How Does My Garden Grow

[AnewAmy]

I figured since so many of you have added me to fb that I probably should post something. I haven’t posted on the site in well over a year,( not even sure if my old posts exist at this point ) however I read it pretty faithfully several times a day. I have gained a lot of strength and inspiration from many of you. I stopped posting the first time because I was having a harder and harder time finding privacy to post without my H knowing what I was doing. He works from home, so was always around.
So my story in a nutshell (probably a lie, I’m long winded). A year ago this past Feb I received the first bomb. He wasn’t happy, wasn’t sure we were right together, etc., etc. I never have been told ILBINLWY. He always has maintained he does love me, just wasn’t sure we could work out the differences. There has never been a 3rd party in our marriage. He had already talked with a lawyer, he filed, he was on the definite fast track. I did all the non-db stuff until I found this site. We had been in counseling to learn better communication skills the year before. I hated the C. Was not a solution based C at all. Heck, I didn’t even know there was a difference at that time until I found this site. After finding db, I found a SB therapist, it was a Christian couple, AWESOME people. I made the appt, told H, he waffled, but showed up. That was a big turning point for us. We saw them from April until Oct of last year. They flat out told my H they had never in all their years of counseling (25+) met a couple that was so much in love, on this track to divorce.
Fast track to March of this year. I leave town for a 4 day weekend. 3 of the days for a softball tournament for my DD. I went a day early because the tourney was in the same town as my bf and it gave us a girls night. My H was very supportive of me going. Actually gave me some extra spending cash. (I’m notorious for not spending on myself) My DD was riding down the next day with her team. She calls the night before to ask me to do something, I don’t even remember what. But H insists on getting on the phone, wants to know if I’m having fun, tells me he loves me, encourages me to relax and enjoy the weekend etc. The next morning I call him because there had been a tragedy with one of my DD’s friends. She’d been killed in a car accident the night before and the girls didn’t know yet. It was a girl we were all close with. Anyway, my H is sounding out of breath, in a hurry doesn’t have time to talk. I thought he was working out or something. (naïve) Never was able to tell him why I called, he just said he’d call me later. I never heard from him again until I found him on Saturday. I called all day/night and he never answered or called me back. VERY unusual for him. I started to have a weird feeling. Same thing on Saturday. I ended up going home Saturday afternoon instead of spending one more night. I get home, open the garage and its empty. I go in the house….cleaned out for the most part. The only room that hadn’t been touched was my daughter’s. On the wall where my bed used to be was a note outlying what bills I needed to pay, the amounts, what bills I needed to move into my name and by what date, and a sentence about not contacting him at all. He had also shut off our tv and internet access. Needless to say I was totally freaked out. No wonder he sounded out of breath on the phone the day before. He was moving sh*&* and quick! I was in such a state of shock I did end up going to find him to talk to him immediately. I knew he had to be out at his uncle’s house. His uncle also drives a deliver type van so I knew that’s what he moved everything in. Sure enough there he was. I cried and cried. All non-db I just did not see it coming. We had taken the Big D off the table or so I thought. He’s gone back to the atty and he’s filed again. It was an awful few days. That’s a lie, it was an awful few weeks. ( I probably would have posted on this site then if I’d had internet access. By the time I was able to get it hooked back up the sting was gone)
I turned into a db queen. And it hasn’t always been easy. My H suffers from SAD – seasonal affective disorder – severely. Not to say that there haven’t been real issues in our R, this has just magnified them for him and made them feel like Mt. Everest. This year we thought we’d had a plan of attack. Like I mentioned he works from home, so we made sure we had special lightbulbs in the rooms he’d be working in to simulate sun, we even decided to spend Christmas in MX, 3 weeks in the sunshine this year. He was doing yoga every day, riding his bike several times a week. At the end of last September, my boss’ wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer out of the blue. She hadn’t even been sick. It happened the day school started (I work at a community college). Consequently I had to take on his job AND my own. Attending his meetings, his paperwork, etc. This meant a lot of late nights for me just to stay afloat, not even caught up. I wasn’t getting home until 7 most nights. By the time Dec hit we were all ready for vacation. When we came back, I had to go back to double work load. I was trying to find a balance with it, made sure that at least on Friday I was home on time, if not at least one other night during the week. H was really resentful of this, did nothing to make the situation easier for me at home, in fact the opposite. H has always been a pitch in and help kind of guy. I would get home at 7, he would have been off since 3, he and DD would be playing cards, watching tv, or whatever, and would immediately ask what’s for dinner. I would have to say that the month of January was bad, bad, bad, for us. Mainly because of the stress I was under at work, I wanted support at home, wasn’t getting it, so I in turn became resentful of him. It was just a vicious cycle. We also had some other dynamics that happened during this time that I will explain at a later time. (does give better understating to our R) In Feb he went to visit his mom for 3 days and I felt a relief, like I could breathe, then the next week he went to visit his dad for a week. Again, I could breathe. It was during this time I took a good long hard look at what was going on with us, and how we were really slipping. I knew that to change that dynamic one of us would have to take the lead or we would continue to spiral downward. So I did. I acted as happy and as if as I possibly could. Fake it til you make it. Which worked to a point, but because of something else going on in our house and our lack of communication / miscommunication there was still a wall.
This is really long winded. I give the rest of the story in another post. I will say that as of today, even though he still isn’t home, things are really good between us. Probably better than they ever have been. He spent the night last night and when he left this morning as he was hugging me goodbye and wishing DD and I good luck this weekend he said “ I love you.” That was BIG. He has told me he loves me during this time, but in the context of discussing our R. Neither one of us has been saying ILY. This morning he said it, and said it first. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I said it back, I was in too much shock. Oops.

