I stood there in the dim light, unable to stop what was to come. I didn't know it then, but this was going to be a moment that would fundamentally change me as a human being, a father, a partner, and a believer in God/Jesus. As anger poured from her lips, the panic was not for myself but for the two innocent children upstairs. This was not where this began though. Follow me back three years previous.
I sat at my work desk one day and, as I leaned into the work, my cell phone begins to ring. It was generally understood by my family that I wasn't able to answer many calls during work hours, so this must have been something rather important. I picked up the phone and saw that it was my wife at the time so, with a flick of a finger, I answered the call and asked, "what's up?"
"I want a divorce," came across the line coldly. Stiff. Rigid. Blank and emotionless.
The relationship was constantly fueled with cutting humor and jabs, her jabbing at me and I enjoying cutting and dark humor, so I assumed this was just another joking stab and replied, "Okay but what's up?"
"I'm not joking. I want a divorce and I'm leaving town with the kids tonight. When you get home we will not be there."
I'll spare you the full conversation but it was full of all of the ups and downs that you can expect. There was a point of me believing she was just taking herself and my kids and going somewhere else without bothering to tell me anything about my own children or their safety. There was a point where she called out some things that I had done and given them as the reason for the divorce. I raced home.
The struggle with being in an abusive relationship is that a lot of times it is incredibly difficult to know that is is abusive from the inside perspective. Things that should have been huge red flags for me got justified by my emotional need to keep the relationship held highly in my mind. Her calling me "socially retarded" and insulting me in front of our friends and family was both social and emotional abuse. I shouldn't have stood for it. Receiving texts like, "you haven't put out in a week so you need to take care of that" is pressured intimacy and is sexually abusive. I shouldn't have stood for it. Likewise, in this scenario, being placed on the hook to do all of the things she wanted while ignoring my own needs just so that she could leave the relationship on better footing for herself was mentally and emotionally abusive and verging on the point of true narcissism - and not the vain usage of that word that has become trite and overused in social media. I shouldn't have stood for it. Nevertheless, I did.
Over the next coming months I asked for her to try and work through the struggles in the relationship. I was dishonest about things and she rightfully had all the reason in the world to be as upset as she was. Justifying the actions isn't something I do for other people and try not to do for myself, but her feelings were valid in what they were and I asked her to try and work on those pieces with me.
What I was given back was an ultimatum. Either I leave my entire support network and go with her back to her hometown where she had a complete support structure spiritually, financially, emotionally, and mentally - or it was over then and there. It's hard to explain how emotionally manipulative this was at the moment to someone who hasn't been in that position. At this time, in my mind, the most important thing was to try and keep the relationship together. It's what was best for the children. It's what spiritually was "supposed" to be done. It was best for the healing of everyone involved in my mind at the time.
She knew that I thought and felt that way. She knew the brokenness of my own blood family in my youth and how highly I valued the idea of that not carrying into the next generation. She knew that there were decades long hurts and scars of being divided from my own family in childhood that held me to this idea. The ultimatum wasn't just unfair because the concept of all or nothing is. It was unfair because she intentionally was levying all of that emotional baggage against me. I didn't see it then because I was too hopelessly devoted to this idea.
So we moved. We moved 6 hours away to a place where she had already, over the previous years, convinced me that my actual friends were not good for me and supplanted them with the husbands of her true friends. We moved to a place where I had no family, no friends, was subject to going to the same church she had attended her whole life, and where my one and only goal would be to pursue the relationship - or so she said.
Over the next year or so I did literally everything I could in order to make the relationship work, much of which I should have seen as a red flag up front. I was supposed to get a job paying X amount in order to keep the relationship. I did. I was supposed to purchase a home for us to keep the relationship. I did. I was supposed to make sure she had a comfortable vehicle separate from mine to keep the relationship. I did. In fact, any time she found something not going her way it became a conversation of whether I wanted to make it work or if I didn't. This was certainly applicable to big decisions like where the kids were going to go to school but also petty daily things like when she wanted to buy something for herself. If I at all objected then it was suggested that I didn't want to make things work.
