Amy- I was also thinking that Jeff must be pretty unique. I think most men whose wife put them in the pokey twice might not be even remotely interested in even seeing them again!
Mine had not been the perfect marriage. We got married in 1995. I had a son from a previous relationship. My husband has raised my son from the time he was 2 years old to the present. My son has never known his biological father. The first year we were married, we had our daughter. I was a stay at home mom in those early years, which was what we both wanted, especially since any money I could earn would be eaten up by daycare costs. Never having been on my own really (I'd lived with my mom when I came home after spending one term in the Air Force - then I met my husband) I never had a clue how much it was costing us just to survive. This is a pivotal point so remember it. The first couple years were as precious as they were hard. My husband and I loved each other to pieces and we were happy. Except for one thing: sometimes he drank too much. Now, after learning all I have learned, I now know it was the stress that really led to the drinking, but my husband was already predisposed to alcoholism, I just didn't know it, or chose not to see it. The second year he became violent with me on more than one occasion. After one particularly frightening incident which resulted in me leaving and taking the kids to my sister's house, things changed. It seemed to have been a wake up call for him. I went home. The next few years were pretty good. We bought a house in 2000. I was supposed to go to work then. I found myself terrified (PARALYZINGLY SO) of even filling out job applications. My husband began to drink again - and more - and we spent many a night with him yelling at me telling me I was worthless because I did not have a job. I never could verbalize what I was going through. All I'd known for years was my babies. Hell, I didn't even have friends anymore. Just my home and family. I remember sitting at night and reading my awards from the Air Force, my letters of recommendation from supervisors all the way up to squadron commanders and I would think to myself "where is that girl?". Little did I realize that MLC was on the horizon. At one point, I found a part time job at an arts and crafts store. I was terrified of running the register. I don't mean nervous. I mean INCAPABLE OF FUNCTIONING because I was so afraid. I had NO self-confidence whatsofrigginever.
Around this same time, I began to go to church. My husband's drinking seemed to escalate. What I now know is that I should have started praying harder but I just didn't have enough knowledge or faith yet. So my resentment began to build.
One night, some months after I'd started going to church, my husband and I were in an argument. He'd been drinking and I had finally started arguing back a little. He reached out and grabbed my arm and our daughter was standing behind him and saw him do it. The way in which my newly mlc mind perceived that whole event, bad though it was, is disgusting. While yes, we were completely dysfunctional, the drinking was out of control and the physical stuff is ALWAYS wrong, my mind took that one event & afixed it to the ones years before and I came to identify myself as an abuse victim. There the "standoff" began. I had my husband locked up that night. I spent the next 8 months alone in the house with the kids while he lived with his parents across town and paid all my bills. I had a protective order in place. He couldn't even see the kids until I went back to court and got some of the stipulations relaxed. During that 8 months, my husband quit drinking, attended AA & went to anger management classes. He did every single thing he needed to do to make things right. But I fell headlong into MLC and began an affair with a guy I'd known years before. That in itself was screwed up because in so many ways it allowed me to go back, to the time BEFORE...sometimes it felt like I was trying to start over instead of it ever occuring to me that I could fix what I already had. It was so weird.
I was very proud of my husband, although detached. He began to come over to the house and have dinner with us sometimes. We were hit by a hurricane and he came over and we cleaned up the yard together with the kids. He wanted to come home. He begged me to let him come home. Sometimes I wanted him to. Mostly I did not. I was still seeing the grass as greener...
As the holidays approached that year, my anxiety was through the roof. I had started a FT job at a company whose VP had pulled me out of shipping and receiving and taken me under her wing. She made me her "expeditor" and my job to was to ensure that what the company built was indeed built and shipped on time. I reported directly to her the status of every order. At every bump in the road she told me "you can do this". During this process, I let my husband come home. I had mixed feelings - the affair was still going on although the flame was quickly fading. Come the first of the year, I ended the affair. My husband and were not okay by any means. I just needed some of the stress off me and om had begun to call my house, knowing my husband was there. I just thought that was an extremely disrespectful thing to do to my H and that was what ultimately ended the affair. What was already horrible then became a nightmare. OM began to stalk me. He parked outside my job, called my house, my cell, took pics of me, ranted and raved and eventually, I had HIS ass locked up. A court process ensued. I went through it alone. My husband and I were THAT estranged still. I was pretty determined that I was going to move out and the marriage was over. My husband slept on the couch for 15 months. I meanwhile, got another promotion at work. Got room for MORE pride? Here's a dose, the devil must have been saying. By then I was the most self-righteous b*tch you can even imagine. My husband began to drink again. In March 04 (I think), he came home drunk from his parents house one Sunday. He was also angry - and rightfully so - because of all he had done to save the marriage and I had only continued to ignore him, disrespect him and walk all over him. I did treat him HORRIBLY. Like a second class citizen. I did not even care when he was sick. I was HATEFUL. And my kids saw it all.