[AnewAmy]

Sorry about no breaks in there. If you read all of that, I'm impressed. I did it in word and did have paragraphs. Should have double check when I copied it. Sorry.

[AnewAmy]

Ok, The rest of the story. (Not even going to apologize for the long windedness this time)

This is a 3rd marriage for me. (I was a WAW in the first 2.) I have 4 children from my 1st marriage; 3 boys and 1 girl. Only my daughter is left at home at this point. My H was married once before, and had a long term live in gf. He has no children. Well, I take that back he did get a girl pregnant his senior year, but he’s only seen her once, due to influences of his mother he signed off his parental rights when she was a year old. So until he met me, he has never been in a father role.

I left my first marriage due to drug abuse on the exes part and didnot want my children around it. I left, he stopped, we tried, I got pregnant with DD and I could not get my feelings for him back. So no reconciliation. He chose to walk away from his children. The only time he had contact was when his parents took them to see him. His parents and I have always been close. I felt it was important for my children to have that relationship and so did they. I stayed in my 2nd marriage for almost 9 yrs, he turned out to be gay. I left. End of story there.

When I left my last marriage, I took a new job and moved 3 hours from where we had been living. The oldest had just turned 14, then 13, 11 and DD was 9. I had great kids. All good in school, involved in sports, lots of friends. Over the years I have wanted to blame where I moved them to, or felt guilty for moving them here, because of how things turned out, but I know it could have happened even if we had stayed where we were because its happened to several of their friends. Anyway I met H after living here 2½ yrs, I had started to have little bits of trouble with my oldest 2. In fact the oldest one had decided to go live with his dad and ended up after 3 months moving in with his parents. He did end up moving home eventually. My oldest 2 became involved in drugs. Big time involved. They actually hid it from us very well.

H and I dated for 1 ½ before we got married. Just before we got married, my oldest was arrested. The police came to our house at 5 am and arrested him. Conspiracy to commit robbery I think was the charge. He was a senior in HS and just turned 18, he was found guilty and sentenced to 9 yrs in prison. He was not eligible for early release or any boot camp programs. It devastated me. He had God on his side though and some caring people in the prison system believe it or not, that decided he did not belong in there and found a program that the prosecutor hadn’t thought of, that they were able to get him into that qualified him to be released after only 1 yr. He no longer uses, but he unfortunately has a lot of problems. A lot of the problems that their dad’s siblings have, my 2 oldest have inherited, even without being around them. My oldest is a compulsive liar and is Klepto. I choose not to have him around for more than limited, supervised visits. As devastating as that was, H and I seemed to work through that one.

