I also had a onetime sexual encounter
with another man, before I married my now ex-husband, Pat. I met Teddy Bear in
a message room on the old computer Bulletin Board Systems. We met in person at
a Bulletin Board User meeting. He was very nice. He invited me to lunch one
fine day and by the time I left; we’d had more than lunch. We’d had each other.
I didn’t cry all the way home this time, I simply felt guilty for what I’d
done. I realize now the reason I cheated on Pat was the same reason I cheated
on Andrew. My emotional needs were not being met. Unfortunately, I was too
needy and hungry for love to see anything else, even how bad a relationship was
for me.
Just before I broke up with Andrew, I
took a job as a security guard. I worked several different sites in the course
of my job and it was at one of these that I met Pat, the man I married. When we
first met he was so nice and understanding and pretty soon I was crying on his
shoulder about my relationship with Andrew. Pat often said he would treat me
differently. Shortly after my breakup with Andrew, Pat and I started dating.
What I didn’t realize at the time was
that I was on the rebound from my relationship with Andrew. Because of that I
wasn’t seeing things as clearly as I should have.
He was very considerate of me and as
time went on I got the impression he wanted the same things in life I did. I
remember he even talked in his sleep one night saying something to the effect
of, “Mayone, take the kids to the car.” I was thrilled. He’d proposed to me by
this time and I honestly thought he was the perfect man for me.
We moved in together a few months
before our wedding, as it was more economical to do so. Pat was going to
college and I supported us both for a time. Pat tried working through a
temporary agency, but after working one job through them, they didn’t have any
more jobs for him. College didn’t go as well as we thought it would for him
because the college found out it wasn’t teaching the students in his program
enough of what they needed to know. Consequently they revised the program and
Pat had to re-take some classes separately he’d already done together. As a
result he ran out of grant money. Then he wouldn’t go to the college to ask for
more money, so he didn’t get his degree.
During this time, I began to have
thoughts about calling off our wedding. I couldn’t put my finger on any reason
why and I felt committed to marrying Pat so I didn’t call it off. I realize now
there were little things that made me realize marrying him would be a mistake.
He didn’t always listen to my requests to not hug me when I was working the
kitchen. Our kitchen was so tiny I could barely work in it; if he came in I was
trapped. There were other things as well. We only had room in the bedroom for
one dresser and because I didn’t own one, we used his. He was only willing to
clear out one drawer for me out of the 4 or 5 it contained.
If I were superstitious at all, I
would have run for the hills on my wedding day. A lot of things went wrong.
When my attendants and I were getting dressed, I noticed that the flower girl’s
dress was not the style I had originally specified and the lace trim was not
what I wanted either. I was not happy about that. I learned later that the
original pattern couldn’t be used for reasons beyond anyone’s control and no
one had bothered to tell me. I never did learn why the wrong lace trim had been
used.
The special nylons I had bought
didn’t fit and neither did the spare pair, my sister-in-law, Danice brought
along, just in case. Then to make matters worse, the friend who was supposed to
be watching over the guest book didn’t show. Fortunately I had made other
arrangements just in case because I had a feeling that would happen. My mother
was late for the ceremony because she hadn’t finished making her dress, even
though she’d had six months notice about my wedding. Then after the ceremony, I
noticed that the person serving punch was my friend Kathy, when it should have
been someone else. I was extremely grateful that she noticed the problem and
just stepped in and took care of it.
My husband Pat, was a little boy
emotionally whom I married thinking that he would grow up once he got away from
his father’s control. His father had been a Sergeant-major in the army and ran
his family the same way. If he said, “jump,” his family asked how high on the
way up. Pat’s father even decided which branch of the service Pat would go
into. Pat wanted to go into the Coast Guard, but his father didn’t consider
that to be “real service” and pushed Pat into joining the Air Force by having
an Air Force recruiter come to their house to meet with him.
I learned a couple of very important
lessons there. If you’re going to marry someone, you had better be very sure
that you can live with him or her the way he/she is for the rest of your life
with no expectation of change. You had also better be very sure that you see
eye to eye on all the major issues in marriage, such as money and how it’s
handled and having children. Those two issues had a lot to do with the breakup
of my marriage.
It seemed I could spend money and
charge things as long as we could afford the payments. But when it came to
paying off the bills and working towards being able to have children, I got no
real help from my husband. Every time the subject of having children would come
up, Pat would tell me we couldn’t afford to have children. Pat also told me
that he would see about getting a second job to help pay off our bills. Pat
never even looked for a second job, but I tried working two jobs twice. Even
when I paid off some of our bills, Pat would still tell me we couldn’t afford
to have children. Only now, he would get up and walk away after saying it. End
of discussion as far as he was concerned. I honestly thought when we married
that he wanted children too. As time went on in our marriage, I began to see
this wasn’t true. That as far as Pat was concerned I was too pushy about the issue
and why did I want children so badly anyway? I realize now that he didn’t
really want children the way he said he did or he would have made more effort
to make it possible. He knew I would not have married him if I’d known he
didn’t want children.
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