Woe is me. Each one of us could look on our lives and make this statement. So, why then, am I making this statement? I really don't have a "woe is me" outlook on life most of the time. But when I think about being a divorced mom of two teenage boys, I can't help but have a little pity on myself. Let me give you the background and you can decide if I am being overly dramatic or right on the money by having my "woe is me" attitude from time to time.
When I was 14, I met a guy that was three years my elder and after a few months of dating, I fell in love with him. Before I met him, I noted that all of my friends were experiencing their first boyfriends and first kisses and I was way behind on all of this. I prayed and wished for a boyfriend. Sometimes you have to be careful for what you wish for. This was not the guy I should have given my heart or my virginity to. My relationship with this guy was strained almost immediately after we became sexually active, like most relationships are when both parties are young and immature. When you have sex, your body releases a hormone called oxytocin, AKA "the cuddle hormone." Its purpose is to create a bond between the person you just gave yourself to. I had no idea this hormone even existed until later in life, when I became an adult, parent and nurse. But looking back, I can see the effect of this hormone on my relationship with this guy. You see, as a Christian, I believe that God created everything for a reason. I believe the reason He created this hormone was so that on your wedding night, when you gave yourself to your husband for the first time, you would create an everlasting bond with him that would last a life time. When I gave my V-card up to this particular guy, oxytocin was released and my heart was directly bound to him, and it was intertwined in a way that would take a very long time to untangle. We went through years and years of breaking up and me being hurt. He would tell me he loved me, which is exactly what I needed to hear, get what he wanted and then move on. My self-esteem was based solely on how he felt about me and how he treated me. If he was kind and nice and acted "lovingly" to me, I was on cloud nine. When he was done with me and left me for another, I was in a dank, dark place that eventually left me feeling sad, angry and at times, suicidal. I know as you read this, you wonder why the hell my parents didn't step in and try and break us up. They did. Over and over and over again. My relationship with this man-child took its toll on my relationship with my parents, which, in my honest opinion, has effected my relationship with my mother to this day (but that is a whole other blog-don't get me wrong, she is a wonderful and loving mom, but my horrible choices led her to do some pretty crazy things). But that old saying "the heart wants what the heart wants," has some truth in it. Too bad my decision making was horrible and I didn't understand that what I wanted and what I needed were two very different things. This back and forth emotional ride with this man went on for years. We eventually broke up for a long period of time and I was able to experience other relationships, but was very guarded in those relationships and would eventually sabotage them.
After a very full and amazing year of college I came home for the summer and ended up at the same parties as "prince charming." We would hook up, but I think I did it more in rebellion than in thinking I still loved him. I wanted to use and abuse him. I wanted to let him still have feelings for me while I would just walk away when it was time to go back for fall semester. I wanted him to feel the hurt he had put on me once upon a time. The thing with doing things out of revenge is that it tends to bite you in the butt. You see, after he and I had hooked up all summer long and I went back to college I found out I was pregnant. I was devastated. I didn't want to end my college career, especially due to pregnancy and I didn't want to be an unwed mother. Another statistic. But that is what I was, whether I wanted it, or not. . When I found out I was prego, I called him to notify him. He was shocked but our decision was made to try and work things out for the baby. Just a few days later, I miscarried. Now, this next part people may totally disagree with. I really don't know if I agree with it or not but looking back, I wonder if God was giving me a hint that I had no business having any type of relationship with this guy. We were only coming together for the sake of the baby and the baby no longer existed inside of me so I could leave. By that time, that tumor that had developed so many years before, that had entangled itself around my heart, the tumor that I thought was dead, flared up and came back to life. I had developed feelings once again for this guy, which I could have gotten over but I felt like, through a sense of the values I had grown up with (which is funny because at this time in my life I had long left those values behind and so it's ironic that at this point I decided to pick them back up), I didn't want to be pregnant by a man and walk away like some slut, even though that is exactly what I was being in my eyes. A vengeful tramp. Someone trying to hurt someone else and using sex and emotion to get the job done. So instead of seeking counsel and getting any type of help, I made yet another bad choice; I would stick it out in hopes of avenging my stupidity.
Telling my parents was hard. I went to my dad first because I have always been closer to him and found it easier to talk to him. He was disappointed, and, if I had to guess, mad. He was going to be supportive though. My line, that I regret delivering to him was this, "you can either have a life that includes he and I, or one that includes neither." What a shit I was. Selfish. I put him in a horrible place and since I was an "adult," he couldn't really tell me that wasn't allowable. They put on a stiff upper lip and accepted him since I left them no alternative. They should have told me to kiss their asses after all the crap we had put them through previously. I would have deserved it and it probably would have caused me to rethink my decision. But, parents don't know what to do in that situation and they did what they thought was right.
