I met my husband while we were both fresh in the Navy. I desperately yearned for the love that starting a family would give me. Growing up as a child, my family was hostile and expressed no love to one another and I knew that I deserved more out of life. I was sure that this life was out there for me.
We dated for a quick 2 military weeks and tied the not with the JOP. I was 18 years old and followed my heart. With this new found love I immediately got pregnant. It was not long after I was pregnant that he started to get into adult chatrooms and started to act really strange when I would come around. He got really good shutting off the computer as fast as he could. I thought it would pass but his infidelity was just paused for another opportunity and with more training in being more stealth.
We raised my daughter and we shared that giddy new baby love. We decided to have another baby. I was pregnant and went back home to have my baby in California to wait for him to get orders to come just in time for the delivery of our son. He called me crying and said that he had been cheating on me since I left and that he felt so guilty. He had met some floozy online and hooked up with her. I didn't know what to do. I had just gotten out of the Navy, no place of my own to live, a toddler and a newborn on the way. I had to tell myself that he was just a man and that's just how men are. I convinced myself that statistically this was logical behavior because there are many more women than men in the world so it only made sense for stuff like this to happen.
I forgave him and continued being a family. It was not until about a year and a half later when he started to act suspicious again. I was oblivious to what was going on because I chose to forgive and forget and trust him again. My mother was visiting and she said something was definitely wrong with him so started to investigate. It turns out that the online girl had a baby and she was not hitting him up for child support. The jerk had known all along that she was pregnant but couldn't be sure if it was his because the girl had been sleeping with him and another man at the same time. She was black, my ex huz is white and her fiance at the time was black. What a winner huh?!! I couldn't have imagined what it was like when that poor baby was born and came out white! I would pay to have seen that!
So fiance obviously ran for the hills and poor pathetic online girl didn't have any means to take care of her baby. A letter comes in the mail stating a blood test is required for determination of paternity. Pictures of the child are a spitting image of him down to the toes and nonetheless the baby was white. He still decides to contest paternity. I wait in the shadows of his dilemma just waiting for him to fail our marriage again. Test comes back and whadayaknow… congratulations dad! It’s a boy! This was the final straw for me. When he burned me it was just me he was hurting. This time he was hurting my kids and I was not going to put up with that.
I filed for divorce and packed my bags and left with my kids in tow. He was not going to hurt my family any longer. My kids were 3 and 1. I found a quaint little apartment and he would take the kids to visit with him a few days here and there. It wasn’t long until my 3 year old started experiencing the effects of a broken family. He had called me in the middle of the night and said our daughter was in the corner of the closet speaking jibberish and screaming and crying at the top of her lungs with the look of deathly fear in her glazed eyes. She had started having night terrors. Her sleepwalking/talking got more frequent. My decision to leave him had done this to my baby. I couldn’t live with myself to watch my little girl struggle like this.
The holidays came around and we still had gotten together to celebrate. He had been sleeping in the next room of his parent’s house where I was staying and I overheard him say “I love you” to some girl on the phone after he was supposedly so broken up about me leaving him. He had previously told me that he was never going to give up on me and here he is telling some other floozy that he loved him and the divorce isn’t even final. I was livid and started a screaming match in the middle of the night on Christmas. I had to take a step back and think of why I was so mad. I figured I was so emotional because I thought I still loved him so I went with it. With the effects of the separation and this uncalled for anger, I called pulled the divorce and decided to give our marriage a second chance. We went on marriage retreats with church groups, we started going to church regularly, we learned how to communicate better with each other and I started to trust him again.
Years go by and I think all is good again. He is by nature a very friendly guy. He is the type to go out and introduce himself to new neighbors and lend a helping hand. An army wife moves in a couple of houses down and she is a mother of 2 young children and her husband is deployed. He offers to mow her lawn occasionally to help her out. What a nice guy huh? Crazy rumors started to go around that the neighbor was paying him with sexual favors. My first impression of this girl was that she was a total idiot and kinda nuts so this rumor was easily disregarded as being one of her crazy stories. I just let her be her crazy self and laughed it off and went on with our happy little lives.
He starts to spend a lot of time chatting it up with the other military wives on the block. These chats start to be later and later. It didn’t bother me. He was just keeping these women company because they were lonely and he does make a perfect gay guy friend when he wants to be. These nights get longer and longer and I would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes with him not being in bed next to me. I would find him outside sitting outside with these women. Rumors start up again and now it’s about another crazy woman whose husband is out to sea with 3 young children. My other neighbor tells me that this crazy lady said she would leave her husband for mine. Hilarious! Another looney toon again! Not surprising when you are living on a military base. I never go out and associate with these insane women so I was always safe. I had to investigate this rumor because it was just to strange to believe that there was another crazy woman involved. I confronted her and called her crazy and told her to stop bothering my husband with crazy texts declaring her love. She looked at me in shock and told me that HE was the one saying he was much happier with her that he was with me. Weird huh? There were too many different stories so I had these ‘whackos’ gathered into one room and demanded the truth. He begged me not to but I didn’t care anymore. He insisted in a room full of all these witnesses to his lewd acts that everyone was crazy and he was telling the truth. How could an entire room full of people all be insane liars?!! I was sobbing because I didn’t believe him and I knew this was the end. With tears rolling down my face I asked him, “ Look me in the eye and tell me the truth. The mother of your children… having been married to you for 11 years through already so much… did you or did you not sleep with these women?” He breaks down and admits that he did. I found out later that there were more women that he had tried to get with. Again, I pack my bags and my kids up and I leave again. I had allowed myself to live the exact life my mother lived with the same type of man that my father was. I was not going to allow myself to become like my mother. This time around it has to be better. I have to put myself first. For once in my life, my life has to be about me.