The End is Just the Beginning (Intro Part 2)

In 2014, I started a blog called Sex After Marriage. I was going through the transformation one does after coming out of an 18-year marriage with a man that I met at 17 years old. I was finding out who I was. I started this blog to chronicle my journey. I figured that if I was inspiring myself, I would surely inspire others. 

In 2024, it’s now been 10 years. I thought it might be time to republish the blog with my “10-Year Take”.  I’m looking forward to seeing what’s changed and what has stayed the same. This is a gift to myself as I come into my 50th year on this planet, the same age my mom lost her 2-year battle with Inflammatory Breast Cancer. In some ways, it feels like I’m on borrowed time. In other ways, I feel like I’m completing her incomplete journey.  Mom, you are missed and I’m not sure I would have gotten here if I hadn’t had to feel the loss of you. Thank you for reading.

Dated December 21, 2014

The end. I don’t want to write about my marriage as a negative part of my life. I don’t even want to write about the end as a negative event. I consider my marriage a success. We were married for 18 years, and it was actually better in the end than it was in the beginning. How many can say that? I wasn’t a happily married woman most of the time, especially in the first half. I didn’t accept my role as mom and wife very well. I always wanted to be someplace else. I was always dreaming of the future, of getting away. My marriage eventually fell apart to the point that we briefly separated in 2003 or 2004. We never lived apart. But we kept separate bedrooms for some time. I don’t think it was long before we were back together, and we never didn’t continue our sexual relationship. In fact, having a bit of autonomy made sex really hot. We eventually resumed our roles and moved back into the same bedroom. No one in our lives was none the wiser.

Things went fairly well after that. I wanted to bail a few times but that wasn’t so unusual. Our biggest issue had always been sex. I didn’t want it. I mean, not so scheduled. It took all the choice out of it. In fact, I never felt like I had much of a choice. Sure, I could have said no, but the alternative was a bitchy husband. But what that did was cause resentment. At some point, I decided to accept that sex was my contribution to a happy marriage. We all want a happy marriage, right? So I actually quit complaining about my marriage for the most part, had sex from a loving place, and did my best to be a good wife. As long as I was happy, we were good. My husband was dedicated to our family. I was always the one running.

Then a few years ago my best friend stopped talking to me. Just boom, out of what appeared to be nowhere. I was devastated. He was my sounding board. I felt safe enough to tell him all my crazy. I had a huge hole when he left. My husband actually stepped up and let me grieve the loss. He joked that he never thought he would have to help me through a breakup. It meant the world to me that he considered my feelings and not just any discomfort he had during my friendship. He got bumped to best friend status for the first time in our long relationship. In all those years I felt like he didn’t get to have access to the real me. He could never accept the real me, I was sure. And I am sure I was right in that belief. I firmly believe I am not meant for monogamy. I had a very hard time being faithful. I may not have ventured out often physically, but I did emotionally. I tended to get my emotional needs met outside of our marriage.

The last year of our marriage I started learning about polyamory. I felt this was where I would have been if I was starting over. But here I was, in a monogamous marriage. You are probably thinking that I cheated and destroyed our marriage. Nope. Well, not directly. He would say that my cheating DID destroy the marriage and that is valid. But at this time, I talked to my husband, and we decided to open it up and share another lover. We were solid. What harm could come?

One day he asked for a divorce. He went from being obsessed with shopping for vintage motor homes to asking for a divorce. Obviously some sort of midlife crisis. But looking back, I did a lot of damage to our marriage. And honestly, ending it was the best for both of us. It just didn’t happen to end in the midst of a bunch of fighting. Within a few weeks, we filed. That was the end and yet the beginning.
Anyone on my Facebook page knows I didn’t handle it well. I kept it under wraps until I couldn’t contain it anymore and then I puked my entire load of dirty laundry onto my page for all to see. It was negative. I was hurt. I felt betrayed. I was a stay-at-home mom for 17 years. I didn’t have a backup plan. I didn’t have anything I wanted to do as a career. I was so lost and hurt.

And I have to say, life didn’t get much easier until he finally could afford to move out, late that summer, about 2 ½ months later. Then everything changed. Everything! We didn’t have to see each other every morning. We didn’t have to interact any more than either of us wanted. It was such a welcome change. I didn’t have to fight with anyone. Exhail.

And then it got really quiet. The weekend he moved out, he also had the kids. So I was in a home all alone for the first time ever. Seriously. We never did anything alone. I never had the house to myself for more than a rare few hours. I was a bit of a mess. I remember crying a lot. That is when I created my list. This is cut and pasted from my actual journal entry on my first weekend alone:

So when will I start actively dating? What am I waiting to see in myself to put my profile back up online? And what am I looking for in a long-term relationship compared to a short-term casual relationship?

