Tonight, after talking for over a year about a divorce, my husband finally left our home. A peace and calm came over this house when he shut the door behind him for the last time. How did it come down to this? This is my story. Out for the world to see. I hope that in some small way my story can help someone else that is going through the same kind of situation. This is my story.
Our marriage began fifteen years ago. We didn't know each other very well. We certainly had no business getting married at the point that we did. We met in February 1995. We married in June of the same year. March of 1997 we had our first child. Followed in January 1999 by our second. The last child was born in 2001. Our problems first began to show, okay not really began. The problems really picked up in 1999. It was shortly after the birth of our second child. She was about two months old when I caught him for the first time. I walked into our living room to find him sitting at the computer chatting with a woman and telling her that our marriage was over. That he loved her, not me.
We argued a lot about that. He agreed to stay off the computer. Which he did for a while. It took a long time to get over the fact that he was professing his love to another woman. Advance to 2001, I walked into our office and again caught him online telling another woman that he was divorced. Telling her that he only stayed around the area so that he could see his kids. We fought badly over that one. It was really difficult but I finally put that behind me.
I thought it was behind us this time for good. But in 2005 I began to have suspicions that he was doing something on the same lines as before. I decided that the only way to know for sure was to catch him in the act. So, I found a key logging software that I installed on our computer that would take screen shots of what was on the screen every ten seconds. Those photos were emailed to me on an account that I had set up for just that purpose.
One afternoon I asked him what was going on. Please tell me what you are hiding I begged him. He insistently told me nothing was going on. I asked him right out if he was chatting to women again. No came the answer that I got from him. A little later he left for work. I went into my email account that he knew nothing of. I sat there for hours going over each and every screen shot that was there. There were well over 5000 photos.
Each one that looked out of line I saved. Those that seemed harmless I deleted. What I had left in the end was thirty five images on my screen.
Each image worse than the last. He was corresponding with a woman that he had met while playing on a poker website. It started fairly simple. That he was divorced. Before I knew it the screen shots showed him talking of moving to Michigan to be with her. That he was just biding his time a little longer so that I wouldn't stop him from seeing the kids. Telling her that he wanted to take her to bed. It only got worse from there. Nothing that any wife wants to see her husband saying to another woman.
I kept those images open on the screen but thrown to the bottom so that the kids wouldn't see them if they happened by the computer. I waited getting more and more angry by the minute. By the time that he walked through the door I was completely enraged. I asked him again what he had been doing on the computer. He again swore that he had been doing nothing at all on there. So I said, "Really" whats this then? I opened each one of the screen shots so that he could see what I had found. He became extremely outraged. He began yelling and asking why the hell I had those and where I had gotten them. I told him that I had been asking, begging him to tell me and that he wouldn't. So I installed software that would show me what he was doing. He then said, so you don't trust me enough that you are checking up on what I do?
Apparently I can't trust you. It's time you leave. I have had enough of the lies and the internet cheating. He left, only to come back the next morning saying that we would just stay together because of our kids. That our marriage was over. I agreed to let him come back on the grounds that it was only because of the kids and that nothing had changed between he and I. We agreed that night to just be parents to the kids, and that when the youngest was to turn 18 that he would move out. So that was how we lived those last few years. We kept separate lives.
Well that brings us to November 2008. Since we were just together for the kids and our marriage was non existent, I felt that I could finally be free. I ran across an amazing website called Classmates. I put my profile on that site thinking I would be able to find some friends that I hadn't spoken to in years. What I came across shocked me. I found the man that I had fallen in love with when I was sixteen. He had posted photos of him then and now, and photos of his kids.
I sent him an email telling him how beautiful his kids were and that I always knew he would be a great dad. I never in a million years thought that I would ever hear anything back from him. In fact, I had sent that email in November of 08. I didn't hear anything at all back from him until February 09. I could not believe my eyes when I got his email. He remembered me, and was shocked to have gotten my email. He didn't think that I ever wanted to talk to him again. I had thought the same of him. We spent a couple of weeks emailing back and forth talking about old times, and things we had been doing over the last sixteen years.