I eventually moved in with him, which went against my parents Christian values (as did the sex I had with him as an early teenager). Another struggle between my parents and I. Within a few months I was pregnant again. No big shock there. During my entire pregnancy our relationship was turbulent. He would go out with his friends and come in at all hours drunk. He would accuse me of cheating on him or he would assume I had done things with other guys that I hadn't, whether said guy and I had dated or not. If a man even looked my way he would throw a fit. It really was hard and a horrible time. My next bad choice was to go ahead and marry him, even though all of the red flags were there warning me not to. I was 8 months pregnant when we wed. Not exactly the wedding I had dreamt of growing up. When it came time to have our first baby, I had to have an emergency C-Section due to elevated blood pressure, which I feel may have had something to do with the stress I was under. For the next couple years, we still had some turbulence, but it had gotten a tad bit better. We decided to have another baby and I immediately became pregnant. We were somewhat happy in our relationship, although at times he would still have the same accusatory remark which I had learned to ignore. During my pregnancy I began to feel God strongly telling me to serve Him. I wasn't saved at the time but God was knocking on the door to my heart and I wanted to respond. The groom felt it, too, but he was also being pulled in different direction by not only his party hard friends, but his party hard family, including his dad who was known to leave his wife for nights on end to drink and cheat with other women. He would occasionally attend church with me, and I knew God was calling him because he had a lot of questions. But his need to get approval from him family was easier to turn to and near the end of my pregnancy he started staying out late again and coming home drunk. If I confronted him he would some how turn the tides and say he knew that I had let a man come to the house while he was gone. How stupid, but he truly thought it was true. That is the thought of a man with a guilty heart. Two days before I went in to have my scheduled C-Section with baby number 2, my mom had come to stay with the intentions on helping me recover and helping me with baby #1, who was two years old at this time. On this particular night, my gem of a husband went out and got so drunk he wrecked my car in to a stop sign. Luckily for him, that is all he hit and he wasn't caught. He made it home and spent the night on the bathroom floor, with me laying in bed crying and trying to figure out what to say to my mom. I sure as hell didn't want her to think there was trouble in paradise. After all, I had threatened them with severing our relationship if they didn't support it. I had baby number two. I was now the proud mom of two boys. During my stay in the hospital I remember being in my bed the day after and due to being split wide open I could hardly sit up. Both side rails were up, which meant that even if I could sit up, I couldn't get out of bed. At 11a.m., the baby daddy was laying in a cot, fast asleep and my newborn was across the room in his bassinet. My newborn began screaming from across the room and I tried everything I could to get out of the bed without hurting myself. What was the dad doing? Sleeping like a dead man. For minutes (which felt like hours) our baby cried loudly with me yelling at my then husband to get up and help me and me also trying to get myself up. He slept through the whole damn thing. Eventually I had to hit the call light and get a nurse to come to the room for help. How embarrassing. When he finally woke up and yawned and looked at me with his shit eating grin on his face, like he was a proud new poppa and all the world was right, I opened my mouth and a barrage of cuss words came out. I called him every name in the book and may have even made a few up. What did he do? Left. He left. What an asshole.
