The Moving on Part:
For me the moving on part, is being happy, being a mother, being who I am. Truly there is no difference than before, I just don’t have Jack telling me and judging me. My role as a mother is different now. For years I had to hear Jack tell me how I didn’t spend time with the children. I didn’t do things with the children. Which is what brought me to write “The Special Times.” I did and I still do things with them, just not what he felt was quality time with them.
Right now money is still tight. The improvising I have had to do for the “quality time” has not been easy. While Jack is taking them to White Water, here and there and doing this, that and the other with them. I financially cannot. There is plenty to do around here that is free or close to free, but it’s a drive. When you are barely able to pay for the gas that gets you back and forth to work. Getting out and going with the kids to a park or even taking them to their friends house, I literally watch the gas needle go down. 1/8 of a tank makes or breaks me at this point. To a kid I can see how dad’s house would be more fun. I am not going to lie that it hasn’t been frustrating and down right stressful that I have to tell my kids “no we can’t do that.” The reality is the kids don’t see or even understand what it costs just to provide the bare minimum for them.
We spend a lot of time at home. Spending quality time together. Their friends come over. The kids and I will play games sometimes. I watch my son play video games or try to play a video game with him. I’ve never been a video game person, they just don’t grab me like they do some people. My son plays street hockey in the driveway and I watch him and his friends play it. He’s a sports buff and I have never been one for sports, but he loves me to watch all the awesome stuff he can do. The last time I was on roller skates (September) resulted in one heck of a sprained ankle, the kids get nervous if I even talk about skates. I am just now getting into physical therapy for the sprain because I haven’t had the money for the co pay, Jack’s insurance would have sent me probably about 1.5 hours away, and the job I used to be at, if I missed time; I didn’t get paid. With my new job, I have awesome insurance and sick time earned. Four to six weeks my ankle should be good as new. The simple things haven’t been easy with the ankle; climbing up on a stool to get something, playing out in the yard with the kids rough or even terrain I had to be careful. Before the sprain my friend and I were doing the Insanity work out and I was starting back with running. I haven’t been able to do any of that since the sprain. It ticks me off. Now that I am in a place where I can get it taken care of and I am doing it.
Moving on is not always an epiphany. I’m not this new person because Jack left me. I am still me. The epiphany for me is realizing that Jack didn’t love the person I was; because I wasn’t like him. I didn’t do things like him, I didn’t think like him, I wasn’t a mother, wife or person he thought I should have been. I still have the same friends I did when Jack left, but I realized the conversations didn’t get on a personal level as far as the marriage. I didn’t talk about the personal stuff going on in the marriage. Jack didn’t want me to. My friends and I had plenty of conversation. Then I realized once Jack left and I am telling them what took place in the marriage over the years they were looking at me saying “that’s not right. I can’t believe you lived like that.” As long as I have known my friends whether they were childhood friends, friends since moving here or new friends they have all said the exact same thing. I would even throw myself under the bus, “but I didn’t keep the house clean, I didn’t get over moms death quick enough, I was always moody, I wasn’t always patient with the kids or him, I was depressed.” etc. I’ve lost count of people who have said they would have left him a long time ago, and that it was no surprise I was the way I was because of him. They would have been the same way if their spouse treated them the way he did. Talking about it with friends didn’t give me the epiphany. Being outside of it did. Hearing my friends opinions on it, validated my feelings. They weren’t wrong. They were only wrong because Jack told me they were wrong. I can’t blame Jack for all of it, because I was the one who allowed him to do that to me. As strong and independent as I was, he found a weak spot in me.
I analyze, that’s who I am. The thinker. It drove Jack bonkers. He made instantaneous decisions for the right now. Instantaneous decisions are in all aspects of his life. What have I learned from it? There are times when a person needs to be able to make quick decisions. In his occupation as a Marine and now as a cop, hesitation could mean the difference in coming home to his family in a coffin or coming home at the end of shift to see his family. I got that, I still get that. The frustrating part he couldn’t turn off that Marine mode or cop mode. Now outside of it I see what a hypocrite he is. It’s easier for him to put someone else down thansit and evaluate his own faults. Here are some examples of the analyzing I have done.
