Long overdue

It’s been years. The last 7-months have been a whirlwind and I’ve needed to journal badly, but have been so consumed with life and changes, that I haven’t found the time. This will be brief, in comparison to what the last 7-months have been, but I hope to come back more often and use this as some narrative therapy. I am blessed with so many wonderful friends in my life, but I do sometimes find myself holding back, and I know this was always a place I could be unfiltered.

I think I last updated here not long after Matt and I married in 2008. We are officially divorced now as of April 2022.

I don’t even know if I can pinpoint any one thing, or moment, or issue….. At the time, when things fell apart, it felt so sudden. As I have reflected back on it, it wasn’t sudden at all. We broke and drifted a part so many years ago. He sensed my unhappiness for a long time, even when I didn’t know I was unhappy. It really wasn’t until things ended that I looked back, seeing the weight that had lifted, the fog that was clearing, and some comparisons that I could now make to see, NOW I am happy. The last few years, I got by. But, I wasn’t truly as happy as I am capable of. As I desire to be. As I deserve.

Our entire relationship, first date, through our entire marriage, was open, consensual non-monogamy. The basic rules we agreed to in the beginning were safety, putting one another first, veto power if the other was not okay with a relationship, and complete and honest communication. We had been, in general, pretty good about all of those.

When I met Matt he was 1 year sober. I only knew him sober. We were together about 6 years when he relapsed. He got sober again. Rinse and repeat a few times. He could string years of sober time together. In late 2016 he relapsed and I hadn’t realized it yet. February of 2017, he attempted his own life. I found him, dead, unresponsive, bleeding out, ODd, in a parking garage around 2AM. It was by happenstance my dogs woke me up, I noticed he wasn’t home, and tracked him using findyouriphone. He was brought to the hospital, air lifted to another, in a coma for over a week, and spent 2 months total in the hospital recovering – including needing hand surgeries and dialysis. It’s a literal miracle that he survived and another that he was okay to return to work after a few months. His parents generously covered a lot of medical bills and gaps while he was out of work, no questions asked. They have always bailed him out. He got lucky and was able to keep his nursing license, although we spent probably $15,000 over 3 years in legal bills and mandatory testing and counseling to complete the requirements for his license. At that point he was so grateful for a second chance to live. He really felt like that was his rock bottom, he would never relapse again. He didn’t ever want to be back there.

What should have been such a renewal, a second chance, a new lease on life, in hindsight, was probably the beginning of the end of our marriage. We survived it. I never even thought twice about leaving him. I needed him sober, but it’s always been in my DNA to be married forever. Short of being abused, I would fight forever. He had always wanted the same. We had a lot of ups and downs, but we always fought to be together and we always agreed that it was forever. Always. But as he had this renewed sense of life, he also had this “life is short, so I am going to give no fucks and do what makes me happy” arrogance about him. He became a lot more selfish. Really a different person after. I have always questioned how much of his change had to do with the experience of almost dying and how much had to do with altered brain chemistry from being dead and in a prolonged coma. He had a different personality when he first woke up – for a few weeks, he was extremely aggressive and arrogant – it was seriously like he’d woken up a different person. He did mellow out and become more like him, but he kept this “fuck it, I’ll do what makes me happy” attitude forever.

I met a guy, Scott, while Matt was in the hospital. He turned my life upside down a bit. Poly and open relationships had always appealed to me because I didn’t believe any one person could provide 100% match. I don’t love geeky movies – if Matt has a friend or girlfriend to go watch a new Marvel or Star Wars movie with, that’ a win-win in my book. And, that’s just an example. There’s so many ways that we are never going to perfectly match another human, but yet, the (maybe) 70% we do, is incredible, and they’re the ones we are meant to spend our life with. But, we can still seek fulfillment from other partners in other areas. Scott owned his own business. He was more conservative than Matt. He was an incredible father (his daughter was born about a month after we met.) He and I could talk business and politics on a similar level. I enjoyed seeing him blossom as a dad and sharing time with his daughter. We had wonderful sexual chemistry and enjoyed incredible sex together. He was silly and enjoyed costume parties with me. These were a lot of things that I didn’t get with Matt. In the past, I would get what I needed from another partner and be satisfied and go home to Matt. It worked. This time, I started to see the things I liked in Scott, as deficits in Matt. It scared me. I knew Scott’s wife, Maddy, well. We even had a decent friendship. But, there were a lot of things about Maddy that frustrated me, and Scott. We didn’t spend our time complaining about our spouses, but it was clear to see sometimes how we complemented one another in ways, our spouses didn’t. There was a point in time I thought “would I leave Matt for Scott if that was on the table.” I don’t think I ever shared that with anyone….and it scared me. Because I never wanted to leave my marriage, but I was just constantly seeing all the ways my marriage wasn’t measuring up and fulfilling me.

Scott broke up with me. Suddenly and without much explanation. It was hard. I think he may have had some similar feelings, or maybe there was more to it that he just didn’t want to share. I don’t know. But, what did come of it, is I withdrew from poly and kink and told myself I wasn’t interested in it any longer. And at the time I wasn’t. I think it was in large part a protection mechanism. I was afraid of blowing up my marriage if I ever felt that way again. And the best way I knew how to protect my marriage was to not have anything “better” to compare it to. So I stopped dating. I stopped playing with other people. I stopped having sex. Matt had ED issues and we just didn’t – he didn’t. I was welcome to with others, but I didn’t. And I told him I wasn’t interested in kink anymore – I wouldn’t go to kink parties. I didn’t want kink parties at our house. It was a point of struggle for us. His identity is wrapped up in being a kinky human and I was saying “I want nothing to do with this life anymore.” While I was trying to keep us from growing apart, my moving away from the lifestyle we had always enjoyed together, kept us moving in opposite directions just as much, if not more. I think COVID hurt us as well – we both struggled with losing the usual routine and time with our friends. It changed so much, and we kept growing apart. I felt like we would make valiant efforts to reconnect and have time together, but there was still no sex.

