My husband of 26 years left me.
Believe me when I tell you that is a sentence I NEVER thought I would say! That is definitely an understatement. The thing is, it came as such a shock – do a lot of people say that (it came as such a shock?), I feel like they do.
Grab a cuppa, because mama has got some tea to spill (although, in this case it is my tea, so I am not sure that lingo applies here, but it is my blog, so I am going to use it – there ya go!)
I have been working so many hours at a really intense and stressful job (the story of my life), and I think that most of us are in agreement that the world has gone ABSOLUTELY topsy-turvy from March 2020 to now, that if there were any signs I DEFINITELY did NOT see them!
My husband and I met when we were 18, and the minute I saw him, I knew that he was the man that I was going to marry. I felt an electric charge as sure as if someone had hooked me up to a live power outlet. It really was a magical feeling – I attributed it to Pure Source intervention! Being so young, we had no money, and most everyone thought that there would be NO WAY that we would make it past the 3-week mark, but here we are, having just celebrated our 26th anniversary this past July 1st.
It was a really hard start…lots of struggles, compromises, learning, and growing. Until bing-bang-boom, we were in the swing of things, and that swing was going VERY well! We would come up against one hurdle, and then another, and then another, but every time we would always ask the question, “Do you love me?”, and if either of us ever said no then we would call it quits, and we just NEVER said no.
Well, technically, we still have not said no, but what my hubby said to me was,
“I am happier without you”.
OUCH!
I can’t tell you the entire story, because I do not own the entire thing, and I will forewarn you that if I do tell you my side of the story, it may be simply lacking, as it is my perception as I remember it. (I think I heard some scientific something-or-other that said that the farther out an even the more changed it becomes in your memory – don’t quote me on that!). Anyway, he said it today, and although he moved out 2 Thursday’s ago, I am thinking it is still fresh enough in my head to document it as fact (a painful one at that).
I am not entirely sure what happened. I know that over the last year, and especially the last 6 months, my social butterfly, happy-go-lucky, hubby had started to seem really down. I just assumed it was because of the lockdown and their not being a lot of options for things to do – the being homebound was really starting to affect him. I think it may have been worse than that, unfortunately. He started to say things like,
“I don’t like socializing any more”
“I do not want to go out”
When we would go out, he would stay in the car, and never go in with me – wherever it was. It just really seemed to be getting sadder and sadder, and then progressively angrier and angrier. Coming from an abusive childhood, which is where my HSP/empath skills come from, it was palpable, and it seemed there was really not anything I could do about it.
When restrictions started lifting we would invite friends and family over, which was great, and it would seem that we would have a good time, but he would make comments like,
“I’m so lonely.”
someone would say,
“But Chrissy is here”
and he would quickly reply,
“I see her all the time, I don’t want to talk to her”
It was becoming obvious to me that he was getting bored of our life that we had created, and more importantly to me, he was getting bored with me.
I started meditating, praying, journaling, asking Source Energy for advice and guidance. I would Pray for hubby, do some Reiki energy work from afar to enrobe him in blessings before he would leave for his work day, but the little comments seemed to keep coming.
I found I was happier, vibing consistency higher, and the normal stressers in life didn’t feel so stressful, but hubby still seemed to be uninterested in me, so I read, and tried to find ideas on what I could do to help the situation.
I took up exercising – I know that hubby loves being in the great outdoors, and I do too, so I thought I would work my way up to hiking again through dancing and walking, and that made me feel even better.
By this point, hubby was starting to get really angry, just in general. Saying really negative comments that would shock and startle me – not to me or about me, but primarily political figures. I think all of the global news of all of the divisive political happenings the 2020 Presidential Election really took a toll on our psyche, but it seemed to have really hit him harder than I.
Then came the day, I can’t quite remember exactly when it happened, but I was in one room, and again I can’t remember what was happening (that little science lesson about the memory changing with time passing), I heard him really shouting – which he NEVER does, and I heard something crash. He put his fist through the wall. I still do not know what instigated that, but I am pretty sure it did not involve me at all.
It was loud, it was energetically intense, and it scared me in a profound way. It flashed me back to childhood days when a grownup in my life would go from peaceful to violently rage-ey with no warning. I realized that I was going to have to start checking the energy around him at all times to make sure that history (my childhood history) did not repeat itself.
He was so mortified that he had done that, that he stayed up late to literally fix the hole in the wall by morning – we had family coming over the next day, and he did not want anyone, especially the niece and nephews asking questions about it. He apologized some completely, that I put it out of my mind (mostly), and just tried to move forward. Because hubby is not typically a violent person (at least not since we were REALLY young)!
