Teresa’s Divorce Story | There are no failures

• Posted: November 19, 2008
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• Author: Adam
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• Filed under: Divorce Stories
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• Tags: divorce, divorce stories, divorce story

I am so pleased to open my mail today and find such a heartfelt divorce story. I have pounded the table that the original goal of the site was to vent your divorce stories and heal. It felt so good for me to do that and it continues to feel good as I share and write more. Dr. Madison's first article is on this topic too. Thank you Teresa for your divorce story submission, we all can relate!

Teresa’s Divorce Story | There are no failures

This seeming conflict of lady and tomboy makes it hard for me to find someone that knows how to relate to me and often, I even have trouble knowing myself. Therein lies the problem and the basic reasons my relationships failed.

First, a tip. Communicate. Communicate before the relationship gets very serious, communicate after, always communicate. Don’t let things get so out of control that the only solution is divorce. It can be avoided if partners simply communicate at all points during the relationship.

It is difficult being an old-fashioned gal with a tomboy’s persona. On one hand, I want what so many people want: a relationship that lasts ’til death do us part’; someone who cherishes me, protects me, and loves me for who am I and not what I could be; and to be the caregiver while the partner is the breadwinner. On the other hand, I shy away from cooking and cleaning, preferring to hire a profession to do those things for me; I dislike dresses and skirts; I like to get dirty whether it’s a muddy game of football or a long hiking and camping trip.

My first long-term relationship was fraught with physical and mental abuse because not only did he have anger management issues, but he was so insanely jealous that his possessiveness was smothering. After him, I went the completely opposite route and found a man who seemed to be a true romantic, a real ladies’ man, someone who let me be me. Little did I know, until after I married him, that he was so easy-going because he was far too busy in relationships with other women at the same time.

When that marriage ended, I waited until I thought I was ready and then found a man that I thought would be perfect for me. He was possessive enough that he made me feel like I precious to him, but laid back enough that I didn’t feel smothered.  Unfortunately, he had never had a real relationship before: eight years my junior, still in college, still living at home while in school. I thought this lack of ‘baggage’ would be a boon, but it turned out to be a downfall.

I was scared of communication, truth-told. When I tried to communicate with the abuser, I was abused. When I tried to communicate with the cheater, I was lied to. So I avoided communication and, with him having so little life experience, he truly didn’t know HOW to communicate.

This alone was the source of the death of our marriage. Let’s go back to the beginning, though, so you can see how a fairytale can become a nightmare when both people refuse to talk…

In 2000, I met an amazing guy online. He was sweet, he listened when I talked, he called me just to see how my day was going. For two years we cultivated a friendship online and I finally felt like I was doing right by myself. This was finally a relationship that was not based in the physical, but in a friendship, something I thought could be a rock that could weather any storm in a relationship.

After two years we met and our friendship became a romance. Sadly, we both had expectations of the romance that we had not discussed during the course of our friendship. He wanted someone that was submissive, and while I enjoyed him taking charge in the bedroom, out of it, I had (and have) a very strong personality that didn’t mesh well with his “good little 50′s wife” ideal.

Among my other expectations (a lover, a partner, a friend), I had one that was of someone strongly driven to succeed in life. I like material things, who doesn’t? But that wasn’t why I wanted a driven person. I wasn’t expecting to sit back and reap the rewards of his hard work like some gold-digger or trophy wife.

I wanted a driven person so that there would be security in our future. I wanted a driven person so that I could be his support system. Specifically, he said his dream was to write a book (one I share, actually) and I was his cheerleader in that and my goal was to be a manager/personal assistant-type to help him manage his schedule.

This was the best of THREE worlds for me: One, I would be able to prove my success and worth in my own right in that role, two, aside from my partner, I’d be my own boss, and three, I’d get to do something I LOVE which is being a guiding light.  Not much gives me more joy than to help others in some manner.

So we both ended up being disappointed. He got into some online hobbies that completely distracted him from finishing college and writing. I turned out to be a more dominant personality than he’d wanted.

When our son was born, I urged him to move us from Ohio to Georgia (where his family is located) in an effort for a fresh start. This was the true beginning-of-the-end for us. This is where I really saw his true colors… and he saw mine.

