by Band Back Together | Sep 1, 2015 | Adoption, Infertility, Infidelity |
My first husband and I were married for ten years. Almost the entire time, I was desperate to have a child. We tried everything short of in-vitro fertilization, with no luck. Eventually, we were able to adopt, but that desire for a child that I could carry in my own womb was overwhelming.
After four years of marriage, I found out he had been cheating on me. As time went on, I came to discover he had always cheated on me, and the number of women was terrifying.
Aside from the fear of STDs, my worst fear was that in the middle of my infertility hell, he would impregnate one, if not several, of his mistresses. After all, he had done it before!
When we had been married for five years, he admitted that he had another “potential” child. He tried to claim that this child may not even be his. That son was only six months younger than his second child with his first wife – who he also tried to claim might not be his.
I tried to tell myself that these things that happened before me didn’t matter, but I could quite never shake that feeling that if he’d done it once, he would do it again.
We divorced shortly after our tenth anniversary. He married his mistress of three years. She left him when she realized he was cheating on her, too. Irony at its best. I remarried, my ex eventually gave up his rights to our daughter; she was adopted by my husband, and I gave birth to an amazing little boy.
It has been eight years since he left me for Wife #3.
His birthday was last week. I wish I could forget that date, but unfortunately, it’s a permanent fixture in my head. His sisters and his mother took him out to eat for his birthday. One of the sisters posted pictures on Facebook from the dinner.
At first, I just scrolled past them, but a sense of morbid curiosity made me go back and look through them. Few things are as satisfying as knowing that your ex is falling apart without you.
Sure enough, he looked like crap. He’s put on weight. He’s not aging gracefully. It makes me much too happy.
Among the pictures was one that made my heart stop. There was a little girl. She was about the age of my daughter. I knew she didn’t belong to either of my former sisters-in-law.
In another picture, she was standing next to him with her hand on his shoulder in a very comfortable, affectionate position. Looking at the two of them together, I was stunned to see that she looked exactly like him. Same facial structure, same chin.
He has a daughter.
A daughter that is too old to have been conceived after he left me.
Hoping that I was wrong, I sent a message to his sister asking her who the girl was. When she didn’t answer back, I knew I had my answer. She finally did answer more than 24 hours later, saying she wasn’t comfortable answering questions about her brother.
Confirmation.
If that little girl had belonged to anyone other than him, she would have just said so. Not talking about her brother was the proof I was looking for.
At first, I was furious! Enraged! Pissed!
How DARE he get some other woman pregnant when I had suffered for so many years to have a child with him!
I sent the picture to several friends and family members, to get their opinions of whether or not I was imagining things and jumping to conclusions. Everyone agreed: that’s his daughter.
And who knows how many more children he has running around in this world!
I was still shaking several hours later when I went to bed. I couldn’t sleep, thinking about confronting him. Whether I would punch him or just slap him when I saw him. After a few hours tossing and turning, I finally fell asleep.
The next morning, however, I was fine.
I realized it really didn’t matter.
I always knew there was a good chance that it would happen. I was grateful that I didn’t find out about her when I was still married to him, or I would probably be in prison for murder right now.
My daughter and I are free of him. He can’t hurt us. And the fact is, he is not worth the time and energy it takes to be angry with him. He is a scumbag, he has always been a scumbag, and he will always be a scumbag. Who cares how many illegitimate children he has? That’s his problem, not mine.
I believe in God. I believe that one day we will all have to answer for our sins. My ex-husband is going to have some pretty major sins to answer for someday.
I think I’ll just worry about my own life.
by Band Back Together | Aug 28, 2015 | Anxiety, Blended Families, Breakups, Depression, Divorce, Help With Relationships, Infidelity, Stress |
Well, it’s been a long while since I’ve revisited this, and rather a lot has happened…
When last we met, dear readers, your hero was making it work, and getting by. So much change …so much upheaval.
When I left off, I mentioned that I was married, but we need to go back to the beginning of that relationship, as the background is important. I hope you’ll all bear with me again; getting these stories out is much like excising vital organs for me. It’s a painful process, and I’m very protective of them, and by extension, of myself.
My divorce from the wife in the first story was final in 2006. Around that time, I became reacquainted with an old friend, Becca. We caught up over the course of a couple of days, and later had dinner. At the end of the evening, she kissed me. This was confusing, as she had always been fairly …”butch,” for lack of a better term. We had a conversation about it, and she told me that her sexuality was uncertain; she was still figuring it out.
