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 would shower me with 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. He told the world how proud he was of me, while behind closed doors he told me I was never enough. Our marriage didn’t start this way, but it ended nonetheless.
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. There is a special place in hell for some of his family who made it okay to walk away from children. He walked from his own daughter and we all fought that decision, but when it came to my kids it was always okay. The way he hurts them shows how badly his own parents hurt him when they divorced. Instead of being the person that stops the generational curse/abuse he echoed it onto my children who did nothing to deserve it. They called him dad, now he will never answer their calls.
The truth is I want the Disney fairy tale, I have defeated the fire breathing dragon, I have walked a million miles in the woods, I have conquered evil and fought for justice. So where is my prince? Why were we not enough to fight for or to fight beside? Why was it so easy to replace us? These are questions only he can answer. I know from the way he cut off communication that he is shutting down any vulnerability. I know from therapy that his ability to just cut people out and cut them off with no regret or remorse means he will never have a deep connection, which makes me wonder what was I? Was I just someone to cook and clean and raise our kids or was I his wife?
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, and there are moments when this hurts so badly that I believe I did give him everything because there is nothing left of me..
Just for reference, before this all came to this, I told him I wanted to start over. For him to come back and get an apartment and we date and spend time together, get the counseling we both needed, and then decide what we wanted to do. Instead, he refused to let me get to know him the way I needed to. He said he would sleep on the basement floor, but then he offered me an open marriage and medical insurance if I would stay. That is not someone who wants me to be his wife. If he loved me, if he had any respect for our marriage, he would have fought with me to save it and we rebuild in a way we both needed. For him, it was his way or no way. So the answer I gave was no. The first moment in 15 years I didn’t put his needs first and the hope of reconciliation disappeared. He didn’t fully shut down until I confronted the dating site and other women, that not only my beautiful readers found out about, but also the private investigator I hired. The minute I had proof, any characteristic of my hisband was gone, it was all business no emotion and then it was nothing at all.
He has someone new, I knew it wouldn’t take long because he is incapable of being alone. He cannot be happy alone, which psychology says he is not happy with himself and that will get poured out onto her eventually. Maybe she is the one who can soothe those childhood wounds and be a spouse to him that I couldn’t be. Maybe she will be the next survivor, maybe he destroys her too. The only thing I know is that I need to heal. Which is why I am telling you all this, I need to step away from the book world. Jon will carry all his damages, defaults, and issues into the next relationship, but I want to be healed and whole before I even think about being in one. I do not want to take the remnants of what we had and place them into something I have with someone else. I do not want to write a love story that would end like mine did because I am grieving the loss of my husband, my friend, and my marriage.
I apologize to those who I had made promises to for the next books. I am writing a new book in a sense by creating a whole new life. Unfortunately, some part of me will always hope that he comes home, but I don’t want to live a life where I dwell on the fact that he hasn’t. As angry and hurt as I am, I will still always have an open door for him and be someone he could call on, because that is who I am. I will write my own story, be my own person, a person he doesn’t deserve, but I will also forgive him and he will always have a place in my heart. Life will be hard with losing him, not writing, essentially grieving the life he promised me, but in the end, isn’t it hard for all of us anyway?
Please respect my decision and my time away. I do not know when or if I will come back, grief is not linear and I will have ups and downs for years to come not only from the loss of my husband, but because he was also my best friend. He was my everything and I was his nothing. I need to accept that I meant nothing to him, but that doesn’t mean I am nothing. Just because he couldn’t see us as something worth fighting for doesn’t mean I am not worth fighting for. His viewpoints do not show my value or worth because blind men cannot see anything they do not want to see.
I am so incredibly lucky to have found myself immersed in the book world and to havr created a network of friends out of fans, authors, and everyone else. You were the reason I wrote, and if its meant to be you will be the support that helps me find my way back. I am so incredibly sorry for any disappointment this causes, but I cannot put him in anymore of my books and to do that I need to heal.
Thank you for all the love and support!
Author Elizabeth York 