Once all of that was set up though, the tune suddenly changed. Now, all of a sudden, I wasn't doing enough to try and fix things. I suggested we see a therapist and she agreed but then demanded that I find the therapist. I suggested some people we knew in the church. That would have been too personal. I suggested we go to our doctor and see if he knows someone. That was "letting people know our business." I suggested someone that I found that specialized in this particular area and that neither of us knew and then it was that she wasn't comfortable speaking with a stranger about it. I should have known that she didn't want to fix it, but I didn't see it. I couldn't see the setup.
Then, one day, we go to the hospital because she is having some excruciating pain. This is almost a criminally glib overview of that event, but it happened to be an ectopic pregnancy. The doctors did what needed to be done and informed my then wife that it was dangerous to both a baby and to her for that to have happened and that it is potentially fatal. Now, the fatality rate for ectopic pregnancy averages around 3.8% nationally. Nevertheless, this experience for my ex was foundational for her. She was convinced that this was a baby that was sacrificed and enabled her to live.
There sort of needed to be some reckoning for this there for both of us. Prior to our first child, there was a miscarriage that went about as horribly as you can imagine. We were at the hospital with spotting and were sent home to let it happen on its own despite them knowing it would happen and then I was told we needed to bring "it" in. So I fished the forming baby out of the toilet with my hands after she was done passing it. I stared into the black and dark holes where the eyes would form as a piece of my innocence and my soul was ripped from me. There is a uniquely depraved and dark experience of staring into the lifeless empty eye sockets of what should be forming into your own child. I will never forget that. It will never leave me. I can never undo that and yet in that moment I felt this burden on me to make sure that she was able to cope and to help her emotionally through it. For her, she cannot undo that either and there needed to be some way to resolve the absurd cold we both felt in this new and somewhat familiar situation. This was the second child to not survive until birth for us. For her, the justification was that it needed to happen for her to live. For me, there was no resolution. The world is full of dark bullshit like this for no good reason.
From that foundational thought, she moved on to making sure she "didn't waste" this "second chance" that she had. She spent obscene amounts of money on makeup to make sure she could do a full set of makeup on her face every day. This was a baby step to boosting self esteem and taking intentional steps to feel good regardless of what you want in the moment and steps like that are fundamentally healthy steps, so I supported it.
She hadn't worked for years yet I never saw the money as "mine" but as "ours." It seems though that she was viewing it all as "hers." While she was spending hundreds of dollars on makeup pallets, I was nervous to spend the money on a cup of coffee at Starbucks because I didn't know if it would break the bank or not. I never saw this flag because at the time I viewed this through a lens of thinking, "she needs to do what will make her feel better as a person so that she can be a better mother to our children and she needs this to cope with the event of the miscarried ectopic pregnancy." It was a start to her trying to feel better for herself and I endorsed that. There is nothing wrong with self maintenance but there was a negligence of my own needs that was demanded which was abusive here.
That need to validate herself progressed on and on into making sure she lost weight. She was determined to do so and she did lose a good amount of weight. She insisted that she be able to pursue being an "influencer" and that if I didn't support that then the relationship was over. So I helped her pursue those ends while they were in their infant stages. I genuinely wanted to see her feel better about herself but also wanted my girls to have a healthy mother. I joined in the diet changes. I joined in the time at the gym. I helped supply ideas for filming and helped furnish better gear to make those things happen. I truly believed that, despite seeing some negative aspects for the children, it was a better route for her and would ultimately be better for the family.
I had done what she wanted. I moved away from friends, family, and my home community. I bought a home. I had the cars. I supported the "influencer" dream financially and emotionally. I tried to get us into some therapy while even going to therapy for myself. Instead of looking at any of that as she had portrayed it to be foundational to keeping the relationship working, she instead fixated on those things I had done and said in the past. She didn't want to make it better. She never did. She had threatened divorce at me only two years into marriage and this was just the clumsy excuse that she was using to justify it spiritually and emotionally for herself.
