Some More Of My Story

The first meeting I ever had with the Fairways Divorce Mediator was a blitz. I got dressed a week after the whole thing blew up in my face and got in the truck with Michael and the girls and drove to FSJ absolutely quaking in disbelief. I couldn't believe that I was actually entertaining the idea of a divorce.  We were met at the door by a chatty lady who took us to her offices and had us fill out a questionnaire. I sat opposite my husband of twenty years and tried to wrap my head around what was happening. It was starting to get around our community that Michael and I were getting a divorce and I felt like I could hardly walk around and look anyone in the eye. I felt so ashamed. I was once again a failure at something. I remember the mediator talking about the victim relationship and realized that she was talking about me as though I had perpetuated this in some way or form. It rolled over me as just one more mini shock wave. Me... victim....me ... at fault? What was she talking about.

What I have come to realize is like most psychological evaluations bestowing the title of victim is not always correct and in some cases is just outright wrong... so wrong. Victims are people who allow themselves to be in that position.  I hadn't allowed myself to be where I was. I had gotten there through no fault of my own. Yes, they say that the part of victim is also a denial that you had any part in the problem. But how can I have allowed myself to be where I was when I didn't even know it was happening. All I had done was give him freedom to have interests that were different from mine... isn't that a part of a normal and healthy relationship. You can't hold everyone so closely that they come to resent you... in the end that is equally bad. As mine and Michael's relationship deteriorated over the winter I would ask him if there was something wrong and he would always say no...  I would ask him occasionally if he still loved me after all these years but asking him is something I had always done and he had always said yes.  So it was as I sat in the Fairways Divorce Solutions office that I wondered why she kept telling me about readings which were meant to help with the victim mentality... it just added insult to injury... I wasn't a victim... I was me! I was trying to cope with something beyond my control in the only way I knew.

I have come to resent the whole idea of the victim mentality... I have come to think of myself as anything other than a victim... the only thing I was a victim of was Michael's deception and dishonesty.... but you cannot make a person tell you the truth... when you ask and they answer, you can only take what they say at face value as truth. Did he love me... no, but he told me he did and his actions, though not as forthcoming as was probably normal were still acceptable.  He still held me and gave me back rubs and kissed me in the mornings as he went out the door. He still acted like he cared about me so how was I to know. We even still held hands after we had turned out the light at night. His actions were still the actions of a lover and a friend. Sometimes his snappiness was disconcerting but I put it down to too much stress at work... after all, the teachers were on strike all year, there was a new principal at the school, and he is the Union rep for the school. As for his friendship with Samantha... I hate being the jealous wife and occasionally I have worn that hat when I have noticed friendships developing that made me uncomfortable... I was determined not to do that and let him have friends just as he did me. I mean she worked with him so they had to associate.

To this day I maintain that I do not have a victim mentality.

My story continued:

Two days after this all happened I was having trouble keeping food down and I was not sleeping for anymore than an hour or two. I was trying to talk to Mike and hoping he could explain how I had lost his love without me noticing. I was worried about the girls because it was starting to hit home for them too. I was already talking about moving back to Nfld. I knew that this town wasn't big enough for me and the "other woman".  I knew that if I saw her I would likely punch the living daylights out of her or worse. I still loved Michael and didn't blame him (which I look back on now as being so stupid). I felt that Samantha had torn her own marriage up and then turned around and played on Michael's heart strings evoking feelings of sympathy and eventually turning him to her. I didn't believe he really loved her, he couldn't... he had promised me that he would love me for all eternity. I knew deep down that the person I fell in love with was still there. He was that kind and generous person in whom I had always depended and trusted. If I was a victim at all it was in that... I allowed myself to put him so high on a pedestal that no one could ever live up to it.  Still he had proven to me over the years how he had always lived up to it....

How little I knew.

