Divorce Variables. What Factors Contribute to Divorce.

He paid his personal bills and gave me half of the house bills.  But he didn’t really pay for anything else, like going out together or groceries.  I felt more like I was responsible for taking care of both of us and as a result, I ended up in debt. I’m also not good at money management.  I like to shop.  I don’t know how to budget.

Plus we didn’t have the same goals.  Financially or otherwise.  He wanted to spend money, I wanted to pay off debt.  I wanted children and family, he wanted it to just be us.  As we talked reconciliation, we talked about him taking over the money management because he was actually good at it.  He also now makes more money than me.  Neat.  Regardless, I think if we had addressed this issue sooner and in a healthy manner, we may have been able to eliminate one of our biggest problems.

Work Stress and Obligations.

Uncommon work hours, such as a night shift, highly demanding careers, or a lot of travel, can cause problems in a marriage as you slowly lose touch with your spouse.  The X and I had worked together which is how we met.  Eventually, we both ended up in new jobs.  My new job started about a year into our relationship and I was given the opportunity to work from home.  He used to tell me to get a real job because I worked from home and that just wasn’t acceptable to him.  Even though my “fake job” still made more money than him.  I think he may have also had some jealousy that stemmed from this, as I continue to make more money while working at home and he had to work his ass off in a warehouse 40+ hours a week making less.

My new job also came with a lot of stress as I took on basically running my own business with minimal support or training.  Plus we do a majority of our business in the December – January months, while I enjoy a fairly lax schedule the rest of the year.  When duty calls during these months I have to jump in and help, sometimes working long hours.  However, it’s fairly short lived.  I understood a marriage to be one where we both supported each other and picked up the slack as life ebbed and flowed.  He didn’t.

Still, I always encouraged him to be better, to take a lower paying job with opportunity for advancement. It paid off. He’s now doing incredibly well at the same company I encouraged him to start with as a low-level employee. I’m super glad his new girlfriend gets to reap the rewards for all my hard work supporting him as long as I did.  #salty

Funny how life changes though.  He now makes more money and I have a new operations manager that has taken over most of the stress of my job.  If we both could have just hung on a little longer, maybe the story would be different.  During the final phases of our marriage, I asked to separate because I couldn’t go into my busiest season of the year also dealing with the fighting and marital stress.  So now The X likes to say I chose the job over him.

Maybe I did.  But we didn’t have the luxury for me to quit my job just because he didn’t like it.  Especially at my level in my career, a new position with comparable pay/benefits isn’t always easy to come by.  After the divorce, I had to turn down two different positions because being single now and supporting all the bills I can’t afford to take a pay cut.  Again, another example of how life can change in just a matter of time.  Instead of fighting for us, supporting me, choosing our marriage, he chose to take the out.

Illness.

Prolonged illness should not be even a consideration in a marriage.  Wedding vows say in sickness and in health.  However, I didn’t find that to be true in my marriage.  The first month of my new job was nuts.  I came in at a crazy time of year with minimal training and not knowing what in the hell I was doing.  I was incredibly stressed.  Stress can have horrible effects on the body.  The first time I got sick was that first season, I woke up vomiting and continued to the point of an ER visit for fluids and meds.

These vomiting episodes started to happen more frequently over the next couple of years. Somewhat unpredictable. They escalated to the point of nearly monthly.  There was no warning and nothing helped once it started.  I basically just had to ride it out.  It would start with severe nausea, chills, and vomiting.  Then it would escalate to severe, non-stop vomiting for sometimes up to 48 hours.  It was horrible and incredibly taxing on my system.  Doctors diagnosed me with cyclic vomiting syndrome and/or abdominal migraines.  Anytime an episode came on, The X was frustrated.  He told me to just stop.  He said it was in my head and maybe it was.

The next few years together, his anger over my illness became even worse.  I couldn’t count on him to care for me and the fact he was annoyed or angry with me just made me feel worse.  My mom or sisters would have to take care of me and take me to the urgent care.  He even left me at the hospital one time.  I had to take a cab home.  He wouldn’t listen to what I needed for my body, i.e. rest and medicine.

On a Vegas trip one time he wanted to go to the buffet, I wasn’t feeling well but went anyway because not going wasn’t an option.  An episode started and we were supposed to fly home that day.  He ended up leaving me in Vegas for a friend who lived locally to come and get me.  He didn’t change my flight costing me money.  He then pressured me to fly home the next day when I wasn’t up for it yet.  Again because I didn’t rest when needed, then had another episode upon returning home.

I also had an episode leading up to the wedding.  I was sick two days before the wedding and heavily medicated most of the wedding weekend.  I feel so bad for all of this.  I wish that I could change it.  I wish I wasn’t sick during that time.  However, since we separated, I haven’t had another episode.  I always wonder if things would be different if I hadn’t been sick.  I also wonder if maybe he was part of the problem.

Stress and anxiety can cause severe medical issues.  Someone who pledges to love you forever in sickness and in health shouldn’t get angry when the sickness happens.  I began to worry if I would ever be able to have a family if I couldn’t get my illness under control.  I worried if I  became pregnant and had morning sickness he would react the same way.  What if our children became sick, or a parent fell ill.  I stressed that what if in ten years I developed cancer, he couldn’t handle it and reacted the same way.  Would he just leave then?  My illness and his reactions to it are one of the main reasons I decided I couldn’t continue to build a future with him.

Addiction.