At some point in this situation she decided that she would only stay in the home and continue to work on things if I moved out of the bedroom. She insisted that I move all of my things into the unfinished 1920's basement which had no heat or proper lighting/electricity or she was not going to work on things anymore. I did it. I distinctly remember laying on a mattress that was directly on the hard concrete floor in a completely unfurnished basement with painted gray foundation. She sat upstairs in the living room with her friends pretending that I wasn't downstairs and threatening that if I came up during that time that it was over. I listened to her chat it up with friends as if nothing was wrong while I dug as deep and hard as I could into my faith and tried to make amends for things that I had done.
Then, one day at my new job she called me and repeated the same thing. She was for sure getting a divorce this time. She decided that where we had been was more important than where we were or where we were going. She had decided she was done this day. This was the beginning point of where I began to come out from under the proverbial "ether."
I went home after work and here is where I originally began this story. I finished my shift at work because I wasn't allowed to leave early. Her mother, this time, did not allow her to simply go over to her house and so there she was, in the living room when I arrived home. It was late in the evening - close to 10pm - and the children were asleep.
She began to yell at me about how she was done. I told her that the children were sleeping so we can't be so loud. She kept on yelling about how bad of a person I am and how manipulative I am.
"I know you're mad. I don't care if you yell at me. I don't care if you hit me but can we do this in the car then so we don't wake the kids up? We can't wake the kids up with this. They can't find out this way." I pleaded with her.
She couldn't be bothered to think of the kids at that moment. She needed to yell at me more than she needed to protect them. As she continued bellowing at me I hear it. I hear what I was dreading this whole time. My sweet and innocent little girl, only five years old at the time, on the stairs says, "I don't want daddy to move away!!!" and she starts crying. I felt like someone had cut my chest open and let everything fall out, and then I looked up the stairs.
There she stood, my oldest, her face sad in a way I can never describe. I watched the vibrant, exploratory, innocent, curious, light-hearted child die right in front of me and saw it change into a child that now knew too much. She was exposed to it. The darkness that isn't supposed to reach you until you are in your teenage years had touched her heart at the age of five and I watched it drain the childhood from her in that moment.
I ran up the stairs, scooped her up and hugged her as tightly as I could. I made mistakes here and kept repeating to her that she doesn't need to worry about this, none of this is her fault, and that we always need to be honest. I HATE myself for repeating those things to her. In my panicked mind I was doing my best to contain the emotional bleeding there. I was trying to help comfort and also not lie to her. I was trying to help her process something a child that age should never have to process and I completely hate myself for it.
As I came back down the stairs, I saw my wife, still ready to yell at me some more. She wanted to know if our oldest was okay and I told her that I had helped her back to sleep. She then started to begin the process again. A flip switched for me. A fundamental flip switched for me at that moment that WILL NOT ever switch back.
"Go file. I'll sign the paperwork." I said to her.
I refused for the rest of that evening to even speak with her and the more I have thought of that evening, which now was six years ago, the more I hate myself for how I reacted. Even in that fucking moment I protected my ex from seeing the look on our daughter's face intentionally. I knew that, given all the things that she was going through at the moment, she couldn't have handled it. It would have broken her. I should have just gone out to the car myself so she couldn't have yelled at me inside. I should have shut it down. She should have felt and known every ounce of pain that her wild and reckless actions caused. She should be the one carrying that scar.
I could not love her after that. I had, up until that moment, insisted that there wasn't really anything that someone could do to stop me from trying to make things work. I was wrong. Watching her care more about her need to yell than about permanently scarring our children and robbing them of that childlike wonder is something I cannot love and cannot defend.
