Getting a clue

Anyone who has followed my blog will know that I have maintained a marriage with a man who for the most part was not involved actively as a father, and even less so as a husband. Devoted was not a word I used to describe our relationship.

So, after thirteen years of marriage, fourteen years of being together, I had finally suffered enough insults and emotional/psychological, and to a degree physical, abuse that filing for divorce was inevitable.

Question is, why did it take me so long and how can I keep from feeling stupid as hell for believing that someone like him would change, and that I would be the one to change him?

I consider myself to be a logical and rational human being, with a good head on her shoulders and down to earth expectations from life… How could I fall prey to the biggest relationship blunder in the world? Why did no one (whose opinion I trusted) tell me I needed to get out?

I can only hope to not repeat my mistakes and better yet, keep my daughter from repeating them when she gets older.

Mistake #1: Believing that a “Happy Home” requires two parents and cannot have just one parent.

I grew up in a single parent household. My parents had not been together since I was six and my dad had a peripheral role in my life–some weekends and occasional holidays. Because my relationship with my mother was so contentious (still is) and not one of mutual respect, I was determined to prove the world wrong and do better than her. When I got married, I was going to show her, and the bastard that I was unfortunately married to, that I WASN’T going to turn into my mother by ending up a single parent.

Mistake #2 Talking to my mother about my marital concerns when I clearly didn’t trust her opinion

And when my Mother tried to point out to me (in the least effective way possible–by arguing with me about it) that I should get out if I was so unhappy and things weren’t going so well… Aargh. Why does it have to be that way?… I stubbornly stuck to my guns and refused to budge and berated her for trying to break up my happy home. What a fool I was back then.

However, her point of view and opinion was suspect. She would waver back and forth between telling me I needed to be a better wife, and that I was lucky to be married and then to the other extreme that he was a terrible husband and I needed to get out. So I wasn’t going to listen to her all that much, it was no better than a coin toss in that she might have been correct 50% of the time, and who knew when that might have been?!

So lesson learned from that nonsense, is that a happy home is a myth and a single parent is no worse off than the two parents making home a living hell.