Throughout the early years of our marriage we had the usual issues of adjusting to married life and each other. He had completed school and began working. He was in the electronics field. Unfortunately timing for that was ill planned. He worked at several places but was getting laid off often as many consumer electronics were becoming cheaper to throw away and simply replace than repair.
It was not easy to have a spouse who had a hard time getting and keeping a steady job. But we made do. It was hardest after we purchased our home and he would be out of work. I would get extremely stressed. He just didn’t put a lot of effort into looking for work. He would spend a great deal of time drinking with a friend who was also out of work. Besides the drinking there was drug use. It came to a head one day when I came home with some little children I was watching for a relative. I had warned the guys not to bring drugs into my home, that I did not want any of the children I would take care of on occasion to ever associate those things with me, or worse yet, accidentally get their hands on them. But I digress, I came home with these nice little children and could smell marijuana. I took the kids to a safe place and then returned home and followed through with what I had told them would happen if drugs were in my house. I called the police.
They fled before the police arrived. I did notice the police sat at the end of the street and watched for them to return for several hours. It wasn’t until late that night that a friend of mine, the girlfriend of his drinking buddy called and told me my husband was in jail.
The guys had gone to meet another friend and kept drinking and doing who knows what other drugs… He was very drunk and almost hit a State trooper who was on the side of the freeway at the scene of an accident. Needlessly to say he was charged and convicted of a DWI.
I was fed up with the drinking and drug use. This is not how married couples lived. I was not a wife. I was a maid, laundress and chef, I was not a partner but more a parent. I was done. I gave him an ultimatum. Me or his buddy and the booze and drugs, but I was not going to live like that anymore.
He gave up the buddy and the vices, but he never let me forget it. I should have just left, no ultimatums, I should have just seen how very different we were and cut my losses then and there. But I thought I could make it work. I am stubborn and loyal. I do not like to lose, I like to think I can rise to any challenge. I still believe that, but what I didn’t fully understand back then is not everyone is like that. Some people just don’t have the same drive.
So we stayed married, less in love, more like a parent/child relationship. I craved a spouse who could be the man I needed him to be. But he just didn’t have it in him.
We weren’t completely miserable. But we were not happy either. Yes he gave up the drugs and alcohol. I was surprised at how easily he could give it up, but what I didn’t realize is he just swapped those issues and went deeper into another addiction. He went even deeper down the rabbit hole of porn.
More about that next time.
The destruction caused by porn and sex addiction 