Part three: Not seeing the signals.
We moved into a house on the lake. I was working at a new job and it was way too huge for me or anyone. I was fried by the end of the day. I would come home and N did not have dinner or had not washed a dish or swept the floor. Nada. I would do the laundry. About this time he said he wanted to control the finances because I was not capable of doing this. I organized mountains of things at work but I agreed because I wanted him to feel good. i started to pay all the bills for moorane and mortgage on his houseboat, moorage for sail boat and 13,000.00 for his airplane. He told me we were going to be together for life. He would often say this.
There never seemed to be enough money in the account anymore. No extras for me.
After about 6 months of this I got fed up and told him to step up to the plate. This was like saying something unspeakable to him. This would interfere with his saving for retirement. He was 52. As soon as we moved in together he was disinterested in sex. I had never had a partner like that. I like sex and intimacy and cuddling. Cuddling was ok but nothing else.
I was happy he had stopped drinking and he told me it would take a year to adjust physically and mentally.
We bought a house together. I paid for most of it 2/3. I then got a mortgage for another 30,000 and put that into the house to make it liveable. It was a fixer upper and in four years N did nothing to fix it up even though most of that time he did not work. He spent enormous ammounts of time on the phone.
He was subtly denigrating me almost continually. Don't crinkle paper, stop sniffing, don't say "you know so much" , don't sigh. dont wiggle in bed.dont make sounds when you eat, no eating candy.
I tried to be fastidious and eat with decorum. I am sort of sensitive about stuff like that and I bent over backwards.
I felt exhausted after about 8 months of this. No help at home and expectations of nice creature comforts and good meals. I think a I balked a few times but the tantrums weren't worth it.
I ended up on stress leave. N became really freaked out when it looked like I might lose my job. He could not stand the idea of me doing something else that paid less. Finally I went back to work because we just could not manage on disability. He was not inspired to help at all. He would say things like'" If this place was tidier I might want to keep it clean" or "I cant stand the clutter so I am not doing anything".
I worked hard and when it came time for a few days off, N would inevitably head off with his daughter with whom he had a very romantic relationship. He would take her traveling and to nice restaurants, sailing etc. All on my money. His daughter was distainful of me. It was a very icky triange. I tried to explain to him that I wanted to like her and to have fun as a group but this was not an option.
Now these things were happening and it sounds really aweful and like there was nothing between us. But N would swear undying love to me. He promised to take me all over the world. Oh the adventures we would have.
It got worse and worse of course. He got a job but told me he did not get paid by them. I found out months after he left that he did get paid 4000.00. But he squirrelled it away in a private account.
IN Feb '06 he began an email affair with an old friend. It must have heated up quite quickly. N was still encouraging me to double the mortgage payments and he had not contributed for more than a year. I was getting really angry about this. When I brought it up he would say, "Oh you are having another episode". This got worse and worse. He would scream at me" You are psychotic. Get help. You are a sick woman". I did not grasp what was happening. Whenever I brought up an issue that needed to be worked through, it became a circular, babbling labyrinth of bullshit. I would ask him where is the money going. Then he would freak right out.
He started to get sort of paranoid and accused me of wanting to destroy his family heirlooms. There were lots of them but I would not do that in a million years. He moved them to friends houses and told the friends that I was dangerous and psychotic. HE told my friends and my daughter this. This was a nightmare. Slander is an aweful thing. People cant help but think there is something to it.
I went off on stress leave again. N told my psychologist that I was homocidal and suicidal. I was not either. He said that he had to hide the guns. I think now that he was on a rampage of projection. His devaluing of me became like a Wagnerian opera.
When he finally went fishing I was relieved. He promised me he would send money when he sold some fish. I paid for the licenses of both he and his buddy ( over 1000.00) Just before he left he paid his accountant 2000.00. This left me with almost nothing for the two months of summer. I would phone him and he acted shifty. He said he had not sold any fish. I started to get frantic. Our expenses were over 2000.00 a month. I had no money for food. It was his turn to help. He turned off his cell phone and acted like i was harassing him. He told his fishing buddies that I was cruel and was verbally abusing him. They advised him to turn off his cell phone, which he did. He never did come up with any money. I had to go to my brother for a loan. N did not see anything wrong with this.
Agani, he would act like I was just crazy. His friends out fishing thought I was nuts. ( It turns out that he was phoning his new sweetie every day).
I phoned his partner and told him I had paid for the licenses and had no money. He sent a cheque. N insisted on putting it in his bank and tranferring the money to our joint account. I have no idea why. HE was always doing fast things like that.
N told me he needed time to decompress when he got back from fishing. He sort of didn't come home for three weeks. I think he went off with some woman.
He gave me & 500.00. This is ridiculous. I told him he had to start paying, sell his property or cash in some savings or he had to start fixing up the house. HE WAS FURIOUS. He said that he had no option but to leave. I had thrown him out of his own home. I felt toltally bonkers. I could not tell up from down. N was a really good talker and usually I would give up rather than try to clarify what he was saying His bafflegab was monumental. I know he likes to get the upper hand on people in a sort of gleeful, immature and sadistic way. I did not thing that this behaviour would include me.
It got horribly messy and painful. I cried all the time. I did not know what was going on. I begged him to tell me. Once he said off-handedly, " A good marriage should be able to handle an affair". I replied that I would bury him in the backyard if he did that. He looked really shocked.
I found some phone bills that were sent to a private mailbox in his name in another town. The bills showed that he called this other woman nearly everyday since Feb 06. It was October 14
He said that he was going moose hunting, which I knew about. Then he was going to go around the province looking for jobs. He said he was going Calgary for 2 weeks. Then I found out about the new woman. I was so hurt and angry. I punced him on the arm ( He is a big man and was not hurt one little bit). He calmly called the police and I was arrested ( They automatically arrest people here. I had to get a lawyer and still stand to lose my professional liscence over this. I could hear him talking to the police saying " She is violent officer and this is not the first time. She has bipolar disorder and is under a psychiatrists care" He was laughing and talking to the policeman. They did not know that I could hear everything through the window. As I drove off N was laughing and talking to the police. He was really enjoying this. I was devastated. I was sobbing.
That was a brutal, brutal day for me.
I came back the next day and he was gone. There was an email from one of his lady friends and it said," I am looking forward to playing with you this winter. I called all over for you but I guess you are in Calgary with your new sweetie". I nearly died when I read that email. Obviousely, this old girlfriend knew all about it. He had planned his exit.
So I had been financially abandoned, cheated and swindled, I found out he was an adulterer with more than one woman and that he planned to relocate thousands of miles away and I got arrested all on the same day.
I could not stand the pain. I remember that. and the shock was like being hit by a truck. I don't know what this sounds like. I loved him with all my heart and I was completely committed to him. I thought he was an honest man.
I did not think I could live through this.
Everything I had clung to was falling away. My job was too much for me, my daughter was alienated from me, my friends were mostly gone and I ddi not know anyone in the little town we lived in. Finalncially, I was in the lurch and was not sure how to hang onto the house. N would not pay a cent to keep it. It was in his interest to sell now.
He did not have any empathy for me at all. When he flipped into this new creature he was not looking back. I thought I must deserve this because new age philosophy says we create our reality. But I could not stand that thougtht.
I would welcome any thoughts or insights. Really welcome them.
Sea storm