Fast forward a few years and the boys are now 6 and 4. We had started becoming a part of youth football, youth baseball and anything else my two babies could be a part of. We had also started going to church and developed a relationship with Christ. This made things better for awhile. But, here is what I have found, when you haven't grown up in a Christian home (and maybe even sometimes when you have been), it is easy to turn back to what you know. This man was definitely not raised in a Christian home. The only times he ever heard about God or Jesus was when his parents were using those names as cuss words. So, when the wife of another couple who had kids our boys ages gave him a little attention, he was ready to jump ship and yell mutiny! All she had to do was bat her eyelashes and wag her ass in front of him and he was ready to leave his family. I wish I could tell you that I gave him the boot but I didn't. Forgiveness was on my heart and I couldn't stand to think of my kids not having a family. I had to make it work. Plus, once again, my self esteem was totally connected to how he felt about me. When he betrayed me like this I just felt horrible about myself. What was so wrong with me that he had to go elsewhere? Was I too fat? Was I not fun enough for him? What did I need to do? I had forgiven him so much, how could he do this to me? When he apologized and said he would do anything to make it work, I believed him and immediately felt better and empowered because he was so remorseful. He wanted me again so I felt needed again. Wouldn't it be lovely to end here saying he and I both learned a valuable lesson and our relationship grew from it all? It would be, but I said at the beginning I was a divorced parent. I allowed him to do this to me two more times before I realized I deserved better. The last time he cheated was when it really hit home. My oldest son was 14 and had been best friends with a female classmate since kindergarten. If they weren't best friends, they were "going out." They really had an affection for one another. Sadly, it was the father of my child and the mother of this sweet, young girl that decided to run off into the sunset with each other. The other two affairs hurt me but I never let the kids know that these happened. I couldn't hide this one though because the "riding off into the sunset" part had occurred in front of the beautiful child that my son had such high esteem for. I had to tell my boys what was going on. It was heartbreaking and angering. I had never felt such hatred for someone in my life then I felt that day for both him and that other sub human. I truly believe it is wrong to hate. God doesn't want us to do that because it causes bitterness to grow in our hearts and puts a divide into our relationship with Him. The Bible says that hatred is equal to murder. That is because you are allowing hatred to take over your heart and it murders who you were before that point. But, being human, I absolutely hated these two. I hated them for having so little respect for me and her husband that they would do this to us, but moreover, I hated them for taking our children's trust and crumbling it up, throwing it on the floor, stomping it all over and then setting it on fire. I hated them for the look on my sons faces when they realized what had happened. I hated them for the look on my oldest sons face when he realized what this would do to his relationship with the harlot's daughter. Ironically, at the same time, I was thankful. Thankful for what I thought would justify my way out. I thought unfaithfulness through an affair was what would free me. I actually didn't realize until not too long ago that he had been unfaithful in other ways. By lying, by not honoring me and loving me as Christ loved the church. Just another lack of understanding on my part. What brought me freedom though, has enslaved my children to being angry, distrustful and sad. That is not what I want for my babies.
So that is the background of my foreground. It is how I got to this point in my life. I could have given you a thousand more stories that let you know what a cold hearted, selfish son of a bitch he was or what an idiot with low self esteem and no self value I was, but it wasn't necessary for you. It might have been therapeutic for me, but it wasn't necessary. Other things have occurred since our divorce was final, over a year ago now, but I will get to those eventually. What I really want to happen here is to help or relate to any other parent (whether you be the mother or father) that is a divorced parent of teenagers. Being a teenager is tough enough without having to have gone through what mine have gone through. I need to know I am not alone in my struggle and I want others to know they aren't alone. That's what this blog will be. The good, the bad and the ugly.
With that said, I want to end on this regarding why my marriage didn't work. It wasn't designed to and I have three statements in which I believe make that true.
1.) We were raised very different, like I said earlier. I was raised in a Bible believing, Christian home where both of my parents were Sunday School teachers and my dad had even wrestled with becoming a minister. We didn't have alcohol in the house and I never heard a cuss word growing up. We lived a very stable life where I didn't want for anything. I was loved and provided for. My ex on the other hand, grew up in a house where his father was getting him drunk as a 12 year old boy. Both of his parents had been unfaithful to the other and the "F bomb" was a normal part of their vocabulary. They stated they were Catholic, but that was in name only. My ex had lived in the street before and had his dad hit him so hard he passed out and been choked by this same "father figure."
2. We were unsaved. Neither one of us had a relationship with Christ when we decided to get married. To be fair, I was the one that had really been exposed to the Word of God. I just hadn't made that decision yet and he really didn't know to. 2 Corinthians 6:14 says "Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?" This verse is referring to people who believe in Christ not being in a relationship with people who don't know Christ. Now, like I said, neither of us at this point had a relationship with Christ, but I did have the knowledge of who He was where as my ex husband did not, which was enough to me to say we shouldn't have been bound together.
3. Lastly, because we were not saved, we did not know that that we should have prayed and consulted God regarding our marriage. If we would have, I doubt we would have received His almighty blessing. I saw a video talking about this. How can you pray to God about whether your divorce is right or wrong when you didn't consult Him about whether or not you should be married in the first place? If He had no intentions for me to be married to this man, of course it wouldn't work! Why should I have been shocked at his actions when we weren't meant to be together?
I don't regret my marriage. My babies came out of this unblessed union. Maybe that is why they are struggling; because they are the result of marriage that should have never been. But, they are here and I believe that God has a plan for them. I believe God has a plan for me as well. As my story unfolds for the rest of you, maybe the plan God has for my children, me and maybe even you will be revealed. I do know that it cannot come only by this. I am a prayer closer today than I was yesterday to Him revealing His plan.
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