My Story...Part 1

Fact: Life throws you curveballs. Sometimes they’re fast, monstrous ones. Others just knock you slightly out of balance.

My curveball was fast, powerful and knocked me clean on my ass.

Here’s more of my story...

I had this wonderful marriage. We were a team. We made each other laugh. We had the kind of marriage that made other people envious. He was my best friend. We carved out this great life, things were going as planned. After an all-inclusive vacation to Costa Rica, we were throwing the birth control out, caution to the wind and trying to start our family.

It took longer than I thought it would to conceive. About 8 months...which in the grand scheme of things, really isn’t too long. We were thrilled when we found out. Even more thrilled when we found out it was a little boy. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my husband’s face. We assembled baby gear, decided on a name in early July. Then suddenly, things started to change.

It came on quick and strong. Suddenly, at 7 months pregnant, my husband was out at all hours of the night with a female coworker. Spending ENTIRE Saturdays with her. Just the two of them. He swore it was a friendship and I would never understand. He disregarded my pleas for him to come home and spend time with me, his pregnant wife. He was already traveling much of the time. He told me I only needed one day of his weekend. That was sufficient. You can imagine the hurt I felt. Though I continued to trust him that he wasn’t doing anything physically with this girl, it was more and more apparent that this friendship had grown into more of an emotional affair...which is more hurtful than anything else.

He refused to let me get to know her. Saying that I would make it awkward. After weeks of arguing, nights of me laying in bed crying, pregnant, miserable...I was fed up. He was clearly choosing another woman over me and it was unacceptable. He said he was doing nothing wrong. I was overreacting. Who was this guy?

I left for my parent’s house on Thursday in the middle of July. I couldn’t deal. I needed to get away. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. Lost 5 pounds from all the stress...which certainly couldn’t be good for my unborn son. I came back that weekend and that week, he mentioned he wanted a divorce. I was shattered. I was only months away from giving birth. Surely he wanted to be there for him. I pleaded him to go to counseling. To reconsider. Our marriage was worth saving.

To counseling we went. He suddenly started taking me down, telling me everything that was wrong with me. My job wasn’t good enough, I didn’t contribute enough financially, I needed to lose weight, I didn’t want to move overseas for his job (something we both agreed wouldn’t be best), I was too “responsible”, I didn’t have enough fun...and the list goes on. The counselor blamed me. Stating my jealousy of this other woman was driving him away. I needed to let him do what he pleased. So, I took her advice. I stopped getting (outwardly) angry. I didn’t say anything when he was gone all week, then left at 10AM on a Saturday morning and didn’t return until midnight. But clearly, I couldn’t live like this. And our friends saw what was happening too. We had a surprise co-ed baby shower in September. He was an hour late. Why? He was taking said friend to the airport. He missed most of our baby shower.

However, I was still convinced that this was somehow him acting out and being scared about being a dad. I’d heard all kinds of stories of first-time dads being scared of the life change that comes with having a child. I truly thought once our son arrived, he would see how much he loved him and wanted our family to be together forever.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story...