I Wasn’t A Good Wife

I always wanted to be a wife… someone’s wife. I wanted that partnership, I wanted someone to create empires with, I wanted someone to come home to… share memories with… grow old and die with. Ever since I was a little girl, I have always dreamt of this.

But I’m here to tell you that when I finally got what I wanted, I wasn’t the greatest wife at all; in fact, towards the end I was pretty abysmal. I know some may take this as an opportunity to judge me, or interject their own marriage advice just know that it’ll fall on deaf ears. Make sure your side of the road is clean first before you try to fix mine.

Most people had no clue that he and I were separating and filing for divorce. Hell, most people still have no idea that we aren’t together anymore. I got a lot of questions like:

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“Since when did this happen?”

“How did this happen?”

“Wait, you were married?”

And the reason why I didn’t plaster the news all over a billboard in town or announce it in a local paper is quite simple: our marriage is none of your fucking business.

But today I’ll at least speak on it since this blog is about growth and all. This will most likely the last I’ll ever speak upon it too. My final statement.

Marriages end for a combination of reasons; it takes two to tango and we were both equally guilty in the end of our relationship but that’s neither here nor there. I won’t publicly bash my ex-husband or write out all his short comings because I myself have PLENTY of them. Instead, I hope to reflect on my own contributions to what was (on paper) the perfect pairing.

There are traumas that people experience throughout their life that shape who they are; some of these traumas (which if not addressed) can rear their ugly head later down the road in a marriage, especially when major life challenges rattle our foundations. Sometimes, the best marriages can falter to these events despite our best efforts, and ours certaintly did. We soon found our own major life crisis triggering cataclysmic change within both of us. Before we knew it, we wanted totally different things out of life… and this happens! It happens more often than we like to think. I wish we can finally end the notion that all marriages end because someone is abusive or cruel… sometimes they just end.

We went into our marriage with the absolute best intensions with each other, but it is as they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions (our marriage was far from ‘hell’ but you get the picture…).

Eventually these cracks slowly started to get bigger in our foundation until they could no longer hold back the tides of change. We started drifting apart. I was never around and he was buried in his office. We became absorbed by our own “Maslowian Needs.” I got tired from work and didn’t want to talk, he took these as signs of being hostile. We stopped touching each other, holding each other, kissing each other, etc. Eventually this breed resentment between us, which buries you even further down the intimacy hole; looking up it starts to be a daunting task to climb out of it. We walled ourselves off from each other.

In hindsight I can’t help but wonder how absolutely lonely he must have felt then… I think about the loneliness I feel now, and how not having that intimate connection with someone is soul destroying. I too at the time felt lonely, but I had zero idea of how to reconnect. I started to think of how he must felt around Thanksgiving of last year, not due to my own situation I’m currently in. We ended up exchanging warm, appreciative texts that holiday. They were sincere from us both.

I find myself sitting in silence of my room. It’s borderline insanity, this vortex of isolation. How my ex-husband kept a straight face through the extremely long and drawn out end of our marriage I’ll never know, but this is why he is so much stronger of a man than anyone realizes (or he even realizes… one day I hope he does). This is why I refuse to talk shit about my ex-husband, because I have seen several other wounded men go mad with anguish (say and do awful things to their women, stalk them, harass them, attempt to control them, withhold support from them) but for the most part we kept it civil. That takes true strength and integrity.

Our marriage killed a really good friendship. What makes marriages work is a different blog post… that alone I can write a book on.

I made sure that the lessons we learned from our marriage were echoed in my future relationships. I did chores around the house, I divided finances equally, I took pride in doing all the “manly” things like paying for dinner, mounting the TV on the wall, or doing home improvements. Every one to two weeks I’d try to remember to put fresh flowers on the kitchen table. I packed my exes lunch almost every day for work. I made her coffee when I’d wake up first. I’d woken up to make her breakfast on a few occasions when she was getting off of night shift (if I remembered to set my alarm). I thought of the most thoughtful gifts to give her, including flying her son out for Christmas. I wanted to be the change. I wanted to be a better partner and a better wife. I tried harder… some may wonder why I didn’t employ these same tactics in my own marriage but by the time we realized something was wrong it was terminal. By the time we looked up, our ships had drifted too far off course. There are other reasons, of course, which I’ll discuss below.

I worked extremely hard in the background (with therapy and journaling) to get over my failed marriage and relationships so I could be 100% available to my next partner. This is something I didn’t do in my marriage that I learned from; I was damned if I let that happen again.

People ask if I would ever fix things between he and I, and go back to him now and the answer is "no” for two fold:

For starters, that pain we caused each other can never be erased. It’s as Lady Gaga once said: “Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it's broken, but you can still see the crack in that mother fucker's reflection.” Our presence to each other will only serve as a reminder of our transgressions. Putting aside the hurt he caused me, don’t you think I caused him enough hurt too? Shouldn’t I not be fucking with this mans life anymore? Maybe it’s best that I leave him the hell alone. This is why couples that yo-yo back and forth perplex me. There’s got to be a point where you both stop and go “ya know what… this just isn’t fixable, but we can re-establish boundaries as friends.” How many times are you going to try and polish a turd before you realize it’s still a turd? Don’t you think you’ve caused them enough hurt? Wouldn’t it be absolutely selfish of me to string him along again? To screw with his mind? To give him false hope? Where’s the threshold where you just realize you should leave someone alone so they can move on? I read that mice under stress go back to these little boxes they know shock them; humans are the same way.

Secondly, I am not that woman anymore. I no longer am Linnie circa 2012… that woman no longer exists. He wouldn’t be going back to the same person he loved; that person is a ghost now. The person I am now is just not compatible with the person he is now (and that’s ok!). People try to circle back around hoping for what they had years ago, but that train has sailed, baby. You’ll never find that person again. They can make all the promises in the world that they’ll be the person you need them to be but what if that person was who they were 10 years ago? Then it’s not going to work; you can’t divide by zero. Syntax Error.

In a few days, our house (the one we got married in) will close escrow and belong to a new couple. We saved the bottle of prosecco from our wedding that we intended to drink on our 10 year anniversary, but we’ve set it aside for the day escrow closes. A toast to a great investment home that set us both up for moving on into something even grander; a toast to friendship.

The day he emptied it, I went back for my remaining effects and walked through it’s empty interior. I wept… I fully admit it. So many great times, way more than painful times. This was the final chapter of the end of our journey, and I had a mix of feeling sad for the end but relieved to have this daunting task completed. The echo of laughter from BBQ’s and dinners and video game binges off the walls haunted me. The first day we moved in there we didn’t have a fridge or any plates so we ate pizza off some paper targets my friend Zack had in his truck. I remember the first week we lived there we had to scrub cigarette smoke off the walls from the previous owner and we sat on the floor as we had no furniture (just a TV). We watched “500 Days of Summer” our first night there (more irony). We got engaged in that house, married in that house, had pets, had roommates, had fights, had joyous moments… I don’t regret any of it. I still cherish those memories for what they are… memories.

I still cherish the bond of friendship I have with him.

One day my ex-husband will make some woman a wonderful husband (truly, he is a great guy with an incredible story). I’m thankful that if I had to get a divorce that it was him of all people because he isn’t a complete and utter psychopath. He’s a fair, gentle, and kind man who afforded me the same amount of grace and humility as I gave to him in the end. I’m thankful for the support he gave me when we were together and the experiences we had.

I am thankful for the lessons learned that will ensure I am a better wife to the next person.