It's A Business Deal

So, I think we have established that Mister Wonderful is not Mister Forever, right?  Good.

The thing is, for 19 years I tried so so hard to make everything ok, or at least acceptable or moderately healthy.  As the years progressed I became more and more frustrated and the feeling of being trapped, of somehow missing out on having a good/happy/fulfilling life grew more and more intolerable.  For some reason, I was convinced that this was the bed I made for myself and I was forever doomed to lay in it.  Also over those years, I began to believe the things I was being told, basically that any and all problems from our relationship (or lack thereof) to finances were all my fault somehow.

So I would try harder and harder to make things better.

Then a few years ago I realized not only was I not doing anything wrong, but that I didn't have to stay in this life forever.  We separated.  I was very happy with the freedom I discovered for the first time in my life.  It was amazing.  The whole mood of our household was so light, so happy.  Nobody yelling or calling anyone names.  For the first time ever, we had a real home, a happy home, a home the girls and I enjoyed coming home to.

It was during this time that I met The Real Deal. Purely by accident.

He treated me like the sun rose and set when I woke and slept.  He treated my kids like they were the most amazing creatures in the universe.  He listened to them, he helped them, he loved them.  And they loved him back.  This amazing new life lasted for one year.  The Real Deal lost his job.  We struggled through trying to find work for him, he had no shame, he would take any and all jobs he could find.  But this was during the worst of the unemployment problems, and it was incredibly hard.  He couldn't pay his share of the bills.  He couldn't pay for his truck, and lost it.  I don't make that much money and got to where I couldn't help anymore, and I was struggling just to keep my home.  The Real Deal decided the best thing he could do was go wherever he had to in order to try and get his life together.  He couldn't stand that he couldn't take care of us, even though I didn't expect him to.  He was at rock bottom.

It was about this time that Mister Wonderful called me, saying that his current girlfriend had slept with his best friend and he couldn't stand to live with said best friend any longer and wanted to come home.  He said he would live there as a roommate, live in the converted garage if he had to.  Said that he had no interest in getting back together with me as a couple, just needed to stay at the house until he could get his sh*t together and figure out what he was going to do with himself.  Since he's been home, I have found out, by his own admittance, that he cheated on me years ago, back when I was crying myself to sleep trying to figure out how to make him happy, how to make our family anything close to happy.

So that is where we're at.  It's a business deal.  Oh, Mister Wonderful realized how truly disconnected I was, once he moved back in, and got a little crazy for awhile, actually trying outrageous things to attempt to secure our marriage as a lasting bond again, things like being thoughtful, sometimes even romantic.....but of course none of that ever lasted more than a few days, minutes sometimes.  So here we sit, me trying to get my financial life in order, so I can make it on my own.  Both of us sitting on the house in hopes that the market will turn so we can sell it.  Him being his spoiled self sometimes and being a real as*hole, and me walking away from it.  Waiting to get our youngest daughter out of high school.  Waiting for, idk.....something.

I think alot of marriages are like this.  Roommates.  Parents.  Friends.  Enemies, at times.  I think sometimes it's more of a habit, a need for the familiar, than it really is a romance.  We love each other, in our way, I know.  But not in the way that makes your heart smile when they walk in the room, or when you see them interact with your child, not in that way.  Not in the way that makes your heart beat faster when you think of them during the day.  Not in the way that makes you dream of the future together.
 

It's a business deal.