Trust and Respect Without it There is no Communication Without These 3 There is Nothing Left

Looking back I can see my marriage was doomed from the start long before it ever actually happened.

When I first met my husband he was a partner in a business who conducted a lot of business with China who's on a totally different clock. He would be working at 3 am talking to Chinese saleswomen. That was a rocky start. When I would spend the night he didn't stop. He didn't slow down. He would leave me in bed, not realizing how light of a sleeper I was, and take off to 'work'. He would also flirt. (I've had a lot of 'salesmen' tell me 'flirting' is necessary, dude, really? It's not.) I would get up go downstairs, find him 'working', watching the news, smoking, and he would get angry with me that I wasn't asleep. How could I sleep? The TV's going, the smokes boiling, and your on the phone.

Then there were the 'business trips' you know the ones that are 20% business, 70% cause I can. The trips weren't the problem though, it was the schedule. If you say you're leaving on Tuesday and coming back on Friday, be back on Friday. Don't wait till Friday morning to call and say oh yeah I won't be home till Monday and then lie about it and say 'I missed my flight'. Yeah you missed your flight because you drank way too much, slept way too late, and didn't pack. So now it's going to take you 3 more days? How does that equal out.

He later told me "I only told you I would be back on Friday because I knew you would be mad". So you lied to me, broke a date, left me to tend to the 'business' things at home to 'help you' and you 'didn't want to deal with me cause you thought I would be mad'. #1 you took complete advantage of me. #2 You assumed I would react a certain way and didn't give me an opportunity not to because lying to me caused the reaction you 'assumed you would've gotten' by telling the truth.

Getting a time frame on those trips was like pulling teeth. It was so hard to make plans with him and I'm a type A personality, OCD scheduled, planner. I have to be I have kids with ADHD who are on schedules. Even being ADHD himself he never fully understood that because his mom wasn't like that with him.

I learned over the years his mom would be our destruction and it wasn't even like you'd think. She didn't interfere or anything like that. He didn't allow her too. It was his hatred for her that came out over time that caused it. When he got on his 'I hate mom' bandwagon the rest of our lives stopped till he moved on. He still hasn't moved on.

We fought about sex a lot. I had a much higher sex drive than he did. He was lazy and he would watch his phone during it.

I've never seen someone as addicted to his phone as he is. He's always got it in his hand. Even now he's carrying 3 around with him. He would say that's my fault because I shut his off, but why do you need 3 phones? 3. Throw aways I'm sure.

I digress.

So there was this 1 argument about 4 months in that should've ended the relationship. Anyone but, me it would've. I was told I would not ever "TELL HIM NO" no one was allowed to 'tell him no". He was determined he was going out of the country. He was headed to a war zone and he didn't care what I said. He even said to me "I'm going, and I don't care if you're here when I get back".

He went.

He came back, surprised me at my office, we worked it out and I learned I'm way to forgiving.

Then there was the time we went out with my coworkers to a bar he frequented. A while later I found he was snorting 'something' (they thought it was cocaine he swore it wasn't) in the corner with his friends. We stayed at a hotel that night and he was so concerned that I was angry with him. I knew something was off but I didn't know what at the time. Knowing what I know now, I should've.

Before I knew it we were engaged and there was another out-of-the-country trip coming up. He was supposed to be gone 7 days. He lied. He got on the plane not giving me a pick-up date telling me he would send it to me then we he got there and let me know he'd made it he told me "I'll be home when I get home".

That time he had left his 5-year-old son with me. I was a mom and a built-in babysitter for him.

I raised his son as my own. I love that little booger so much.

I married him. Every fiber of my being told me not to. I thought of our boys. I thought of the family we were trying to put together. I let that out weight the fights where he had put his fists in the hood of my car and scared my boys to death. Where they had screamed and cried in the back seat because of the berating I received trying to talk to him about this out-of-the-country trip. I ignored the chair flying at me across the kitchen as I blocked my son from getting hit with it because he was in a rage.

I ignored the drugs. I'm naive about these things. I don't know enough about what he's telling me he's taking or not taking to know what anything is or does or how bad. To me all drugs are bad. I don't care how you scale it on a 1-10 it's a drug, it's illegal, it's bad. Don't do it.

We were headed to the courthouse to get married the next day. He was at his bachelor party and called me. He instantly knew I had cold feet because of how I worded something. He left. He came home because he knew I wouldn't show the next day. I'd never make it with everything I had going on. It would be an excuse for me to back out. He came home. He got up, he helped me prepare. We ran errands. We got the kids, we went to the courthouse we got married.

By that night we were fighting in the car about the next out-of-country trip and I was telling him I wanted it annulled. I didn't want to be married. I didn't want to be married to someone who could leave me home with the kids, while they went to a dangerous part of the world, and not care how that made me feel.

He went anyway.

The marriage wasn't annulled.

He always had a way of winning me over. Smoothing things out. Calming me down. Whatever you want to call it.

We trudge through. Things are ok till their not.

Mothers day he wants to do something special for me. He'd been skydiving before and had a tumultuous experience (to say the least) and that little young thing with the naked pics I mentioned on Facebook, she had her license (or so I'm told). Anyway I had always wanted to do it and had been asking for him to go with me for a while so we finally did.

Everything really changed after that.

It got bad. Quick. He was hooked. He had kicked his pill addiction with painkillers and now he was looking for another one. The battle the year before to get him off the drugs was hard-fought and replaced with skydiving. Now if you've ever been skydiving you can understand the addiction, the rush, the adrenaline all that. But.. It's not cheap. It's like drugs and with that crowd your likely to find any kind of anything you wanted so it was yet another long hard road.

