The past 5 months

This blog is about my my journey the past five months. It's a journal of my thoughts and feelings through a very difficult separation and now a divorce. As I am the one who would do anything to work on the marriage, I've been having a very difficult time and a friend recommended that maybe I start an on-line journal of my innermost thoughts. It is now May and since December, I haven't had one day without crying. Yesterday, I was served the divorce papers and have been an even more emotional wreck. So tonight, I'll be writing all of my feelings that have been bottled up for the past five months. It'll be long so if you do decide to read this for some reason, please bear with the length.

A Friday night in December 2006, my husband with no previous mention, decided not to come home. This was a painful night but I did not expect what happened next. Back story, the week before we had gotten into a pretty big fight- in my eyes- it was one of the first fights we had. Later- I find out in his eyes we had been fighting for four months straight. The fight came about because we had gone to a holiday party for his MBA program and I was a bit uncomfortable. I'm an introvert and get very nervous around large groups of people. The past few years, I had also worked in substance abuse prevention. At the first place, there wasn't a lot of food and I hadn't had too much to eat that day and there were free drinks. I'm not a big drinker and I had a bit too much too drink. After a while, the large group of students and significant others went down the road to another bar. Apparantly, I wasn't smiling at all and it seemed as though I wasn't having a good time. My husband had asked me to dance and I said no. There were two reasons for me saying no: we've been together 8 1/2 years and not once have I ever been able to get him to dance so I was tryingn to be nice and I had too much to drink and wasn't feeling very well. My husband became very irate and ordered a taxi home. A couple of his friends came with us in the cab and we dropped them off. We were all talking about a party she would be having the next week. I was very excited about this because I really did want to get to know my husband's new friends. I could tell that for some reason, my husband was quite upset- I ended up crying the entire way home.

The following evening, I started my first night of tutoring and was really excited to come home and tell my husband about it. When I left tutoring, I had a message on my phone that he would be going out that evening. I had called him back to see if I could come with and he said no. At the time, I was a little upset because in our 8 1/2 years together, we never went out like this. In CT, I could barely get him to have a drink while at a Karoake bar. He came home a little after midnight and I couldn't sleep very well because he smelled like oranges (why he smelled like oranges, I have no idea) and he was snoring which he never did. Because of those 2 things, I ended up sleeping in the other room which is now something I greatly regret. That same night a friend of mine who use to live in MN had called because she wanted to know the laws on divorce in MN and she didn't want her husband to see. So, being a good friend, I looked up the information on our home computer. Never thinking anything of it. The following day, my husband had off from classes. During the day, I usually got a couple phone calls or e-mails from him while I was at work. I'm not a fan of my job and those phone calls or e-mails were the highlights of my day. That day, I didn't get any so I decided to e-mail him and his e-mails back were very short. On my home from work, I called him as usual and he asked if I was planning on coming home. I said of course, after I check on our friends cat. He then told me that when he turned the computer on he saw the page on divorce. I explained to him what had happened and he said good, that explains things. He had checked my phone records and I was talking to the person who I had looked up the information for. When I get home, the house was spotless- he had called his sister to see if he could come live there for awhile and he wanted to leave a clean house.

At that time, we talked about what was going on between us. Again- back story- before his MBA program- my husband never ever went out to the bars or clubbing or anything like that, he barely drank yet I always thought we were having fun. He told me that I really hurt him at the holiday party and his one friend (a girl who I was jealous of because he was always talking about her- this is yet another story, it's the first time I had ever been jealous) thought I hated her because I wasn't talking to her. I don't remember her talking to me but I have a really hard time hearing things at a bar/club. He also said that he had worked his a** off for five years and wanted to have some fun. He told me that he was upset with himself that he was so uptight in college and that he now liked to go out. He also told me that he really wanted his friends to get to know the real me because they had only seen the depressed me. ( Sidenote- at this time I had started a new job and was very unhappy- I am an introvert but I like to be around people- and in this position I work completely by myself. Unfortunately, I let my unhappiness with my work leak into my personal life. ) I told him that I really don't mind if he goes out, I just want to know what time he'll be home. I also asked him if I could come out with him as well and if he could set up a bowling night or something like that so his friends could get to know the real me. At the time, he said that if he would have known that I didn't mind going out- we could have had a lot more fun in NYC. This hurt me quite a bit because I always had fun just because I was with him. After the conversation, we both said things that we would work on. I was really forward to his friends holiday party and getting to know his friends a little bit better.

