Marriage Problems are Not Always the Husband’s Fault

It was December 1989 and we were both 23 and living on our own, both in a 12-step recovery program for alcohol and we worked full-time jobs. Looking back I should have never let my sponsor set me up on that blind date. If she hadn’t I wouldn’t have broken Michael’s heart, shattered his dreams, and stepped on his future. He would probably still be in the choir, living in the same city, married to someone else with a couple of kids, having held the same job for years.

But I said yes that fateful day just to get her off my back because she kept insisting I meet this Michael, a former high school football and baseball team captain, sweet, generous, sales guy who didn’t have much experience with women.

I got to her house early at her insistence so she could help me get ready which consisted of her doing my hair, makeup, and nails, and me wearing a red dress she picked out. Her much younger boyfriend, who also knew Michael, was there; too, watching TV and complimenting me as she did the same while we awaited Michael’s arrival. It was Christmas time and we were going to Michael’s company Christmas party, a swanky affair held in a fancy mausoleum, a place I’d never been to but heard about. After what seemed like forever Michael arrived, driving his small white Toyota truck and carrying a flower for me. He was in a suit and tie, hair neatly combed, expectant smile on his face and nervous gaze.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then, let’s go,” he said boldly and we were sent off amidst waves and promises from me to call my sponsor and let her know how it went the next day.

He careened around the highway loops and exits, chattering nervously about our mutual friends and soon we arrived at the party to a packed parking lot. We had to park kind of far but I didn’t much mind and Michael fished out his tickets and money from his jacket pocket. We scoped out a table and sat down for just a few minutes before he asked me to dance to a slow song and off we went to the packed dance floor, bodies moving to ours in unison. I don’t remember the song now but I used to know it. We didn’t stay long before we decided to go have coffee at a pancake house, staying out late and talking before he dropped me back off to my car at my sponsor’s house and I drove home.

I liked him though we had nothing in common. He was a Republican Baptist from a poor family who never went to college and his dad had left the family when he was a kid. He worked in sales at a phone company which he liked and had recently been promoted to supervisor. He lived near me, didn’t have many friends, and mostly connected with adults, the latter of which I did have in common with him.

The next day he called and we went out again, this time to a church function, a Christmas dinner where we sat with mostly elderly people since that was the majority of the makeup of the congregation. He had me take home some party favors such as a paper plate made into an angel, Christmas cards, and some other stuff which I kept for a long time. So the next night we went to see “War of the Roses,” something we probably shouldn’t have seen together. He wanted to get married one day and thought it was a good thing while I thought the opposite and was terrified of commitment. We would get into long, intellectual conversations, each trying to convince the other one of our views and one time he stormed off, frustrated with my bleeding liberalism. I always swore I’d never date a Republican but there was something about him. I think it was his innocence.

A month later we broke up though he gave me a doll with a note that read “A little doll for a little doll” for Christmas before speeding off to visit his family in the middle of an ice storm at the holidays. Later I wound up giving it and some other things he gave me back to him in a fit of anger right before we broke up. I didn’t see him for a month then we were back together again once I saw him playing softball with some friends across the street from where I lived and had to go over and say hello. He seemed happy to see me so there we were again, off to the races. We dated through Valentine’s Day and my birthday which he made extra special. Sometimes after I’d come home from my retail job, feet killing me, he’d have made me beef stroganoff and he’d massage my aching feet. He was a good man and I really blew it. In April of that year I got a job with his company which he thought would be a good thing but turned out all I did was complain. I wasn’t a team player like him which he realized right off the bat.

He supported my freelance writing work though and would go out of his way to help me get exposure. By June 1990 we were broke up again due to my need to continuously sabotage things and I spent the summer casually dating a guy who was three years younger than me and dumb as a box of hammers. I missed Michael’s intelligence. Then no word from Michael till December of that year when I was in town for Christmas having moved an hour away for a job. I ran into him at the local pharmacy and we were back on again. He took me to his apartment he shared with his best friend to introduce me – a friend who later told him he could do better and then we went out to eat.

But by January 1991 having spent the holidays together, hanging out with mutual friends, going to movies, eating Christmas dinner together, and exchanging gifts, all while still having not been intimate yet, we broke up again, this time at my doing of course, as always. I called the police on him when he refused to leave, something I cringe at now and they quickly talked him into leaving. He carried a resentment against me for a long time after that, which I don’t blame him for doing. I started dating some navy guy who I didn’t really have an attraction for, trying to forget Michael but not being able to. Then it was Christmas time again, 1991 and I unwittingly moved into a garage apartment right next door to where Michael had moved to in the last year. He always asked me if I did that on purpose but I swear it was just fate. I was carrying my umpteenth load into my apartment when there he was, standing in his driveway.

