Friday, November 12, 2004

But wait, there's more...

February 2003 - K said that at some point, he maybe, might, possibly want to move out. At this point, I hadn't ever really contemplated the idea of separation or divorce in spite of being less than happy with my situation, and I was floored. I cried, I had fits, I anguished - but in retrospect, I don't think I ever tried to talk him out of it. (Hmm, what does that tell me???) And life went on, with me waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for him to say, OK, now's the time I want out. Now there's a fine thing to have hanging over your head, the potential end of your marriage. I didn't have the intestinal fortitude to do much other than wait at that point, though.

And K's friendship with JG continued. I wasn't stupid, I figured he felt something for her other than friendship. You don't spend that much time with someone and *not* develop romantic feelings for the person. Along the way, JG and her husband started having problems, and he threatened to move out, then finally did move out. K and JG continued spending time together, and I continued to be annoyed and resentful.

November 2003: finally, K said, OK, that's it, I want to move out. At that point, I wasn't even upset anymore - I'd already had time to be upset over it back in February, and March, and April. I was like, fine, go. (Besides, I'd had time to think a lot since then, and I'd realized I wasn't happy, that I'd welcome time apart as much as he would, if not more.) He was surprised that I didn't freak out - even though I'd told him back in Feb. that if that were what he wanted, I wouldn't fight him on it, wouldn't make it more difficult than it had to be, I wonder if he didn't really believe me when I said that, if he expected that I really would put up a fight. But by that point he'd told me he'd fallen in love with JG, and when the man you married tells you that, it pretty well demolishes any desire you might have to fix the marriage. Had we *just* had problems with communication or *just* had issues with division of labor and me feeling like I did a lot more of the childcare along with working and trying to take care of household chores, that might have been fixable. But that, after he'd spent so much time with her to the exclusion of J and me, was brutal. To my way of thinking, if he couldn't at least tone down the friendship once he realized he was developing those feelings (inappropriate for a married man), then apparently I didn't mean to him what I should have meant as his wife and as the mother of his child. And if I didn't mean enough to him for him to let go of a friendship heading in a different direction, to my mind I didn't mean enough to him, period.

K asked me later if, had he never said he wanted out, I would have said anything. I told him I would have - it might have taken me longer, possibly a lot longer, but eventually I would have gotten to where I couldn't have stood it anymore, because I wasn't happy. I had my suspicions that part of his motivation for wanting to move out might have been because he was hoping things might go somewhere with JG (he denied it then, he denies it now, but I still have my doubts - another thing making me not real inclined to want to fix the marriage, the distinct possibility that his desire to move out was directly related to his desire to get involved with another woman).

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