DIVORCE SUCKS. There is no way around it, and although the use of the F word is considered vulgar in some circles, the word fits.
My story begins in 1993. Met in January, proposed in April, married by August, divorce final 2 days before our first anniversary. That’s not where the story ends though. The journey between the two destinations doesn’t really matter, it was our first year of marriage, and many factors came in to play.
3 months after we got divorced, we were back living together again, and 2 years later, on what would have been our 3rd anniversary, we got married again. Many said that we were glutton for punishment, but we didn’t listen. We were happy, and in love.
After 3 major moves through 2 states, we ended our journey in the city that started it all, and now with a 9 year old son.
The 21 year journey also doesn’t matter much. Our marriage wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it was working. There was lots of give and take, and depending on which side you speak to, there was more give than take. None of that is of any consequence. The final act does hold a lot of importance though.
In April of our 21st year of marriage, I was preparing to go out of town on a business trip. I don’t travel for my work, so an opportunity to go to Alabama for 2 days was a welcome treat. The afternoon before I was to leave, my wife is going through my tablet, and subsequently going through my emails. Her reasoning for going through them has never been discussed, but she found something in my outgoing mail that was not good.
I can’t remember much of the email, but it seemed to be a reply to a Craigslist ad. It said something like “I don’t want anything, I am just bored, write me back.” I am paraphrasing, but from my perspective, it was fairly tame. Granted, a married man should never be writing such a thing to begin with, and that is the very bad part of this.
Here is the problem with this…I didn’t write it. I don’t know how it got there, and probably never will. I have only vague ideas on how, with little to no proof, but like she said “It’s there, in your email!” I have been using computers for years, and I am the one who everyone turns to when they need help with theirs. I am also smart enough to open up temporary emails if I were to do such a thing. But I didn’t, and she wouldn’t believe me.
That is the crux of the problem. She didn’t believe me, and I was upset that after 21 years, and having never even the slightest hints of infidelity, that she didn’t believe me. I went on my business trip, and had an Absolute terrible time. Every spare minute I had was going through my emails, trying to see if there was anything else in there that would lead me to how they got there. I did find that my email had been hacked about the time of the alleged email (which was over a year old), and was reminded of this when I forgot my password and was told I had changed it XXX months ago. I thought I had at least found the way it was put in there, but still had no further proof. My marriage was crumbling beneath my feet, and I felt like I was coming apart at the seams. We spoke numerous times, and although she was still understandably upset, I felt like she was coming around to believing me.
Here is the thing about accusations of any kind, that all people should take heed to. Accusations with only circumstantial evidence can be a terrible thing. Take for instance a scenario that you can put yourself in to: You’re neighbor has the most irritating, yippy, heal biting dog you have ever lay eyes on. It digs up your flower beds, craps in your yard, barks incessantly at you every time you walk outside and it’s owner is completely oblivious to it, and doesn’t care. You walk out to get your newspaper one morning, and Yippy the dog bolts off the porch and runs right for you, tripping you and causing you to skin your knee. You yell at the dog, and when it’s owner comes off the porch to scold you for yelling at her precious mutt, off the cuff you yell back that you would love to kill that worthless dog. The next day, Yippy comes up missing, and the police come knocking on your door. She tells the police that you were always mean to her dog, and just yesterday, threatened to kill it. Now the dog is gone, and you killed it. There is no evidence the dog is anywhere but lost, but the police are still at your door. You are accused of something that before yesterday would have been a non issue. But your words are still enough for you to be accused. Can you prove you didn’t kill the dog? Of course not, because you didn’t kill it, and had nothing to do with it. You have no proof because you didn’t do a thing other than have words with it’s owner, but the burden of proof is not on her to prove you did it, the burden of proof is on you that you didn’t do it. The next day, the dog is found dead in her trashcan. If you would have killed the dog, would you have put it in her trashcan for her to find? Hell no, you would’ve taken it somewhere else completely so there was no proof you did it. No dead animal, no murder. The police are at your door again, and accusing you of murdering her pet. You didn’t do it, you would never harm a living thing. But the police don’t believe you, and no matter how much you beg and plead, and tell them that you were with your family the whole time, they want you to prove you didn’t do it.
Terrible, isn’t it. That is exactly how I felt. That sent email was my “I’m going to kill that damn dog”. I didn’t do it, couldn’t prove it, and the damage was done. Our marriage took a hardcore skid downhill after that. We made a go of it, but I could see it in her eyes that it really couldn’t be fixed. Because it was “my” email, every little thing I ever did, became a huge point of contention from that point on, and even though we had moments of happiness again, they became further and further apart. By July, she asked me to move out. Things happened where it became impossible for me to do so, but on the weekend of our 21st anniversary, and my birthday, it all fell apart for good, and I moved out the following Monday.
