The Other Woman

I should have trusted my instincts and said that I wouldn’t continue to have any kind of relationship with you – friendship or otherwise – unless you stopped talking to that girl.  You told me that continuing to talk to her was helping you move on because she didn’t want to be with you, and I knew better.  I am not a stupid woman.  Blind, apparently, but not stupid.  Why did I ignore what I knew – that every second that you spend talking to this girl pulls you farther away from your family?  Why did I continue to trust you after you cheated on me with 3 different women?  Did you really have me so convinced that your betrayal was the result of my failings that I overlooked common sense?

What is holding me back from accepting what I know to be true – that you don’t want to be with me, that you never really wanted to be with me, and that nothing I say or do will every make you want to be with me?  Is it really just that I don’t want my children to grow up without their father being a constant presence in their lives?  Am I that afriad of being alone?

I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself. I don’t know why I’m living in this house with you when I know you don’t really want to be with me.  It’s a pretend marriage, one we keep for the kids, because ther’s nothign else we can do.  The economy is awful.  Without me, you will never be able to survive.   You’l never finish school, you’ll never live in a decent neighborhood, and you’ll work so much that you’ll barely see them.  I know that’s not my problem, but I think it would upset the children.

And I want to understand – not why you wanted to leave because you’ve made that abundantly clear, but why you don’t love me, why I’m not good enough for you.  Because if I’m not good enough for the man who chose to marry me, then I’m not good enough for anyone, at least not anyone worth having.  I want to understand why you married me if you “had doubts” that were enough to give you pause, and why you wouldn’t have tried harder to lay those doubts out for me clearly so that I really knew what I was getting into.

It kills me to think that you never thought I was beautiful, that you never looked at me and thought, “Wow, that’s my wife.”  It hurts me to know that you’ve never been proud of me and that the most difficult things that I do mean so little to you.  All I ever wanted was for you to love me for who I am.

Happy Anniversary

Living together makes it difficult to ignore our anniversary, but I see no reason to celebrate it, either.  We’re not sure how this is going to work out, but the fact that we’re trying says something, possibly, because your motives are questionable at best.  This is supposed to be a celebration of another year together, remembering the good times and the bad.  I wish I could rewind, go back a year, and change everything.

I don’t know if it would make a difference.  By this time last year, you had already slept with someone else.  I knew, but not for sure, and I pretended to believe you when you said you weren’t with her.  We went out to dinner on our anniversary and had a great time, but all the while you knew something I didn’t – that you weren’t in love with me anymore, that you didn’t want to be married to me anymore.

You were tense and distant for the entire summer, and I couldn’t figure out why.  It made sense when I found out you’d slept with one of my “friends” on July 4th.  Unfortunately, I didn’t find out soon enough.  I keep thinking tha if I had known about the first one, if I had realized the severity of the situation, I might have been able to save my marriage before it was too late, before you fell in love with someone else, before I let you travel to another country, twice, without me.

The infidelity is one thing, but the reason for it is something else entirely.  I had allowed distance to grow between us.  I didn’t take care of you.  I let life get in the way and I didn’t focus on our relationship.  I didn’t pay attention to what was important to you, and I let you slip away.  What you have done is hurtful.  I feel betrayed.  I feel alone.  I feel incredibly guilty.  Trusting you again will be difficult and take years, and I don’t even know if it’s worth it.

Father’s Day

I had no idea how difficult living with you while going through a divorce would be at certain times of the year.  All week I’ve been on edge.  I thought it was because school’s almost over or because I’m about 8 months pregnant now, but I was wrong.  I’ve been dreading Father’s Day.

I am not happy that you’re the father of my children.  If I had known when I married you what I know now we would never have gotten married.  I certainly wouldn’t have had children with a man who wasn’t physically attracted to me and who had doubts but cast them aside because he thought I was as good as he could get.  I had children with you without knowing how you really felt about me, without realizing that all I’ve ever been was a cure for your loneliness, and that when you were finished with me, you would leave me behind.  You can say you’ll be there for the kids all you want, but a real father would be there for the kids every day, every night, whenever they needed him.  A true father wouldn’t have had children with a woman he didn’t truly love.

The worst part is this: up until 6 months ago, I was proud that you were there father.  I was thrilled when I found out I was going to have another child with you because I have enjoyed watching you with our son so much.  I couldn’t wait to see the way you reacted to a daughter, how different she would be, and how your relationship with her would grow and change you like your relationship with our son has.  Up until 6 month ago, there was no one else I would have chosen to be the father of my children, no one who even came close to being the kind of father I would want my kids to have, which was why I was still single even after 5 proposals.  Now I look back on that and see that any one of those men would have been a better choice than you.  Any one of those men loved me more than you ever did, would never have left me, and would never have left our children.  You are not the kind of man I want my son to be, and tha breaks my heart.

Unconditional Love Is…

So for the past few weeks everyone has been asking me how I can stand to live in a house with a man who is trying to have relationships with other women because he is leaving me (eventually).  The answer is this:  I do my best to practice what I preach.  Though I may not be Christian, I do believe that some of the concepts Jesus tried to get us to understand are useful.  Forgiveness always fascinated me because it seemed to be the hardest part of what he preached, and I always did like a challenge.  I have always told my students, who need constant reminding, that unconditional love is unconditional.  I can be incredibly angry and disappointed, but love is not disposable.

If I wasn’t pregnant, I probably would have moved out of the house already.  But I am, and more than my desire to get away from this man quickly is my desire for my new baby to have the same chance to bond with his or her father as my son did.  I recognize that this makes my life more complicated and that it forces me to spend time with someone who has hurt me, betrayed me, and disappointed me in a variety of ways.  But he is the father of my children, and my love for THEM is unconditional.  My love for him should be as well, and I’m working on that.  Right now the anger gets in the way a little.

It is for them that I have decided to work to be friends with my husband.  To let go of the anger and resentment so that we can show them a united front for the rest of their lives is important.  I want them to see us as two people who care about each other a great deal even though we don’t want to be in a relationship with each other.  It won’t be easy, and it will take a while, but I really think that we can get there.  I just have to learn to forgive him.  An stop the overwhelming urge to kick him in the nuts.

An Amicacble Divorce

I am not myself.  I don’t know who I am right now, but I know it isn’t me.  Or at least it isn’t who I want to be.  I’m a depressed, exhausted, pregnant version of myself, and I’m getting a divorce. Sort of.  My husband wants a divorce, but he didn’t actually file for one, and he didn’t move out of the house.

He just decided he didn’t love me anymore, or quite possible he had never loved me, and now he wants a divorce.  Now that we have a two year old and I’m three months pregnant.  Now.  Not three years ago before we had our son.  Not four months ago before he got me pregnant.  Now.  Well, his timing has always sucked.

He wants to be friends.  He thinks it will be better for the children.  Since on of the reasons I married his was that I knew he’s be an amazing father and he has always been one of my best friends, I think he’s probably right.  We will be friends.  Once I get past hating him.  A lot.

Because while we’re living in separate rooms and he has’t filed for divorce yet, he’s having a long distance romantic relationship with his cousin in Colombia.  I know this because I saw some websites like, “How do you tell your family you’re in love with your cousin?” and “In which states is it legal to marry your first cousin?” in the history of my laptop.

But it’s considered an amicable divorce because I’m not fighting it.  He’s made up his mind and there’s nothing I can do.  He won’t go to counseling.  He won’t try a separation.  Although, if he’s having other relationships, I guess we’re already spearated, if not legally.  He’s giving me half of everything and full custody of the kids.  If I fight it, he could get nasty and I would have to fight him for custody, for child support, for everything.  And I  just don’t feel like fighting.