Jack told me I would always need to be in a relationship. My thought process: I wasn’t the one who left and walked right into another relationship.
Jack told the woman he was seeing “I feel like a school boy again.” My thought process: Why the hell does a 44 year old man want to feel like a school boy again? I WANT TO FEEL LIKE A WOMAN…not a teenager in puppy love. As a woman I want to feel appreciated, supported, have an emotional connection; not just a physical with my partner, loved, cherished, admired, communication and all those stupid emotions. In reading his words to his lover I saw how selfish he was. It was all about him and his feelings. He never stopped to think for once there was someone else in the relationship who wasn’t getting what she needed. It’s a two way street people. Don’t tell me; show me. The day we had our fight and he left…13.5 years and everything we had been through; I was still loving him. I still loved him a year after he left.
He was so busy focusing on the woman he didn’t have; he didn’t see the woman he did have. I knew I wasn’t perfect, I knew he wasn’t perfect. Jack also accused me of the same thing. In the analyzing of the relationship I realize now he may have loved me, but he was never in love with me. I loved him and I was also in love with him. There is a difference in loving someone and being in love with them. A HUGE difference.
I actually had to get up and walk away just now; the tears came flowing and here they come again as I write. He wasn’t in love with me. If he had been he would have tried to give me what I needed in the relationship. The memories of the 13.5 years I was married to him I recall looking into his eyes and I see now, that I never saw in his eyes that he was in love with me. I didn’t see it when I looked in his eyes all those years, now remembering the look, it gives me chills, his eyes were empty. It hurts because why did he stay for all those years. I asked him when he said he was done 7-8 years prior in the marriage. He said he had hope it would all work out. Hope? He had “hoped” it would all work out, but he was telling me “just do it.” He got onto me when I said I got tired of being the one to initiate the emotional, the connection, communication and finally I just “waited” and he is frickin’ “hoping,” the marriage is going to magically change. It might seem selfish; I no longer care; he cheated me long before he physically cheated on me.
The years that I had to hear from him what would make him happy in the marriage and I did it. I did it because I loved him, was in love with him and it was important to him. He took notice that it would last for awhile and then it would taper off. At the end when he walked out, when I pointed out to him I did the things he asked, and his response was, it should have continued. “Just do it” It was then I pointed out to him he too should have just done it. I shouldn’t of had to spend many nights alone while he was off with his buddies, I shouldn’t of had to sleep alone for a majority of the nights in our marriage. And I damn sure should not have felt like I was alone while my mother was dying and 1500 miles away and worrying about her and made to feel something like was wrong with me. I should not have had to ASK to be held by him while I am tried to hold it all together so no one sees me hurting. I refused to ask, I had asked for so many years, I got tired of asking. If we were sitting on the couch together on opposite sides and I wanted to snuggle, I just curled up beside him and put my head on his chest and wrapped his arm around me….I just did it. If he was in the kitchen or somewhere else in the house, I would just come up to him and wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him….I just did it. Not because I had to, not because it was an obligation because I was married to him. I just did it because…I loved him, respected him, in love with him and I wanted him to FEEL that through it all and after 13 years of marriage he still made my heart skip a beat, my eyes would still light up. That is what being in love is. It’s going through everything; good, bad and ugly and still feeling it.
This is where I have moved on. For some who read this it might not seem I have moved on because I am writing about it two years after the fact. The reason I write about it and even talk about it is because it might help someone else. I don’t even look at the years we were married as a waste. There were some awesome times, there were memories. That’s the past. Moving on is seeing the mistakes that were made in the marriage. If he had honestly been in love with me we would still be together. That’s not to say he’s wrong I am right or even vice versa.
I personally don’t believe that starting a new relationship or jumping into a relationship, when the two people can’t even fix the current marriages they are in is solving anything. New relationships don’t breed new people. It’s obvious him and I have a difference of opinion. I’ve said all I needed to say to both of them and more than what they wanted to hear. If they are happy together, good for them. I am happy as well.
Moving on is being happy and loving every moment of it.
One Woman's Logic 