I never stopped him from playing with others or dating. He started dating a girl – maybe a year before we ended our marriage. I was fine if she came over, but I just preferred not to be home when she was there. Nothing else in our rules had changed. I expected open and honest communication. And I expected if I was uncomfortable with something, I would come first.

In November, I found out that his relationship with this girl, Peachy, had delved into a daddy/little girl role that I hadn’t known about. It was something he’d always held sacred with me and had always told me would never be a relationship he’d have outside of me. I was hurt and confused. As I tried to understand it, he decided it would be easier to just break up with her. I didn’t ask him to, and in fact, discouraged it at the time. He has always just done things irrationally, and he went to work the next day, after me saying “let’s talk about it more, don’t break up with her.” and he broke up with her over text. Yeah not cool. I have met the girl, like on 3 occasions. Once when I walked her through our home before she dog sat. The other 2 times, I came home when she was over and she refused to look at me or speak to me – she would hide her head and not say hello. Very odd. We are not friends on social media and don’t have one another’s phone numbers. But that day after Matt broke up with her, she send me a FB message. Matt asked me not to respond to her. Out of respect for him and because I don’t know what the heck I could have said to her, I never did. But 2-3 days later, Matt tells me he wants to get back together with her. I was dumbfounded. Not entirely surprised because I didn’t think he wanted to really break up with her, but knowing how disrespectful she’d been to me, I wasn’t on board. I wanted us to focus on us and our marriage. Do marriage counseling. Without her. I thought he was in agreement, but he continued to see her anyway – because that’s what he wanted.  He did it in secret for awhile. He literally told me he was choosing what he wanted, and just because I wanted something else, it didn’t matter, he was going to do what made him happy.

We went to 2 therapy sessions before he told me he didn’t want to try any more. At the last therapy session I was coming around to him continuing with his relationship with Peachie. I thought we were making progress. But, he came home from work in the most dramatic of moments, stood at the bottom of the stairs, and as I started to descend to greet him, and he had an emotional outburst declaring he just couldn’t do it anymore, he was done trying, he wanted a divorce, I needed to just let him go. I sat down on the step I was on, not even half way down, and was ice cold calm, in shock. In disbelief. I didn’t know what to say or respond. I felt like I should have cried or emotionally begged him to reconsider, but I had no emotion. He judged that reaction harshly later. I can’t explain why I sat like that, because in my brain I was like “cry, that’s the appropriate response.” And I just sat there like maybe if we calmly talked about it he’d come to his senses.

That was a Sat. Monday we went to one more therapy session and nothing was accomplished, we agreed to a divorce. This was less than a month from when this had all started. I felt defeated, like we hadn’t tried at all. Tuesday, I tested positive for COVID. FUCK. I was quarantined to the master bedroom for 10 days. I felt like shit. I worked from home. He did his best to make sure I had medicine, water and food. He never got sick. I had wanted him to stay healthy, but had wondered if he had gotten sick, would we quarantine together and work it out? Probably not, but we never had he chance. Normally, I would have distracted myself by going out with friends, not thinking about it, and being ANYWHERE BUT HOME. But, that wasn’t in the cards. I was stuck for 10 days with my own thoughts, in my bedroom, trying to figure out my damn life.

I had a consultation with a couple attorneys. Went thorough every scenario of my fertility options. Matt didn’t want kids. I did eventually want them, but had chosen to stay in our marriage over having them. Now, I was about to be 40 and on the verge of a divorce and my time is running out….after looking into everything and weighing every option, I decided to do nothing. Not to freeze my eggs. Not to get pregnant on my own. Not to run out and foster or adopt. Not even to look for a baby daddy right away. I will let life play out. I’m open to children, but let it play out how it will. The more time that passes, the more I realize I don’t think I want to start a family at 40+. I go back and forth on it, but I am more solid in that than I was.

One day, as I am still quarantining, I wondered into the spare room that Matt was staying in, to grab a bottle of ibuprophen, only to find other drugs…he had relapsed. As the weeks went on I kept finding more and more drugs. Including finding out that he’d stolen some from work. It put so much of his recent behavior into perspective. We hadn’t been happy, but his “burn it all down” behavior breaking up with Peachy and then telling me it was over, those were symptoms of his relapse. Things he does when he’s out of control. But, it was in that moment that I became 100% okay with the divorce. I couldn’t go through another relapse. I didn’t have it in me. And, I knew, this wouldn’t be the last one. If the last one, where he almost died, spent 2 months in the hospital, required 2 surgeries, and dialysis….if that wasn’t the last one – he won’t stop until he’s dead. And I am no longer a partner in that.

I immediately retained one of the lawyers I had consulted with and asked to help me serve him so that I could minimize my liability in the event he got a DUI, killed someone, had an adverse action on his license, etc.

It was in January that he was served.

Coincidently, in January I got an interesting and unexpected text message from Eric (remember him from soooo long ago!)