We continued to see one another for a few months, and anytime things would become more intense, she’d slow it down. This was fine with me, as I was still pretty vulnerable from my marriage. We had a good time, and I always had a sort of unspoken understanding that we were going to end up together.
Things changed.
Eventually, it came to the point that she was just using me for “stuff,” and I distanced myself from her. All well and good, but it was still hurtful.
In 2007, I met a woman who changed everything. Long distance again. (Yes, I know.) She was intelligent and well-educated and fun. We would visit one another around every other weekend. Lots of activities, and the intimacy was there, too.
Then, she started shopping for a home in my hometown. It meant so much to me that she was willing to uproot herself so that I could be near my family. We found a wonderful fixer-upper for a good price, and started working toward buying it.
Those of you who have bought a home know that it is a very stressful process, and the stress took its toll on her immensely. She wasn’t the fun-loving Jen I had gotten to know, anymore. Still, I stuck it out, but eventually, I wanted the “old Jen” back badly enough that I told her to let the house go. She did, and I hoped for things to go back to normal.
Shortly after that, her father became seriously ill, and she was heavily stressed over that. Still no good old Jen. I was right beside her through his surgery and recovery, still hoping for a return of what we used to have.
She bought a house in her hometown, which stressed her out even more.
I proposed to her in 2009, and she said yes. Surprise, surprise, planning a wedding is very stressful as well. I was at wits end by this point, but I was committed to giving this relationship the best possible chance.
We married in 2010, and my daughter and I moved into the house she had bought. Stress. I was in a new city, in a job I hated, with no friends, and nobody to talk to but the woman who was increasingly frustrated with me. She had never lived with anyone before, and had all her ducks firmly in a row, and suddenly she had a husband and a stepchild, in her space, all the time.
We enrolled my daughter in the private school that Jen had gone to as a child. The people there were horrible and elitist, and my daughter acted out. The intimacy Jen and I had went away. First, Jen started sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the bedroom, because she said it was better for her back. Later, she started sleeping in the guest bedroom, because she couldn’t stand the sight of me. She worked nights, and I worked days, so we managed to barely see one another. I would come home from work and do my best to drink myself into a stupor, and she would constantly berate me about the things she needed help with.
I am not a smart man. If you want me to dust the dining room, just say, “medic77, dust the dining room for me,” and I will do it. If you want me to clean the guest bathroom, just say so, and it will be done. Jen, however, believed that I should be able to see what needed done and take the initiative. It wasn’t an easy concept for me, but I won’t make excuses.
She would catch me in the middle of a project she had given me, and ask me to, for instance, mow the lawn. Ten minutes later, once I had gotten to a stopping place in project one, I would go outside to find her mowing the lawn herself, and mad about it. It made me crazy. She was a therapist, so she KNEW it made me crazy. I turned into a “yeller.” I’m not proud, but we would have epic screaming matches while my daughter cowered in her bedroom and wished for it to be over. Jen threatened to have me committed.
In February of 2011, after living under the same roof for less than nine months, we separated, and I came back to Ohio. Jen later told me she was mad about that, too. She thought I should have gotten an apartment where she was. It just wasn’t possible. I didn’t have any savings, and I had only worked my current job or a few months. It just wasn’t possible.
Back in Ohio, I went back to work, and got a second job with state benefits, which eventually became my only job. Jen and I weren’t interested in communication at that point, so I was very low.
We went through cycles of talking and silence. I had friends, but Jen always suspected me of being in secret relationships with the female ones. It was just another lack of faith. A couple of years ago, after we had been separated almost longer then we were together, I met a girl at work, Lorrie, and we started a relationship. I was happy.
One night, Lorrie and I were laying in bed talking, and I heard a noise. Suddenly, Jen was standing in the bedroom. It was as bad as it sounds, but it could have been worse. At least we were clothed and only talking. Still, not long after that, our divorce moved forward and was final.
I am still with Lorrie, but our intimacy is gone. We haven’t had sex in months. She says she loves me, but she just isn’t interested in sex. I feel as though I did something to cause it. She doesn’t touch me. She doesn’t kiss me unless I initiate it. She SAYS that if I want sex, I should just say so and do it, but it doesn’t feel right to me. I feel like sex should be a union; a collaboration. Not just, “Hey, hold still a minute.”