One email from him asked me to call him sometime because he would love to hear my voice again. I couldn't believe how that made me feel. I for the first time in a long time had butterflies. He knew I was not divorced yet. He still wanted to talk to me. One night I went to the store, I called him. I sat in the parking lot of the store and we talked for what seemed like forever, but in fact was only a couple of hours. Still to this day I can't wrap my mind around the fact that he wanted to talk to me. It was a shock.
Anyway, we talked as we could over the next few weeks. I went home after work one night and came clean about it to my husband. I told him that I had been talking to a man from my past that I had never fallen out of love with. I told him everything. Yes he got mad, he had every right to be mad. I in turn reminded him that we had only stayed together because of the kids. Had it not been for them we would have gotten a divorce years earlier. I told him that I was going to go for a weekend to see this man. I had to see if what he and I had shared in the past was still there or not.
So in May 09 I went to meet with him half way between where he lived and where I lived. The very moment I saw him, all of those same feelings came rushing back. Was it only because I was reliving the past? I thought in the beginning that it might have been just that. As time has gone on I realize that, the past is the past. We love each other now for who we are today. We both have gone through so much and grown over the years. We were but mere children ourselves back then. We have grown up in more ways than age.
After our weekend together, we decided we wanted to be back together. I went back home and he went to his home. We kept in contact the next few weeks. My husband and I talked in length about the fact that I was no longer willing to stay together because of the kids. It did the kids no good to be living in a home where there was so much tension. So, as a somewhat dysfunctional family we moved to the state where my love lives. It was hard for my husband, but I felt that the kids needed to still be able to be close to him. I live closer to the man I love now. We are only about fifty miles apart. My husband was still living with me and the kids until tonight.
The straw that broke the camels back? I finally realized that I had been doing everything for the kids myself. Paying bills, taking care of their needs and as many of their wants as I could. Meanwhile my husband was sitting at home complaining about the fact that I want to divorce him. Literally everyday after I left for work he would complain to our kids about how mom and this guy were always seeing each other. We aren't, it was only in his mind. We see each other every couple of weeks for a few hours. My husband seems to think that everyday when I go to work that I am going to meet this guy before work. It doesn't happen but that is what he thinks happens.
So tonight, we argued about what else. This other guy and how when I see him I hug or kiss him. Yet how I don't kiss my husband anymore. I told him when he started yelling about it tonight for the millionth time that he has known that this was what was going to happen. That he has known it for the last nine months. I have been as honest with him as I can possibly be.
When he left tonight he told our kids that it was mom that told him to leave. I didn't in so many words. I just told him that I was so over this. That I was completely over it. So he left. Am I upset by it? No. This is better for all of us. Our kids no longer have to listen to anyone yelling all the time. They were happy little kids again after he left tonight. I sat here and listened to them laughing and playing. Something that I have not heard in a long time.
We also sat and talked about how daddy was not going to be living with us anymore. But that he will always love them, and that they will still get to see daddy. I asked him before he left to please call to talk to his kids when he could. They still need their daddy. I do not want to take that away from them or him. He called them before they went to bed tonight to tell them that he loves them. I was glad he called for them. They deserve to have him in their lives as much as they do their mom.
As for me, I will be glad once the divorce is filed and final. I need to move on. I need to know that although it is over between the kids dad and I, I can and will be okay. Divorce may not be for everyone, but for me it is what is best. Living with a man that you do not love, never truly loved, is not the answer. Having a life filled with happiness and peace, is. Can anyone be happy after a divorce? I think so, I think that in some cases being divorced is better than being married. At least when you are married to a man or woman that you do not really love, divorce is best.
So where do I go from here? I am moving forward with my kids. I may from time to time see the man I moved here to be close to. I don't know where the future may lead me. Until then I plan to do my very best at making my kids lives full of happiness and peace. They deserve no less.
Congratulations JustAMom1974!
You can follow her on her blog, Just A Mom's Blog
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