Whine, whine, a little bit of cheese, more whine

[AlternateGray]

Just wrote a long letter to my wife. I've always treated her well, I love her, but this one wasn't very nice. Writing it was easy, I have eight years of pent up anger. Sending it was hard, because I know it's going to hurt her. Or rather, I hope it's going to hurt, 'cause if it doesn't, that means my suspicions are right. Is that twisted or what?
My room-mate and I were talking about our marriages (my current, his previous) and I realized when we were done what a fool I've been all these years. All the times I told myself she wasn't cheating on me, because we're different, she's different- sure, if every other woman in the world did the same thing, they'd obviously be cheating, but when my wife does it...
No, he didn't tell me that. It just came like a bucket of cold water in the face. Or in the heart. I think some of you may know what I mean.
She's not cheating on me now, that's not the problem. That would be simple. The problem is, she married me not for love, but for stability, a steady paycheck and insurance. And lied about it the whole way. I've suspected it since the beginning, but I always just... put the blinders on and plodded along like a good mule.
What's so hilarious about this whole thing is that I've been agonizing for months over what to do about my own feelings about the marriage, even wrote a post about it but never posted it because it was a little too personal for me. But screw it now, here it goes. I'm leaving everything in there; there's a part about a soldier who died in our company, and his wife. I don't know why I still react so strongly to his wife's plight (I couldn't even cry at my mom's funeral- don't get me wrong, I tried to find the grief I knew was there, is still there, but...), although I know my reaction is related to my marriage. Maybe I'm just too damn close too the subject. I don't know. But here goes. It's the next post.

[AlternateGray]

"Purging time.

I’m not on the net. I’m writing this on word, just to get it out… if it helps, I might not post it after all, but I’ve found that writing to yourself about some things is a lot like… well… you know. It works a little bit, but sometimes it just doesn’t purge the urge.

The reason I’m not on the net is that… a military wife hasn’t heard yet that her husband is dead. She doesn’t know. I keep checking the internet connection. Not because I’m all that worried about getting on. Because when it no longer says “… cable is unplugged” with a little red X, I’ll know that she finally knows. I don’t know why it bothers me so much. She’s going to find out- whether it’s now or tomorrow; and his death is irrevocable, timeless in a way. It’s hard to know that she’s sleeping now, perhaps worried but still full of faith, and she doesn’t know that nothing is ok. To know what’s awaiting her a few hours from now. It’s the prelude to a nightmare.

It’s the first death in the company. In any company I’ve been in. I didn’t know him well, but well enough to be impressed by him. If he was an asshole, or hell, even an average guy, I don’t think it would hit the guys quite as hard. But he wasn’t, and it does.

I’m near tears, and I can’t be this way. It doesn’t make sense. Not to be callous, but I didn’t know him well enough to be this upset, and I don’t know her from Eve. I don’t know what it is.
On to the other purge.
I fell madly in love with my wife eight years ago… at a point very early on, that ended. She broke my heart a few times (ok, more than a few), I swept it under the rug, and when we moved it seemed like a good chance to forget about the past. I figured time heals all things, and that sooner or later I’d fall in love with her again, or at least feel some passion again. It has been six years since we moved, and I have not. Marriages are not built on passion, but they require it every now and then… (insert fitting plant/water analogy here). I’m stubborn, and I like to think of myself as loyal, but in the last couple of months I’ve finally realized that I’ll probably never love her in that way again. It’s finally sunk in. While painful, I can deal with that, but there’re so many other issues in our marriage to boot. I’m going to ask her to go to counseling when I get back… and I hope that will help. I’ll be at a complete loss if it doesn’t. I have a ten-year-old stepdaughter, I’ve raised her since she was two, I love her so much I can’t even say… and I can’t destroy her family. I can’t. I’ve learned a little bit about how traumatic a divorce can be for a child -oddly enough, from others’ posts here… my own mother was married 9, count ‘em, 9 times, divorced 8 times, but if I ever felt any guilt over the third one with my father (I doubt it, I was a little young) it was quickly replaced with bewilderment at numbers 4,5,6,7… and to be honest, we were usually way happier about the divorces than we were about the marriages. We used to joke that if she wasn’t careful she was going to run out of assholes. I could make a trivia game based solely off of her marriages- “Name all of Jill’s exes- double points if you can remember last names”. (Much like naming the states, there’s always one you forget). “Which ex did Jill actually marry and divorce twice?” (answer- I don’t remember. I should, but I don’t). Occasionally my brother and I would sit around and try to remember some of this stuff.

