You ever come to a fork in the road where you either had to go left or right? You had no map, no compass, and no signs to tell you which way is the way back to civilization? I recently found myself at those same crossroads.
Did I make the right decision?
Did I go the right way?
At first I didn’t think so, but as time unfolded the road before me I realized it was the only way to go. I am not going to start at the beginning, to tell you the story of how a love so pure could go so incredibly wrong. I will tell you that in my marriage I lost myself.
I accepted the disrespect, cheating, the angry outbursts, and the callousness he should shine on you when things weren’t going his way. He would sing my praises and tell me how I could do anything and be anything and then he would tell me I wasn’t allowed to make decisions and that what I wanted would always take a backseat to his wants and needs. I would try to leave arguments and he would chase me through the house trying to get the final word in.
Don’t get it twisted when he loved me there was nothing more incredible than that feeling of being his, being what he wanted, being with someone I saw as my best friend. That feeling of being treasured got me from every decline just so I could feel it again at the top of the cliff before we would fall again. He was funny and charismatic, but he was also a showman and a manipulator. Being with him made my life a long term episode of whiplash. To be adored and then told you are nothing… I already had complex PTSD and he fed off that. He fed off the triggers while being my hero and my loving husband to everyone else.
The worst part of it is what he did to the kids. To be in their lives, raise them, adopt them, and then leave them. To act like a parent when present, but to ignore them when gone. There is a special place in hell for him for what he did to our children.
I may have lost myself in this relationship, but on the outside of it I am good. I am happy, no one is telling me that what I want doesn’t matter, no one is lying and cheating on me. I was built to be a military spouse and I did my job well, but I was not built to be taken for granted, to be taken advantage of, and to be a back up plan when the affairs didn’t work out. I would have given him everything I had, but thankfully the gaslighting became so evident that I walked away before there was nothing left of me.
Author Elizabeth York 