The Stage I'm At

[trezeralietas]

I believe I have started to enter that stage where I've stopped making excuses for my husband. I've stopped saying how wonderful he was, how much good there was in our relationship, etc.

 

I've started to see things for how they truly were and are. I spent so much of our relationship seeing him for his potential and not who he actually was. I always thought he would "come around," and I didn't recognize that he chose to be a little, selfish boy. I don't say that meanly--I just recognize it as a fact now. He never truly wanted to make the sacrifices or grow in the way that marriage demands you grow.

 

A few months married he decided he wanted to buy a stereo system for his car. It wasn't my idea of a good way to spend that kind of money, but I saw it was important to him. All I did was ask him what his budget was, and he said $700 (which seemed a lot to me), but I agreed that was okay. He came back with a stereo which cost $2200. Over three times our arranged budget!! I could understand maybe $1000, if it was really what he wanted...but, over three times the agreed amount?!!

 

A few months after that, he traded that car (which we'd bought brand new only eight months prior) for a two-seater sports car...while I was away for the weekend. He bought the new car on Saturday and I found out about it on Tuesday...because I saw him driving it. I told him then that if he wanted to be single, he just had to let me know...He didn't understand what I meant and I told him that you can't go buy a car without even mentioning it to your wife the first time she leaves you alone for a weekend. He acted like a single guy...

 

He smoked for seven years and hid it. He swore to me that he had quit and would never smoke again. I tried to keep him from making that promise to me, but he insisted. Then, he couldn't stay true to it and rather than let me know he'd failed, he hid it for seven years, built up guilt and resentment towards me and blamed me...When I found out he'd been smoking the whole time I was disappointed, but I told him that I would not give him an ultimatum or end our marriage over it. I hoped he'd quit, but I've love and support him either way.

 

There was a girl from high school whom he lied to me about. She called him out of the blue (they'd had little contact the preceding five years), and she cried to him for 3.5 hours about her boyfriend breaking up with her...This happened while I was at work and he was late picking me up from work. When I asked why he was late to get me, he said he'd been on the phone with her and they'd only talked an hour. I had never even heard of her, and I was confused why she would call him of all people when her boyfriend broke up with her...I found out later that the phone call had been 3.5 hours and not an hour and, though I am not usually one to dictate who my husband can be friends with, etc, I told him that I did NOT want him in contact with this girl since he clearly could not be honest about his relationship with her.

 

A few years later, when he was working night shift, I found out that he was consistently calling her on his lunch break (at 2 AM). He still insisted they were only friends, but he knew how I felt about her and he insisted on talking to her behind my back.

 

The lies, the deception, the blame and resentment, have been consistent throughout our marriage. There are many other things that have happened that I've started to realize...and when I add it all up, it points to the fact that I have been married to a selfish and immature man who has snuck around and done what he wanted behind my back and then wondered why I didn't trust him. I've tried to blindly trust him, but all of these things have stacked up over the years and chipped away at my sense that he was looking out for our common interests or that he could keep his word.

 

He got out of the Navy early because he was given an easy out (he claimed he was depressed and had hard things going on at home and they discharged him early). When he made the decision to quit the Navy, rather than talk to his superiors, seek counseling, etc, he did so after having just reenlisted for another two years. The Navy had already paid us $24000 for his reenlistment bonus--and since he got out early, we were now on the hook to pay that amount back--and pretty aggressively too. The Navy wanted $700 a month (almost as much as we were paying in rent).

 

He's never finished anything. He runs when the going gets hard. Why did I expect him to do anything different with this marriage?

[swampyankee]

Glad you're making that decision now. I went 30 years before I stopped making excuses for my spouse and waiting for her to make good on all her lofty aspirations. We started a family very early into our marriage and I made a conscious choice to work with her through raising our children, meanwhile hoping that she would finally mature and become the responsible adult and partner I hoped for.

 

But once the kids were grown I finally gave up hope that she would grow up and get over the issues that had plagued her entire life. Once I took off the rose-colored glasses I saw that she was who she was for a lifetime and no amount of aspirations on her part were going to change that.

 

Although I'm glad I raised the kids in an unbroken home, I wish I hadn't wasted so many years believing a leopard could change their spots.

[Crazyaboutdogs]

Good that you are seeing this now. We all waste so much time on people who keep demonstrating to us that they are not worth our time.

[ForumGuy]

In other words, you are taking him off the pedestal, which is a good and important step to your moving on to something better for yourself.