Living with his parents while our house was trying to be sold, he became lazy, throwing himself into his online pursuits and waiting six months before trying to find a job to support his family. He also reverted back to ‘mama’s boy’. Now there is nothing wrong with a son loving his mother and I hope I have a great bond with my son throughout his life, but this was to the extreme. He completely disregarded me and our needs as a couple in order to keep his mother happy.

During this, my strong personality came out in an effort to try and control the situation that I felt was destroying our marriage. This led to a strained relationship with his family, that in turn strained our marriage even further in some deadly cycle.

It became obvious in a hurry that the move to Georgia was a huge mistake.

Eventually we found some common ground and decided to move back to Ohio. Our home had not sold, our debt was piling up from maintaining two residences with our limited budget, and we were on the verge of divorce.

But our communication had completely collapsed. We tried counseling, ‘dating’ each other again, but we never truly communicated. Our ‘dates’ were what he wanted to do, which were sexual games, never what I wanted to do, which was dinner, or a trip to the zoo or aquarium or movies. Sex is nice and all, but a date consisting of ONLY sex and no true connecting to me seems to be really lacking in what couples need to bond.

And our bond was growing weaker by the day.

Finally, in January 2008, an old friend of his encouraged him to come back to an online gaming forum to play with her. As with his other online pursuits, he threw himself into this with abandon, completely disregarding his son. He would have completely disregarded me too, but he managed to convince me to come play with them. Just like our ‘dates’ and how they were always focused on only sex, instead of an in-depth story arc, he just wanted to play cyber sex.  And like our dates, this ended in a hurry for me… a woman can’t survive on sex alone. Sorry men. It’s true.

I tried to communicate with him about this, but he refused to listen, telling me things like “I like to play this with you because you are the best writer I’ve ever met.” Sure, flattering, but why not write stuff other than sex then?

After a while he turned to other women for that online cyber-fix and I pulled further and further away. A path I’d been on since we’d moved to Georgia years earlier.

At one point I met two women online that I became friends with. This didn’t set well with him, because he was used to be the only person in my life, other than our son, who could claim my time. Soon, his cyber-sex friends tried to convince him that I MUST be having an affair, because why wouldn’t I want to spend time with him instead of them?

Perhaps these women were happy with the fact that they had no friends, aside from a sex-addicted married man, and couldn’t see that our marriage had been dying for years. I can’t blame them, though, as they can only know what they are told and if we had not communicated well enough for him to see the marriage dying too, how could he possibly communicate exactly how long back our problems had went?

These friendships I had were not affairs, not in the least, but they did fill a hole I had in my life. Eventually, the friendships ended (too long a story to go into here, but the basic gist is I don’t tolerate being lied to and both of them lied to me.. a lot). By this time, he had flung himself so deeply into his cyber-affairs and had himself so firmly convinced that I was doing something wrong, that once he had me “back”, friendless and needing some kind of caring in my life, he denied me.

And this is what caused the real affair to happen. A self-fulfilling prophecy, that one.  It was an emotional affair, and to be honest, it is still going strong, but I am a very loyal person and I never even would have gravitated in such a way to this man had it not been the distance from my husband that had been building for years and culminated during the online mess of this year (2008).

In October, 2008, my husband filed for divorce. I had been ready for it since August of 2006 before we moved back to Ohio and the only reasons I didn’t file were one, our son, and two, I’m an eternal optimist and hoped we could rebuild our relationship, or, really in our case, build it from scratch since we started it on such faulty perceptions.

I’m going to end here, even though it seems a bit awkward a place to stop, but I am going to wrap up with the following:

First, a tip. Communicate. Communicate before the relationship gets very serious, communicate after, always communicate. Don’t let things get so out of control that the only solution is divorce. It can be avoided if partners simply communicate at all points during the relationship.

Second, an offer. If anyone has any questions on anything I’ve written, as it’s long and yet still a very brief overview, feel free to ask me in the comments. If my story can inspire, or help, or warn, then I am willing to impart any of my experience to help that.

Finally, some inspiration. “There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.” That is a quote from Tom Krauss, a motivational speaker from the early part of the 20th century. Never feel that because a relationship failed, you are a failure. Just learn from it and use that new knowledge to make the next one better. Eventually you’ll find that someone that is perfect for you.

I did.

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