I’m not quite sure what the point of this post is, other than to get stuff off my chest. I do know one thing, though. Train wreck of a marriage or not, my life could be worse.

And I’m kind of dreading the moment that little red X disappears from the toolbar. "

[AlternateGray]

I felt very guilty. Now I just feel... bleak.

And now that I've emotionally barfed all over the Cellar, I'm gonna go fetch a mop.

What's funny is that I've always warned my soldiers that one of the "dangers" of the profession is a certain type of female who does everything she can to make you fall for her, when what she's really after isn't love but the military's security and benefits. They're usually women with prior experience with the military (usually, their dad was in), and they will suck your account dry, usually while cheating on you left and right (most don't consider it cheating- it's not a real marriage to them, so they just see it as... dating). I've seen it a million times. Hell, my last neighbor was one of these women, and unapologetic about it, although she never told her husband of course. He dumped her for cheating on him and she's already married to another soldier, one year later. I've always warned soldiers that if they go looking for dates online, to never, ever put on their profile that they're in the military, because it attracts these women like flies.

Damn, I'm dumb. Somebody smack me.

*Smack*... done some barfing here too.
I hope this works out for you man.

[Clodfobble]

Sorry things are tough, AG. I hope the counseling works out, for your stepdaughter's sake as much as yours. Good luck to you.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Love and lust will come and go like the tide, but trust holds it all together. Broken trust is very, very hard to mend.

We all marry for "security and benefits", among other things. Marrying military means you might lose your spouse for extended periods...... or permanently. I guess for some people that's a plus but for most it sucks.

Try not to get so distracted by this that you forget to cover your and your buddies asses. Good luck and thanks.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Try not to get so distracted by this that you forget to cover your and your buddies asses. Good luck and thanks.

My sentiments exactly. Keep a clear head out there man.

[limey]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Love and lust will come and go like the tide, but trust holds it all together. Broken trust is very, very hard to mend.

We all marry for "security and benefits", among other things. Marrying military means you might lose your spouse for extended periods...... or permanently. I guess for some people that's a plus but for most it sucks.

Try not to get so distracted by this that you forget to cover your and your buddies asses. Good luck and thanks.

Yes, the reasons we "partner-up" are all tied up with security and benefits ... try to keep that part of it in perspective. However, if there is no trust, then that's a different matter.

[AlternateGray]

Thanks for the advice and the support... but I think I might have been misunderstood. Job security and a steady source of income, and insurance and retirement benefits.

I understand that the above will always play a part in relationships... but there's a difference between it being a factor in a relationship based on love and caring, and using someone for it while carrying on with a relationship from the past (a lover who was unwilling to maintain a steady job). I'll admit, the relationship ended physically when we moved. I'm assuming. I still feel used, because I'm still being used. And the problems have not ended- I understand now why that is. She needs me, but doesn't love me- and she resents me for it in a way. She resents me because I was supposed to be her ticket to an easy life, a way out of the small town she was stuck in. She spends my money faster than I can make it, her number one concern over the phone is when I'm getting my next promotion and raise, and I think she's pissed because she gave up the man she cared about for a life that's not as fantastic as she thought it would be. Her behavior during our marriage has not been that of someone who cares about their spouse. Even remotely. I made all kinds of excuses for her actions, although some I couldn't explain- because I wanted to believe she was with me because she cared about me. I could give some examples, but I'd rather not, as most are pretty embarrassing, some humiliating. Her pledge to make life difficult for me if I leave the military before my ten year mark should have been a pretty good giveaway (for those of you who are familiar with the military). Of course, she didn't come right out and say the ten-year mark- it took two months of fighting about me re-enlisting before she finally made that slip.
And I know, I know: if her behavior is as bad as I say it is, why didn't I see this earlier? Because I didn't want to. I still don't want to, but denial only goes so far. I remember someone saying at work that their wife had told them to volunteer for deployment for the extra money, and I thought to myself, that's one cold bitch. If the family needs money that bad, cut your bills, and she can get a damned job. Of course, when my wife suggested it to me (and I make more than enough to take care of our bills- just not enough to sate her spending), it didn't even click right away, although it did offend the hell out of me (I both love and hate deploying, but I'd like to be in a relationship where my companionship, and possibly my life, is worth more than $500 a month to my spouse). Everything's starting to click. I can understand why she doesn't respect me- if I told someone I loved them, treated them the way she does, and they actually kept believing me, much less putting up with it? I'd think they were a fucking moron. The thing is, she will never, ever, admit to deceiving me. The one thing I can always guarantee is that she will never admit to doing wrong, no matter how blatant it was, and will use the entire playbook of dishonesty: dodge-divert-distract-shiftblame-crying-outrage. If pinned down with no way to deny, she uses anger.
I appreciate your concern about my focus, but don't worry. When we roll for the gate, a switch flips in my mind and the only things that exist are the here and the now, the mission ahead. It's from years of training.