That day he came home drunk was it for me. I lit into him the minute he walked in the door. Now - I still had a protective order, he was to have "no abusive behavior" towards me. It would have expired 8 days from that day. In my MLC mind, I made a TERRIBLE decision, and actually thought it justified although how I do not now know. He once again reached out to grab me. I called the cops and he went right back to jail. To give you an idea of how OUT OF IT a MLCer is, I JUST FOUND OUT IN SEPTEMBER that my husband spent 7 DAYS AND NIGHTS in jail that time. AND FOR NOTHING. Just my screwed up perception and self-serving behavior. I can not express to you what I felt just a few weeks ago when my husband told me about that time. I was mortified. I cried. I can NOT believe that was me but I know that it was. MLCers DO NOT HAVE THE PERCEPTION OF TIME THAT YOU HAVE. The maze of bullsh*t that is in their heads DAILY would friggin render your run of the mill "mentally healthy" person CATATONIC.
With my husband again living at his parents house, om long gone and me working, things began to slowly settle down. The kids and I fell into routine again with school and such...they visited their Dad often. THIS separation, my husband finally detached. What I haven't told you and I actually just realized (OMG) is that that first week after he went to jail that time - was the first time I had cried...IN AGES...and he was still in jail and I didnt even realize that til RIGHT NOW. I laid in that bed at night and cried because I missed him. That was the first crack in the MLC shell. During most of that time, I kept going to church. I never, EVER realized that I was about to need EVERY SINGLE TOOL my Pastor had given to me on all those Sunday mornings that I'd sat there in the pews self-righteous, prideful and unyielding. Thank God, my spirit took in every single scripture.
I lost that wonderful job. The VP told me I'd gone as far as I could go there and, knowing me as she had come to, she told me basically I could stay there and wilt in an office or I could take the opportunity "to fly". All the old fears came back but somehow, I knew I had to go so I did. She told me "you can do this and in 6 months, I know you're going to come back here and tell me something wonderful".
In 3 weeks I had a job in a law office working for 2 very different attorneys. One was a children's advocate who worked primarily in the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court and the other was a bankruptcy attorney.
My house of cards had started shaking and I did not even feel it yet.
The first couple months working for the attorneys was uneventful aside from learning a lot. Then my eyes were opened. I started seeing the troubled children that came through the firm. They all had one thing in common. They were from broken families. I slowly began to see the value in my own. On the other side of the firm, there was one particular couple that came in and filed for bankruptcy. They loved each other and you could really tell it. They were maybe late 30's - early 40's. They had a business and it had gone under. As they turned in all the required paperwork, a picture began to emerge in front of me. She had been his partner every step of the way. He did the manual work, she kept all his books. She'd done a very thorough job, too. They were justified in filing, one of a very few couples that actually were at that firm. She'd gotten very sick from diabetes around the same time his business had started to fail after years of doing well. 2 hits like that back to back can really strain a marriage but I'll tell you, every time they came to that office - and there were many - they were like best friends. What I could tell just from the paperwork, they'd been that way all along. What I learned from them was how I'd failed to help my husband all those years. I hadn't helped provide for our family. Hell, I didnt even help mow the damn acre of land he PUSH MOWED in 100 degree weather the first couple years in the house. I DIDN'T EVEN TAKE THE MAN A GLASS OF ICE WATER. I did the INSIDE of the house. He did the outside. That's how it was. BUT WHERE THE HELL WAS MY SUPPORT? It didn't exist. Not as it should have.