Everybody is different on how they handle such things, and in the beginning, I really truly thought it would all blow over. I completely ignored the warning signs in front of me, and kept pushing and trying to get back to my old life.
The time between August and November was the most difficult of my life. But I also grew more as a person during that time then all the other time before. And how I did it is the key to crossing that bridge in to your new life.
I was a complete and utter mess, and we fought all the time. We had tried counseling in that time between April and August, but for me, it was a complete and utter waste of time. I know all counselors are different, but they really are just mediators. If your marriage isn’t working, sitting on a couch in a sterile office with a person who doesn’t care one way or the other, it’s not going to work anyhow. But during that time, I did a lot of research on my own, and found a few very helpful websites that dealt with marriage problems. I brought up many of those things, and we tried them, but I think she was done with our marriage long before I was, so it was a losing battle to begin with.
One of the things that I found being helpful, was a diary. I didn’t even find that idea on a marriage website, I found it by stumbling around to other “like” sites, and came across one for dealing with loss. So, on day one, I downloaded a simple diary app to my phone, and started writing.
I don’t have many friends, and the friends I do have, I would never talk to about how I was really feeling. I could only tell my family so much, so the diary was my new friend. I began writing in it like I was telling my closest friend every single little thing.
I would sometimes write in the diary 10 times a day. I would write after we talked, I would write after we texted, after we met, after we fought. I would talk in circles, saying some things 20 times in 10 different ways. Every thought that came in to my head, good or bad, I would write in the diary. At night, I would go back and read it, and then write my thoughts about what I read. It wasn’t making it any easier, but it was my way of getting out every little thought I had in my head.
Each passing day was a day closer to saying the “D” word. Some days I was ready for it, other days, the mere thought of it sent me in to a deep despair. I kept thinking that we were going to make it work, all the while knowing in the back of my head, that from the second she made me move out, we were done, and there was no coming back.
So, each day, I made it a point to write in my diary. There were days when I didn’t have much to say, and it was on those days that my despair was the worst. But, I was a big strong man, and I kept things bottled up like any good man should do. I learned that is not a good thing, and like anything under extreme pressure, there has to be an outlet. Even a slow outlet is an outlet, as long as the pressure gets let of a little. My bottle came to the point that it was time to explode, and explode it did.
I remember the day like it was yesterday. I believe it was the very end of August, or the beginning of September. She and I had been texting all morning, and something was said that set me off. I don’t even remember what it was that was said, but I felt it coming on and needed to vacate work in a hurry. I told my boss that I needed a personal day, clocked out, and left in my truck. I believe I said something to her that scared her, but it wasn’t intentional. I didn’t make it but a few miles before the emotions overtook and I broke down like I had never done before.
She tried to call, tried to find out where I was at, and I wouldn’t tell her. Somehow my mom got involved in texting or calling, and when I spoke with her, I was a complete mess. I promised her that I would call her after a while. The wife called again, and after her begging and pleading, I finally told her where I was at. The tears and emotions kept coming and coming, and I had zero control. I was crying in fits, and when I finally thought it was leaving, the emotions came rolling back up again.
When she showed up, my face was a puffy mess. I was inconsolable, and she was as calm and cool as a cucumber. I talked about all of my feelings, begged and pleaded for her to believe me about the alleged email, begged and pleaded for her to let me come home. The one fact of the whole thing that opened my eyes was the fact that no matter how upset I was, and no matter how emotional I was, she stayed calm and cool, and never once gave up any ground.
That was my plateau, and from that day on, I knew exactly where I stood, and knew exactly what was coming next. My statement right from the beginning was that I would give her 1 month to make up her mind. But being strung along for that long was terrible, and with a little over a week left, I pegged her down to making a decision.
Her thing was that we both made the decision by me making her tell me her decision that day. She said that because I knew that was what she was going to say, I was also making the decision to divorce. It was b.s., but I understood that was her way to even out the decision in her eyes, or at the very least, was able to tell the people around her that we made the decision together. It was her justification.
For the most part, the divorce was pretty easy. We didn’t hire lawyers, and did everything with the aid of the courthouse and free forms. After filling out all of the forms we could find online, I was tasked with taking them in to the courthouse for filing. Little did I know that we had done it completely wrong, papers were out of order and the courthouse would not file them in that condition. They sent me down to aid department, and after paying another fee, and attending a class, we soon had our papers ready to be filed.
