The death of a marriage

How does the end begin? Usually a little at a time with one or both people deciding that something or someone else is worth more time than their spouse.

The wife sits here today facing the end of her marriage. The death of a dream. Her heart is breaking and it is all she can do to keep from breaking down.

The husband and wife used to be happy. Then came the pulling away, the spending more time with friends than with spouse, telling the wife that she is not wanted nor is she welcome to come along, the excessive drinking and resulting temper problems, the foul names, the coming home all hours of the morning on the weekends, while the wife lays in bed, praying that he is ok, that he isn’t out there getting in a wreck, having an affair or any other myriad things that cross a wife’s mind when she is told her husband will be home at a certain time and after a look at the clock it shows the time is two hours past when he says he will be home and still no call or text from him and he is not answering his wife’s calls or texts.

Then there come the phone calls and text messages at all hours of the day and night from a mysterious someone. Someone the husband won’t tell his wife about at first. Phone calls that take him out of the room so that the wife can’t hear what is being said. Text messages that came to the husband while out with the wife shopping, while at dinner at his parents. Finding out that this person taking up so much of the husband’s time has only just turned 19, newly moved to the area, is the husband’s coworker, not to mention 11 years his junior. Finding out that this little girl has been over to the house while the wife was at work, spending time with the husband and the two year old daughter.

There’s the night where the husband has stayed out, literally all night. Not answering phone calls or texts and even shutting the phone off after 3:00 in the morning. Coming home at 7:30 in the morning, ignoring the wife, going to bed, grabbing his rosary and saying it until he falls asleep. Never answering where he was or what he did. Finding out later that the last phone call that was made from the husband’s phone around 2:30 in the morning was to the 19 year old girl. The wife is not Catholic but knows that saying the rosary for a husband who is not religious really in any way is a BIG DEAL.

Then after that there’s the Sunday night where the husband is out, needing “space”, and the wife has an idea that he isn’t where he says he is going so she goes over to the little girl’s apartment to check things out and sure enough, the car the husband drives is in front of the complex so the wife takes pictures on her camera phone for proof. He comes home between 1 and 2 in the morning and when the wife asks him what he did and where he went he says to Home Depot and to a couple of bars. The wife then asks the husband if he went anywhere else. There’s the slight hesitation then, “No.” The wife asks again, “Are you sure you didn’t go anywhere else?” Again the husband answers no. The wife then pulls up the pictures on her phone of the car and asks if the husband didn’t go anywhere else, then would he mind explaining where these pictures were taken. Dead silence from the husband. No answer at first for several minutes. Then the husband tries to say that the minor asked him to bring her some alcohol so he obliged her and stayed there for a little while. The wife knows that “a little while” was longer than 30 minutes. The amount of time she sat in her vehicle outside of the apartment was about 30 minutes and the car the husband was driving was there before the wife pulled up and after the wife left.

There’s the Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving) where the husband can’t go shopping with his wife b/c he doesn’t want to but can go shopping with this poor pathetic girl b/c she doesn’t know where the malls are and where certain stores in the malls are – being relatively new to the area of course.

There’s the trip to visit relatives in Iowa and Minnesota for the grandmother’s 90th birthday that the husband doesn’t want to go to. Then to find that while the wife, her mother and the precious 2 year-old daughter are gone that, according to neighbors, the husband was only at the house during the 9 days for about 10% of the time.

There’s the phone call two days after the trip from the 19 year-old at 5 in the morning that gets the husband out of the bed he shares with his wife to go into the living room to talk in “privacy”. The phone call that same evening that the wife walks in on, though the wife thinks the husband is catching up on his sleep, and instead the husband is getting dressed and ready to go somewhere without having told the wife anything and the husband is on the phone with the 19 year-old girl. The wife asks the husband where he is going and he says to dinner for another co-worker’s birthday. The wife asks if she’s invited and the husband says no.

At this point, the wife is fed up and says that the husband can either go to the dinner or stay home with his family that only been home for two days. The husband chooses to go out so the wife ends up telling him to leave and not come back. The husband ends up moving in with the 19 year old girl, 11 years the husband’s junior, and he lives with her for over a year.

Now the wife is slightly whacked, deluded, stupid, an idiot and still wants to work things out with the husband b/c she still loves him with all of her heart. When she finds out that the lease is up she tells the husband that he can either move out and work on the marriage or stay with the now 20 year-old girl and the marriage would be over. The husband moves out, promises, yes promises that he will not have any further contact with the now 20 year-old girl and that he will work on his marriage.

Several months later, the wife finds out that the now 21 year-old girl has gotten in contact with the husband again and that the husband has taken the now 4 year old daughter over to the now 21 year old girl’s apartment. The husband and wife go to talk and the husband ends up flirting with two women at the place they have gone to. The husband and wife go outside where the husband ends up yelling at the wife and calling her a Nazi racist bigot for her personal beliefs that one can't get to heaven by just being a good person and that there is only one way to heaven, through Jesus Christ which includes the person repenting of their sins, asking forgiveness from God and asking Jesus to be Lord of their life. For that the wife is considered a Nazi racist bigot, according to the husband, who calls her this where other patrons of the place hear him and turn their heads to look at what is going on.

The contact between the husband and the now 21 year-old girl continues and becomes more frequent until the husband is spending days with the now 21 year-old girl and her family and the precious 4 year-old daughter, doing “family” things that the wife has longed to do with her own husband, but the husband would never make time for. The wife used to ask the husband frequently to do stuff on the weekends, but with each rejection or “I’ll have to see” but nothing ever comes of it, the wife stopped asking b/c it hurt too much to continually be rejected by the husband who was supposed to be working on repairing the marriage. Now the husband tells the wife that the marriage was over a long time ago and accuses the wife of not trying “hard enough”, instead of admitting that he made his choice that he would rather be free of a wife he didn’t want and would rather spend time with the now 21 year-old, taking the wife and husband’s precious 4 year old on “family” outings like going to the movies, playing at the park and having lunch together. Not to mention wrapping gifts at the now 21 year-old’s apartment, putting together a list for Santa and putting up a tree together. Things the wife would love nothing more than to do as a family with the husband and the precious 4 year-old daughter.

But the wife has had it. The wife deserves better than a husband who constantly chooses another female over his own wife. The wife is tired, run down, emotionally exhausted, broken-hearted and defeated. The wife does not place sole blame for the problems in the marriage on the husband, but does not take responsibility for all of them either. The wife is sad b/c she loves her in-laws very much and is sad to be losing them as a result of this.

The wife will be filing for divorce and praying that God will comfort her in the midst of this broken time in her life. The wife has two amazing friends in town, a great group of online friends and a bunch of supportive relatives up North. There’s no reason for the wife to feel so alone, but still she does. Alone, broken-hearted and extremely hurt. The wife wants to be alone with the precious four year old daughter and her mother for a while. No new relationships are in the future for a very, very long time, if ever. The wife just wants time to heal, to recover, to be just a mother and concentrate on her precious daughter and getting through this divorce, which will most likely get pretty ugly before all is said and done.