Over the process of the divorce there was a host of ugliness and there continues to be afterward. My grandmother (the only person to regularly be involved with me when I was left in foster care) had died. She insisted I bring my five and three year old to the funeral without her. My therapist suggested that I look into Asperger's in a session so I went through the long process of getting diagnosed and when I informed my ex she commented, "oh good - so I married a retard." When I reconnected with a very old friend I went to another state to meet up. She told the entire church that I went up there for a gay orgy, which is very stigmatizing in that circle of people. Then, while I was up there, she had the kids taken back to her parents without my consent and tons of drama ensued. She, in the process of the divorce negotiations, tried to use the same old methods to get even more from me. She insisted that I give her the house that was in my name and that I support her financially for five years while she goes to college. I was no longer under that ether. I declined and informed her that the fault in that plan is that this is the real world where things like that don't happen. She refused to finalize the divorce until after the medical insurance I carried paid for her to get a surgery she wanted and then, when I was making sure she was okay on the day out of surgery, the first words she said was that she is going to file the papers.
When I decided to date that person I went to go meet she placed impossible barriers for that person to have to cross. That person wasn't allowed to walk into certain rooms in the house because my ex hadn't moved out yet. When she moved down here with me she wasn't allowed to pick the kids up from school, etc. After we were married my ex still wouldn't let her sign off on medical emergencies for the kids. She decided to have the police come to the house with her on new years eve to collect things because we were headed out of town and she hadn't gotten those things with the three months she was given and this was the last day - so we had to return to the home and the kids wanted to know why there were police at the house and why we weren't going to go see family for our late Christmas. Even the police wondered why they needed to be there. She had a table but also took the dinner table from this house and left nothing for the children to eat dinner at - knowing that it would do so. She insisted that we meet up in the strangest places to switch time with the children because she didn't want to come to the house anymore. My youngest broke her arm at her house and they didn't even notice. We had her come to our house three days later and my current wife (the same lady she didn't want in the house) took her to the E.R. where my ex refused to allow anyone to help without her or my consent and we got it fixed but rest assured my ex got some Instagram photos taken with her in the cast and some campy garbage text that failed to mention that she neglected the broken arm for 3 days or the massive bruise that clearly indicated a problem. My oldest at a point started self harming and informed us that she was going to tell her mom so that she would be proud that she was able to punish herself. When we suggested therapy for her to fix that kind of thinking my ex wouldn't even help get that going and asked if she really needed it so we set it up ourselves. Our oldest came over from their house with lice and we had to take care of that only for my ex to threaten going back to court over me not catering to her fears. She wanted me to dump olive oil all over her head, wrap it in plastic wrap, then a towel, and let it sit and then take them to a lice clinic. We did the Nix kit into the wee hours, sanitized EVERYTHING in our house and it fixed the problem. She still did all the stuff she wanted me to do only to text me later that they found no lice - so her threatening court was pointless. The school emailed me that on their days with their mother they are dressed in clothes that are not appropriately sized or are wearing out so we have constantly had to keep on top of that too. I've had my children's heads filled with political ideas at the age of seven and ten. I've had my children told that vaccines don't help with COVID.
So life moved on a bit from there. My ex capitalized on her perceived atrocities and utilized the damage to write articles about her overcoming. She posted on media about her overcoming the things that happened to her when the largest bulk of those things she was doing to herself and her children (while blaming everyone but herself). I was the bad guy for "letting" her get to the unhealthy size she was. I was the bad guy for "letting" her ignore her own needs. I was the bad guy for not "letting" her keep a house that she had no job to take the loan over for. I was the bad guy for not completely financially supporting her for five years (no joke - she actually was mad that I wouldn't do that). I was the bad guy for not continuing to pine over her after watching her crush the spirit of our children. I was the bad guy for "making" her overreactions take her to get medical procedures done. I was the bad guy because she took a lease from the divorce that was in my name but she didn't make the payments to the lease that was awarded to her. I was the bad guy because the income changed and she wasn't afforded a ton of support. She even made it a point to blog about specifically how she felt that the money she "got" from it was measly for the time invested in the relationship - because that's what matters, the money. That's all that ever mattered. I was the bad guy because she decided she wanted her own place and things and needed to get a job for herself to support that - despite it being mostly supplemented by her parents and support network. So she blogged about how terrible a person I am while casually leaving out the details about the significant damage that was happening to our children and the wild amount of abuse she was dealing out. That's not as instagram worthy as a picture where you've cropped out your ex and are showing off how much weight you lost after surgery while using your children's cuteness for "likes."
