The Beginning of the End of My Marriage

I am not even sure how it started. All I know is it was happening far before I knew anything. Looking back, I should have known when she gave up on me- she stopped trying to help me be a better person. She stopped wanting to talk about the future. I noticed this, but I was fooling myself. I thought she had finally accepted me the way I was. I foolishly thought she realized that I was normal, and life was the way it was supposed to be. I thought we were bonded by the life we created together. I was wrong.

This marks the start of the most difficult time in my entire life. I wish I could say it gets easier, but at this point, I am right in the thick of things and cannot see a light at the end of the tunnel. I pray every day, I cry almost every day. Most days are horrible, some can be bearable at times. It is truly a roller coaster, with my moods changing almost daily.

What I can say is that exercise helps. Meditation helps at times. Certainly, doing nothing makes things worse. Most things that I enjoyed before are pointless to me now. TV is not entertaining, video games are pointless, even talking to people is difficult. I barely eat. The only positive has been the significant weight loss.

I often wonder why this happened. My mind cannot even process all of the information. Almost seems to shut down at times. What hurts the most is that our family is ruined. Our family, our life, the future I had planned are all gone. Sometimes I fixate on the lost future. Sometimes I fixate on the lost family. While others, I focus on the lost love. The fear of the future is a big one. One of the hardest parts is that if I am able to get over one thing, I start to worry about another one. I find myself staring off into space many times throughout the day.

Work is hard for me right now, it doesn't help that the COVID pandemic is making me stuck at home. I really became withdrawn leading up to this, possibly due to the reality of living with a wife that secretly hated me for many years. My withdrawal didn’t help much when I needed people to support me. I had to really reach far, I had let a lot of my friendships go over the years. I contacted an old friend that turned out to be going through a similar situation. That made me feel better, knowing that I was not alone and that other people had experienced the same thing.

I remember the first step she took, almost a hint that she was wanted out. I thought we had a minor disagreement, and that things would go back to normal once we let things settle down. She said she wasn’t sad, but she was not happy. The key here is that there are lots of things that could make her not happy, but she was hinting that she was not happy with me. The next day, I asked if we could talk. She said yes, then followed by saying “I have no feelings for you anymore and I am moving out.” The most direct, callous, hurtful thing I have ever heard in my life. And it came from the person I had pledged my life to- My best friend for 17 years.

I was immediately in shock. I had never even considered that our marriage would ever end before this conversation. I was always committed to doing whatever it took to make it work and I thought she was too. Especially since we had a family and we really didn’t seem to have any major problems. All I could do at this point is to say “well I am sorry for all the things I did wrong.”

As the story unfolded over the following days, weeks, I started to learn that she had much resentment from things I have done wrong over the years. I had no idea. She hid it very well. I knew there were things she was not happy about, but they didn’t seem like they were big. There were also things with the kids that I couldn’t control. She was angry that I didn’t help enough, and I didn’t fully understand this because I thought I did. She had so much resentment for things I did over the years. This built up over time and she just began to hate me.

There were so many things that came up. It really felt like she expected me to read her mind. How could I possibly know these things if she didn’t tell me? The sad thing was that it really didn’t matter at this point. Anything I said and did from this point forward just served to confirm what she thought about me. I think she had to justify her decision, so she was just looking for anything to show her how bad I was. The words “too late” came up often or even worse “you had your chance.” I don’t remember either of these phrases from our vows.

One thing that really stood out to me was that she seemed to be trying to find excuses for what she was doing. They are often pathetic excuses, and a negatively bias towards anything I did. One example was her negative view of my garden. All she could focus on was that I had too many weeds in my garden. I asked her why she had to focus on that and why she couldn’t focus on how I was working hard at gardening to grow fresh vegetables for our children or why she couldn’t focus on the fact that I was teaching them and getting them excited about growing food. She just responded “oh what, with the five beans you grow.” Again, very negative bias there. I had grown a 50 pound pumpkin the year before, and I had so many tomatoes that I had to sell a five pound bag just to get rid of them all.

I am not going to lie. I think most men would say that they didn’t cry. I cried. I cried a lot more than my whole life combined up until this point. I don’t know how much I cried when I was a baby, but this still would compare with that. In a way, it kind of makes sense, this was kind of a rebirth for me. Part of me died when this happened and now I was being reborn. 

She has said some truly horrible things to me throughout this whole thing. She said she does not want to be with me, she is not attracted to me and so on and so on. It hurts quite a bit, but I just keep going back for more. I am not even sure why- Why won’t the point get through to me? Why can’t I accept her words as she says them. I guess it could be denial, it could be a bit to do with rejection. She is rejecting me. That’s it.

It is hard for me to accept being rejected after 17 years. After all we have been through together. I guess I really need to just accept that. The saddest part is that it is COVID times, so I can see her point, I sit around the house most of the time. How can I not? I literally have to stay at home. For my job, for safety, for COVID. So I can’t just up and not do it.

The loneliness and inability to go out and socialize are the most painful parts. I would say there aren’t a lot of options for me to do anything, and if I fall into the trap of doing nothing, I end up feeling much worse.

Thinking back, now that I know about her relationship with the neighbor's son, it was all about her new relationship. More about that in the following posts, but essentially, all of her behavior can be traced back to her trying to justify what she did. Trying to confirm her decision, trying to see me in the most negative light possible, trying to make herself feel better about what she was doing- all of it.