“Terri?” he asked, disbelievingly.

It couldn’t be but he stood there, having lost his truck due to finances though he was still working. He helped me unload my car; we talked by candlelight since my electricity hadn’t been turned on yet, and I apologized for how I treated him. In January we were still dating, spending every minute we could together, having bonded once again and rekindled our romance amid financial problems and cold weather. But in February I dumped him again, having suffered a flashback from my sexual abuse days at the hands of my dad. In May we were back on when my cat was injured in a fight and Michael helped me nurse her back to health. The next month he proposed and I said yes, knowing it was a bad idea but figuring no one else would ever propose to me, he was a good man, and I could make this work. By July we were living together in a new apartment down the street with hardwood floors, lots of windows, a spare bedroom, fuel heater, and hardly any furniture between us. We finally made love for the first time during the Summer Olympics that year in 1992. But in August I had cheated on him twice and we were in couples’ counseling. I was a self-admitted sex addict and he was the victim, a reverse order of things. In September he went into codependency treatment, something I’d done the year before but didn’t stick with the aftercare program and now I feared losing him once he got healthy. But in October we attended a costume party together, me as Tinkerbell, and he as a genie.

In November I made my first Thanksgiving dinner and we had five people over. It turned out great and he was so happy and proud of me. In December luck smiled on us and we had a really blessed Christmas financially, me working at a law firm, he working in construction. In January I was having major problems at work still and he was always there for me, emotionally and in every way. He would light incense, hug me, and tell me that I didn’t have to put up with an abusive boss and to quit my job if I wanted to. In March he gave me a great birthday as always and I felt so loved though how I treated him was never consistent. In April I went on anti-depressants for the first time, having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and in May we continued wedding plans. In June I had a bridesmaid luncheon as he slept from exhaustion, in July we watched the fireworks together outside our apartment, and in August we held an engagement barbecue with many friends in attendance.

But in September he kicked me out for hitting him – a total of six times over the years. In October we were back together and I checked myself into a mental hospital for a few days though he disagreed and felt the therapists talked me into it. We had Thanksgiving dinner with friends that year, a month before we were to be married.

We were married Dec. 4, 1993 in Fernandina Beach, FL, amidst much chaos like a flat tire, being stuck in a parade, me arguing with my sister, fighting on the way to the rehearsal dinner, the soloist having to sing acapello due to us not being able to afford a pianist, the seamstress suing me for nonpayment, a potluck reception which was held at a twelve-step club, and Michael’s vows not being heard due to the crashing ocean waves in the background at the outdoor wedding. A month after we were married I took another job, one that paid well and the month after that I was lashing out at Michael again, further alienating him with my uncontrolled rage. That year he was on the road with a new job during my birthday which I spent with friends, lashing out at them, too which resulted in me walking home after pitching a tantrum. By April Michael and I had a new cat after mine of five years disappeared and we looked for her in vain, me crying for two weeks, searching daily, posting flyers, ads, and being vigilant about finding her. In May 1994 we went to a Memorial Day cookout together and things were good as we now shared mutual friends and in June we watched together on TV. as O.J. Simpson ran from the police on the highway.

In July Michael had already met the girl I was serving as a child advocate for who was in foster care though a program I was in – Court Advocates. In August he and I were fighting again when my job changed to commission only and I took it out on him all the time. The next month I planned his first surprise party he’d ever had in honor of his birthday and proceeded to enter the wrong house with the cake and gifts, having only been to the right house once, down the street. In October 1994 I broke my sternum, totaling my car when a woman side swiped me and Michael was out of town on business. It took me a month to recover and in December we celebrated our year anniversary with a romantic dinner at a cozy restaurant called Raspberry’s and watched “Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory” on TV. In January 1995 Michael took a temp job with a new construction company and he had to get up at the crack of dawn to meet the crew daily, us having only one car to get both of us back and forth to work. One time an old friend of his blew into town and spent the night on our sofa and I heard Michael complaining about me to him while I lay in bed, unable to sleep.