I know I’ve got depression and anxiety, but I can’t help wondering just what it is that makes me so forgettable. Why I can’t seem to find anyone who just WANTS me.
So, yeah. I’m surviving, but just.
by Band Back Together | Aug 21, 2015 | Abuse, Anger, Anxiety, Depression, Fear, Feelings, Infidelity, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Parenting, Psychological Manipulation |
As a you child I was very sensitive and very petite. My family saw that as a weakness and did what ever they could to put me down and make me feel bad about myself. Until a week ago, I always thought the biggest bully was my sister. She would physically and mentally abuse me. She had to control me in every way she could.
So in order to protect myself from this type of abuse, I grew up to only want one thing …to never feel anything ever again. I wanted to be able to turn my emotions on and off. I became very heartless, unloving, less sensitive, and kept to myself. I never shared my feelings, and I eventually despised the word “feelings.” It made me want to gag. I did achieve this goal. I trained myself so well to never feel anything at all. But I became depressed and had anxiety that increasingly got worse. My dad sent me to a therapist, blaming my mom and sister for the cause of all this.
After a year and a half of therapy, I finally realized my dad was the problem the entire time. It was in therapy where I first discovered gaslighting, and when I finally realized he did that to me, I was very upset. Then I was told he had the traits of a narcissist. As I read about that, I became enraged. I couldn’t believe my own father would do this to me for his own personal benefit. He let me believe for so long that there was something wrong with me.
My friends always loved my dad and mom and wanted them to be their parents. My dad was a different person around friends and my moms side of the family. During my parents divorce, my dad manipulated everyone into thinking my mom was to blame for the divorce, when my dad was the one cheating. He had us all fooled for a personal, manipulative game.
My friends always wondered why I acted so different around adults compared to how I was with my friends. I just acted like it was a good girl act, but even I didn’t know why I ever did it until now. I never knew how much my dad controlled me with his narcissistic ways. And I just makes me so angry that I want to punch a hole through the wall.
My dad always says that he loves me more than I’ll ever know, and I broke his heart every time I tried to stay with my mom. It’s all a mind game with him, and it just blows my mind. It makes my even more angry that I never had a normal childhood because of him. I had to grow up too fast and be more mature than anyone I knew. He controlled my personality, and therefore, I could never be my true self. Even now, knowing all this, I am still too afraid to confront him. I’m too afraid to never see him again for what he might do.
by Band Back Together | Jul 24, 2015 | Abuse, Adult Bullying, Alcohol Addiction, Anxiety, Bullying, Child Abuse, Compulsive Eating Disorders, Depression, Infidelity, Loneliness, Self-Esteem, Stress, Suicide, Violence |
The name is Kat, and I’m a 29 year old college graduate. I feel bad about being so “big” and still being bullied. I thought it was something that just happens to kids and teens, but thanks to The Band, I’ve felt a little more comfortable admitting that yeah, I’m 29 and I’m still being bullied.
My parents have always had problems. When I was smaller, they would get into huge, violent fights that would end up in them beating each other (mostly my dad towards my mother) and cussing at each other. My two younger sisters and I grew up in a very violent atmosphere but were always close.
We also lived with our grandparents in the same house, and they would defend us a lot from my parents’ rage. My dad was an alcoholic and cheated on my mother. She would take it out on my sisters and me, mostly on me, since I was the one that always talked back to her, protecting my sisters.
Thanks to the constant abuses, I grew up insecure about myself. I was actually pretty creative, but also very violent. The slightest insult towards me, and I would attack other kids. Whenever my mom and I fought, I would feel the need to eat, so I was a little chubby. That got me bullied even more.
Back home, my mom used to beat my sisters and me with a wooden flat stick, saying that the Bible told her to “correct” her children like that. Aside from that, she would slap, choke, and punch me in the face, in many of our confrontations.
As a teen, I had a lot of trouble with authority and got into many fights with kids, claiming they only wanted to hurt me. My first boyfriend went to jail, and I changed universities a lot.
At 23, I had enough, and left the house. I got a great paying job and moved into an apartment, away from my mother. Once out, I got thin, got a new wonderful boyfriend and had a “perfect” life. But I still wanted to finish my career, which meant I had to quit my job, go back home, find another job that allowed me to study, and get into college once again.