He started AFF, and got his license. I followed suit. We got jobs and worked in the sport to help pay for it. I was in the office so I wasn't able to jump as much so it got to where I worked to pay for his and eventually didn't work in it.

A few months later he's lost his business because of a bad deal in that country he kept going to. He blamed me.

He's skydiving all the time. I'm working 2 jobs to pay for everything and he isn't working at all now.

We are struggling we're barely 2 years in and our marriage isn't good. Some of that is my fault. I shouldn't have gotten married. It was too soon after my divorce. I knew better. I used the word "divorce" way too soon. I'm not perfect and I'm not innocent. I accept responsibility.

We went to a church marriage thing and it was great it seemed like just what we needed. I was so excited. We came home full of love until... He decided to smoke pot in my kitchen. Remember I said any drug is bad. I have kids. Don't do that shit in my house. None of them were home but still. I didn't want that shit in my house. I didn't want it on the property much less in my house. Especially back then. It all went south then. I was taking an antidepressant and started drinking. Don't ever do that. That was the absolute most horrifying night of my life. I was so out of it. I tortured him and that night he loved me through it. I still don't know how he did it. He didn't deserve anything I said or did to him that night. No excuses. I just had no control over what was happening. Every feeling I had felt, everything i had pent up, everything I tried with my type A personality to control it all came out at once.

I still hate myself for that. I have so much guilt.

I have apologized and apologized and I don't know if he ever forgave me but, I didn't.

We split up after that for a month or so. He went awall. On a skydiving escapade. I didn't think we would survive it but we did.

He came back we gave it another shot but things were never quite right. We tried going to church together as a family. He was never comfortable though. We weren't the same after that.

Fall of the next year we split again. He got online and charged a dating app to my credit card. He met women in his aunts town. He told his aunt things about cheating on me and how horrible i was and showed her videos of our fights where he would taunt me and back me in a corner and hit record when I reacted. But the reaction was "Get a job, help me, get off your phone, get out of bed" so as bad as it was she even thought it was valid.

She told me about the things he said and while he was there. She told me how he was going out drinking all the time. She told me how he was seeing women and talking to them all the time. He ended up with a warrant for public intox in another town because someone thought he was breaking into a car but it was ours.

He went 10 hours away out of state after having taken our son to his birth mother and leaving him. Neither of us were in the state of mind to do it alone and he was so done with being married he took him and left him and blamed me for it. It was so terrible and so heartbreaking. On his way out of town though he was calling various women telling them how horrible I was and making plans to meet with them.

I found out and filed for divorce.

Then covid hit. We had signed the papers and sent them in and everything went on hold with covid. I had been praying and praying and I just knew this was God healing our marriage. And he did. He came home, I stopped the divorce right as the judge was about to sign it. 2020 was the best year of our life. Until July 2021.

His uncle died in a home and he found out. He wasnt' the same after that because he said "he didn't suffer enough". Then he wasn't feeling like a man so he started looking for that ego boost from women he allowed to be way to comfortable around him. First with flirty pics coming out snuggled together, then with the newest 'ho' (not my words) calling me to get a message to him "that shes ok".

I'm sorry, why does care? Who are you to him? Have you ever heard of boundaries?

It got bad again quick. There was too much. I had covid when she did that and I was so sick. The kids were taking care of me and he was gone again.

No job. He wasn't working but he was gone 10-14 hours a day. Even when he was here he wasn't here he was in the car in the driveway on his phone.

I was back working doing everything by myself again.

By the time our anniversary rolled around we were married 6 years 10 days later I was filing for divorce for the 2nd time. My husband who I still love so much. Who went from doing all sorts of drugs to none at all. Who went from not knowing how to be a family to being the greatest guy in 2020 was gone. He was in and out now and we were talking about how to make it work but there were other things. Financial things. That had to be separated so at this point the divorce had to go through. We were going to work on it though. We were going to keep fighting.

He was running with the wrong crowd now. He'd met these people close by and they were into things that weren't cool. I later found out one of them was even a wanted car thief. It's a small town. He tried to lie his way out of it but the cops came looking for him saying they'd been seen together. The whole time he was telling me he chose me and he wanted to fix us. I wanted that so badly that until I saw him on the interstate and he lied to me about it 3 times when i asked a simple question of 'what did you do today". When he said "and I didn't even do drugs" i knew he was around them, again.

He lied 3 times. I saw him. It wasn't until i told him I saw him that he said the other. And I was supposed to overlook the lies and accept that he didn't do drugs as a good thing.

Then he had something shady sent here. Everything blew up. I ended up turning his phone off that day and hell broke loose. Never turn off an addict's phone. Doesn't matter what the addiction is. His was his phone itself. I had to get a protection order after that. It expires soon. I'm going to let it.

I even got word to him that I would let it because I felt it was more harm than good. To which he responded by saying I had broken the protection order in his attempt to discredit me.

He called my friend at 130am repeatedly said my name and my ex-husbands name. He carried a girl to our lake where he was seen by our friend. He called my friend a 2nd time. These things were done to get a response. I offered one. I gave him a response. I opened a window and he slammed it shut.

So here were are. It's been 98 days since we've spoken outside of a courtroom. It sucks! It's 2 days till his bday. I can't say happy birthday or do anything special for him. I hate all this is happening so much.

We came so far and it feels like it's really over now and after everythign we've been through I really don't want it to be over. I dont' want to move on. So I wait. I pray. I hope. One day maybe he will find his way home. One day maybe he will figure it out.

I love him no one will ever fill his shoes.