The Common Denominator

1 post / 0 new
#1 Aug 2 - 4PM
4x@42
4x@42's picture

The Common Denominator

It’s been 11 days since I filed for divorce, 96 hours NC and 72 hours since I moved out of my house. I know this to be exact because I am watching the clock move ever so agonizingly slow. I am hoping that sharing my story will help pass the time. I am analytical by nature usually numbers, but I’m sure I could find an algorithm to pinpoint my patterns if I really wanted to. The first step is writing it down and watching the pattern emerge on paper … or, in this case, online for the whole world to see.

I can pinpoint the exact day my story starts: December 9, 1992. I had graduated high school, but still lived with my parents while attending a junior college. I was getting ready for school one morning when a family member sexually assaulted me. I moved in with my high school sweetheart who vowed to take care of me for the rest of my life and we married. As with most marriages formed under these circumstances, it ended before we hit our 2-year anniversary.

Alone, divorced and estranged from my family I had no one. I lived in my car until I could save up enough money for a deposit on an apartment. I worked 3 jobs – a full-time job during the day, at the mall in the evening and at a shooting range on Saturdays and Sundays. It was at the shooting range I met my second husband. He asked me out and I explained I had 3 jobs, so he gave me rent money so I could quit a job and have time to date him. We moved in together, but it didn’t work. We broke up, but then I found out I was pregnant. He said we would be a family. I wanted that, but two kids later I realized what I was really dealing with was a cheater. 6 years … wasted. Alone again, on food stamps and without child support, I was still estranged from my family.

The first time I married for love was husband number three, whom I met 6 years after my last divorce. Little did I know it was doomed. He had 2 girls from a previous marriage and I had my 2 boys. I endured four claims of child abuse by his daughters (who were encouraged by their mother, whom I was eventually awarded a permanent restraining order against) and when one of the girls claimed that my son had touched her inappropriately, enough was enough. Again, I was divorced before my 2-year anniversary.

Fast forward three years and the Narcissist entered my life. It was at a McDonald’s and approaching my 40th birthday. I had a mid-morning meeting, so I never went into the office but instead stopped at McDonald’s for a cup of coffee. It was quiet when I ordered, but then a bunch of loud teenagers started flooding in. I felt someone tap me on the arm and I turned my head. I was eye to eye with husband number four. He was a high school teacher and had taken his students to do community service, but the food bank didn’t have any work for them. They didn’t want to go back to school, so they came to McDonald’s for breakfast. He talked quite a bit, even telling me what school he taught at but I never said a word.

The next day, I looked his school up online and found his e-mail. We met for a drink that night and became instantly inseparable. He was the first husband I told the truth to about being estranged from my family. He made me feel loved. He made me feel safe.

100 days after we met, we married. He presented a good argument why it needed to happen so quickly and it made sense to me. I pumped the brakes several times, but ultimately married him. My friends were skeptical. After we married, he isolated me from my friends by saying we needed to surround ourselves with friends who support our marriage. The problem is, he didn’t have any friends and we were never in situations where we could make friends as a couple.

A month before our 1-year anniversary, I had a hysterectomy. While recovering, I had to look something up on his cell phone and a text message came in from a female that he had never, ever mentioned before. I’ll never know if he cheated on me and, quite honestly, it doesn’t matter now. But I suspect he did. Somehow, he made me believe it was my fault that he was “talking” to her because I had a hysterectomy and not available for him. I found text messages dating back nine months. Funny enough, he actually texted her from my hospital room the day of my surgery that he was bored. Suffice it to say we never celebrated our first anniversary.

Enter marriage counselor number one. A female. Heaven forbid, a female. He quit because he had a conspiracy theory that we were both against him in some kind of girl power unspoken arrangement. Enter marriage counselor number two. A male. He quit because he decided that I was the one that needed help.
I have always been involved in politics, and campaigned for a local office. On the day of the election, he voluntarily decided to go work and sent me a text. When I received his text, I had to remind him to at least go vote for me. My friends threw an impromptu election night party; otherwise, I was planning to just sit at home and watch the returns alone. I won, and by a much larger margin than I anticipated.