Now I was breaking by this time, summer 2005. One hard blow I took was when I wanted to take the kids to Washington DC for a weekend and I asked my husband to come with us. He declined and he said to me "I'll be honest with you Amy. I don't trust you to be alone with you." That hurt. And it left me with no choice but to do the one thing I'd spent years avoiding; start looking in the mirror at the REAL source of MY problems. Well, the kids and I went on that little vacation and it was more like a National Lampoons movie than anything else. I spent the first night crying on the phone to my husband from the motel room. I'd booked us a room in the G-H-E-T-T-O and we were scared to death! We heard gun shots all night, my kids saw their first hookers at 10am the next morning, two very flamboyant gay guys changed my flat tire at dusk next to the FBI building where NOT ONE SOUL came out to help us - God Bless America - and we couldn't wait to get the hell HOME and WE NEVER DID GET TO SEE THAT DAMN BABY PANDA.
So back home we're settled. My head was coming together but my heart was breaking.
The second to the last final straw that kicked my ass out of that MLC tunnel happened one Sunday evening when my daughter was leaving to ride her bike to the little farm up the street where she has always played with the animals. She wanted to take a picture of an elephant from the National Zoo to the lady that runs the farm. When she ran outside, she left the picture on the couch and I saw it and grabbed it and ran out front to give it to her. As we stood at the edge of the yard we heard a motorcycle and then we heard brakes. From her vantage point, my daughter saw a man fly off of his bike. Just a month prior, my cousin had been hit while on his motorcycle and that day marked 40 days that he had been in a coma. My daughter said "Mommy somebody just flew off their bike!" and I looked down and for no reason in this world, my car keys were in my hand. We jumped in my car and drove down the road to the scene of the accident. A man was there dialing 911 and there was a man lying in the ditch. I got right down in the ditch with him and laid my hands on him and just started praying. My daughter stood there watching. I couldn't move him, I could tell from the position he was in, something had to have been broken. His face and head were swelling right in front of me, blood was pouring from his nose. I reached down to try to undo the strap on his helmet and when I was done my hands were covered in blood. He died right in front of me. I was in some sort of a state of shock for weeks afterwards because I'd start shaking at just the sound of a siren. One beautiful thing happened though. I posted on my cousins webpage - which kept everyone updated of his status - about the accident, basically saying how blessed my cousin was to even be alive - albeit in a coma, we were trying to pray him through. Through a series of events I still don't really understand, the man's son read my post about being with his father when he died in that ditch. He emailed me and wanted to meet me. We met later at the site and he thanked me for praying for his father. He believed my prayers at that moment he died may have made a difference as to where his father ended up. I don't know. I only know the difference the whole event made to me. Shortly after the accident came the one last straw that put me out of MLC and back into reality 100%. I came to believe one weekend that my husband had a girlfriend. After all that time, all that time of not giving a damn, suddenly every single feeling I REALLY had for my husband was right there and along with it was a mountain of guilt and regret that literally pushed me on my face in the floor praying for forgiveness and the restoration of my marriage. I found this board shortly after and have been here ever since.
So you know my story for the most part. Now let me tell you something about a MLCer. You can not hold him to the same standards you used to hold him to because he is not physically or mentally able to uphold those standards and when you expect these things from him, you're as good as SETTING HIM UP TO FAIL. He can't verbalize those things to you. Only someone on THIS side of MLC understands that. I am still assuming your husband is MLC. I do think he really could be though, just for the fact of the 2 miscarriages - they could have served as a sort of catalyst. Not that they are the reason, or hurt him more than they hurt you, but they could have TRIGGERED this crisis. You have got to make up your mind that you will do what you need to do to make yourself understand this process. Get over yourself and all that he is not doing for you and instead, start doing something for him by learning all you can about MLC and further, how to hold your tongue.
I'll tell you again, you have some issues of your own to deal with.
So get busy or you won't be able to be there when he comes out of the tunnel and make no mistake, he will come looking for you because he's going to be looking for a safe place to fall.
Just so you know, your story really does help and gives me a new perspective on this whole ordeal.
I am really so close to just giving up and moving on. Somehow, something always helps me to find the energy/will/compassion to have a bit more patience and give my W another few days or weeks to find herself. Your story is one of those things. Thank you for posting it.
SD
Me 41 W 41 Kids: S9 S7 Married 16 years Bomb dropped 2/2/07 Still living together! current thread