Back home, I got chubby again. My mother constantly fights with me and tells me she doesn’t want me in her house. She values the pet more than me since she tells me that if her pet is sleeping on my bed, I’m not allowed to push her off. Sometimes I can’t sleep because of it. Her new husband shouts at me and loves getting me in trouble with her. I had to fight and struggle through college because of the stress at home.
I graduated three months ago, and I’m desperately looking for a job, so I can get out of this hell. My mom and I fight at least four times a week, and she always tells me to get the fuck out of her house. I have nowhere to go. I don’t want to involve my friends in this, and my father has another family. I’m desperate, I feel lonely, I lost my boyfriend, and she and her husband are constantly bullying me.
It may sound horrible and harsh, but its the truth. It took me 29 years to figure out why I eat compulsively. Just now, we had another fight. As soon as it ended, I raided the fridge, even though I wasn’t hungry at all. It’s not about filling “the void,” its about the desperation and anxiety I feel that make me want to eat like crazy.
However, I still remain strong. I wish for you gentle people who read my story to stay strong. I may be a little depressive, but I’m not suicidal. I love life and I want to move on. I know there are many amazing things waiting for me, and I just have to go ahead and do them.
Thanks for reading my story.
by Band Back Together | Jan 29, 2015 | Abuse, Child Neglect, Fear, Guilt, Help With Relationships, Infidelity, Love, Romantic Relationships, Trust |
Dear Ex,
You did not see it, but my confidence in you stopped growing on a daily basis. I told you that I knew what I was hiding from everyday. I didn’t tell you that I was hiding from you. I didn’t tell you how scared I was of you. I always knew that we weren’t meant for each other, and you wanted to argue.
It is so great to see that you have moved on. So great to know that I have been released. I finally have what I wanted with us. I no longer have to question what I’ve been told. I no longer have to doubt the motives of my kind and nice friends. I no longer have to inspect everyone’s motives.
Is this just another cry for misplaced sympathy? Or is it an attempt to hurt me? The questions are irrelevant. You made sure of that when you abused my love, my trust, my friendship circles, my mind. They are, by far, not the worst forms of abuse that I was put through, but the persistence of them made them the most common.
I told you that you didn’t have to lie. I would stay by your side no matter what. I told you that I would forever hold a place in my heart for you. You tore that place out of my grasp when you decided to work with your friend to abuse me together. You looked at my kindness as a weakness, not for the strength that it is – the strength to give to those that are worth it, the strength to help anyone to heal from anything. My friends will forever be in my life, until death do us part.
I can and have always been able to achieve my dreams. That was the most terrifying part of your abuse, that you had no reservations in ripping all of them away from me, so that you could hurt me. I watched you spiral downward, into an abyss of vindictiveness.
Do you even remember why you started the abuse? Do you remember why you decided to let your dreams fall from your grip, and get fired from the job that you wanted since you were a child? Your abusive attitude lost you that job. It got you fired because you were more interested in self piety than in achieving something great, and being recognized for that.
To this day, I still blame your experiences as a child. I am guessing that no one paid attention when you did the right thing, but the moment you were crying, everyone was looking your way. Being starved for attention does that to a person. It’s not your fault, it is how you were raised. That is what you were taught was right.
I can only hope that you break the cycle of abuse, handed down to you by your mother, before our baby lives a life of toxicity, venom, and a lack of morals. I hope that you choose to change what you believe, and instead, aspire for attention for greatness.
You watch t.v. How many people watch when someone goes for gold in the Olympics? How many people are watching when the finals of X-Factor are shown? Do you want that, or do you want the hollow attention of someone that will forget you in a year’s time? I will forget you soon.
I forgot how it feels to love you a long time ago. I can’t even remember when I last had the desire to help you succeed. It could have been after you destroyed your own dream, the one I tried so hard to build your confidence to try. I hope you haven’t forgotten how to try. If you have, it’s no big deal because I don’t sympathize with you anymore. That is another thing you lost when you went on your vindictive, plague-fueled attack of my life.
You know you should have told me that you were “smiling and happy, bouncing off the walls,” that you had an amazing time, and he really made you feel special, the night you cheated on me. Instead you wanted to play the victim again. You wanted sympathy for the guilt of your actions.
Why did you feel guilty? It made no sense to me. I would have forgiven you, if you had been honest. I could not forgive you for playing the part of the victim when you broke my heart, like I was the one who did something wrong. Lying? Cheating? Your story never added up. The other guy’s story was consistent. You are the only one who can’t face what happened. You are the only one who claims to be the victim. You lost a lot of your friends because of your lies. You lost the last speck of my trust for you.