I, however, feel like garbage because every day I see my kids wounded from this and I feel at fault because my mistakes ignited this whole thing and yet there is also this very distinct part of me that also gets frustrated at that sense of guilt because, even now, several years later, I cannot believe I let so much happen to me and my kids. I cannot believe that I would focus so much on how to improve and move forward only to be falling for a game so that someone else could get what they want out of a relationship before abandoning it. I get mad that I was stupid enough to believe that, if I worked on myself and was willing to work on the relationship, she would be willing to do the same. I get mad that I feel guilty because I DID all the things I was told and could think to fix it. I think there will always be a part of me that hates me in all of that.
And so this is a messy messy process. It has caused me to change my thoughts and feelings about many many things, some of them spiritual, some relational, and some just about life. Here are some of those things:
1. Unconditional love doesn't exist - people love you until you cross whatever their line is. For some, that line is getting bored. For others, it will take something extreme like murder but, rest assured, everyone does have that line. If you cross the line, you're out. People say, "I'll always love you no matter what" but that's a lie. People I knew for over ten years and had said those things to me abandoned me at the drop of a hat due to a single phone call during the divorce process. People will tell you that it's no matter what. It isn't.
2. The "God" that most of my upbringing talked about is garbage. People spoke about how everything was about this "relationship" with this "God" but then the relationship was always "his will only" and never really anything but that. Relationships where only one side gets what it wants or needs are abusive. Relationships where the other side isn't allowed to speak for what it wants or is conditioned to always be subservient without questioning things is abusive. If the God out there is the one that hates on LGBT people, only wants everyone to do his will and isn't willing to change that will, and doesn't have enough compassion to help people understand why He would stay a hand at the atrocities we see - then that God is a jerk and I am uninterested in that God. When I read my bible I read stories of a God that listens to people and changes his mind sometimes when they talk to him. I read stories of the Jesus guy having compassion on people. I read authors warning people away from judgement and more into helping the poor and needy. I can get behind those concepts. Screw that other one that people insist they speak for without any validation. That God didn't care to reach into this process to help with any of it. That God didn't care enough to let me know I have Asperger's until I was in my thirties. That God is an asshole.
3. There isn't any such thing as "the one." There isn't one magical person out there that is going to magically click for you when you meet them. I made a mistake in thinking with my ex that we were "meant" for one another. We weren't. Nobody is. You're not going to find some person where everything just goes smoothly because they are the "one for you." It's not a fairytale dream. We are all basically like some Legos. Some pieces fit together well. Others will fall apart easily and still others just don't work together. Find a piece that works for you. After that you have to WORK. You have to work at it daily. My wife, my lovely, adorable, caring, empathetic, and exuberant wife, is something that I need to PUT IN THE WORK for every day. The love I have for her is found in that work that I do daily. She isn't "the magic one." She is the one I am willing to put that level of effort in for on a daily basis regardless of how I feel at the moment because she is WORTH it. She is always worth it no matter how I feel in a moment so she will always get the best I am able to produce.
4. Love is something you do. I don't always like the people I love. I'm not always happy about them or their choices. Love is the choice to treat them as you would want to be treated and give them the very best you are capable of in that moment anyway. Love is trying to speak THEIR love language to THEM rather than demanding they speak yours. Love is something you do. It's something you give. It's a gift you give to another person. It's not a feeling. It's not that warmness you feel for someone, as nice as that can be.