The day before my swearing in ceremony, we were packed up and ready for a fun evening with fellow elected officials. He said he would only go on one condition – I have to introduce him as “my husband”. He said I often introduce him by his first name without prefacing that he is, in fact, my husband. I told him he was absurd and people could reasonably deduce that he was, in fact, my husband. Needless to say I left home without him. He did show up at my swearing in ceremony, but was less than engaging or enjoyable. Even today, people I serve with do not have nice things to say about him just from that singular encounter.
Things were going well for me at work and I received a promotion and raise, which put me over my financial earning goal. My boss had invited me to dinner to give me the news and talk about my future with the company. I was thrilled and couldn’t wait to get home to tell my husband. Only, he was already in bed. I told him about my raise & promotion and, without opening his eyes, told me “if you wanted me to be happy for you, you should have been home earlier.” I seriously think he gets a rise out of popping my happy bubble.

So he planned a trip for me for my birthday – a surprise. Wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but to pack a bag. Two days before my birthday, he bought himself a new car without discussing it with me. This is after we had taken on $206k in debt in the first 23 months of marriage (and, no, we didn’t buy a new house; this is literally credit card debt, a boat, 2 new cars, remodeling the house, etc.). I was fuming over the fact that he bought a new car, but went on the birthday trip anyway. He planned my birthday trip to a city he used to live in. I got to see where he used to work, where he & his former wife lived, where his adult children went to elementary school, where they shopped, etc. I even got to have my birthday dinner at a restaurant that his former wife loved (which, in my opinion, was nothing special). We got back to the hotel that night and I was really hoping to get lucky. No such luck. I cried myself to sleep lying next to him and for the first time in our marriage, felt truly alone.

Seventeen days later was our second anniversary, but we never celebrated that one, either.

About eight months after we were married, I learned that he was a defendant in a legal proceeding in another state. He gave me tidbits but nothing substantial. The case was set for trial 3 weeks after “my” birthday trip. I received a copy of the pre-trial brief and … wow. It contained elements I was not privy to, which had significant financial implications. So I filed for divorce 2 years, 4 days after we married to protect my assets; although, I was not committed to actually getting the divorce at the time.

Before filing my petition for divorce, my attorney contacted the opposing counsel to inquire about a law that is unfamiliar to my state under the pretense that he would not disclose the conversation to the defendant – my husband. But that didn’t happen. At the trial, the opposing counsel told my husband that my attorney called and he was livid. So I had to tell him I filed for divorce. I told him I had questions and in the absence of him providing the answers, I was left to search for them on my own. The conversation did not go well and it ended with him telling me to move his stuff to the apartment over the garage (which has no access to the primary residence).

Devastated. Broken. Shattered. This doesn’t begin to explain how I felt. Two hours later, the truth was flaunted in my face. He took a single female out for a beer and there, on FaceBook, was a picture of the two of them, smiling. She posted it with “laughing like crazy …”. Really?! He is out making another woman laugh like crazy while his wife is devastated, broken and shattered?

I think he loved me to the fullest extent of his capacity, but he certainly doesn’t love me the way I love him. I reflected on the e-mail I sent him just 2 days prior which read:

"I know who I am and I know what I have to offer a true partner. I will not settle for anything less in return."

But I did settle and this photo of my husband making another woman “laugh like crazy” was proof. This was the moment I decided to move out until I can get the house awarded back to me in the divorce (since it was mine before we got married) and I entered the No Contact zone.

What I learned is he thrives in a high conflict environment. When there is no conflict, he creates conflict. He actually had me believe that I was bi-polar, but 3 different therapists disagreed before I accepted that I wasn’t. There are many other instances I could share, especially when it comes to his controlling behavior.
At least I made it past the 2 year mark with husband number four. I was beginning to worry that maybe I couldn’t. I know there are many who will judge me for being divorced 4 times at 42, just as there were people who judged me for being married 4 times at 40.

While I am having a good day today and can write this without throwing in emotional scrambled eggs, I take it moment to moment. Every fiber of my being wants to rush into his arms and have him hold me. But, logically, I know that he is hollow. And while I feel hollow without him, I know I have the strength and capacity to overcome this whereas he will always be hollow. I once told him he was either going to be a blessing or a lesson. And now I know he is a lesson.

But I will survive. Because that’s what I do.