I left a small part out; the part about custody. Initially, I was told that a judge wouldn’t allow for exactly 50/50 physical custody because it’s nearly impossible to go through with it with two parents who don’t live together. And then came the subject of child support. Because she made almost twice as much as I did, we put together a parenting plan that showed she got him about 75 percent of the time. We made the decision together at that point, that neither one of us wanted money from the other, and if it came down to it, would give the money back to the other parent.
That all changed when after they looked at the papers, and made the final changes, I was going to owe her over $250 a month. Her story completely changed, and now she was going to need that money to help take care of our son. After many many heated arguments about the obvious things, she agreed to let me change it to what it will really be….50/50. Unfortunately, because the days in a year are odd, it ended up being 51/49, with me being the 51.
I thought she was mad before when I was upset about she was going back on her agreement, she was really mad when it came down to her paying me $100 a month. I assured her that I would not go back on my end of the arrangement, and would give her back all of the money, but I was missing the whole “principal” of it, and she provided way more for our son than I did. It wasn’t true, but nothing I ever said that was contrary to her point of view was going to be right anyhow.
It all blew over, and by December, we were officially divorced. Things didn’t get easier from there. I was still living with my parents, and she lived in the apartment that we got together 5 months previous. I had almost no money for Christmas, and she had taken a loan out on her 401K and was able to be extravagant. She said it was not about showing me up, but that’s not the way it looked.
That in a nutshell was the worst four months of my life. I came out of that stronger than ever, but with that strength came a cockiness that I was over everything and was ready to take on the world. I began seeing more and more reminders of my old life with her. Those reminders were always there, but because I thought I was over it all, I began looking at those things with more scrutiny than the passing observations they had been in the recent past.
Memories flooded back, as did all of the future things that I would no longer be able to share with her. We had always said that we would never get divorced, and would grow old together. But I began to see all of the hints that had been there for a while, and I had never picked up on. She would bring up how we would never ever get divorced, but if we did…..These conversations were not frequent, but they were always brought up by her. We would fight about the smallest things, and although I was never allowed to bring up anything from the past, many times her basis for arguments were things from the past. Even when she knew was wrong, and I would ask her to change, she would show me the door and tell me that “If I didn’t like it, I could leave.”
I think they were all hints pointing at the inevitable, and the email was her match to start the fire that she had been building stick by stick for a long time. Granted, I wasn’t happy either, but I wouldn’t have ever done anything to jeopardize my marriage. My thinking was that my happiness didn’t matter. Being miserable in a complete home with a mom and dad with their child was vastly more important than being happy and raising a child in a broken home. I still think that to some extent, even though I have been told my numerous people that is a dumb way to go through life.
I do see their point, and still have a problem wrapping my head around that idea. Especially now that I am happy. I feel guilty sometimes for being happy. Going over things in my mind, wondering what I could have done to keep our home together. But those thoughts are in vain, and although hindsight is 20/20, there is no going back. I know I am where I am supposed to be in this life, and wouldn’t be the person that I am today had I not been married to her.
I wouldn’t change the last 21 years for anything in the world. Without that marriage, I would not have my son, and its unimaginable to think about how life would be different. There is no point is going over the past unless you use it as a tool to change your future. Marriage just does not hold the same importance as it used to, but then again, who do we know this from? Our parents? Our grandparents? My grandmother on my mom’s side was married twice, as was my grandfather. My grandmother on my dad’s side was married 4 times, and my grandfather was married twice. So, I guess the idea of the shrinking sanctity of marriage is out the window. Both men and women of older generations stayed in miserable marriages, and only stayed because it was the communal normal. Marriage hasn’t changed. At 21 years old (or somewhere there about), how does anyone think that they know enough about the world to stay with the same partner for 40,50,60 years?
Let’s face it, Divorce Sucks. Unless you have been through it before, it is unlike anything you have gone through, and it’s tough. Find your way, and you will come out of it better on the other side. Write in a diary, get your words out. It is important that if you do talk to someone, they are only there to listen. You don’t need advice at this point. You just need a shoulder to cry on, and a patient ear. Let them support you without telling you what to do. You are at this point because of decisions that you have made, one way or the other. It is up to you to pull yourself out of it. It took me a while to learn that, and I know that when it comes right down to it, I was just as much at fault as she was. Be it letting her get away with things, or being difficult myself.
You can do this, and these feelings will pass.
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