I felt my heart die when I finally accepted that I was in denial, and there was no reason to believe what you were telling me. I was ashamed that I let you control me again. I was ashamed to the point of not wanting to face life. But I got through it, and you didn’t hold me once. You didn’t sit by me, look into my eyes, take my hand, and say you were sorry, that everything was going to be alright. You withholding compassion, out of fear of the truth being exposed, was the worst part of your abuse. You knew you were lying from the start.
It will happen again and in the years to come. You will repeat the cycle of hiding the truth. You will repeat the pattern handed down to you by your mother. Your life will go back to Square One, and, like your mother, you will be unwanted by everyone.
Yours is the only dream I will not make come true. You fought it too hard.
My deepest condolences for the loss of your heart, empathy, compassion, a happy future, a life filled with people that will love you.
May they all rest in peace.
by Band Back Together | Oct 29, 2014 | Anger, Divorce, Domestic Abuse, Fear, Infidelity, Love, Violence |
He had asked me for a divorce, and I had fought for months to keep that from happening. I loved him, and I didn’t want our family to fall apart. I knew there was another woman, even though he wouldn’t admit it. He had never admitted to any of the others, why would he tell the truth this time?
I was annoyed by the irony of how he wanted to sign the divorce papers. He had dropped off the papers at the house for me to read them, but he didn’t want either of us to sign them until we were together. It was like he wanted it to be some kind of sick date! How romantic of him, right? Let’s get together as a couple and sign the divorce papers. Be still my heart!
I had been avoiding reading them until that day, trying to delay the inevitable. I knew there was nothing I could do. He’d made up his mind. But when I sat down to read them, I couldn’t believe my eyes! Here was my way out of this! The papers said that I was agreeing that our marriage was irreconcilable. The thing was, I didn’t belive our marriage WAS irreconcilable. I thought it could be saved. This was a legal document. I could not put my signature on a legal document that I didn’t agree with! So if I told him that I believed our marriage was worth saving, and I couldn’t sign the papers, maybe he would agree to work on it!
He came over that night, cheerful as could be, ready to have our special little night of writing off our marriage. I took a deep breath and told him I couldn’t sign the papers, explaining my reasons.
His rage was immediate. I saw his eyes go red and his lips swell up like they always did when he was ready to start punching things. I knew he’d had an anger management problem before we met. I’d read his homework from the court-appointed class that he’d had to take. I knew he’d lied on the homework, making things look less than they were. But he seemed to have learned from the class because he’d only ever thrown things before when he was mad at me. It had only happened a handful of times, but he would grab whatever was closest to him, throw it, and then stomp out of the house.
I had never worried about him actually hitting me.
But now he was on a rampage. His fury was terrifying. He punched his fist through a tv tray that was in the living room, completely destroying it. He took the little table that my dad had built when I was a child, that our daughter used to do puzzles and color, and smashed it into the floor. The corner of the little table was crushed, it dented the hardwood floor, then it bounced and hit the edge of our brand new tv. Thankfully, it didn’t hit the screen. But it left a permanent mark on the tv’s frame that I could never clean off, no matter how hard I scrubbed.
Then he crashed his way through the house and into our bedroom. I was even more terrified because our daughter and our foster daughter were asleep in the next room and I was so afraid he would wake them. I didn’t want them to see this side of him.
Once in our bedroom, my terror turned to horror as he grabbed the golf club he always kept next to the bed – for protection from intruders – and started swinging it around the room. He smashed the glass on the pictures hanging just a few feet away from my head. For the first time in our ten-year marriage, I was truly afraid that he might actually hit me. I stood there sobbing, pleading with him to calm down.
And that’s when I knew.
Our marriage could no longer be saved.
He had crossed a line that I was not willing to deal with.
Our marriage really was irreconcilable.
I told him I would sign the papers. As quickly as the rage had entered him, it was gone. We went into the kitchen where we sat down at the table and signed the papers. He hugged me, then left. I cleaned up the mess he had made, so the girls wouldn’t see it in the morning. Then I went to bed, where I cried myself to sleep.
It took me a few days to recover from the impact of seeing him so angry. I deeply mourned the end of the marriage we could have had.
But one day, about a week after signing the papers, I realized I was done. I no longer wanted anything to do with him. I was ready to move on and make a new life for myself.
