As the divorce process progressed, I learned things.
I learned my husband had planned out the divorce for some time.
I learned my husband had lied to me about things.
I learned my husband had hidden things from me.
I learned that not everything was hidden-some things I knew about but didn’t
understand what they meant or realize at the time how it was all connected.
I felt so upset at myself.
How did I allow all of this to happen to me?
I had once considered myself to be a strong woman.
I had once considered myself to be fairly intelligent.
All of those thoughts were gone.
I spent every minute of every day filled with thoughts of self loathing.
I had failed.
I was letting everyone I loved down.
I wondered, had my husband laughed behind my back each time he felt he was pulling
something over on me?
It wasn’t that things were completely wonderful between us-we had a lot of problems
in our many years together.
But I lived my life believing everybody has problems and you navigate life in spite of
them.
But I knew that if I sat in a room full of people and revealed my life over the years, each
and every person in the room would be shaking their head at me.
How could she be surprised about the divorce they would be asking themselves.
Why did she let things go on this long they would also ask themselves.
I realized that I had become the girl in the movies that you feel sorry for but tell
yourself “she should have known better” “she should have been smarter”.
Each new revelation was making me feel like maybe I didn’t really know the person I
was married to.
I wondered how much was out there that I didn’t know.
It was a strange feeling.
And one of the biggest questions that I have found myself asking myself is if I had not
had health issues over the past 13 years or so, would I have been the one that said
enough is enough and had asked for the divorce in spite of how much I hate divorce.
As I sit and reflect over everything day after day (whether I want to or not), I am filled
with shame at how I had allowed my marriage to be something that was so unhealthy
and I had simply just been “hanging on”.
“Hanging on” is not at all the proper landscape for a marriage.
I had let my health and not feeling good so much these past years keep me from doing
the right thing and demanding better for our family.
I have not shown my boys what a healthy relationship between a man and a woman
looks like.
This has become my biggest shame.
Because insomnia had become my constant companion, I lay awake night after night
replaying so many moments from my marriage.
It wasn’t just that my husband was divorcing me.
Divorce in itself is an awful thing to go through.
But finding out about things that were hidden from me or lied to me about made
everything so much worse.
It was a vulnerability that I had never felt before.
It made me doubt everything.
Even good memories are taken from you because you wonder what part of them was
real.
A moment came about 6 months prior to being asked for the divorce that became a
catalyst of sorts to realizing deception existed.
It was such a strange thing that it still feels unreal to me.
Had it not happened, I’m not sure I would ever have known that lies and hiding things
was a part of my marriage.
Up until that point I really felt that my husband was an honest man.
Not without flaws just like me-but I never doubted his honesty or integrity.
I was in our living room and one of my sons came in and asked about something he
wanted to order again from Amazon.
I told him I would re-order the item.
Our Amazon was under my husband but I was able to put things in the cart and then
he would look everything over and place the order.
This was part of the “out spouse” process I would learn about.
Even Amazon was in my husband’s name.
Everything was.
Our house loan.
Every car loan.
Every credit card.
Our phone bill.
Our Utility Bills.
Our Streaming Services.
Our car Insurance plans.
Every membership-Costco, Amazon…
EVERYTHING.
I would learn during the divorce process just how much this would harm me.
After so many years of near perfect finances that included never having a single late
payment and always paying every bill on time, my husband was left with a perfect
credit score and the ability to get any credit card or loan he wanted at the drop of a hat.
Because I had not had anything in my name for nearly 30 years, I would learn that it
has left me looking like I was MIA where the credit world was concerned.
I wasn’t qualified for even the simplest of loans at this time.
I get no credit for years worth of being wise and frugal with our money.
The end of our marriage left my husband looking like royalty to creditors and I looked
like a ghost that just returned from credit death.
Oh why didn’t I listen to all those people that told women not to do this to themselves.
Keep yourself involved in your family’s finances.
I think there is a realization of many emotions that divorce brings out in us.
One of those for me is great foolishness.
I have been knocked off the ladder of wisdom that I thought I stood strong on, and I am
currently standing on the step ladder of foolishness…