I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 11

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. His father even decided which branch of the service he would go into. Pat wanted to go into the Coast Guard, but his father didn’t consider that to be “real service” and pushed him 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 were the biggest issues in our marriage and the ones that ultimately ended it.

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, he’d say we couldn’t afford to have children. He also told me that he would see about getting a second job to help pay off our bills. He never even looked for a second job, but I tried working two jobs twice. Even when I paid off some of our bills, He’d 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 he 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.

During our marriage, I went through a period of months when my monthly cycle simply stopped. I went to my doctor about it and she told me she was going to run a test for early menopause. I happened to tell Pat about the test on the phone. I informed him in no uncertain terms that I was in early menopause, then I was going to jump him and there would be no birth control. I could tell from the way he got quiet for a moment before responding that I’d shocked him and made him uneasy. Looking back on this, I realize now that I dealt the final blow to our marriage then. It continued to stagger along, but it never got back to what it had been, which wasn’t all that good in the first place.

His family wasn’t helpful in matters of having children either. One sister stayed out of it, the other commiserated with me in a weird way. She would say, “I know just how you feel Mayone, I want my little boy back.”

I used to look at her and think, “How dare you claim to know how I feel when you have three beautiful daughters? Wanting something you had is not the same as wanting something you have never had!”

However, there was another way in which my now ex in-laws hurt me. I don’t think any of them ever realized it. One year for Christmas I decided to make cookies as that was cheaper than buying gifts and I thought they’d all appreciate some homemade goodies. Then I decided to buy some little things to go with the cookies. I stayed up really late Christmas Eve packaging the cookies into individual baskets for everyone. The next day we got raves for the store bought gifts, but not one fucking word about the cookies I’d worked so hard to make for everyone. I decided then and there to never, ever bake for them again. The only person who said anything was his Aunt Donna and she loved them so much she wanted a recipe for one of them. I always meant to get it to her, but never got around to it, which I do regret.

I see now there were other signs he didn’t care about me. There was the matter of pocket change. I once told him that I needed his quarters for laundry money. He told me he needed them for parking while doing things for his company. I remember thinking that his work should provide him money for parking while on the job and besides he had nickels and dimes too.

I know now he was buying coffee and lunch with the change, while I took lunch to work. How do I know this? I made him a lunch on a couple of different occasions, which he didn’t eat. Later the food got so moldy he threw it away, Tupperware container and all. He told me the food got so moldy, I wouldn’t have wanted the container back. The first time it happened, I told him to bring me the container and let me try anyway. Of course, he didn’t care enough about me to respect my property or me for that matter.

Another thing he did was to leave the driver’s seat pulled forward in our car, even when he knew I would be driving it after him. Pat was shorter than I am and he needed the seat pulled forward. I repeatedly asked him to put it all the way back when he knew I’d be driving it after him, but he never did. I don’t know how many times I banged my hip on the steering wheel getting into the car after him. That seriously hurt!