The Demise of a Marriage

I married for the first time when I was 20 years old. I had stars in my eyes and even though, our courtship had been rough I believed that love and the strength of a good woman could make any marriage work. To be fair, there were times in our marriage that we were happy and we were friends, but there were other times that he would get upset because my mom called or because I hadn't cleaned the house just as he liked. He would get mad and say ugly things to me. But out of naivety, I thought it would get better. After the birth of our son, we went for counseling. A few sessions and some promises from ex and the councilor told us there was nothing more he could do and that we would be fine. We weren't fine! We continued to argue and the verbal abuse continued. Because we were good friends and because we had some sense of happiness, we decided to have our second child.

Our daughter was born in to a happy and loving home. However, something changed after her birth. Suddenly, the ex became very distant. He no longer wanted to spend time with me or our children. He was very unhappy and was rarely home. His job was in the entertainment field and there were always "work" related events for him to attend in clubs and bars until very early morning hours. He stopped coming home some nights. I began finding strange messages on his phone and catching him in lies. I suspected that he was having an affair, but he denied it. He was drinking heavily and admitted to having done drugs a few times. He also told me that I had never made him happy and that he wasn't sure if he had ever loved me. I tried not to let it effect me and I remained devoted to him.

Finally, when our daughter was a year and a half old ex was fired from a job for sexual harassment and having a relationship with a female coworker. He finally admitted to me that this was his second affair and the the first one had gone on for over a year.

After all of this, my first reaction was to try to work through the problems again and save the marriage, then I realized that there was no marriage to save. I no longer trusted him, believed him or even liked him. He wasn't the same person I had married. I filed for divorce three weeks later.

--The Short of It