The move to Nfld was becoming more and more realistic. I had been online with Daughter #2 who had been with me as soon as she knew her father had cheated on me... she wanted out of this community and being with her Dad did nothing to make her feel like she could trust anyone.  She didn't like what her Dad had done to us, she didn't trust him, and she had lost her respect for him. She had always felt uncomfortable with his relationship with Samantha and had had suspicions for a much longer time than any of us. Meanwhile Daughter #1 was reacting in her own way. Panic for sure was on the top of the list. She wanted to run away, she wanted to go to Oma's and Opa's and stay there, she wanted to change her name, change her hair, get a tattoo, at least change anything. But she didn't know if she wanted to leave Hudson's Hope, she wasn't sure if she wanted to stay with me or stay with her dad. We backed off her completely and let her have space. Lots and lots of space. But lots and lots of love and hugs and worry too. We told her she could choose to live where ever she wanted.... but I was worried, I'll be honest. I was worried at her stability, I was worried that she would want to stay with her dad and how would I ever leave her behind.

I worried and this added to the weight loss and the throwing up. One evening we were surfing the internet looking at Nfld real estate... we were talking about one house in New-Wes-Valley and he was in the background looking at the houses that we were looking at for possible candidates.  I turned and looked at him and saw sadness there on his face. And I said to him, "You know you should be coming with us. You are so important to this family and you should be coming on this new great adventure." He visibly crumpled. So I said that maybe with help we could work things out if he wanted and we could all go together as our family should. He stared at me very hard and he all he said was, "I have to think"... and he walked out the door.  He was only gone for five minutes when he came through the door visibly agitated. He said you and I need to talk. I said ok barely able to hold my breath... was he contemplating a reconciliation?!

We went outside to the truck and sat there for the next hour discussing why he had turned away from me. It was quite a humbling experience. He laid out why he had fallen out of love with me, telling me that I had become a recluse and that I was not considerate of his needs. He began to talk of all of his resentments and I began to realize that this had been building for a very long time and that he had not been honest or truthful for a very long time... some of his resentments went back eight or nine years. This is the part that I am ashamed of... because I apologized for  all the wrongs I had done him... but I continued to push for a reconciliation saying that I was willing to seek counseling to better myself if he was willing to seek counseling with me. I said that we could fall in love all over again and make a better marriage than the one that we had been living.... I practically begged.  He said he needed to think and that scared me because I had no idea how long he needed to think so I asked him how long he would leave us hanging and he said not long.

That night he went to the trailer and I went to my room... he to think and me to reflect on everything that he had said to me.... all the hurts that he had bestowed on me.  I took a hard look at myself that night and decided that in some things he was probably right but in some things he definitely was not. I could see how he had thought of me as a recluse (though I am not) but I understood that in the last few years my Master Spinning program had drawn me away from the people with whom we had always associated. I also saw that more and more I hated going to town on the winter roads and that I had allowed him to go alone many times to get groceries and do other things as needed when maybe I should have gone with him. I had allowed him to take the brunt of caring for our animals instead of sharing in the task. I had pushed him to do household renovations when he hated it, instead I should have hired someone or not done them at all. But mostly I recognized that he is a man who is satisfied with the same old same old and I am always seeking the new and different and that reflected in my household management. I was buying and selling furniture so that we could have new things, I was constantly moving the furniture around. I was building new decks when he wanted to spend money on vacations. I fully own up to those bad decisions but I was willing to make an effort to do better if it meant saving our marriage and our family. I ate it all hook line and sinker. But then he was at fault too. He never talked to me... and told me how he felt... he said he tried but I would always turn it back on him. He said that I liked to have my own way... that was harsh. He said I was not a caring wife and demanded all of his time... I don't know how you can be both at the same time.  So many harsh things were said... some true and some not so much.

The next morning he came into the house and headed straight for the bathroom. I was in the kitchen and heard him come in and I wondered what he was thinking. I sat in the sunroom awaiting him to come out. The girls came downstairs and when he finally came out of the bathroom he asked me to come upstairs so we could talk.