When anyone suffers from a disease of any kind is never easy on a marriage.  It tests your devotion in so many ways.  Addiction is a disease.  I was smoking marijuana when I met The X.  He didn’t smoke when we met.  However, over the next few years, we both smoked, more than we probably should have. I always wanted to quit but I couldn’t ever seem to actually stop. Maybe I was self-medicating.

I didn’t think it affected me.  I thought I could maintain it, maybe even that I needed it.  When we separated I stopped smoking.   It introverted me into a position of feeling paranoid, depressed, way too thoughtful.  I found it gave me horrible anxiety and with the crushing devastation of divorce I didn’t need self-induced anxiety as well.   I started to wonder if maybe it always did and this was the problem.  So I quit.

I also feel more motivated, clear-headed, and less emotional.  I still smoke on occasion (it’s legal in Oregon) but not like I did before.  Honestly, even when I do now it puts me back into the same mindset of the past.  So I just made the choice to let it go. I just didn’t need or want it anymore.

The X still smokes, or at least the last time I saw him he did.  I don’t know how it affects him or if he may be changed like I am if he quit.  Ultimately it doesn’t matter anymore.

Depression.

Depression, like a disease, can place a dreadful strain on a marriage, especially if it hasn’t been clinically diagnosed. Often characterized by extreme mood swings and a severe detachment from life and the people around them, a person may seem like themselves one moment and then suddenly swing into full-blown depression in the next. People who are depressed often don’t seek treatment, and their spouse silently puts up with the problem, growing more distant or resentful every day. Depression doesn’t need to lead to divorce.  But it can contribute.

I believe that The X may suffer from undiagnosed depression.  He also has anger management problems and childhood issues that have never been dealt with.  His depression and unhappiness caused me to be stressed, depressed, and unhappy myself.  I never felt like anything I did was good enough.  He was never happy.  Like really happy.  Nothing I did make any difference.  He says he never wanted me to feel like I needed to be perfect but I felt like he did.  The house was never clean enough, dinner never good enough, my job wasn’t appropriate, my family was too much, my friends took up too much my time.  I was just too much for him.

I have suffered from anxiety and depression on and off over the last 10+ years of my life.  But I have seen a doctor and I work to maintain it.  Following our separation and failed reconciliation attempts, I found myself in a severe depressive episode.  So I sought help with therapy and medical care.  I wanted to take the appropriate steps to get healthy and to maintain control over my mental health.  I wanted to eliminate the imprint I left on friends and family.  I had told The X one time that I felt he would continue to have relationship issues until he dealt with some of these things.  I do believe that.  However, he’s in a relationship and I’m not.  So who fucking knows, maybe I’m wrong.  Or maybe she just deals with it better than I do.

Unrealistic expectations and a lack of communication.

We didn’t have problems before the marriage.  Well maybe we did but it’s not always easy to see through those rose colored glasses.  The majority of our problems did begin to happen after the wedding.  I’m still not sure why.  I guess I figured since we would be together forever so I needed to focus on what’s next.  I wanted to start a business, get healthy, have children.  I have no idea what he wanted.  The reason I don’t know?  A lack of communication.  I don’t really even know what his expectations for marriage were because we never really talked about it.

Infidelity.

Infidelity can occur in many ways, it doesn’t always have to be the physical act of sex.  It usually starts with emotional support, but it can morph into anything.  I met a man we will call beast mode from here on out. I’d shorten it to beast but that makes it sound like he’s hideous.  He’s not.  That’s part of the problem, he’s very easy on the eyes.  He was a coworker, my bosses’ shop, and operations manager.  As you know I work from home, limited contact with other people. When I first started my new job, I was basically a one-woman show, who had no idea what she was doing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t just run to him.  It started slowly.  I don’t like to call it an affair but that’s what it was.  Emotional or otherwise, I’m not sure it matters.  A female friend of mine who’s husband cheated told me recently that it wasn’t the sex that hurt her, it was the emotional side of it.  Her ex felt she was not able to support him emotionally.  I thought the same of my ex and I imagine the same.  He couldn’t forgive me because the emotional stuff is sometimes worse than just a one-time sex act.  The X offered little to no support regarding work.  I wanted and needed to talk about it.  He couldn’t have cared less and he verbalized that.  Repeatedly.

So I started to talk to beast mode.  I relied on him for shop tasks I didn’t know how to do, a friendly ear when my boss pissed me off, work advice.  He made me feel like he cared about what I had to say.  He helped when I was overwhelmed or incredibly stressed, taking work off my plate.  We talked a lot and we talked mainly about work.  But eventually, it did morph into talking about our spouses (side note – both of us are now divorced).  We talked relationships, supported one another during our busy season when we fell off the earth and our spouses hated us.  I considered him one of my best friend.  I valued his opinion and needed the support in my position. He offered me something I was lacking in my marriage, emotional support.  The X asked me to stop talking to him and being friends with him.  I eventually did but much too late as the damage was already done to my marriage.

Abuse.

Physical or emotional abuse is a sad reality for some couples. It doesn’t always stem from the abuser being a “bad” person, but deep emotional issues are usually to blame.  I didn’t realize the state of our marriage or recognize what was happening as abuse until after I started therapy.  But what was happening was not okay.  I blame myself too.  I didn’t stand up for myself soon enough.  I made excuses for him.  I would say he doesn’t travel well.  He’s having a hard week.  He had a rough childhood.