Fast forward 3 days. It is now Friday and we had made plans to go to the casino with a friend. Previously, I had asked my husband if he would be going out to celebrate as it was the last day of his classes and case competition. Originally, he had said no. I talked to him very briefly during that day and he said that he was really tired and would be coming home. I asked him if he wanted me to not go to the casino with our friend and if I should just come home. He told me no, he would just go home and sleep. I went with my friend to the casino for awhile and asked him if we could leave early because I wanted to spend sometime with my husband. On the way home, I received a message from my husband saying that the class decided to go out and celebrate and that he knew I wanted to know when he would be home and that he would call me at 11:30. I have no problem with this yet 11:30 comes and no call, 12:00 comes and no call. By this time, I'm getting a little worried because it's the first time he's actually gone out. I try calling his phone and it's off, I keep trying and then I get hung up on a few times. Finally, around 1:30, someone answers his phone and it's a girl. I ask for my husband and the girl tells me that my husband isn't there. I call again and the person that answers the phone says that someone just turned the phone in and they don't know whose it is. About 10 minutes later, I get a text message saying "I'm staying at this person's house". I'm really worried at this point as he has never done this before. I call his phone and still no answer. So, I use what I know and look up the phone number of the friend that he said we would be staying at his house. His friend answers his phone and tells me that my husband is not with him but gives me the phone number of a girl my husband is with. I call and the girl answers, tells my husband who it is and then I'm hung up on. I call again and finally get a hold of my husband. I ask him if he wants me to pick him up and all he says is "no, I'm a horrible person". I ask if he did something with a girl and he says "no, that's the alcohol talking, but I'm a horrible, horrible person". It's now about 3:00 in the morning and I have to work at my 2nd job at 10:00. I have no idea what he meant by he's a horrible person. I keep calling, I text him saying I apologize if I did anything wrong. At six a.m., I get a text message that says "we need to talk, I'll stop by the house after my sisters". I try calling him again but no answer. I'm a wreck at this point so I call my mom and my mom tells me to call his sister so I did. I was balling at this point and the only thing I told his sister was that I was worried about my husband and he never came home. She became worried as well because my husband had never acted this way. She then told me about a time that her husband did this when they were first married and her father went out looking for her husband and brought him home when he found him. I asked her not to tell his mother because I didn't want to get her involved as well.

It's finally time to go to work and all i want to do is call in sick. It's only my 2nd day there and I've never called in sick to any job. I tried to teach to the best of my ability but it was quite hard. After I left my job, I had a message on the phone from my husband that said "I guess I have some apologies to make, I'll be at the house at 2:30 and we need to talk".

When he comes home, he tells me that he needs time to think and he's not sure what happened- he just snapped and didn't want to come home. He's going to spend some time at his parents for a few days. He was suppose to go on a trip in a few days that I had said that I had asked him not to go on because this girl that I was jealous of was going. In prior conversations, we had agreed that he would go but he would just go up for the day and then come back down at night. He told me wasn't going. He grabs a few things and leaves. I'm a mess, I don't know what happened. Later that day, his mother calls me and apologizes that I have to go through this and says something to the tune that I could have expected it because every time he talked to her, he would tell her that I was always upset with him. This couldn't be farther than the truth, there were two times I was upset. One was when he made the plans to go on the trip without asking me, another one was him going on a pub crawl (in retrospect, I shouldn't have been upset, but I was). Since that day, I have lost 31 pounds and I am small to begin with, have blamed myself quite a bit and have been very unhealthy. I tried to go to work that Monday but had to take my first sick day ever because I couldn't stop crying. I can't remember why, but for some reason I called his mother and she told me that my husband went on the trip. I said, oh he told me he was going to the casino. She said, no he went on the trip up north, I then told her the reason I didn't want him to go and she understood. When you are married, you just don't go on a trip with a bunch of single guys and girls. She ended up calling my husband and he called and told me it was just the guys.

He was up North for a few days and when he came home we went to see a marriage counselor. At this marriage counselor, I found out a bunch of things that had been piling up inside of my husband for 8 years. At tht time we saw this marriage counselor, we had been married for 3 1/2 years and we had dated for 4 1/2 years before that. I found out every thing I had ever done wrong in the marriage and I still feel a little of guilt. He started out by saying it all started in college when he went to France. Again another back story is needed. I come from a family with not a lot of money. In college, I was a community advisor, worked the admissions office, information booth in the student center and many other things to pay for school. I took out student loans to give money to my parents so they could pay bills. I really wanted to study abroad since I was a Spanish and Elementary Ed major but I didn't believe I could afford it. I'm a first generation college student and did know about scholarships and I didn't think I could take out any more money to study abroad so I didn't. I am two years older than my husband. At that time, I had to turn in my preferences for student teaching and I wanted to student teach in the cities but my boyfriend wanted me to be close to him so I decided to put preferences near the school we were attending instead. Well, about a month before my student teaching, my boyfriend informs me and his family that he has decided to study abroad in France that semester. I should have been really happy for him but I was upset. Not at him, but at the fact that I decided to stay down there for him and I was upset that he could study abroad when he had never once thought about it. He use to get so mad when people couldn't speak English here and he would say some cruel things. So, in my own crazy mind, I was a little upset. We spent a lot of money on phone calls and had quite a few arguments.