I sat on my bed awaiting the outcome of all our lives. He started by saying that he had promised himself that he wouldn't come into the house until he had made a decision. That he had been thinking all night long. That he had talked to Samantha and that she felt he should give our family a chance, (my heart sunk at that... because I thought he should make his own independent decision). Next he said that he had changed his mind five times between the trailer and the house, (my heart sunk a little further). Then he turned and looked me full in the face because up till then he had been looking at the floor. He said, " you need to know that if I stay with you I will be staying with you out of obligation. I realize we have two children that need both a mother and a father and I don't feel right about leaving you at this point in your life with two aging parents with terrible health issues when you have so much wrong with your back. Everything will have to change and I don't know if I can get a job in Nfld. I would be giving up a good  career here to go to the unknown and whose to say that in a year or two we don't go through this all over again. I can't stay here if I stay with you because I don't know if I can trust myself around Samantha." He went on and on and on and on.... I sat there and listened determined not to interrupt... but I knew the moment he said that he would be staying with me out of obligation that the door was not only shut but the doorway to reconciliation was gone. I sat there listening to that man try to tell me that it was not workable.... but he didn't have the balls to make the cut complete. He kept saying all the things that a woman dreads to hear. I listened for 20 minutes to him try to let me down easily. I listened to his inner struggle and I knew that when I spoke that I was going to shut us down permanently. But I wanted at that point to see if he had the balls to say what needed to be said. Finally I had enough because he started to hash out all the things that he saw wrong with me and I was not willing any longer to enable him to put me down. I have my faults there are no two ways about that, but I am not willing to have him beat me up emotionally with his diatribe over and over again.

I stood up and said to him, "I think we both know where this is headed. I think I am not willing to live with someone who is with me out of obligation. Who had to ask his girlfriend if he should stay with his wife. I think knowing what you have just said to me that this divorce is our only option."

It took a lot for me to say that. I know it was the right thing to do... but still it killed me to say it. At that point I began to get my strength back. It was a turning point for me. Even though I was still an emotional basket case, I began to eat better and I stopped throwing up.

That was the day that he moved on. That was the day he turned to concrete. That was the day that he called the people at the Fairways Divorce Solutions office and made an appointment for us. That was the day that I needed to stand on my own two feet because my husband had changed and I had changed and we were no longer compatible. That was the day I knew deep in my soul that I was on my own. From here on in I would be making decisions for me and the girls and that he was not a part of those decisions. That was the final nail in the coffin.

I still didn't know how we had gotten here. How could we have changed so much and I not notice. How could I have had so much faith is something that was so fundamentally broken.

It ate at me... I would have panic attacks at strange times thinking about all that I faced.... the first thing was to get ready to go to Olds and face a week of testing. How was I going to get through it all. We started making plans... me and the girls and Opa.... Oma was unsure of things and was in a state of shock too. She was not fit for decision making. We looked at prices of moving companies. We started looking at houses. All the while I was telling my family members what was going on, he was hiding from telling his family. I don't know why but each day I would ask him he had told his mother and sister and brothers. He began to tell people here in town... he told the staff at the school, but for some reason he wouldn't tell his family. I still had days when I would shrivel up inside and cry for hours on end. But my friends and family gathered around me and bolstered me up. I had begun to think of him as not a part of my family. But I still hoped that for the children's sake I would be able to maintain some kind of friendship with him.  I thought it was a good possibility if we could get through the divorce without tearing each other apart.

We went to our first meeting at the Fairway Solutions office and I was like a deer in the headlights... there was such a sense of surreality that I'm not sure any of it made sense. I still couldn't figure out how this had all happened. Underneath in a small part of my heart I kept a little flame going because I wanted our marriage back like it was in the beginning when everything was shiny and new. Little did I know the half of it. He was already moving on... you could tell from his body language that he was thinking elsewhere and I couldn't talk to him about anything other than the Daughters.... He didn't want to talk to me at all. Essentially he had cut me out of his life. That was clear that day in the Fairways DS office.

I went to Olds and struggled through somehow. At one point in the middle of the night one night, I emailed him and begged for him to make me understand how this could have happened. He wrote me a long and rambling letter where he took a lot of responsibility for not being more honest with me a long time ago. But he continued to blame me for his falling out of love with me. I shot back a long answer that basically poured out what I saw was wrong with our lives as a married couple and I'm sure that didn't help but it was the truth from my perspective which I felt he really needed to see, besides, I knew there was no hope for our marriage... I wasn't saying it in an effort to "get him back" I was seeking understanding.

