We both worked multiple jobs part time and really struggled financially but at least we were out. Two months later, I lost the real love of my life- Eva, my dog. The devastation that I felt is hard to put into words, I felt utterly alone. The one thing he could understand at least for a while, was the loss of a pet. He was extremely supportive and we buried her next to the love of his life- Belle. I could not handle coming home to an empty home, it wasn’t long before I needed to have a dog. I wasn’t replacing Eva, but I needed that emotional connection that I wasn’t getting in my personal relationship. He made me feel so horrible about it, how could I replace her like that, how could I disrespect her like that, I’m not even decent enough to grieve over her. So I let that go for a while. Eventually, some really horrible things happened with our living situations and we needed to find a new house. I was working at an environmental center and the house on their property was empty. I wanted to talk to them so bad but he didn’t want me to, we could survive on our own, we didn’t need their support, how could we possibly afford that? Well I finally was tired of hearing that and I talked to the director. She said YES! and it was $475 a month which we could totally afford. He still wasn’t thrilled but we eventually moved in to a beautiful house on 150 acres of forest.
We moved in and the next day he said, guess we should get married. A week later, I was getting married in my kitchen with only two witnesses and a cake from Meijer. The only reason I had a dress was because a lady at my second job found out and bought me one that night. I had just sold my soul to the devil without even a second thought.
We lived there for 3 years. He got a job on 3rd shift as a quality tech and I was a lab tech on 1st shift. We were finally financially stable! we had an awesome house, good jobs, two kind of functioning cars. Life was finally going our way. I finally convinced him to let me get a dog. It was going to be our dog, we were going to be married in a beautiful house with our own cute dog, I was so happy! I searched for a long time for a dog, and convinced the center’s board to let me get a mastiff. We brought it home and she tried to kill all of our cats so we had to take her back. This time I let him pick, he picked an old little gremlin looking dog and an all American mutt who were kennel mates. He’s always been good picking out dogs. He could read dogs and people like a book. They are awesome dogs, we couldn’t have picked better. I had in my head, me and him walking through the woods with our dogs holding hands talking about our day. I blame the internet and my own naive imagination. In the 3 years we lived there, he walked with me a handful of times. Most of the time it was because I guilted him into it and he would be mad the whole time.
You see, he had insomnia and he was on 3rd shift. All that rage and depression stormed back into our lives like a nightmare. He shut down again and the one thing I thought was my joy was the outside. Which I never saw. We went to bed an hour after I got home from work and I would get up at 2am. I lived my life in the dark away from anyone in the middle of the woods. But he was tired, he couldn’t sleep, he hated his job, he didn’t get to spend time with me. All this was just more excuses for misery and anger. I fell for them again! I tried to leave multiple times but I was always sucked back in by lies. I had no friends, no life, and an angry husband that never thought he was doing any damage by making me take up his schedule, we’re married, we should suffer together. People would tell us that I was a saint by doing this (or crazy) and he would just tell me that that’s what love is. Those dogs weren’t our dogs anymore, they were mine because he didn’t think they loved him. He would complain about them all the time, we never should have gotten them, you had to be inpatient, now we’ll never be able to go on vacation because of them (not that we ever did before). He still brought up the first time that I broke up with him and told me that he could never trust me because of it. He never forgot anything- when he was mad, he would use everything that ever happened against me and then tell me later not to take it personally, he was just tired and angry. I tried everything to help him sleep or help the anger, different diets, essential oils, noise machines, blacking out the room, asking him to work out. Big mistake- he assumed I asked him to work out because he was overweight and I wasn’t attracted to him. Still brings that up too.
I was so alone again, so I decided to bring home two more senior dogs from work thinking that would help at least me. I was dealing with an extremely controlling boss who was extremely manipulative. The people I did like at work, my husband would tell me how weak they were or that they were just nice to me because I was a woman. But he was still verbally supportive, he would tell me that I was awesome, and that I was so smart and that we would always move with my job because it was the priority. It was never the priority though, if I had to stay 15 minutes late, I was cheating on him. If I was stressed about work then I needed to chill out because he could support me. Eventually my boss yelled at the wrong person and a complaint was filed. I had to talk to HR multiple times and the whole time my husband was ‘training’ me to fight this battle. He taught me to be manipulative, be secretive, evil almost. This is when I truly realized who he was. I had seen him do it to other people but I had never had him talk through it. I would ask him to explain how he would do it just to see how far he would go. He was getting more comfortable showing his true self and more comfortable that he had me completely controlled.
….Read more on part 3
The Tired Wife 