back home for a few days to see my brother graduate college, but I arranged my flights so that I’d be home the late afternoon on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend so I could be there as I knew he’d probably be drinking and having a hard time. When I arrived home, he wasn’t there. I asked our kids where he had gone, and they said he went to lunch with his friend, so I called him, and he had obviously had some drinks . He told me to come party with him...I reminded him that we had a birthday party to be at in a couple hours and one of us had to drive. I admit, I was irritated. About an hour later he comes home with his friend, visibly shitfaced, stumbling, and I realize he drove home. So I lose my cool...berate him for drinking and driving and setting a poor example for our kids. He gets upset about a fallen brother, and I basically tell him that throwing his life away is no way to honor his sacrifice. That was not the response he was looking for. I left the room and went outside to get some space and to figure out how to deal with this man. He snaps and loudly says “I’m gonna kill her”, and comes outside and pulls his gun out of his waistband (he has a conceal carry). He never pointed it at me. He has never threatened me before. My daughters see all of this. They call 911 immediately. The police were there in less than 5 minutes. I made a snap decision and told the police that he hadn’t pulled his gun out. They removed his weapon from him just in case and took him elsewhere to sleep it off.
A couple days pass. He stays away. His birthday comes around and he comes home. He tells me he wants a divorce. He can’t stand the tension, He’s unhappy, etc. Shortly there after, his whole family comes over for dinner and we do the whole cake and presents thing, while I’m struggling to hold it together he acts like nothing in the world is wrong. We make it through the event and I ask him if he’ll go to marriage counseling with me. He agrees, but requires that the counselor have a military background.
So for the next 2 weeks I call every psychiatrist, psychologist, and therapist in town (we live in a small city which is very isolated and about 90min away from the next small city) and cannot find any counselor with the background he requires. I ask my co-worker if she knows anyone, and she asks if I’m ok...I open up a little to her. She asks if I’ve looked at his phone to see if I can glean anything I hadn’t. So later that night I just look at our phone bill. For the last month he had had lots of texts and Lengthy phone calls to a local number I didn’t recognize. I google that number, and I find out it belongs to a 24 year old girl. So...When he gets home from work that day, I ask him who she is. He says “just some girl.” which is all I needed to hear. He swears they were just talking, nothing happened, etc. Obviously, I’m incredibly hurt. He says I don’t show him compassion, we don’t have sex enough, we fight all the time. (The sex thing is true, but I disagree with the other two) Ask him to leave. He refuses. A couple days go by he says he wants us to do counseling. He’ll find a good one through the VA and We can do it through Skype. He sends an email to all of his partners basically telling them they have to start pulling their weight because he’s no longer doing X, Y, Z. He plans a weekend getaway for us, to reconnect. I’m open to giving anything as shot. We had an amazing time. I’m feeling hopeful, waiting on him to contact the VA. The next weekend we take a little family trip. Things are still going well. And the weekend after that he goes on a long planned trip to visit his BFF/battle buddy in West VA for a week. I think this trip is going to do him a world of good, but he comes back...off, for lack of a better word.
He works the whole weekend trying to catch up from his week off. His mood doesn’t improve. I check the phone bill again at the end of the week, and now he’s calling divorce attorneys. I ask him what that’s about. He says he’s filing. I asked if it was about this girl, he said no. I ask when he planned on telling me. He says when I got served. This absolutely blew my mind. I could sort of understand if we had been having big dramatic fights or something, but we hadn’t. In this conversation he said he won’t be telling his parents or anyone. I asked if he had talked to his BFF that he had just visited. He said they’re no longer speaking!? Wouldn’t tell me why. I asked him to leave the house while I tried to wrap my head around this, as he has family near and I don’t. He refused, though would disappear at night. The second night, I just googled that girls name and found her address and drove by...sure enough, his car was in the driveway.
Since then he’s told me he attempted suicide twice late at night in May, but couldn’t go through with it. He tells me that i make him miserable but won’t tell me how or for how long...He looks at me like he hates my guts and every interaction is cold if not cruel. It’s like a different person took over his body. He’s upset with me that I’m not handling all of this the way he thinks i should. I am completely lost here...i feel like i must have been living in an alternate reality than he was or he’s going through some serious shit. i don’t know which, or if it really matters.
He finally filed this week. I’m working on finding a therapist for myself. I’ve found an attorney but haven’t retained them yet because initially, he struck me as bloodthirsty, but I guess at the end of the day, that’s what you want in your lawyer? I’ll do whatever I have to do when I get served.
I don’t know how to de-escalate this so that we can at least remain civil. The thought of him being my enemy kills me...he’s been my best friend for pretty much my entire adult life.
I don’t know if any of you have any insight or advice for me. I’m grasping at straws here. I don’t know whether to treat this as a likely ugly divorce or a mental health crisis or both.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, I’m terrified he may take his own life, and I’m terrified of doing anything in this divorce process to create a situation where that will be the outcome, but at the same time, I need to protect my interests as well.
Thanks for taking the time to read my novel.
My husband of almost 18 years is a retired marine. He took the early retirement and has been out of the military for 4 years now. He did 5 combat tours as an infantryman, some deployments worse than others. I’m fairly certain he’s had PTSD since about 2004. Once his early retirement was approved he started the ball rolling on his medical stuff and was immediately diagnosed as having PTSD. Since then, he’s used the VA as his mental health care where they’ve prescribed him about a dozen drugs at various dosages. After about 2.5 years he stopped taking them all together and quit any therapy as he said they make him feel like a zombie and gave him side effects that required even more drugs. He felt the therapy wasn’t worth the time required. Now all he is using is prescribed testosterone for energy and medical marijuana at night to help him sleep. Things, mood wise, seemed to be going ok-ish, in relative terms. His impatience and short temper were exacerbated, but he didn’t seem very depressed and hadn’t started drinking or anything, so I remained hopeful that he would come back around to therapy once things calmed down at work.
