Miss Daisy's Story

We met at work. It was 1989. He was 19 I was 26. I had recently gotten out of a long term relationship with a user/liar (maybe he was a N too ????) He pursued me. I thought he was too young. I finally gave in and went out with him. What the hell, just have some fun I thought.

I fell in love with him. He was kind, somewhat naïve and very cute. We moved in together after dating for 2 years. I did not rush into anything. 2 years later we got married and had a son. Things were good. We had the normal problems any marriage has. He always had selfish tendencies which I attributed to his being an only child.

We bought a house, raised our son and had what seemed a normal family life. We both worked full-time with me having the majority of the household and child rearing responsibilities. I started to notice that our relationship revolved around him and what he wanted out of life. At my suggestion we started marriage counseling – I thought maybe if we learned to communicate better things would be better. Counselor suggested I tell him what I need from him in our relationship, that he couldn’t read my mind.

So I started to tell him what I needed from him. Simple things -- time, attention, compassion and caring. He took everything I said as nagging and complaining. He told me that he was not a lovey touchy kind of guy that I expected too much. He attempted at times to give me what I needed but it never lasted for long and it always seemed like a chore for him.
Over the next few years I started to not be so agreeable with everything he said and did. I tried to stand my ground to get what I wanted out of our relationship and told him that I wasn’t gonna just go along with his every whim. This just put more of a strain on the marriage – we did more and more things separately.

In 2008 he started to hang out with younger people. Drank a lot, would stay out all night. He told me he didn’t want to get old. That I was no fun any longer. That we had nothing in common. He had several female “friends” that he said understood him and were more like him. I told him we needed to separate and have some time to think things thru. He left for about a week. Came back home and we decided to try and work things out.

The following 4 years were full of ups and downs. I won’t bore you with specifics but there were a lot of selfish choices, even when it came to our son. My mother’s health was failing and I had to spend a lot of time helping her. It was hard watching my mother get so sick. I would cry to him and ask him to come along for support. He was too busy. Heaven knows what was going on behind my back – I am aware of some things but there is probably so much more. I see now that I was kept to take care of the household until our son was out of school (he sure as heck didn’t want to pay child support) and I did bring home almost half of our household income.
Now that I look back I wish I would have stood my ground in 2008 and maybe I would have not suffered more. Hindsight ….. I really wanted our marriage to work – I wanted to have my family intact and I loved him.

Fast forward to December 2012. He was more distant than usual. I knew something was up. I even asked him … But he said nothing. I was reduced to snooping. Checked his cell phone while he was asleep (he always guarded it closely). Found texts about a woman. Confronted him. He claimed she was just a friend. That he was unhappy. That he didn’t know what he wanted, yada yada yada.

I told him I was done – we had been thru this before, I was tired of trying and getting nothing in return. That I didn’t want the house and that I was going to move out. Stayed at the house for 2 months until I could get my things in order. During that time he gave me a list of things/conditions that if I agreed to he would stay with me. This list was insane – it was all about him – he wanted me to be more involved in his hobbies/likes. He wanted me to take pictures and video of him when he rode his bike. He wanted me to stay with him and hand him tools when he was working in his shop. The list went on and on with things HE needed. There was no mention of loving me, needing me, wanting me. It was like a contract. Ugh

In March 2013 I left.

This is a condensed version of my story – I could have written for pages and pages …. Some of things I put up with I even hate to admit to myself. I just wanted to have my marriage and my family.

I have learned so much from this forum and Lisa’s book --Now when I look back I can’t believe the things I went along with just to keep him. I feel so used, devalued and discarded – and foolish.

P.S. We still both work at the same place