Then in March 1995 Michael took a job with a company that would require us to live out of motels and be on the road permanently as he traveled from job to job based on commercial contracts that opened up constantly. In April I joined him, having held a goodbye party for my friends and we put a lot of our stuff in storage, taking the cat with us. In May we were living in a trailer temporarily that was owned by a motel so he could work in Claxton, GA and I got a temp job with the local paper, writing. In June he stayed with my mom and step dad while I stayed behind in the trailer, still working and he worked on a temporary contract in the city where they lived. In July we were off to Guymon, OK, living in a motel, me working as a telesales rep, which I hated but had experience in, he working ten hours a day in the heat but always cheerful when he got home to our dungy motel room.

In August while he was in Florida on business, I wrote some bad checks to be able to eat and survive since I had no money and he told me we had to cut back. In September we were at each other’s throats, he having found out about the checks and no longer trusting me in any area. In October I went back into the hospital for asthma, something I’ve been hospitalized for a total of six times and in November we were off to Fort Worth, TX where we lived in a hotel still with the cat and still cooking out of our wok all our meals. In December it was back to Guymon temporarily where we got snowed in for two weeks and he was rarely able to work, us stuck in a one-room rental, still at each other’s throats, me having relapsed drinking, he having done so a few months before.

In January 1996 we were living back in Texas in the same hotel only this time since we were supposed to be here for awhile so I looked for steadier work. In February I got a job at a non-profit and his drinking escalated though mine had stopped. My 30th birthday which fell on Easter Sunday was marred by us separating temporarily, he taking off to the Carolinas for his job, me staying behind in our new apartment with only bedroom furniture. Three months later he came home to a much smaller apartment when I had to move into efficiency due to money. By September I visited him in Ohio and we checked out the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cincinnati but weren’t intimate all weekend. Thanksgiving Day, 1996 we separated for good and a few days later he returned to his motel-living job and I stayed behind, working for a new non-profit by now.

At Christmas I told him he could come home and we could try again but we soon realized it would never work. In April 1997 I saw him at a hotel when he was in town on business and we kissed and I asked him to forgive me for the past. By now I was seeing someone else but Michael didn’t want to let me go. We kept in touch sporadically, making empty promises to each other, all the while knowing that as long as he was on the road it wouldn’t work and I was dating a woman. I met him another time when he came back to town and we had dinner unbeknownst to her or anyone. We still weren’t divorced and neither of us could bring ourselves to do it though he was dating someone else, too. In September that year I sent him birthday presents and a card anyway.

I tried to make him feel guilty when I almost died in Dec 1997 and was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance with my asthma but by then he was so detached from hurt and betrayal, how could I blame him? The year 1998 I don’t think I saw him at all and the next year we were still dating other people, not talking, but not divorcing, partly because neither of us could afford an attorney but also because neither of us wanted the stigma of divorce. In January 2000 I had to get his signature on a form saying he wasn’t the father of the baby I was placing for adoption so that the legal department at the maternity home would be satisfied. I being pregnant by my boyfriend was something I never wanted him to know about but it was totally unavoidable.

Now it was 2001 and Michael and I still weren’t divorced, though living apart, I having talked to several attorneys but never able to come up with the $500 retainer, the cheapest I’d found. In December of that year he wound up calling me while I was thinking about him while watching a movie. We talked for awhile and he told me he had sobriety again, having suffered a horrible relapse involving a shootout with the police and now living in a halfway house, still working but having lost everything. 2002 came and almost went before I was back in the hospital with my asthma. I called him, hoping to get some sympathy but he had none for me.

In March 2003 I sent him a second set of divorce papers which he still hasn’t signed, not because he doesn’t want to get back together but because he says it is just too depressing to admit defeat in a marriage he wanted so much to work. My only alternative now is to post an ad in the paper and get a default divorce, something that is long overdue, having just marked our ten year anniversary in December 2003. In July 2003 I met someone who I have now been dating since December and I have finally allowed someone to love me, of course at Michael’s expense. I haven’t forgiven myself for what I did to Michael and I don’t know if I ever will be able to.

I took the light in his eyes that once sparkled with naivet�© and hope and turned him into a cynical middle-aged man who trusts no one because I took my anger and distrust for men out on him due to an abusive childhood.

So we are still married though once in a while I call just to jog his memory about the divorce papers but his voice of faraway scorn tells me all I need to know and I know that this time it will be me who has to be the grown up and set him free to love the person he should have been with all along.

Free to rediscover hope, if that is at all possible.