Reflection Time: My marriage to my ex-husband.
I want to preface this reflection by saying my marriage was vanilla. There was never any d/s dynamic discussed or implemented. It was traditionally vanilla. Which is FINE AND I AM NOT SHAMING ANYONE VANILLA/NON-KINKY.
I was kinky before my marriage. Not anywhere near as kinky as I am today, but I was interested in bondage and possessiveness. Very early stages of discovering BDSM, and my marriage killed my exploration of that. My ex-husband is 18 years older than I am. Yep, you heard that right folks. When him and I started getting intimate, we had 0 sex discussions. No “What are you into?” “What turns you on?” “Do you like x, y, z?” “Is it okay if we x?” Nothing. Went in completely blind. And you would think that’s acceptable for the first time, maybe it was hasty and those conversations didn’t have time to blossom yet, but no. In the whole 6 years I was monogamous with this man, not a single sexually charged conversation. Which I look back on now and see as a huge red flag. But back then I had such a distorted way of looking at any older man as having his shit together and that I should just follow him. I thought he knew what he was doing with me and I trusted him to lead me.
Boy was I fucking naive. I give myself grace by acknowledging that I was young, too young to be making the decisions I made. I was not in the best mental health chapter of my life. And I told myself I would do better when I was ready to reenter the dating world.
My ex-husband was abusive, manipulative, evil, and spiteful. He was a trash person. And all the signs were right in front of me, but I was too blinded by an older man wanting to love me. And of course the relationship didn’t start off abusive, otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed. He brought me flowers, worked on my car, helped me buy my childhood home from my divorcing parents at 19/20 years old, showed me that there are men out there that love my body type, and of course said all the things I wanted and needed to hear as an insecure young adult. And then it started. The drinking. Money started disappearing faster than we could make it. Crazy, emotional outbursts that he wouldn’t remember in the morning. This included throwing his full dinner plate at me from across the table and jumping out of moving vehicles on drives home as well as leaving me stranded in unfamiliar places when he had the keys. Drugs (weed specifically) became a part of normal life for us. While I did not partake in the beginning, I was eventually worn down about doing it so much that I did it. And then the real manipulation started. I could no longer be upset with him for it because I was doing it too. His problems were now my problems and it was my responsibility as the wife to fix them. And work a full time job (2 most of the time) and take care of his kids when they visited and clean the house and run the errands and run the finances and maintain my personal hygiene and still want to have sex everyday. You can imagine how out of control that got. I managed to hold it together that way for 3 years before I absolutely broke. My being broke. Everything I thought I knew about life and love and partnership was so distorted from what my reality was that I finally got up the courage to have a hard conversation with my ex-husband. I thought the conversation went well. We were both not happy, we acknowledged it and discussed things we could both do to help fix our marriage and had planned to do those things moving forward. But I was wrong, the next morning I woke up to the beating of a lifetime. It was so bad that I called my mother who I was no contact with for 4 years and begged her to come get me. She called the police and came to get me. I went to the psychiatric hospital and got the help I needed, but it was a long, hard road. I had to quit my job because my ex-husband would show up at my work (I worked 3rd shift and didn’t want to risk him taking me in the dark). I did extreme amounts of therapy, during and after my hospitalization. I even had to go through a period where I thought we could reconcile. But I made it out the other side.
I struggle with trauma from my marriage, but the people I am currently in a relationship with are some of the most understanding, caring and passionate people I have ever met in my life. When I’m having hard moments, they seek to understand and help, not just listen. And that’s what love and partnership is truly about. I cannot forget that. Even when it’s hard.
