Today it's been six months since I asked my husband to leave. What have I learned in six months? That I wonder what we did with all our money. In the last six months I've made some major and minor improvements in my house, paid tuition for a graduate course, helped my kids with some tuition and college living expenses paid the bills, paid a little extra on a debt I want to get rid of, and still managed to save money. On one income. Go figure.
I have learned how great my friends are. Woman friends and their husbands. Turns out their husbands have been so frustrated with how I've been treated over the years, and how the husband didn't take care of things around our house, that they've been itching to get their hands on a few projects. I am grateful and humbled. I have never experienced such caring from a man, and am sometimes overwhelmed at their generosity. I've always known that "acts of service" was my love language, and it has been spoken loudly over the last six months.
On the other hand, I have experienced a different kind of loneliness. I never really had a partner in the marriage enterprise, but this is different. Being so completely alone. Alone in parenting--to a different degree. Not even anyone to bounce ideas or frustrations off of. Parenting is different. He was not a very involved parent before, and much of the reason I asked him to leave was because of how he treated the kids. Now the struggles are different, because the kids are so emotionally dependent on me. In some ways, it's like having younger children again. I truly do not know the best way to parent my youngest right now. She is the epitome of the glass half empty. A part of me wants to give her the proverbial kick in the butt and say, "enough already," and yet I know that she would be devastated if such words were to come from me. On the other hand, I know that if she continues to wallow in self-pity, she will only become more lonely and alienated from others. Such a hard call.
I miss the idea of good sex. It wasn't very good or very frequent for quite a while, but I miss the idea of having a loving sexual marriage.
I struggle with always being "on." I feel like I have shadows attached to me at the hip in my kids. And yet, when I take space for myself, they seem unable to focus on anything but watching tv or netflix. Yuck. I need to teach them to be involved in caring for our household, so that they know they are important to the functioning of our family. At the same time, I feel like I don't have time. Such a Catch-22.
Would I do it again? Definitely. Overall, the house is so much more peaceful and positive. I am overall so much more peaceful and positive. My children know they are loved deeply by me. I have to hope that time and maturity will help them heal from having their security, no matter how damaged it was, ripped from them.
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