Anatomy of a Failed Marriage

I finally was able to file for divorce last week, after having been separated for 16 months. The ball is offically rolling. I can honestly say that I am happy to be getting divorced and that period of my life will be legally over. But I can't help but look back and wonder... what if?

It's hard to explain to people why you're getting divorced after having been married for 10 years and having 2 kids together. I can't look back and pinpoint what exact things caused me to lose all hope and decide to leave, for real this time. I can pinpoint when it happened, but the reasons why are so numerous and jumbled together with disallusionment, hurt feelings, and disappointments that it's hard to sum it all up in one or two sentences. I usually end up saying that we were just different people and we didn't know each other well enough to have gotten married in the first place. Both of which are certainly true, but those are really just minor details.

I guess I'll start at the beginning. My soon-to-be-ex-huband, C., and I met in Tech School (Insert collective groan from everyone familiar with this phenomenon here) , which for all you non-military folks is the school you go to after you complete Basic Training. Each branch of service calls it something different, but the Air Force calls it Tech School. You learn your career skills for the Air Force there.

Tech School is notorious for failed marriages. My theory on it is this: Basic Training is a very intense experience for most people and there is a huge sigh of relief when you reach Tech School. Most of these airmen are 18-19 year old kids, fresh out of high school, and this is their first time to be permanently away from home. In my opinion, these kids mature faster because they aren't spending 4 years in college screwing around and deciding what to do with their lives. The military has decided that for them and for most career fields, it's only a few months between Basic and your first duty station, where you begin your career. BUT (you knew that was coming) even tho the matters of a career and responsibility and discipline are taken care of, these kids are still emotionally 18-19 years old and still going thru teenage angst where everthing is a big deal. So they meet someone they really like (often classmates) and start dating. Then they figure out that they REALLY like each other because they have SOOO much in common - since they all had identical experiences in Basic and Tech School, they think 'hey, we're adults now - old enough to fight and die for our country... why don't we get married?!' Anyone see what's wrong with this picture? The main thing is: they don't know each other! And the other thing is: they don't know themselves! And one more thing: they don't know each other! Did I mention that they don't know each other?!

So anyway... C and I met in just this way. In our case, the above stereotype didn't fit quite so neatly because he and I were older than most newbies - 22 and 21, respectively, and we, well, at least I, had seen a bit of the world. We were in the same year and half long language course (did I mention that I am full of impulsive and very bad ideas? Well, I certainly was then. I still am, but not so much) so we were around each other 24 hours a day. We dated for a few months and then things got kinda tense between us and we were on the verge of breaking up. I went to a going away party that night and came back to the barracks drunk. I went to see him and... we kindof made up and he proposed. I actually thought he was joking. But I accepted, nonetheless. Then we called our families. I went down to L.A. to meet his family, then we flew to Fla so he could meet mine. We got married at the courthouse in Fla a month after we got engaged. It was December 1994. We had known each other for 6 months.

Here is our first mistake: we moved out of the barracks and into base housing several miles away from post. We had no money and no friends and no furniture. We started fighting then. And boy, did we fight. The fighting really hurt my feelings - I had never argued with a boyfriend like that, and no one had ever taught him to fight fair. When he got mad, no matter what it was over, it was no holds barred and he called me every name in the book. He also said he regretted getting married and thought being married would hold him back from his goals. (Of course, in my mind, this begs the question 'if he felt that way, then why the hell did he propose in the first place?')

This was the start of my disallusionment. When we got married, I had the Disney, happily-ever-after scenario in my head. I had never lived with a guy before, never dealt with day to day things like money and schedules and stress. I had never even lived on my own before. I had either lived with my parents or my sister. C had been more independent, but he hadn't been in a super serious relationship before. He had never lived with anyone either. At the beginning, we were basically two naive kids full of unmet expectations (me) and resentment (him). I did everything I thought a good little wife was supposed to do, but I never stood up for myself. The first 15 months of our marriage was spent this way. Fighting, hurt feelings, and resentment. I was fighting for our marriage, he was fighting against it.

It got to the point where we decided to take separate vacations - 3 weeks - to re-evaluate what we were doing and where we were going as a married couple. I went to Fla and he went to L.A. While I was in Fla, I told my parents what was going on, and I came to the conclusion that I was making myself miserable and decided to get out while the getting was good, since it was what C wanted, too. Ironically, while C was in L.A., he had a chat with a close friend who changed his perspective on marriage. So C and I returned from our vacations with me ready to separate and him ready to reconcile. We went to marriage counseling and discovered that we were fighting over control issues and not really getting to the root of what was bothering us. We decided to give it another 3 months on a trial basis. Things were a little better, but still pretty rocky between us. I still wanted to leave.

Halfway thru this trial period, I found out I was pregnant. When the doctor told me, I started crying uncontrollably. I felt so confused. I wanted the baby, but my marriage had been so bad, I didn't want to bring a child into it. It was several hours before I could tell C because he was out of town for the day. During that time, I decided that no matter what happened between C and I, I was going to have the baby. I was emotionally mature enough, financially stable with job security and I could handle raising a child on my own if it came to that. When he got home, I sat him down and told him. I tried not to ambush him, but I'm sure that's what it felt like to him. He freaked out, and not in a good way. He didn't feel like he was ready to have a child, and having a child made him feel even more trapped. So he took off for a few hours and returned with a dozen roses, tho I suspect they were more because he had just bought an expensive pair of speakers off the BACK OF A VAN, instead him freaking out on me when I was freaked out, too.

The marriage during my pregnancy went surprisingly well. We stopped fighting over trivial stuff because we realized that it just didn't matter. The little bad things that happened really hurt my feelings tho - one being that he never went to any doctor's appointments with me except the sonogram at 15 weeks. This one sounds silly, but he had a cologne that made me nauseous. And he would spray it in our bedroom while I was still in bed, which would promptly make me throw up. I asked him not to wear it, or at least not spray it on our room, but he thought I was being stupid and overreacting - even while I was throwing up. And when we found out the baby was a girl instead of a boy, his disappointment took the form of anger towards me and he blamed me for the pregnancy and regretted it all over again. Not very nice memories to have.