I lived with my husband from September 200 to June 2004, but we married in July 2003. Officially we didnt make it to the two year mark. I heard a stat very shortly after we split (sorry no cite) that 50% of marriages end in divorce and 50% of the ones that end in divorce last less than two years.
My husband was a cool, hippy, contraire, person with artistic pretentions. He used his “artistic nature” as an excuse to avoid getting a real job, keeping any kind of job, and for drinking and lying about drinking. (Note, I have nothing against artistic types, but when you have only been to one audition in four years, havent worked on your script in three years, and all you do is occasionally buy notebooks to write drunken crappy stream of consiousness stuff that sounds like word association games gone horribly wrong, I no longer can believe you are an artist who works in a gas station but more likely a gas station attendant who is having trouble dealing with reality) Eventually he would screw up at the job he had, and quit “on principle” before he got fired.
This isnt why I asked him to leave.
He funded his drunks from money he “borrowed” out of his father’s bank account…his father who was in a nursing home, and who’s co-payment was oh, about 75 dollars a month less than his pension cheque. Also with my money, his money from his job, money from selling the furniture (including a teak bedroom set) at shady second hand stores. He got 75 dollars for the teak set, because he was told that it was veneer. ( I think the shelves were veneer, the rest was solid)
This also isn’t why I asked him to leave.
Not the quitting a job when I was 6 months pregant, not us having to move across the country by Greyhound a month later, not his telling my dad off the second day we were staying with my parents… none of that caused me to ask him to leave.
The day he wouldnt go out to the car to get my infant son’s nasal aspirator because “he didnt like my tone and he wasnt stupid he didn’t need to be told twice” and ended up freaking out, leaving the house, missing the birthday dinner I had for his mother (who had flown in from Vancouver to see us and baby) I thought… this really isn’t working…
The month of May after taking his “vacation” (he worked two jobs, one four hours twice a week at a movie theatre, and one graveyard shifts at gas station friday saturday sunday) back to BC and buying and smoking most of a half an ounce of the plant that makes BC famous…I thought… gee it was so nice when he was gone. I had to borrow rent money from my mother that month.
A week or so later, I was sent to the store with $7.00 to buy rice and vegetables… so we can have stir fry. I took my Shoppers DrugMart card, used the 75 dollars of free merchandise I had accumulated and bought food, diapers, formula, etc.
I used cash to buy the vegetables. I came home to find 12 beers, and a bottle of Hungarian wine in the fridge, with a couple of individual bottles of imported beers already sitting in the living room.
Nice. Two days later I asked him to move out. He refused, the fight turned physical… police involved… I went to my parents …Childrens Aid involved, and for days I still thought that I might go back. An incident where “penis ensued” (he pulled down his pants and waved his member at my parents house while yelling obsenities… )I started thinking my parents would be disappointed if I went back. I was on auto pilot for a while, but finally I realized that going back to him would be disappointing for me and my son.
Several of my mom’s sisters have been divorced, but I never thought it would happen to me. I tried individual counselling, but he would never go to couples therapy…
i didnt mean this to be so long. I didnt get married for the wedding, it was short and sweet and on the cheap. I didnt get divorced for any one particular reason, but because suddenly the reasons to leave where overwhelming. I shudder when I hear about two month marriages, but only two people know what really goes on in a marriage, and I am not about to point fingers at anyone
But yeah, as an outsider I would wonder WTF?. I offered to repay my mother in law back for half the money she gave us for our wedding, she refused, but asked that I pay that money into a bank account for my son someday. I can do that, and am grateful she is so understanding and generous.
On preview: My parents are almost polar opposites in terms of personality traits, (dad’s a joiner, into clubs, committees, uptight, and an only child, mom’s a free thinker, hates groups, more mellow, oldest of ten kids) education, (barely highschool vs university) backgrounds, (dad comes from middle class with a bit of money, moms family had it a lot tougher) but they grew up in the same town, went to the same highschool (never really met until years later) and share the same moral values. 40 years this september, and the clock keeps ticking.
