I got married quite early to a man that wasn’t good for me. It was a marriage of convenience. I wanted kids and he wanted a beautiful, hard-working woman so we decided to get together and make it work somehow. Long story short, it didn’t turn out how I expected.
For some perspective on how emotionally isolated I was, I struggled with infertility for three years; I had to take tons of medications and shots that made me sick, tired, have hot flashes, body aches and migraines for those years; not to mention the emotional drain of every month without fail seeing a single pink line on that pregnancy test stick. The emotion of taking photos of your friend’s child’s first birthday. It was just a whole lot to bear.
I was very open with my struggles because I think it helped other people too. Somehow, my husband wasn’t even aware that this was a thing that I needed support in. He had no idea. He was clueless. He just was that thick and lost. He was a five year old trapped as an adult… lacking the ability to give support in that way or anyway.
When the kids came, he was actually more of a burden than a help. I spent most of my time walking on eggshells, trying to balance being exhausted from a high-demand job, making dinner and looking after the kids while my husband played games on his phone and mostly ignored them. I spent more time trying to keep them from upsetting him than anything else.
Now, I am not a “typical woman” if there even is such a thing. I have a career where I make enough money on my own to live comfortably. I know how to use power tools, fix my own car, change my tyre and google the shit out of anything that needs to be done. I’m not a super woman.. I’m just an independent woman. But my husband misinterpreted my strengths wrongly. My husband felt that I didn’t need him but he was wrong. I needed support. I needed a partner, a friend. I couldn’t manage everything on my own. He assumed that I was okay but I wasn’t okay. Sometimes Superwoman also needed to be rescued.
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Even though I was the primary breadwinner, I did most of the things around the house and raised my kids mostly on my own, I still spent 13 years in that worthless marriage.
When I finally asked him to leave, everything improved immediately. I could breathe again. I was free of so much dead weight. I was so, so happy to just not-have-him around. It was so much better, I never looked back and I was ok on my own. I was free. And I was happy.
I made the wrong choice and married my husband. It was a bad decision but I have come to realise that a single bad choice shouldn’t define you. Almost every person in this world has made bad choices and some managed to bounce back from them, yeah maybe others didn’t.
Know this and know peace, that no matter how bad your decision is, there will always be a way up or a way out. It’s either you accept the mess and decide to move on or you can sit down and let it ruin you.
My story is to encourage someone out there who feels stuck in an unhappy relationship. Look, you don’t have to remain in that ugly situation if it continues to rob you of your peace of mind. You have made a mistake but you don’t have to die in it. Don’t let one bad decision consume you.