Then I returned from Olds and it felt like nothing had ever changed.  He was still living in the trailer on our property working on the renovations on our house as we were trying to sell it. He would come to the house for meals but he was sleeping in the trailer. His laundry was mixed up in ours and I was washing it just the same as I always had. He was getting me tea in the morning as he always had.  Then we had a viewer come and look at our house. That was the day after I got home from Olds. They came and viewed and then they made an offer. It was low so we countered but the plausibility of selling our home and never seeing my husband again hit home and when it did, I started to cry. I ran to my room and curled up in the fetal position and cried all over again. The girls came in and I threw them off like I was possessed and I stormed downstairs and I asked him if he saw all the harm that he was doing... I asked him how he could do this... all the time I saw him and couldn't figure out how an alien could have entered my husband's body and possessed his soul. That concrete face stared back at me and I finally asked him to explain... to tell me everything... because I knew, just knew that he was holding out. He said he had said everything... and then I told him that he needed to make me hate him.  I begged for him to make me hate him. And I am ashamed of this... I asked him to show me some of his emails to Samantha so that I could not only hate her but I could hate him too. Of course he said no. I asked him over and over how far he had taken his relationship with Samantha and he finally told me that they had kissed a number of times. I felt my heart breaking and breaking and breaking... kissing... was that all... how could you throw off your family for kissing... there had to be more.

In the end I told him he had to leave, that this farce that we were living... this friendship that we were trying to portray was confusing the situation badly and no one was able to move on. Everything that we were trying to do in the name of the kids was not healthy. He said he couldn't leave until the renovations were done. I felt so trapped like a caged animal. I needed to get out but I couldn't get out. I was well and truly stuck.

I knew I needed to find some space. That's the night I packed up Daughter #1's things and my things and Narmin. Daughter #2 chose to stay with her dad until mid week. I packed up food and bedding and everything that I thought I might need for a stay at a friend's empty house. Then I headed off to my friend's house in FSJ like a scared and chased animal. Little did I know that The Hounds Of Hell were on my heels. That was only a few days before the reckoning came... my reckoning... a reckoning like nothing I could have ever expected. I took that week in FSJ as a time for me. Within days I made a discovery about Michael that floored me to the bottom of my soul. There is no doubt that it was a good thing that I was there when I made my discovery. I spent the next days at that house and I nursed myself in every way I could. I needed it.

That's enough for now... I think I had better find some distance from this dreadful story. I will tell more at another time. Right now it is bedtime. Daughter #1 is home looking positively buff. She has been working very hard in the last while. I picked her and him up at the airport. He sat in the back seat as I drove home. I couldn't keep acting like we were the family we had always been... because we are not. We were only home a short time when I knew I had to set some boundaries because he has come home expecting it to be like it was before. He went to the tent trailer and changed his clothes and proceeded to act like mi casa et su casa. He comes and goes without knocking on the door. He acts as if he has every right to be here... but he doesn't... he needs to get the hell out of my house.  I sat down with him on the deck and explained that he needs to maintain a sense of decorum and that there had to be some rules. I also told him that he had till Monday to find a place to put the tent trailer. He was no longer a part of my family and since this house was my place to live that he wasn't welcome here. The stupid idiot said, "but it is my house and those girls are still my daughters."  So I painstakingly said that this was not where he lived... that he had moved out of the house on the 6th of June and that he was no longer welcome. Then a patiently explained to him that since he needed to finish the renovations then he could come in the morning at 10 a.m. at which time I would leave and I would return at 5 p.m. at which time he was to leave again. Then I painstakingly explained that I was not trying to take the girls away from him because with our time here in BC getting so short that he could take them as much as he wanted five nights a week and weekends too if he wanted... I was ok with that as long as that is what they wanted too. But he definitely doesn't get it because he is still coming and going all night long without knocking on a door... and he washed the dishes after supper tonight... Next thing he will be complaining about how lazy I am... he fed the animals... he watered plants... he acts like he belongs here... It's just too stupid for words... he doesn't understand.... "Get Lost... Get outta here... go away.... I kept my peace and didn't say anything because I know he is going to be leaving here on Monday and hopefully it won't be so bad then. Arggh...

Last night after bearing my soul here I didn't sleep very well... I think it was dragging the whole thing up again. So tonight I am tired and it is time for this bonzo to go to bed...I think that is all I can talk about at this point... there are other things that need to be said before I am completely done but that will come down the road when other things have come to pass.