Marriage, Take 1

At the end of undergrad, I began dating a non-practicing Catholic - which was, of course, against my mom’s rules, but it had been so long since I cared about the no-drinking, no-dancing, no-cursing and no-Catholics rules. Six months in to the relationship, we had a fight and he called me a bitch. I was stunned - even though my parents were divorced, I had NEVER heard them name-call. But I thought, “I’ve invested 6 months of my life in to this! I have to tough it out.” So naive, so short-sided. But I had a list of things I wanted to do. Get my JD, get married, and have a baby by 25 were the top 3. Plus, I loved his son - a beautiful 3 year old when we met - and knew that I could “fix” this man.


You see, my boyfriend had never met his father, who abandoned his mom when she was pregnant. Most of the men in his family were alcoholics. So you see, I had a “project,” but knew that I could love him enough to cover over all of those things - his abandonment issues, his alcoholic family members, his unbelief in Jesus. I could fix all those things. Because by this time, I was a master fixer and over-acheiver - I had done college in 3 years and started law school at age 20. I couldn't even celebrate my first day of law school with a legal beer.


On December 23, 1999, when I was in my second year of law school, I got hit by a car on I-55. Two drunk drivers were involved - one of whom went to prison, because the wreck killed the woman who stopped to make sure I was ok. I was bedridden for 2 months and had to learn to walk again. Despite my doctors’ orders that I take a semester off of law school, I was determined to finish on time. Remember….the plan. Getting hit by a car on the interstate wasn’t in the plan.


By the end of our 4 year courtship, we had gotten so accustomed to knock-down-drag-out fights that I don’t think we actually knew how to resolve conflict. But because of the plan, I married him 4 years into the relationship, despite the voice of the Still, Small Squatter telling me it was not what He wanted. God was not at the center of that man’s life, and he would not respect if I decided to finally grow a pair, do some forgiving of the imperfect people in my past, and make God the center of my life again.

My best friend, the night before my wedding, whispered to me, “You know, you don’t have to do this.” I looked at her like she had 3 eyes. Of course I had to - the church was already decorated, and I had a man to fix and a plan to stick with. So I scoffed at her and told the Squatter to shut up - that I could love this man enough to make him respect God. That I could heal the wounds he carried from having never met his father, that I could be a good mom to his beautiful son. I could REFORM him!


But of course, that’s not what happened at all. Our fights were frequent and visceral. My husband wanted me to be his everything - and when we make our spouses our god, they will always disappoint. He was emotionally and verbally abusive - calling me names that my father would have shot him for, had he known, and constantly threatening divorce. Little did I know that pornography and pills were also regular parties to our marriage.


We got pregnant with our first son in the first year of our marriage, per the plan. By the time we got pregnant with our second, I knew we would not make it - but when the stick showed a positive sign, I knew I was stuck. No one knew how we were behind closed doors - like my mother, I was very good at keeping it all together in public.


After 10 years with him, I knew we needed help of the miraculous variety. I had decided to go back to church - solely because I felt I had a responsibility to my sons to expose them to it (and hoping that the "honor thy mother" bit would really take root). But I didn’t get much out of it - until it came time for the invitation. I watched from the balcony as people of every background and age would walk to the front of the church and literally kneel down, face to the floor, and pray. They were broken. I was broken. And all I could do was sit and bat back tears as I wondered how I was supposed to live the rest of my life in the mess I created.

After a year of asking God - begging Him - for a sign that my marriage was going to get better, a voice spoke to my head - the fact that it wasn’t getting better was my sign. We can sit and debate whose voice that was - the Still, Small Squatter’s, Satan’s or maybe just my own. We had one last fight on my way to work - during which when I wouldn’t respond to his hateful texts he threatened to put my Twilight memorabilia collection on the barbecue pit and light it up - my secretary and friend came to me in my office, tears in her own eyes, and said, “You know you don’t have to stay, right?”


It was what I needed to hear - that I didn’t have to continue to subject myself and my kids to chaos that was - unbeknownst to me - fueled by unresolved abandonment issues, porn, and anti-depressants that were popped like candy. In that moment, I decided showing my kids no marriage was better than showing them the one I was in, and I told my husband that if my boys ever talked to their wives the way he talked to me, I would have been a total failure as a mother.


I had told my husband that I would never, ever threaten divorce - if he heard me say I wanted one, he would know that was a point of no return. And for me, it was. I told him that he could stay in the house as long as he paid the bills and kept his hands off me. When he came home one night and decided he couldn’t keep the latter part of the deal, I kicked him out and changed the locks. It was all the confirmation I needed to be certain I was making the right decision.


Our divorce was super quick and relatively conflict-free. My husband started going to church, and never missed an opportunity to condemn me to hell for my sin of divorcing him. But I let this roll off of me. God and I made pretty quick peace over the sin of my divorce.

But I was in denial about the impact of the silent participants in our marriage - the pills and the porn that I didn’t actually discover until I packed up his things to get him out of our house. I remember finding an empty bottle of Xanax and then looking up his prescription records to discover he’d been popping them like M&M’s for years...I thought to myself, “that’s interesting,” but by that point I figured it was really just irrelevant. After all, what good did it do to know about pills and the porn after I’d stopped loving him? Since he was out of my life, I would never need to worry about that kind of thing.

I had no idea.