The Long Road Ahead

Tonight was a night that will not be forgotten for quiet some time. I wont remember the exact day, the exact time or any of the fine details. What I will remember is the day that my marriage ended in full. How we talked in the car and listened to music, sang along to the songs that said more than either of us could. We talked about what was wrong what hurt us over the years when, things went wrong and all the other things that we had been holding on to. There were no tears, no intentional malice just honesty. All of this happening with fireworks going on in the background. They were beautiful, violent and short lived. Just like what I turned my marriage into. My partner will blame me for things that have gone wrong in our marriage and I will blame her for things. At the end of the day the fault should lie with us both, but for me it never will. The blame will lay with me. I realize that I’m a terrible partner. I was only there when she needed me the most. I wasn’t present in our daily lives. I had checked out and didn’t care anymore. I let all of the worst parts of me come to the surface and tucked them away from other people. When we were home together we only dragged each other down. I was a lead weight tied to her ankle when she tried so hard to swim onward. When we got home we talked more and we both realized we were dancing around trying to say the same thing but neither of us had the guts to say it in full, so I did so she didn’t have to make the last cut. I could at least save her from that. We both agreed that it was over. Our relationship had sunk, over, consumed by fire and whatever else you wanted to say. In all of this there were things i could have said but none of it would have been productive only hurtful. So as of right now those thought and feeling will be left alone, there is no need for them. In all of this I always tried to avoid hurting my partner and almost always failed in a grand fashion. This time I will be better. This time I will do my best. This time I will know I did everything I could to help.

From here we will find out who I am and what it actually means to live with all the mistakes and choices that I have made in my life. Demons will need to be brought forward to face the light and hopefully I will end up a better person.

Well Shit three years two months and four days of marriage and three years three months and twenty-three days of dating have ended. I feel like it should hurt more but right now i just feel empty and strangely light.

One coping strategy that I have is escapism. Actually its the main strategy that I have. The ways I escape is generally through audio. I listen to podcast stories and music and they have a great power to let me keep productive while I can keep my mind busy with visualizations of what is going on in the stories. The wide variety helps as well. Right now I’m currently listening to well over two dozen stories. and at least 12 update weekly with new content. This form of escapism helps keep my mind busy. The form of escapism that damages my relationship with people is the escapism of oblivion. This is escape into my phone. where i scroll facebook and whatever else for hours on end. I know that this is a problem but I can not stay away. I try and give myself timers or delete everything but it always slowly works its way back. I’m hoping by acknowledging this I will be able to actively work on this better than just mentally saying it. THe biggest problem with escapism as a strategy is when other people don’t recognize it as a coping strategy and just see it as you avoiding them. I’m trying to escape the stress and to me this is the healthiest way. Its better than be turning to alcohol or anything else. But my partner just sees it as me avoiding her and takes it personally. I’ve tried to let her know how it helps and why I do it but it never sinks in for long. I’ve tried to get her into podcasts so we could listen together but we have very different tastes in what we listen to. In the end I just couldn’t keep it up and trying to get her involved was just exhausting. 

The last time my wife and I had any kind of intimacy was christmas. Literally Christmas Day, December 25 2016. This was a last ditch effort by my wife for a form of connection. a month or two before that I has stopped trying to initiate sex with my wife as I got sick of constantly being turned down. Before that the passion in our marriage has been gone for a long time before that. I honestly can’t remember the last time we kissed each other with any kind of passion other than a quick peck. Sex has become the same thing when it did happen it was the same thing and was disappointing. One of the most painful things about all of this is it’s not totally our fault. My wife has an undiagnosed medical condition that causes her a lot of pain. I think where some of the passion was lost was due to the pain that being intimate caused her. The rational side of me gets this and can’t blame her for this. Who would want to do something that was painful? The emotional side - the sweet whispers - ask how many times did she fake pain just to get out of sex? when did it become a chore for her? There were other things that she could have done and I was more than happy to reciprocate. So slowly day by day we drifted apart the way the tectonic plates slowly slide apart. No big movements. Each day that went past and every time I was rejected I can say it hurt. At first it was nothing nothing more than a bug bite, but as the time between sex started to get longer the more I noticed it effected my attitude and mood. Not just at home but overall. I became short tempered and more pessimistic. Than we would have sex and I would notice that I would be happier and the future would seem a bit brighter. This cycle went on for a long time. Eventually the ups didn’t even take the edge off. I would try and take care of things myself but then my wife would find out and we would get into an argument over it and she would refuse sex just to spite me for a while afterwards which didn’t help at all. It has now been over 7 months since I have had sex and I’m noticing something else start to happen which is disturbing me. I’ve noticed my sex drive and urges have taken a sharp decline and I find it hard to become aroused. I honestly don’t know what to do about this but I guess that’s just one more step I need to take. For anyone who actually ever finds this sex is an important part of any marriage. not the amount or quality but both of you need to be on the same frequency on what you both want, but hey its advice from me and you can see how my marriage went.