During our counseling session, I find out how much the time in France hurt him and how he had no fun because of me. I also find out that he decided not to have fun his senior of college since he didn't think I had fun since he was in France. I did have fun my senior year of college, it was difficult because I was student teaching and I did miss him but I had fun in my own way. Another thing about us, is he is a complete extrovert and I am an introvert. Our counselor started comparing us to Peter Pan and Wendy and then said some pretty nasty things to my husband so we decided to try a different counselor.

The next counselor is where I found out what a lousy wife I was and I haven't been able to stop feeling guilty. If you knew me, you would know that I would never want to hurt anyone or anything and I feel awful that I unintentionally hurt my husband. During these four sessions, yes we only went to four- not my choice, I found out many things that had I known earlier, I would have worked on them much sooner and maybe we wouldn't be at this point. I found out that my husband believed that I was never in the marriage and never truly loved him which is not true at all. I found out that I devastated him the day he proposed. I had the most romantic proposal that anyone could ever ask for. It's a long story but the quick version is that he had coarsed a friend to get me to take some time off of work to visit a friend. This was in February and I was a teacher and it was my first year teaching in the district. I am a workaholic and a close perfectionist so it was really difficult for me to even take the days off. The day we were suppose to leave (Valentine's Day), I was suprised with 2 tickets to Paris. I was really excited because we were planning a trip to France for the summer, he then told me to look at the dates and I noticed the dates were the 14th-the following Wednesday. Uh oh, I had only taken Thursday and Friday off and parent teacher conferences were the following Tuesday and Wednesday. Now, if you don't know teaching- you really can't just take days off- especially in your first year of teaching in a district- and you really can't miss classes. I let him know that I really wanted to go but I would have to come back early and that I would pay for the difference in flight. He kept asking if anything would change my mind and I kept saying no. He then said, I'll be right back. He came back out and said "not even this", he got down on his knees and asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes but I also said "I still need to be back early". I never knew this hurt him- 5 years later, I find out I devastated him. I really would never want to hurt anyone- especially him because I always have loved him and always will. We had a wonderful time our trip, I paid for tickets to come back early and we started planning our wedding. I thought all was well.

At this counseling session, I find out another reason he thinks I was never in love with him or in the marriage is because I hyphenated my last name instead of completely changing it. To me my last name is part of my identity and I was combing mine and his. Ironically, the week before he left, I had gone to find out how to completely change my name because he had finally told me how much it hurt him so I wanted to give that to him for Christmas. Again, not completely changing my last name was not intended to hurt him. Another reason, he said I wasn't into the marriage was because I never soldered my engagement ring and wedding ring together. The reason I never soldered them together is because I didn't want to take them off. I never took the rings off. So, now- I'm sitting in this counseling session finding out all of these things that I wish I would have known a lot sooner.

In another session, I find out that he believes that just being with him was not enough for me. Again, this couldn't be further from the truth. What happened here is that I had applied to grad schools and he was going to be able to telecommute. I was accepted into a great program at Arizona State University. Well, instead- he gets a great opportunity to be a sales person for the company he was with. He had to go through an intense training and then we would be placed somewhere in the U.S. However, we were promised that he could choose west of the Mississippi or east of the Mississippi. I said I would go anywhere but the East Coast. Again, ironically we end up getting placed in Connecticut. I was really upset by this. But, we make the move. Connecticut isn't exactly the most friendly place in the world and I had a very difficult time adjusting to Connecticut. I was upset that I postponed a year of grad school because I was starting to feel old, I was upset that i couldn't find a job. I didn't start to feel good about CT until I started grad school. Because of this, my husband thought that he was never enough for me.

All of these things plus more that I will write about later are reasons I have been feeling guilty. I love my husband with all of my heart, always have, and always will. It pains me to know that I hurt him so much while we were married. I received the divorce papers yesterday and we spoke a little bit today because I told him I didn't want to change my name back and he said "why is it important to you now" and I informed him that it always was important to me which is why I hyphenated it in the first place. But for some strange reason, he doesn't quite believe me. I hope and pray that some day, he'll see that I always did love him. Even though I do have the papers now, I still hope and pray that somehow we could work on our marriage instead but he has told me numerous times that he doesn't want to be in a marriage that needs to be worked on- in his words "a marriage should just be". I don't agree and I have been working on many of his other complaints for the past five months in hopes of getting back to gether but I may never have the chance to show him.

It's getting late and I need to try to sleep, at least i've been able to stop crying for an hour.