For me for short-term dating:
I would like to see me enjoying my time alone, rather than dreading it

For me for long-term dating:
I would like my divorce final
I would like to see me enjoying my time alone, rather than dreading it

What I want in a short-term mate:
Sexually compatible
Wants to spend time with me when possible and looks forward to it

What I want in a long-term mate:
Sexually compatible
Wants to spend time with me when possible
Gives me space
Not possessive of me, ok with sharing me but knows I am primarily with him
Passionate about something
Feminist
Progressive in politics
Supportive of my freedom, desires, and exploration of life after marriage

I survived that first weekend. When the second weekend approached, the anxiety started to build. It was Labor Day weekend. That Thursday the anxiety was bringing me to tears on a regular basis. I was emailing with an old friend of mine. He stopped me and virtually slapped me. He said something like, “Michelle, I would give my left nut for your weekend. You can do anything you want. You could go to a strange city and just walk around if you wanted. From my understanding, you’re not in financial ruins, you have a roof over your head, you have nothing to really be anxious about.” He was right. His “slap” snapped me out of it completely. I stopped crying and I had a wonderful weekend, a lot of the time being with myself. I was ok. I enjoyed my alone time. That was quick! Thanks to a good friend setting me straight, because that is what a good friend does, I had conquered my fear of being alone. I was ready! My end was my beginning.

Now that I have you sort of caught up, let me explain how I intend to use this blog. I will not use this blog to bash my ex-husband. If you meet me in real life, I will tell you he is a fine man. We all just do the best we can. He did what was actually best for both of us.

I am exploring a lot of new things in my life. I want to post as things arise, but I also need to go back and cover a lot of the journey so far. I want my journey to make sense, so it is like you are on the journey with me. Yet I don’t hold on to stories well. So what I am saying is, I have no fucking clue how to do that. But I hope you bear with me as I figure it out.

10-Year Take

Sigh. Let me see if I can put into words what I noticed in my body as I read those words above…

I have an ache in my heart. Not for the lost marriage but for my Self. I’ve evolved in how I look back at my first marriage. I wanted him to be my friend. And I really thought he was my best friend at one time. But here’s what I know now… if you can’t be your authentic self with someone, they aren’t actually your friend because they don’t actually know you. I didn’t take the space, nor was I encouraged to take space, to know myself. The way I talk about that marriage was before had some tough realizations. That was an abusive relationship. We abused each other. I was abused. He was abused. I’m not here to point fingers but I will own that I didn’t want to see at that time in my life, post marriage.

I think I’m going to pull some lines from the post and address them directly.

“I quit complaining about my marriage” = I gave up. I resigned myself to, “This is your life. Might as well make the best of it.”

Back then, I dreamed of someone coming to rescue me. I never once thought that there was an option for me to rescue myself. I rescued myself after the marriage ended. I’m a little embarrassed that this was my thought process back then. And yet, it’s the truth. I’m more proud of the fact that I turned it around than I’m embarrassed that I spent 20+ years in that relationship.

“Our biggest issue had always been sex. I didn’t want it. I mean, not so scheduled. It took all the choice out of it. In fact, I never felt like I had much of a choice. Sure, I could have said no, but the alternative was a bitchy husband. But what that did was cause resentment. At some point, I decided to accept that sex was my contribution to a happy marriage. We all want a happy marriage, right? So I actually quit complaining about my marriage for the most part, had sex from a loving place, and did my best to be a good wife. As long as I was happy, we were good. My husband was dedicated to our family. I was always the one running.”

Yikes! This was written before I knew the phrase “marital coercion” or “sexual coercion”. This makes me sad. If I can’t say no, then I can’t say yes, not truly. Was it a happy marriage? Fuck no. Do you know who was satisfied? He was. What was I? I was self-abandoning. I was sacrificing myself so that he wouldn’t be unbearable to live with. What I know now is that our bodies treat these acts as an assault. You can call it duty sex if that makes it feel better. But what I know now is that my current husband (yes, I remarried - more later) would never threaten to leave me if we didn’t have sex. He celebrates my no and wants me to do what’s best for me. I’m never pressured to have sex. My value is not in my sex! It took a lot of work for me to say that statement and once I said it, I couldn’t forget it. I couldn’t ignore it. I have a hunch that a lot of people look at relationships as something they endure to get a regular source of the sex. Yuck. Sex is an outcome of two adults who both decide that is the way they’d like to connect and it’s only one of many ways they connect. That was not how sex was in that house. I’m sad for my younger self. I’ve been able to touch those old feelings at least once since then and I can’t believe I lived like that for most of those 20 years.

“We never did anything alone. I never had the house to myself for more than a rare few hours.”

Red flag! This is enmeshment. This is a lack of differentiation. This is NOT how I live my life now. Enough said.

“I will not use this blog to bash my ex-husband.”

That’s still true. I won’t lie, but I don’t want to “bash”. I think we were doing our best at the time. Because I know it’s important to him, I want to make it abundantly clear that I cheated on him. Many times. Is that who I am now? A cheater? Absolutely not. My husband and I have full transparency and deep care and respect for each other. So once a cheater, always a cheater? Not in this case. But I’ve done a lot of work on myself, and I live in my integrity. If I weren’t happy in a relationship, I would leave. If it were a bad relationship, I would leave.

I think this is enough for this post. I’m betting this isn’t going to get any easier. Stick around.