i’ve been trying to finish a book. i’m not making very good progress and i’m paying $.25 a day for it from the library. this is why i haven’t written lately. i’m just trying to read every minute i can.
anyway, husband came over saturday to bring groceries. i hate that he does it, but it is nice because i don’t have a way right now to buy food for the house. then, he stayed. our two little ones would not let him out of their eye sight. it was pretty sweet and it felt nice, but then he stayed for dinner and then after bed time. then we talked. we have such good conversations about everything when we are not together. i’m trying to figure him out, why he can’t be vulnerable when we are together, why he waits until we are apart. of course he decides i must have had post-partem depression after my third baby that never really went away because i admitted (again) that i know i suffered from depression while pregnant with our last and also after her birth. he decides then that this news “explains a lot” of my behavior during our marriage. of course it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he was completely void of feelings, emotional connection, understanding, empathy, consideration or that he was an asshole to my son and mean to me and my daughter….and on and on.
sometimes i wonder if i haven’t been effected in some sort of PTSD from so much emotional stress. i honestly think there are different ways people are effected by emotional stress, abuse and the control a person tries to have in a relationship. whenever he’d be back, i’d always have in the back of my mind, a running calendar of when three months was coming up. or wondering when he was going to decide it was time to go. a few days after our anniversary, he was trying to start a fight and leave. if i hadn’t been shell-shocked by what the hell was going on, i think he would’ve left. instead, i was like, what the hell is going on? we just celebrated our anniversary. where is this coming from?! so he stayed. had i not said any of those things, i think he would’ve been gone. had i not said anything, it would have been three months and a few days since he’d moved home. this time he did stay a little longer than three months because of me pushing him to explain himself, but he left just two months later. i find it equally hard; knowing he wanted to go, but didn’t, so when will it happen again? a month after that, we got child support set because he did leave so frequently, i got it set and in an active order so that if/when he left, i could at least get child support. that day he told me he’d be out by October 1. he moved out september 30, with no notice, except me texting him after i called and got no answer when i realized it was nearly 9 pm and he hadn’t made it home yet. he has not been back since, except to get stuff from the house. while he was here, i had to keep things secret, like that my mom opened my son a student checking account to have a place to put his money. i didn’t want a fight about it, even though it didn’t have to be a fight, it would’ve become one. i ended up feeling like we had to keep things a secret just to keep the peace.
so when he came over and we talked the other day, i talked about how the leaving made me feel so unsafe, so insecure, so unsure about us. a little bit later, he up and leaves. literally. i was saying something, he shifted in his seat, i stopped talking to see what he was doing and he got up and left. why was i surprised? he also mentioned that he blew “his” saturday with no kids by being with us. never mind that the kids were so happy to have him stop by. is that ever a waste? i don’t think so. so today he asks if he can bring the little two to get winter coats and stuff and then asks if i want to join them. i went because i wanted to make sure they got warm enough stuff and while we were eating lunch, our three year old says, very excitedly, “daddy you’re being nice to mommy again! mommy! daddy likes you again. he’s nice.” that really made him feel bad i think, that his 3 year old can see it. but then again, he probably thought i taught her that.
i’ve come to the conclusion that when we don’t “have” to be together, we do great. when we are separated and doing our own thing, we do so well. he stops drinking and starts working out more. he says it’s to deal with depression, but then when he’d move back home, he’d start drinking and stop exercising after a few weeks. when apart, we can have good conversations, laugh a little and joke around, but also he doesn’t put the pressure on me like he did when we were together. i think, dare i say, that we are simply better off apart. i think we make better friends than spouses. i don’t know if we just don’t mesh well or if we collectively lack the tools we need to figure out how to make our marriage work, but i think this is the reason we think we can get back together every time. it makes me so sad because we just can’t figure out how to be married to each other.
lifeunarmed 