My 2nd son, is addicted to meth. That became apparent about 3 months after we were married. We were able to get him in rehab, just before he turned 18. This after we’d called the police on him because he’d broke into our home and stole over $10,000 worth of items, broke doors, etc. I was in agreement with H in calling the police. Rehab did good for about 6 months, he managed to get his GED and a job. When he started using the next time, he just didn’t come home for 4 months. He managed to clean himself up on his own that time. Came to me and told me he couldn’t live in our town and stay clean, wanted to move down to his dad’s. We helped him get down there. He did great there for over a year. However, his dad and step-mom were using meth and he walked in on them. Ex has major health issues and when DS confronted him, they kicked him out on the streets of San Diego. We brought him home, but wouldn’t let him live with us, he moved out to my dad’s and was still doing good for awhile. It has since gone down hill in a major way. He is/was living from couch to couch, he’s broken into homes, including ours. Been arrested several times. He is shooting up. Currently he is sitting in jail awaiting trial. That case stems from while we were in MX over Christmas. H and I both had started feeling uneasy about him again, even though there weren’t any real “signs” per se, just more of our own intuition. Everyone else kept telling us how great he looked, he’s doing so well, we just knew in the pit of our stomach something wasn’t right. We both were uneasy about leaving our home unattended while we were out of the country for 3 weeks. We didn’t want to leave my youngest son, who moved out 2 weeks after he turned 18 and had moved home temporarily 2 months before in the position of policing his brother. My dad said he would be more than happy to stay at our house during this time, watch things, take care of the dog etc. We felt like we were leaving things in good hands. Well, my dad ended up letting the wayward son into the home, let him stay here alone while he was out running errands, all things we had agreed would not happen. My youngest son came home, found him here going through things and kicked him out. When grandpa got home he scolded him, but grandpa said it was ok. Early the next morning wayward son broke into the house through a window he’d unlocked earlier, took $60 from my dad’s wallet and his car. My dad discovered it not too long after, called police, they found the car 2 blocks away with wayward son, arrested him. Grandpa got car and money back. Due to overcrowding they let him out 2 days later. Prosecutor decided not to pursue charges, grandpa hounded them for the next 5 months until they did. My dad has yet to own up to allowing him in the house while we were gone.

[AnewAmy]

Fast forward to Feb. The oldest son was arguing/fighting with gf, came over to the house for a couple of hours. I let him spend one night on the couch. Somehow in his mind that allowed him to move in with us. Even though H and I neither one said he could. BUT, and this is the BIG BUT, we each thought the other one had told him he could. My H has a HUGE HUGE soft spot for my oldest. He will be the first to admit it. We started noticing things were coming up missing out of the garage. At first it was blamed on the other son, but then things were missing out of the other kids’ rooms. I kept trying to talk to H about it, he’d tell me well we can’t put him out on the street. He wouldn’t do that etc. I was getting past my breaking point with all this drama/trauma we were going through. The final straw for me was coming home from work, no H only oldest son at home. He proceeds to tell me how he found H’s checkbook in youngest son’s room and gave it back to H, but nothing was missing and how he left in a huff and went to his uncle’s. I KNEW that the youngest didn’t do it. He is an extremely honest kid, even if it will get him trouble, he doesn’t lie or steal. I had had it. I blew up and kicked him out of the house. Then started worrying that H was going to be upset with me. Even the other 2 kids thought he was going to be mad at me. He just has a strange bond with my oldest. Turns out he wasn’t mad was glad to stop the madness.

So now you see all the drama the older 2 have caused. It’s hard enough blending a family without this crap. There are no instruction manuals on how to deal with it either. H and I have never been divided on the kids until this last go around. If we’d had better communication going on, we’d have each realized we felt the same way. I have always backed him up, even if I didn’t agree. Then we’d talk about it later without the kids around. He isn’t abusive to the kids in anyway, shape or form. He’s actually a great dad. Not just a great step-dad, but a great dad. This last go around is what was the breaking point for him moving out. Because of something the counselors has said to us he thought he’d never have a choice in this R when it came to the kids, so he was just giving up. They had told him that he had to stop putting me in the middle and making me choose between him and the kids. I don’t remember now what the context was that we were having this discussion, but it wasn’t over this type of situations, it was more along the lines of my DD’s activities or something. Anyway, he hadn’t clarified with them, I didn’t know he’d took it to hear t the way he did, and he never talked to me about it. This all came out when we started talking again a few weeks after he moved out.

[LolaL]

My goodness...are you my twin?? Your sitch sounds eerily familiar to mine. Obviously, there are a few differences, but there is a lot of similarities.

I am doing the dbing now. Did you do anything significant?

[AnewAmy]

I have read your sitch, and did find similarities, which kept me following yours.

