Apparently it has been nearly a year since I sat down here to write. It isn't that I haven't had anything to write about, goodness knows, but more that I've been dealing with life in general to the point of not even thinking about sitting down. This means that you (whomever is reading this) get a recap blog before I even actually write about what drove me to sit here right now in the first place! Yay! Right? *listens to crickets* Well, anyway, moving on!
Let's jump right in this with the major change in my life: I am no longer married. For any reading who already know the whole story, sorry because you know I'm going to recap it all right here anyway. Just bear with me and go get a cookie or something.
We moved to Ohio at the very beginning of 2009 because my husband wanted to come out here in order to work with a friend of his. The job offer was pretty amazing and my husband really wanted to go (to the point of saying he was going with or without us) and so off we went even though I had reservations about moving to Ohio, the weather and the fact that I didn't know anyone within a 2,000 mile radius. Once we moved here, things seemed to happen pretty fast. We got in with a group of friends. One of the guys turned out to be a total asshole who molested me at a party, and many of the other people in the group backed him up as being "a really good guy" even though they pretty much all admit to knowing that he frequently does things of this nature. A small handful of people remained friends with us after that particular falling out and we had a pretty good, solid, core group of people that came over a lot and that we enjoyed hanging out with.
During all that, my husband had started seeing someone (we had been poly since the beginning of our relationship, for those who don't know, so it's not like it's that strange). I had always had the rule that friends with benefits were fine, but girlfriends/boyfriends (read: people that have an emotional commitment that could conflict with our relationship) were right out. This girl that my husband was seeing was nice. We got on well. When she broke up with her boyfriend (whom I disapproved of anyway) and needed a place to stay for a while, I didn't even mind offering her our couch. That was in September of 2009. By November of 2009 I had to have a talk with my husband about the fact that our Queen-sized bed wasn't comfortable for 3 not-small-sized adults to share. There were quite a few nights that I ended up on the couch because of this. Understandably, this bothered me, but I attempted to deal with it as best as I could. By December I was beginning to get over my feelings of intrusion at her presence and like having someone around that I could hang with and talk to. I even started going out to the club with her occasionally. I got a bit frustrated when I wanted to go and she and my husband decided that staying in and having sex was better. I was running out of stuff to watch on television.
January 5th of 2010 I went to the club with the girl who was still living with us. I hung out with the people there, who were fun to talk to. One guy in particular seemed to be hitting on me. When I proposed everyone adjourning to my place for after-club hanging, the boy I thought was flirting with me was the only one to opt to come along. Turns out he was hitting on me, and the evening ended with us... well, you get the idea. This made everything a lot easier. I no longer had to deal so much with the feelings of being left out when my husband and his... (I did not want to acknowledge she was his girlfriend. Did. Not.) girl-friend-person, were off doing things together. I was settling into life in Ohio. Snow wasn't nearly as horrific as I had remembered (especially since I mostly stayed inside when it was snowing). The kids seemed to be adjusting well (they actually like snow... crazy), we had a great group of friends (even if it wasn't extremely large, it was full of good people) and all seemed to be going well.
Despite my original feelings on boyfriends/girlfriends, I was finding my view shifting. I was realizing, whether I wanted to or not, that the girl who was living with us was my husband's girlfriend and I really just needed to admit it. I also found that I really liked the boy I was seeing. So, at the beginning of February I discussed with my husband finally giving in to the thing which he had wanted since we got together - for us to actually be polyamorous rather than just swingers and to be allowed to have girlfriends/boyfriends. After coming to grips with this, our life seemed like it couldn't get more perfect. We even worked out a schedule so that everyone got time with everyone else and no one had to squeeze into the bed that was too small to hold more than two of us at a time. The girlfriend and boyfriend actually ended up getting an apartment together as roommates at the beginning of March, which meant that the girlfriend was no longer living at our house and I could be alone in the house for the first time since September! 6 months of living with someone in which we were both pretty much constantly home was a bit wearing.