P.S. The women I mentioned above aren't after a healthy relationship with a stable guy. They're after a walking paycheck who spends a lot of time away from home, if you get my drift. There's teenage girls in Fayetteville who can tell you down to the dollar what a soldier makes based on his rank and time in service. Not an exaggeration. That's not natural. I would go so far as to say that's... a little creepy.

[Trilby]

My ex-husband spent some time in the army at Fort Lewis in WA. He said pretty much the same thing you've said, AG, about some of the women in that town, how they knew how much a soldier made, etc., etc. They would wave goodbye to their soldier spouse and head straight for the bar to pick up other men. I feel for you. I know very well how easy it is to NOT see the (obvious) signs. You've got to make some hard decisions...I wish you the best. You don't deserve this treatment. No one does.

[AlternateGray]

There's a little more to this than just what I've gone through with my wife. I was raised mostly by my grandparents. My grandmother' first husband was an alcoholic who couldn't hold down a job or support his family. They divorced in the 60's, and she remarried. A few years ago my grandmother confessed to some of us (she apparently felt a great deal of guilt) that she had married my step-grandfather solely for the reasons that he had a decent job, was stable, wasn't all that smart, and she could control him, unlike her first husband, who she loved dearly but couldn't deal with. She'd been lying to her second husband for 30 years, every time she told him she loved him... and the guilt was eating her. I love my grandmother, but I'd grown up watching this man work his ass off, to come home to a wife who treated him coldly, and often poorly. She flat out didn't like him, she never did, and you can only hide that so much. He was rarely happy, and he looked as confused as I felt sometimes when she'd lash out at him. Whether he was miserable or not never seemed to matter to her, so long as she got her way.
He gave his life, and let's be honest, his happiness, to a lie. A bald-faced fucking lie, designed to keep him working like a mule so my grandmother and her kids would be comfortable.
I felt sorry for him, and even though I love him, I couldn't help but... I don't know, he gave almost his entire life to someone who thought he was a shmuck. And treated him like it.
I was disgusted with both of them at heart, and swore I'd never be that stupid. I'd never let a woman treat me like that, or use me for my money. I would never, ever be somebody's fucking mule. I'm worth way more than that.
Ha. Apparently not. There's more than a little bit of irony here (I married my damn grandma!WTF?!), and while I feel like twice the dupe he ever was (after all, I had his example to warn me), what truly enrages me is the fact that my stepdaughter is caught in the middle of all this. And there's no good solution. I will not follow in my grandfather's footsteps.
I haven't been able to get ahold of my wife for a couple weeks. I've sent e-mails, I've sent IMs... I'd call her, but my phone card's empty; I'd buy another one but shockingly enough my bank accounts are empty. As usual. I've finally arranged to borrow someone's card so I can call her next chance I get. I'm secretly, childishly hoping she got tired of her spending limit (i.e., my entire check and hers) and ran off with a sugardaddy. But I know she won't do that. Part of the reason she chose me, I think, is much for the same reason my grandmother chose my grandfather. Easy to control, and I (USED TO) put up with shit that most men would not. No matter though, I take leave in July, and if nothing else I'll resolve this then.

[wolf]

Good luck, AG. Do you have any recourse for her taking off with your cash?

[Trilby]

Ag, you are not the first to marry a thinly (or even thickly) disguised version of the controlling parent/guardian in your life. Welcome, sweetie, to the club. I managed to do it twice!

Mantra: I can't control her, I can only control myself.

Good luck.

Get thine jack to somewhere else ASAP.

[AlternateGray]

Originally Posted by wolf

Good luck, AG. Do you have any recourse for her taking off with your cash?

Um... She's been taking off with my cash every payday for eight years. A few more times before we resolve this isn't going to hurt too much. I can't cut her off (BIG no-no in the military) and I wouldn't anyways because of our daughter.

Brianna... I don't suppose there's membership card for this club, is there? (Oh, wait! There is... Divorce papers .)

Thanks, guys.