What did I do. I validated, validated, validated. Acted As If til my face hurt and I felt like my behind was falling off. As much as it sucked the way we separated, (and yes, I know I still have resentment in how he handled it) I know separating has been good for us and I've told him that in conversations. I have tried to keep R talks to a minimum. I let him initiate contact in the beginning. He mentioned once a while back that I was calling him first, emailing first etc. I mentioned that he'd asked me not to and I was trying to respect that. He told me that was old circumstances, not now. I still try to keep it at a minimum so he doesn't feel pressured.

I guess the only thing real significant was putting on a happy face. It made it more comfortable for him to want to come around and over time it made it more comfortable for well timed R talks, that were able to lead to real communication. After a good R talk, I changed the tone back to a happy, fun, light mood. He has a tendency to project how his mother will handle a situaion on to me. He's learning, (and has said as much) that no matter how hard, I'm not going to blow up at him or make him feel guilty for his point of view. (classic mom)

Patience is a virtue I am learning. There have been days I have felt like telling him to take a flying leap, but I keep my mouth shut and paste a smile.

[LolaL]

Oh Amy I can so relate to all of that!! I have found that in the last couple of months, I feel as if I have an ache on my face from the permanent smile that is affixed there!!! But I also realize that my H takes his cue from me, and if I sound good on the phone or in person, he feels better. I cannot imagine what you went through to find out he moved everything while you were gone. I actually left because he owned the house before we were married, and he did offer to let me stay there, but I couldn't. In hindsight, I wish I had.

How do you handle the sitch's with your children now?

[AnewAmy]

Lola - I may be interupted in this post. Waiting for the gal I am riding to Portland with for my DD's softball tourney this weekend.

My H and I bought our house together 3 yrs ago. Though he asked for it in the D papers and will get because I cannot afford it.

As for the boys. My oldest, I take calls from him sometimes, not often. I believe nothing he tells me. If he wants to see me, he comes to my office. I think I've allowed him here twice since I kicked him out. I pretty much keep him at arms length. I have no rose colored glasses on with him.

My other son. He knows that until he is clean, he cannot be around us. If I see him on the street (rarely) I will talk to him. Other than that there is absolutely no contact. I have moved beyond that breaking my heart. I had to for my own survival. I love him dearly and want my sweet, loving son back. I am not so sure that will ever happen. Meth is worse than the devil in destroying a person I think. I have had to help H keep boundaries here too. He is very easily to this day, manipulated by him. Like I said he has a soft spot for him. He appreciates this. He takes calls from him maybe 2x month to help, he avoids having to see him for the time being. I support this until he is stronger himself.

My youngest son lives on his own and he is fine. We have no problems with him. Do we wish he woudl get more direction. Yes, but he is able to take care of himself and does not try to manipulate us.

My DD, I DESERVE her. If I gave a list of what I wanted in a child she would meet every expectation. She is awesome. She loves to spend time with both of us and we both love to spend time with her.

So to answer you question, I guess I have put up very clear boundaries. I worked past my own guilt. They are now 22 adn 21. They are for all intents and purposes adults. They know right from wrong. The choices they now make in life are their choices, not mine. DB is good for more than just the spouse.

I really can talk. LOL I am gone for the weekend. Hope you have an awesome weekend yourself and you will make it through the day. You are a really strong woman.

[LolaL]

Thanks Amy, you are too!!!

I have had to do the same with D21. We refer to her as Emo Vampire (emo=emotional). I love her dearly, but she has a way of sucking the life out of me. Although its not drugs, its just the constant want and want of more and more attention. I have had to limit phone calls to once a week, and even then sometimes I just cannot answer the phone. I cringe if I see her number on caller ID. She lives half way across the country, and started complaining she wanted to leave her H and come home. I told her she could not stay with me. So I can certainly understand having to put down the boundaries.

I have D23 as well, but after a rough start and joining AA, she is doing fabulous. She and her H are going to have their 3d baby, and she calls mostly to check on me. She rarely complains, so when she does I know she is upset.

D12 is the only one left, and she is great. She is just beginning to hit the "arguing" phase, but its not bad by any means. These days, it usually only takes a look and she will sheepishly bow her head and say "okay Mom"...

I am out for the weekend too...have a good one!!! Enjoy your weekend!

[LolaL]

Hey Amy: How was your weekend?