Tonight was one of the hardest nights of my life. I had to confront some very scary demons about myself. 

To set the stage - me and my partner were not on the same page on what our separation meant. To her this meant 30 days apart and we renegotiate where we stand. To me this separation was the final straw and our marriage was over. So in order to move on I started an online dating profile to chat with other people. My partner found out and we had a huge fight. Honest things were said and honest truths were said that hurt a lot more.

One thing that I have been dealing with for almost 20 years is the other voice in my head. Now this voice says things to me that are concerning. It’s been that way because I take out all my anger on this voice. In my head I have him strung up hanging on hooks and tortured for everything that I have ever done wrong - and there is a lot - Now this voice has started talking to me more and more and he doesn’t yell he whispers. His whispers are so soft and so subtle and there is many times that his voice comes out instead of my own.  I try very hard to keep him contained but the stress of my imploding relationship has caused cracks and his voice is getting louder and more persistent. I’ve been dealing with this issue for a very long time and the battle has been held at bay. I don’t believe anyone else can help with this and my wife said I need help.

Over the past couple of days I’ve started taking inventory of the things in my life that matter to me, the list that came to my head

1. Got a good job - Check

2. Got friends - lets put a pin in that

3. Got a car that lets me go from point A to B - Check

4. Got a house - well its being sold

5. I have a beautiful Daughter 

There it is. All in all i’d say i’m not doing to bad. Now when i finished this list I made a couple of revisions, here is the new list

1. I have a beautiful Daughter

2. I have a beautiful Daughter

3.  I have a beautiful Daughter

4.  I have a beautiful Daughter

5.  I have a beautiful Daughter

At the end of this whole terrible event I need to make sure I protect the most important thing in my life. My Daughter. I already only see my daughter on the weekends from my past relationship. Over the past several months when I was trying to work on my relationship we missed a lot of weekends with my daughter. Every weekend I missed with my daughter is like being stabbed in the heart and having twisted for several days. I did this willingly to try and save a marriage that I thought that could be saved. I don’t think many people understand what its like to not see your child for weeks on end due to one partner not wanting to help or compromise their time which would leave them alone with their child for a full day. That’s what it ultimately came down to. My partner would not spend a single day with our child alone. A typical weekend, we would pick up our daughter at her birth mother’s house which is 45 minutes at 10am. we would then drive all the way back and get home just before 11. effectively the morning is shot. we would have a quick lunch which ended up being the same thing week after week. I tried to help my lunch and come up with different ideas but every time my partner would just shut them down and I honestly did have the energy to fight it anymore so I would let her get away with it. Then after lunch our daughter would go to her room for “quiet time” she would stay in her room for 1 - 2 hours most of the time she slept the entire time because she needs it and I understand but I still feel frustrated about. she would get up and it would be close to 3pm and she would go out and play with all the other kids on the block. we never took her out anywhere because we were broke and she needed to interact with the other kids and have a childhood. we would have dinner around 5 she might have a bath after dinner and then she would be in bed before 7pm. that is the time I got to spend with my daughter for the past several months. after that I would drive her home Sunday morning for 10am give or take and then go to work. I rarely got more than 4-5 hours with my daughter when she was awake. If we did go some where I was scolded for trying to help my daughter or interact with her because she needed to learn to ask for help or needed to learn how to be independant. 

This I swear ends now. My Daughter comes before everything else and i would kill for her and I would die before I let someone hurt her again. I realize that the person who has hurt her the most has been myself and my own inability to truly connect to another individual in a meaningful way. I need to be a better role model and I will. I will help my daughter and play with my daughter and make sure she learns how to love someone and how to be open with people without fear of judgment. I can only hope that she takes what’s best out of all her parents all four of us and leaves all the other bullshit behind.

Daughter if I ever tell you about this place I hope you will forgive me and I hope I was able to explain when happened 

Today was the first day I talked about my separation with someone other than my wife. This person I have come to realize means far more to me then I ever thought possible. She has been at the drop of hat to help me through all of my darkest times. While talking with her I came to realize a couple of things 1. I am a terrible friend. Which I am going to try and change 2. People who I thought I was close I know truest nothing about them and I have superficial connections with them - I want to work on this and connect with these friends again like I was so many years ago 3. I truly love this individual - not the romantic kind but a deep love that comes from years of connection with no judgement and the power to call you on your shit

I had been chatting with this individual for a couple of months over coffee and realized I’ve missed talking with her. During our chat today she allowed me to open up on some of the darkest things in this relationship with no judgement and allowed me to talk freely. During this chat she also was able to read between the lines drag those topics out that she knew needed to be dragged out. I owe this individual a debt that I don’t think I can ever repay but I’m sure going to try