I just realized that I started this blog a little over a year ago. It was early October, in fact. I am nearing my 100th post, which is why it didn’t seem like it could possibly have been a year yet. 100 posts in a year isn’t really very much, actually. That’s around 8 posts a month, or almost two a week. Not bad, I guess, but not prolific by any sense of the word.

However, I thought maybe you’d like to know a little more about me. I have no idea if you do, but I do know I enjoy reading other people’s blogs about the minutia of their lives and so I thought I’d share a little about me.

I’m 53 years old and I’ve been married three times. Divorced three times, too. You think I’d learn, right? Well, I’m sure why I’ve been married and divorced three times would be fodder for the therapist’s couch. Naturally, after I left my last marriage I’ve been mulling that one over a bit, in addition to mulling over whether or not I want to do that again. Or whether or not I even want a relationship again. I mean, relationships are a lot of work! And they involve conflict at some point, which I abhor beyond anything else. And in dissecting these relationships, you always go over in your mind — was it his fault, was it mine? More than likely it was a little of both. Sometimes, depending on the situation, it’s more one than the other, especially in the case of abuse. But depending on who you talk to, the husband or the wife, you will get a completely different story.

But since my exes aren’t here, and I attempt to be as objective as I can, but also understanding that I only have my own perspective and point of view of how things were, take it as you may.

I grew up wanting approval from men, because to me, approval equaled love. If they got mad or angry with me, this would upset me to no end, because I thought they would then leave me. I would pull inside myself, refusing to risk being hurt and rejected, and would become emotionally numb and unapproachable. I’ve thought about this a lot; it is hard for me to be vulnerable to anyone, especially men, and I feel most vulnerable when I’ve made a mistake and then they become angry with me. It is a vicious cycle, because the more I withdraw, the angrier they get, it creates emotional distance, yadda yadda.

Anyway I tell you all of this because it really shows how desperately I needed approval from men. I am sure this contributed to my difficulties with relationships.

I married my first husband when I was 22 and thought I knew everything. I was also in my last year of college, all my friends were engaged or married, and I was feeling left behind. Due to rejection by my peers in jr. high and high school, my biggest fear was remaining single, and that no one would want to marry me, and I would grow up to be a spinster old lady with 10 cats and would be an object of pity. Thus, I grasped the first man that came along that worshiped me and that I could manipulate into marrying me. Yes I said manipulate. No, I didn’t get pregnant to get him to marry me; that would have shamed the family and then they would have disowned me. I had to make everyone happy, remember? I found a guy who was nice enough but was dumb as a box of rocks and had a very overbearing mother. This made him very easy to manipulate, since his mother manipulated him all the time. In other words, he was (and still is) a weenie. A wimp. My friends and I now call him he “Ball-less Wonder” (referring to his loss of his man-card because he doesn’t “man up” and grow a pair.

KD and I were married for almost 10 years. We produced two children (I got pregnant “accidentally on purpose.”). He was basically just a large child who never had real jobs the entire time we were married. He was a narcisstic self-centered mama’s boy who got whatever he wanted because I enabled him. I thought that if I pleased him enough, let him do whatever he wanted, and I took the entire responsibility of our lives on my shoulders that he would love me. I worked full-time, raised our sons, made all the decisions in the family, and basically running our lives so he could run around and work out at the gym, work part-time, and go out and party with the boys (and it turns out, some girls, too) whenever he wanted. I figured that some day he’d wake up and realize what a wonderful, faithful, patient wife he had and come running home, ready to take on the responsibility of hearth and home. (I read way too many romance novels back then!).

Well, big surprise. It never happened. Finally I began to be suspicious that he was cheating on me, and went through his car one time, and found some notes from a woman. A few months after that, a card arrived in the mail, addressed to him with hearts all over it. By this time, my youngest child was 2 and my oldest was 7. I grimly ripped open the card — and subsequently had my heart ripped open, too. Of course, she did this on purpose, because she knew I’d open it and read it. She was trying to break us up. This should have been his first clue that she was a few beers short of a six-pack.

I confronted him; he denied, denied, denied. Of course the denials were lies, lies, lies. I kicked him out, he wouldn’t tell me where he was living, and yet insisted that he wasn’t living with her. Well, by then my eyes were opened and my mama didn’t raise no dummy. I wanted so desperately to believe him, and yet I knew that there was no way he wasn’t living with her. I found out where she was living, called her house and he answered… the evidence was all there.

Over the next year or so, we went back and forth. He moved back in for awhile, and I could always tell when he wasn’t seeing her anymore, because she would call our house 15 to 20 times a day (no exaggeration), she would come over to our apartment and bang on the door, crying that he was hers and I wasn’t good enough for him. We all shook our heads and said what a psycho she was.

Of course I could immediately tell when he started seeing her again. The lies, the evasive answers, and the fact that she stopped showing up at our door and stopped calling us. Finally, in August of 1990 I’d had enough. I filed for divorce and our divorce was final Feb. 1, 1991, just a couple months shy of our 10th anniversary. In June of 1991, he married her. He is still married to her, and completely miserable. She runs him with an iron fist. He doesn’t take a shit without asking her. This is how he earned the term “Ball-less Wonder.”

The saddest thing of all, is that my kids missed out on time with their dad because she would limit it. She would often tell my ex that she wished he’d never had kids when they married. They had one daughter of their own a few years after they were married. She’s 16 or 17 now. My kids were never part of their family. They were this annoyance that she begrudgingly allowed to come over for a few hours once a week. My kids lived 8 miles from their dad, and they rarely saw him.

When we divorced, I made sure the court papers gave him generous visitation rights. Just because their dad can’t keep his dick in his pants is no reason to keep them from him. I wanted them to have a relationship with him. In the papers, it stated that he could have the kinds every other weekend from Friday after school to Sunday evening, and the holidays and birthdays were split. I also told him that he was welcome to have them during the week if he wanted, all he had to do was clear it with me to make sure we didn’t have anything else planned.

He never had them every other weekend. They never were invited for holidays. Their dad only saw them them once a week, as dictated by The Wife. They went over to their house every Saturday from right after breakfast until right before dinner. It was usually a total of 8 hours. One time I asked them to take the kids for a couple of days during a school holiday, and they said sure, if I paid them. They wanted me to pay them (like a babysitter) for having his own kids. That is almost incomprehensible. I could go on and on and on, but suffice it to say, they never really had a dad.

I never once said a bad thing about their dad or his wife to my kids’s faces. They came to the conclusion all their own that 1) Their stepmother couldn’t stand them and 2) They couldn’t stand her. They also knew that their dad loved them but not enough to stand up to his Nazi. Errrr…wife. Heh. My mistake (eye roll).

But there is poetic justice in the world. He married her knowing she was a crazy bitch, and she is a crazy bitch to this day. And that machete she holds to his balls each and every day has to sting like a mother….

The best revenge, is living well.

Ta ta for now!