I met my ex-husband while we were working at Walmart together. We kicked up a conversation on the bus home not even a month after my breakup and instantly connected; he was in a broken relationship and I was just out of one. Things moved fairly quickly on our part... we were both pregnant and married within six months. Here is where it would have been nice for either one of our family members to say "hey you're moving too fast." I can't speak on his side of the family but neither of my friends or family did. We were married out of pure love; and ignorance.
I want to say right here right now that there was not one moment when I didn't love my husband. We struggled together and we had our fights but we loved and we both loved hard. I screwed up, but before we get to that point I want to show you the first place in which I made my mistake. I remember before getting married asking God if this was something I was supposed to do. I waited for the answer and the answer was not no but it wasn't yes either. That was my first mistake, I took silence as a confirmation of something I was going to do with or without God's permission. The second thing I did wrong was not taking the time out to find out who I was unbroken and I essentially carried my brokenness into our marriage. In my mind, we were perfect together because neither one of us would hurt each other. I was right but I was oh so wrong.
I've rationalized the signs that our marriage was failing that things were going wrong after I looked back at all the things I let go that bothered me, but those were just excuses and a way to take the blame off of myself. Where I went wrong; the most damaging thing I myself did wrong, was have the belief that I could begin a friendship with someone I was attracted to at work. I was arrogant. I knew what marriage was before going into it. I knew that as long as I wasn't actively seeking to start something with someone a friendship just wasn't wrong. That was far from true. I mean, I made sure that the guy knew I was HAPPILY married. We conversed daily before work on lunch briefly before leaving work everything was fine. We. Were. Just. Friends. Until we weren't.
At the time I'd convinced myself that kissing wasn't cheating and as my feelings for this other guy grew deeper I began to lose sleep. Tossing and turning dreaming of someone who wasn't my husband. Sounds cliche but it was the honest to God's truth. My spirit was so bothered that one day I just came clean out of nowhere. I couldn't take it anymore. I told my husband I was attracted to another man and that there was something wrong with us and we needed to fix it. From there it would be; for lack of a better word a shit storm. I said we need to fix us and he heard I cheated. We...I wasn't on the same page because at the time I didn't consider it cheating to be emotionally invested in someone else to kiss someone else. It would be 2018 before I would realize the impact something so seemingly trivial would have on a marriage.
Looking back there were so many options I hadn't even considered in rectifying this situation. I rationalized that we couldn't afford for me to quit my job and get away from this person, I didn't stop to think about changing shifts or even changing my behaviour. The lowest thing I have ever done in my life was make that man feel like he wasn't enough; like he was the problem when the problem was me. I was still a broken person searching for an emotional high and when the person who provided that high stopped being my husband I went seeking it elsewhere with the belief that it just happened.
That is the backstory, those are the events that lead up to the fail of my marriage, and this is the truth of why it didn't work...
At 23 (going on 24 years of age) when I, yes I, made the decision to get married I was not ready. No matter how much I'd tried to convince myself that I was. I was still a child with a childish sense of what marriage was supposed to be instead of what marriage actually was. I had not dealt with anything in regards to my past. Looking back on the situation there was one sign, in particular, that should have served as a warning to the area in which I was vulnerable. I had a friend I'd been friends with for the worst part of 10 years whom I'd loved dearly, the moment I would not let that friend go should have told me that trouble was headed my way. Sadly it didn't. Another reason my marriage failed was that I'd never had a clear understanding of what cheating was. I still had this high school image of what cheating was I had yet to grow up. I was a grown up playing grown up. And last but not least I hid everything about me. My depression, my mental health issues, my way of thinking I was only ever open and honest about the here and now and not the when and then. He'd married the figment of my imagination I created myself to be. At that time I wasn't even sure who I was, I never should have brought someone else into my own uncertainty.
There you have it, the reason my marriage failed. I don't take pride in these facts, however, I am woman enough to admit that I was in the wrong.
In my next blog Why I Let Go I will be focusing on if we could have made it work and what finally made me let go.
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