In January he and a few partners started taking over his parents company. I work there too. His work days became consistently longer and longer until he was working about 12-18 hrs a day regularly, taking maybe 1 day off a week, if that. He worked on vacations. His partners were not doing the same, which I actively expressed my concern (bitched) about, as he was shouldering most of the work load.
Fast forward to this May. I noticed some concerning stuff, but May is generally a bad month for him (Memorial Day, etc.). I had been trying to give him space...doing the bulk of the household duties, etc. He had gone out drinking with some friends every weekend, which isn’t typical. I ended up going back home for a few days to see my brother graduate college, but I arranged my flights so that I’d be home the late afternoon on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend so I could be there as I knew he’d probably be drinking and having a hard time. When I arrived home, he wasn’t there. I asked our kids where he had gone, and they said he went to lunch with his friend, so I called him, and he had obviously had some drinks . He told me to come party with him...I reminded him that we had a birthday party to be at in a couple hours and one of us had to drive. I admit, I was irritated. About an hour later he comes home with his friend, visibly shitfaced, stumbling, and I realize he drove home. So I lose my cool...berate him for drinking and driving and setting a poor example for our kids. He gets upset about a fallen brother, and I basically tell him that throwing his life away is no way to honor his sacrifice. That was not the response he was looking for. I left the room and went outside to get some space and to figure out how to deal with this man. He snaps and loudly says “I’m gonna kill her”, and comes outside and pulls his gun out of his waistband (he has a conceal carry). He never pointed it at me. He has never threatened me before. My daughters see all of this. They call 911 immediately. The police were there in less than 5 minutes. I made a snap decision and told the police that he hadn’t pulled his gun out. They removed his weapon from him just in case and took him elsewhere to sleep it off.
A couple days pass. He stays away. His birthday comes around and he comes home. He tells me he wants a divorce. He can’t stand the tension, He’s unhappy, etc. Shortly there after, his whole family comes over for dinner and we do the whole cake and presents thing, while I’m struggling to hold it together he acts like nothing in the world is wrong. We make it through the event and I ask him if he’ll go to marriage counseling with me. He agrees, but requires that the counselor have a military background.
So for the next 2 weeks I call every psychiatrist, psychologist, and therapist in town (we live in a small city which is very isolated and about 90min away from the next small city) and cannot find any counselor with the background he requires. I ask my co-worker if she knows anyone, and she asks if I’m ok...I open up a little to her. She asks if I’ve looked at his phone to see if I can glean anything I hadn’t. So later that night I just look at our phone bill. For the last month he had had lots of texts and Lengthy phone calls to a local number I didn’t recognize. I google that number, and I find out it belongs to a 24 year old girl. So...When he gets home from work that day, I ask him who she is. He says “just some girl.” which is all I needed to hear. He swears they were just talking, nothing happened, etc. Obviously, I’m incredibly hurt. He says I don’t show him compassion, we don’t have sex enough, we fight all the time. (The sex thing is true, but I disagree with the other two) Ask him to leave. He refuses. A couple days go by he says he wants us to do counseling. He’ll find a good one through the VA and We can do it through Skype. He sends an email to all of his partners basically telling them they have to start pulling their weight because he’s no longer doing X, Y, Z. He plans a weekend getaway for us, to reconnect. I’m open to giving anything as shot. We had an amazing time. I’m feeling hopeful, waiting on him to contact the VA. The next weekend we take a little family trip. Things are still going well. And the weekend after that he goes on a long planned trip to visit his BFF/battle buddy in West VA for a week. I think this trip is going to do him a world of good, but he comes back...off, for lack of a better word.
He works the whole weekend trying to catch up from his week off. His mood doesn’t improve. I check the phone bill again at the end of the week, and now he’s calling divorce attorneys. I ask him what that’s about. He says he’s filing. I asked if it was about this girl, he said no. I ask when he planned on telling me. He says when I got served. This absolutely blew my mind. I could sort of understand if we had been having big dramatic fights or something, but we hadn’t. In this conversation he said he won’t be telling his parents or anyone. I asked if he had talked to his BFF that he had just visited. He said they’re no longer speaking!? Wouldn’t tell me why. I asked him to leave the house while I tried to wrap my head around this, as he has family near and I don’t. He refused, though would disappear at night. The second night, I just googled that girls name and found her address and drove by...sure enough, his car was in the driveway.
Since then he’s told me he attempted suicide twice late at night in May, but couldn’t go through with it. He tells me that i make him miserable but won’t tell me how or for how long...He looks at me like he hates my guts and every interaction is cold if not cruel. It’s like a different person took over his body. He’s upset with me that I’m not handling all of this the way he thinks i should. I am completely lost here...i feel like i must have been living in an alternate reality than he was or he’s going through some serious shit. i don’t know which, or if it really matters.
He finally filed this week. I’m working on finding a therapist for myself. I’ve found an attorney but haven’t retained them yet because initially, he struck me as bloodthirsty, but I guess at the end of the day, that’s what you want in your lawyer? I’ll do whatever I have to do when I get served.
I don’t know how to de-escalate this so that we can at least remain civil. The thought of him being my enemy kills me...he’s been my best friend for pretty much my entire adult life.
I don’t know if any of you have any insight or advice for me. I’m grasping at straws here. I don’t know whether to treat this as a likely ugly divorce or a mental health crisis or both.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, I’m terrified he may take his own life, and I’m terrified of doing anything in this divorce process to create a situation where that will be the outcome, but at the same time, I need to protect my interests as well.
Thanks for taking the time to read my novel.