Life seemed to go back to normal, and then at Christmas I heard him make the “I talk to her all the time comment again” and thought to myself, okay chicka-pea, you have more work to do! SO I started to explore recipes, and try new herbs and seasonings. My hubby is quite the foodie and loves him some food, I am kind of meh when it comes to food, having had so much troubles with my digestion, so I typically keep it kind of bland, but this new recipe search and experimentation seemed to be doing the trick. Hubby would start finding recipes, or making suggestions, and (one of my new fave things) is that we would take turns being the sioux chef for each other. One of us would take on the role of lead cook the meal and the other would cut up all the fruit/veg and pull ingredients out the pantry for the lead cook, and then we would swap the next night!
I must tell you THAT was a lot of fun. He is a hoot in the kitchen!! I always did call him MY KITCHEN MAN!!! 🙂
That was so much fun, so I decided to spend some time putting together a playlist of all of the fun songs that have always caused us to dance, play, giggle, get up and move, whatever, and I called that my #1 Playing with Hubby playlist. I would put that on during our cooking or baking times, and make a party out of it. I was ignorantly blissful at this point, thinking our marriage was a DREAM!!!! 🙂
I also started putting more effort into my nutritional goals, as like many others, I have put on some COVID weight, so I started religiously intermittent fasting, and am happy to say that I am close to my pre-COVID weight, and because that feels so easy, I am going to keep going to see if I can get closer to goal weight.
I am digressing a bit. The point I am making here, is that, with the belief that I can only ever truly change my own behaviors and actions, I was consciously making changes to my lifestyle so that I could fill my cup back up to the tippy top, so that I could then be a happier wife for the hubby – thinking that THAT would make hubby happy too.
If you have made it this far, do you need to go refill your cuppa? No, okay, I will try to make this a bit faster.
On Feb 7th. I am in the living room watching a happy musical – singing at the top of my lungs (of course, because how else are show tunes supposed to be sung???). Hubby is in the kitchen cooking himself a late dinner of eggs and toast, because he had gotten home from work late. In the process of cleaning the kitchen, there was a loud crash of dishes and silverware. I thought hubby had fallen into the dishwasher, I had popped up, and ran over to see if he was okay. He was “okay” but he was in a rage. I do not know why, I still do not know what triggered it, but as soon as I got into his radius, he pointed that anger at me, yelling at me to get the “F” away from him. I was worried that in his rage, he would break more things, because as he is yelling at me (what he was saying outside of get away from me I can’t remember -thankfully) he is continuing to throw silverware at the cabinets…
I am going to stop there. I was not harmed, besides have the crap-o-la scared out of me, and left shaking, and all alone. Hubby disappeared. Left the house, did not come home. Was on radio silent and no one knew where he was. He came back the next day. We had a conversation and he essentially did not know what caused it, and told me he needed to be away from all people, because he was dangerous.
Thankfully I have family in high places, and I called one of my sisters, who works at medical facility to see what I could do to get hubby help. She helped him get into an emergency counselor and to his PCP really quickly. That seemed to help. Hubby came back home, and even though it felt a little precarious in the house – primarily because I was now scared of him exploding again, and he was thoroughly embarrassed, but it seemed like we were going to be okay.
Blah…blah….blah…we made a couple days and then we would disappear for night. No communication. Then home for a few nights, and then disappear again.
Flash forward to Feb 19th, and hubby went MIA again. I texted him, knowing that he would eventually get it, but basically told him that I need him to either choose to live at home or move out, the constant worrying about is he coming home or not was wreaking havoc on my anxiety. I also asked that we put some ground rules into place to make whichever way we do this work.
There was an agreement. All was set, but right away hubby was having some trouble with part of his end of the deal. and that was, I wanted a call every evening before bed, just so I know he is safe, and not sleeping in his truck on a random road somewhere – which was his lodging one or two of the nights he was MIA, I believe. Nothing else, he didn’t have to pay for anything, or have to make an appearance , I did not want to add any stress to his self-investigation/healing/walkabout/mid-life crisis – whatever you want to call what he is doing.
As you can imagine, I was getting frustrated. Started asking questions, that he either could not or would not answer – the verdict is out on that one. and that is when he said it,
“I am happier without you!”
It is still a punch in the gut, and I’m just writing it.
I hesitate sharing any of this. I do not air my personal life out on the interwebs, but I keep hearing
You need to share your story!
So, here I am, putting on my big-girl panties, and sharing. Just for documentation purposes. and maybe, in all honesty, just maybe, it might help someone else who may be going through the same situation. We shall see.
If you made it with me this far – Good’onya!!! I would like to get into the habit of writing like this again regularly. I am not sure anyone reads blogs any more, but I do know that the writing of the above has really helped my anxiety, and given me a little bit of hope that even though hubby and my marriage may be over, or maybe not, I am too tired to direct it all right now, but maybe this is just the door opening to something new.
With that in mind, I hope you all have an EXCELLENT evening!
~Chrissy B.
