Marriage Fail
The 30s started off being quite a wild ride. In the few months leading up to my 30th birthday, I panicked. Here I was, approaching the dreaded 3-0, and I was still single, still alone, with no prospects on the horizon. For some reason, I believed I needed to have a family to be complete, or at the very least so I wouldn’t be a complete and total loser. Well, I do know the reason why now. It was partly because my mother was a little competitive with her sister. Her oldest daughter got married and was starting a family. I found out my mother was writing her telling her I had a boyfriend, when I didn’t. I think this gave me the signal that I needed to get married soon. Not that I’m totally blaming her for this though. I know I was completely to blame for this behaviour.
I created a new profile on a free dating website and that’s where I met him. In all honesty, I really wasn’t that drawn to him. My reason for getting together with him was simple: I was terrified of turning 30 and didn’t think I could do better than this.
In my history, I’m sure you have already read that I have had confidence issues over the years since I was bullied. So the belief that I couldn’t do any better than this even if I tried was ringing through my ears.
I ignored all the warning signs that my gut was trying to tell me. He wasn’t right for me, that much was a fact. But I didn’t want to be single — or rather I didn’t want to be a “loser” anymore. After only a couple of encounters which were rather awkward, we were already talking about moving in together and then marriage.
He did give off quite a lot of warning signs that he wasn’t right for me. First of all, I found out he was living with some girl while he was talking to me online. He had previously mentioned that he was sent to work in California as apparently they couldn’t find any warehouse workers there. The truth came out about a month later. While I was shaken, and this indeed did make me wonder what else would he lie about, I ignored it. Why? Because he chose me over her.
We moved in together only a couple months after we met, and had really only met each other a couple of times. While living together, I noticed that he was also inclined to take fairly expensive items from his work place and turn around and sell them for money. It’s like he had no conscience. What was worse was the fact that his mother would buy the stuff from him nine times out of 10, which only served to enable this behaviour.
Now, I have never been a religious person in my life, but he used to go to church all the time. Growing up in Alberta, I came to realize that a lot of the church-going boys were hoodlums of some sort, stealing things or a large amount of drug and/or alcohol users. I was raised with the superhero code of ethics about what is right and what is wrong. Good guys don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t cross the line. This fact did grab my attention and make me wonder, “What else does he think he can get away with?”
I wish I had heard Barbara Walters talk on Oprah before I got married. I remember she said the one piece of advice she would give to every woman is, “If you are intending to get married, and you have a heavy heart - don’t get married.” In the week leading up to our marriage, I had a very heavy heart. But again, I ignored it, thinking that it was the old-fashioned cold feet.
We were married on June 16, 2006. Immediately after, we went on our honeymoon to Florida. The next year and a half would see quite a roller-coaster of events. We always had money problems. He always saw his money as “his money”, while all my money went towards keeping us a-float, paying the bills, food, and incrementally more and more towards rent. He wound up maxing out my credit card in a matter of a couple of months together, some of which I will agree was my fault, but most was wedding and honeymoon expenses. He kept promising me he would pay me back, but he never did.
He paid a couple hundred dollars in total towards my credit card, and that was only after I bugged him to do it. Then, when I thought my credit card was finally starting to go down, suddenly it was maxed out again, mysteriously. My statements indicated that on three occasions money was withdrawn from my credit card, which I knew wasn’t me as I had no intention of using the blasted thing until it was completely paid off. I asked him if he knew anything about this, but he denied any knowledge. Then I thought I was a victim of identity theft. I called my credit card and told them this. They froze all my bank accounts for a couple of weeks while they investigated this. A month later, I noticed the charges came back on my card, so I called the credit card company and they referred me to some security office to call. They asked me to describe my husband, and, long story short, it turned out that the money had been taken off my credit card by “someone I know”, and since it was someone I knew, I was still liable to pay for it.
I confronted him about this and he told me he “didn’t remember doing it”. Then told me he had problems when he was a kid and had to be medicated for it. Then he promised me we’d get counseling, as obviously our relationship was not a good one. I never heard about this again. And once again, I ignored my instinct and just let it go — but I never forgot about it. How can you trust someone after they did something like that to you?
I really should have ended it right then and there, but again, fear was keeping me with him. I was afraid of being single for some stupid reason. The chaos of our relationship kept continuing, plagued with financial problems. Throughout our brief relationship, we moved five times within two years, which is really quite daunting. The final move was from Edmonton to Burnaby, BC. I sold my car to pay for the moving expenses and we hit the road. We had to have a talk about things. I needed to feel more financially secure. We moved to BC with the idea that we could start over again. It was kind of a last straw move. He promised things would be different, and again, I believed him.
As soon as we moved out here, he was like a kid on vacation. He bought 12 metal cars in two weeks. Neither of us had a job, nor did we actually get any groceries (we ate out a lot in the first month). My bank was calling me daily several times wanting to know where their money was and when they would see a payment, but I was “not home” because I didn’t know how to tell them my husband was a selfish prick! Besides, call me old-fashioned, but I always believed if you owed someone money you’d pay them back before you bought new stuff.
As soon as I found a part-time job, I had an a-ha moment. We were half a month behind on rent because of his spending habits and our landlord was so nice to accommodate us. But they told me as soon as I got a job, it would go back to the first of the month, because, well, they have to pay their bills, too. So when I started working, our rent would be due on the 15th and then again on the 1st of the month. So, knowing this was happening, I tried to tell him “This means we really need to be more careful with our money for the next little while...”
He immediately said “Oh, I’m still planning on buying a laptop at the end of the month.” This was the source of a constant battle the two of us had together. He always needed to have one of three items: a laptop, an Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3. He would bug me and bug me about getting item #1, then eventually buy it anyway, whether I liked it or not. After using it for a month (if that), he would turn around and try to sell it on some used site, to make not much of a profit, if any at all. Then he’d go on to item #2, and repeat the cycle. It was quite frustrating, especially knowing how much money he owed me.
This would normally set me off through the roof and I nearly reached it when he made that statement. However, this time, as I was approaching the roof, I sort of stepped outside myself for a moment. I asked myself, “Look at what you’ve become as a result of this. You’ve become a nag! He obviosly doesn’t get it. Do you really want to continue to have this same argument over and over again for the rest of your life?” The answer was no.
So with that, my marriage came to a halt. I filed for bankruptcy in order to get my finances back on track and began working full-time at my job. Suddenly, my stress level went way down and I could breathe again. I realized that I deserved to be treated better than that, and more importantly, I don’t need a man to be happy. I don’t need to have the husband, the kids, the white picket fence. I was truly happier being single, and I managed my money a lot better than I ever did when I was with him, which also made me realize how much I was contributing to his habits. I also started taking an online eCounselling program my work offered at the time, and made quite amazing discoveries about myself and healed a lot from my experiences. I realized that I was paralelling the relationship my parents had with each other. Our initials were even the same as my parents’ initials, M & D. My divorce was final on September 15th, 2009 and nothing could have made me happier. In fact, I called that “Mell’s Freedom Day”.