One feeling above all others

I married a man who never found me to be something to be proud of. He says he loves me. He says that he wants to be with no other but when I met him he spent a considerable amount of time talking about all of the things he loved about his exes.

Maybe that was my red flag moment that should have been my cue to exit stage left. But alas, I didn’t!

In four short months we’ll have spent 20 years together. TWO WHOLE DECADES.

There have been people that he’s worked with who were shocked to find out he was married (before we had kids because now mentioning kids people automatically ask about a wife or partner) because there were no pictures of me in his wallet. No picture of us on his desk. I was only part of his life between the hours of 5 pm and 4 am.

He’s never been one to defend me. One day, sitting at a Starbucks with him and one of his friends, his friend said to him directly in front of me and said he didn’t know why my husband was with me. He went on about all of the girls he could have had he not chosen to be with me and that he could get better.

It was laughed off.

The school that I go to sent an email about telling your “PSU love story” if you met your significant other or friend at the school. 20 years ago my husband was a senior for his first bachelor’s there. I love the story of how we met but when I mentioned it’d be cool to share ours…he replied with “meh.” I made a comment about that not seeming to be of interest to him and he just blew me off.

I have issues and I get it. I wasn’t what my mother wanted or my father. So I had hoped that whoever I ended up with would find me worth wanting. And yet I picked someone who doesn’t. He’ll tell me things but when we walk out the door you’d more assume we were roommates who spend a lot of time together.

And yet he questions my lack of affection.

I’ve chosen to completely wall myself off because the pain when I stop to think about it all hurts far too much. But today it just hurt a lot. It was a new reminder that ours isn’t a story that will ever be told with a glimmer in the eye of the man telling it.

I love him more than he loves me back and that hurts.

And yet I don’t want anyone else but I don’t want to keep hurting. And I’ve talked about this with him for 20 years, and nothing is different.

I want to rewrite my story but how does one do such a thing?