All of this was overlapped from about the end of January on with my husband receiving increasingly desperate and pushy calls from his family on his mother's side. It seemed that his mother had fibromyalgia, which was preventing her from working and she was about to lose her house. My husband was told by his family that it was his responsibility to take care of her and his younger half-brother. We really didn't have the money to be constantly making her payments for her in addition to paying for his younger brother to go to a private school and many other expenses besides, nor did we have the space in our two-bedroom apartment to house another adult and child, not to mention the fact that I didn't think I could handle being trapped in a house with his mom - neither of us working - 24/7. She had never really shown any approval towards me in the slightest in the entire time we had been married. She also was violently opposed to us being polyamorous. With my husband's girlfriend still basically living with us when all this began, you can probably see why I thought moving her in with us would be catastrophic.
So, at the beginning of March - when his girlfriend moved out - my husband told me that he really did feel that he had to take care of his mother and that the only way he could see to do this would be for us to buy a house large enough for our family plus his mother and younger brother. So we began the hunt for the perfect house that would fit this need. We were mostly looking for places with a separate area or unit that could be more-or-less and apartment for his mother and younger brother. On Monday, March 15th we had a list of houses and we saw some of them with a realtor. We found one that was absolutely perfect. It had a basement that was more-or-less a two-bedroom apartment (without a kitchen), the master bedroom was huge and well away from the other bedrooms so that we could be loud in there without fear of waking anyone up and it had a deck that seemed built for a hottub (something my husband has always wanted). I was extremely excited.
We went home. My boyfriend came over and I told him all about the house that I was so excited about. My husband quickly became withdrawn and seemed upset, but wouldn't really talk to me about it. I figured he'd tell me when he was ready - as was his wont - and went to bed.
Tuesday morning I had a massive migraine (I get them relatively frequently), so I got up, got the elder child ready for school and then went back to bed while the younger child slept. I was shaken awake a little while later by my husband. He announced that he wanted a divorce, that he was breaking up with his girlfriend and moving back to California. I was in shock for most of that day. I asked if he wanted to try a trial separation. I asked if he wanted to go to marriage counseling (even though I am very leery of going to therapy of any kind). He said no, he just didn't want to be married to me any more. He claimed, at the time, that it was because I didn't do enough around the house. That was his reason for breaking up our family. That night I went and got ridiculously drunk. I asked his now-ex-girlfriend if she wanted to come and commiserate with me. She said no. I later found out that they had spent most of the evening together. The next day, Wednesday, was awkward and strange with us not really knowing how to interact. I spent most of the time he was home hiding in the bedroom, crying and not knowing what to say or do. Wednesday night I got to hear him and his supposedly-ex-girlfriend having sex on the couch. I got lividly angry and told him she wasn't welcome at the house anymore because I couldn't deal with the lying on top of everything else. He didn't understand how saying he was breaking up with her had anything to do with fucking her.
Since then, it's just been basically a laundry list of dates detailing the end of my marriage. My boyfriend started staying over pretty much all the time. My husband moved out about a week after he asked for a divorce, on the 22nd. He began living as a "roommate" with his ex-but-still-fucking-girlfriend in my boyfriend's place. We traded weekends of having the children with us. He was suppose to take them for Spring Break, but didn't because he didn't set up child care for them in advance. We signed dissolutionment papers June 2nd. My ex was also suppose to take the girls for the month of July, but opted out again for similar reasons to Spring Break. And on Thursday, July 15th 2010, we went to court. It took all of 10 minutes. I couldn't keep myself from crying at the end.
So, that's basically it. My ex says he's moving back to California within the month. I don't know what this is going to mean for me, for my girls. My boyfriend is still pretty much living with us. The girls adore him and his cat. The cat doesn't seem to feel the same way. I'm trying to think ahead to what I need to do now, how I need to adjust my life to being a single mom again. It's difficult. But, then again, what isn't in life?
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