Back Story

What I'm about to write has a lot of private information about myself.  I'm laying it out there knowing I will be judged.  But I ask you to keep one thing in mind: It is not your job to determine the quality of my character, my moral standing with God, or my relationship with our Savior.  If you think you can read this without doing any of those things, then read on.  If not, you might as well exit out now.

I've been doing a lot of thinking.  About my relationship status.  For anyone who hasn't caught on by now, I'm separated.  My husband, we'll call him X, lives in an apartment about two or three miles from me.  We're sharing custody of our little girl (we'll call her K).  I wanted the split, and I'm really doing quite well.  I mean yes, it does suck, but I'm doing much better than I thought I'd be doing.

When we first split up I spent almost no time with him.  Not that I didn't want to work on it with him, but I was busy trying to make sure things would work for me financially.  After a couple of weeks I pretty much got things stable, and after that we started dating each other.  Sometimes we'd go on actual dates, other times we'd just hang out at his new place.  We were trying to see if things could possibly work.  But there was a problem...

See, I've never actually been in love with my husband.  In High School I wanted a boyfriend, and he asked me.  He was cute and I was kind of crushing on him, so I said yes.  Then we were all over each other.  We made out constantly, but rarely actually talked.  A couple days into the relationship I was sweeping the porch at my house and the thought "He's not the one for you" entered my mind.  But he was hott and I liked making out with him, so I kept seeing him.

After two or three months I wanted to break up with him.  But at that point we were saying "I love you" and had been for a while, and he'd gotten out of a really bad relationship just before me.  I didn't want to hurt him, so I waited.  And waited.  And before I knew it, he was at boot camp and I couldn't break up with him then.  Then he was in SOI, and I kind of tried in a very immature way (mind you, I was 17): I held hands w/another guy that I and told him about it.  I was kind of hoping he'd break up with me (yes, I know it was immature, I just said that, right?) but it backfired; he proposed.  And, being stupid, 17, and feeling guilty, I said yes.

My dad and step-mom were furious when they found out.  And I mean furious.  But that just made him more forbidden, so I held on.  It was "Romeo and Juliet", the high school version (only nobody died), and I wanted that 'fairy-tale ending'.

Then I started to get excited.  I mean come on, I was 17 and I was planning a wedding.  MY wedding!  I wasn't excited about getting married, but the wedding stuff was a lot of fun.  I kept up the act of being hopelessly and desperately in love with him, on the outside, but he and I started arguing a lot (it was mostly me arguing at him, really) and we were having a lot of relationship issues.  In fact we broke up for a month in March of '09, but I got in a lot of trouble, freaked out, and went back to him.  He was 'safe' for me.  We weren't able to talk as much, so when we did we didn't argue nearly as much, and I felt so bad for what I'd done to get in trouble that I pretty much just kept my head down.  And so it went.

But as the wedding got closer, I got more and more anxious, and not in a good way.  I wanted to call it off, but I was terrified of what everyone would think of me.  After all, I'd defied my dad and step-mom in order to get married to him!  I could just hear the "I told you so"s and I desperately wanted to avoid that.  But a few days before the wedding I lost it.  I called my mom in tears (she and my step-dad were very supportive of the wedding) and told her I didn't think I could/should do it.  I'll be honest, I was hoping she'd say that if I felt that way I should call it off.  Then I could have an 'out', because my "mommy told me to do it".

But the adult world doesn't work that way, as I found out.  She told me that I just had cold feet, reminded me how good of a man X is, and said everybody went through what I was going through.  So I got married.

Since then I've been miserable.  Absolutely miserable.  So miserable I was literally cutting to try to handle the pain better (I know it's stupid, believe me, but when you're that miserable not much makes sense).  My sex life sucked - no offense, X, if you ever read this - because my libido dropped instantly after the wedding (we waited til marriage).  It was like being with my brother (not that I've ever been with my brother) and I went from wanting it all the time to not wanting it at all.  He was very good, don't get me wrong.  But the desire was just not there for me.  But I knew a marriage wasn't based on the physical aspect, and I started looking to other things.

Problem was, there weren't other things.  He was a friend, but that was it.  I wasn't in love with him, and I'd known it since two or three months after we started dating.  But I was married now, so I was 'stuck'.

I bought every book I could to try to force that feeling (gently, of course) into my marriage.  I bought "The Love Dare" (which is a very good book and I highly recommend it), listened to 'Eternal Marriage' on tape every night and day, read "The Five Love Languages", looked up essays and journals and stories about people who hadn't been in love but fell in love with their spouse, and spent hours upon hours upon hours on my knees begging God to incorporate that feeling into my heart.  I loved him, yes, but only as a friend.

I tried to make that enough for me, but it never was.  Then something that I consider both horrible and wonderful happened: I fell in love with another man.

Luckily for both our morality's sake, he was across the country.  We'll call him S.  S and I began talking just as friends, and it honestly stayed that way (talking) for a very, very long time.  But I was falling for him, and I knew it.  I didn't tell him, or anyone else; I was so ashamed of it!  A few times I told him we should talk less, simply because I didn't want to cross any invisible boundary in the marital world.  We'd do good for a long time, but then we'd go back to texting or skyping close to every day.  And I fell desperately in love with him.

I still didn't tell anyone, including S.  But after around 5 or 6 months it became clear that the feelings were mutual.  Around month 6 or 7 we admitted our feelings for each other, but agreed there was nothing we could do about them, as I was married.  It hurt like hell, to love someone I couldn't be with. But I think what hurt more was to love someone and be married to someone else (since then I've been sorely sympathetic to every female character in every book or movie who is in love with one person and promised to another).

X and I started spending more time together, and S and I stopped talking as much.  In fact, I found S a girlfriend (BIG mistake; she was crazier than me, and not in a good way! She made his life and mine and X's miserable) and we both started to move on.  In a weird sort of way, the bad girlfriend I found S turned out to be my saving grace; she drove him so nuts that he went from being a man I was very much able to love to being an absolute jerk and - at times - a bit of a womanizer.  So getting over him got a LOT easier.

When I finally got over S (there's a part of me that still loves the man he used to be, but in my defense a part of me still loves my first boyfriend from the 9th grade), I focused all my energy on trying to fall in love with X.  I read all the books and listened to all the tapes again.  I went back to praying feverishly for the love to come (or at LEAST the physical attraction).  I did all sorts of things for him, as I'd heard that service is a great way to love someone.  But still it did not come.  After I had our baby, the depression I'd been in since we got married got so bad that I went from simply cutting myself to being suicidal.  I talked to my midwife and she prescribed me some medication for it, and I was able to stop thinking thoughts like that and I even stopped cutting at all (mind, I didn't do it often, but I did do it).

Several months passed and I kept trying  to fall in love with X.  I focused all my energy on him, and on bettering myself.  I wasn't as miserable as I was anymore, thanks to the meds, but I still wasn't happy, and I still wasn't in love.

I found Energy Therapy, and I started working on myself to try and better myself (I'm now a certified Energy Therapist).  I began working on my depression issues, and then I decided to try and find out why I have such a problem saying 'no', or doing anything *I* want to do that I feel is inconvenient for others.  Well, I was successful.  I didn't turn into a totally selfish, I'm-going-to-do-anything-I-want-to-whether-you-like-it-or-not, kind of person.  But I had a limit.  And it turns out, not being in love is way past the 'limit' for me.

So a few months after that, we split up.  I'm no longer depressed at all.  In fact, I'm very happy.  I may not be in love with anyone right now, but I'm not with someone I *don't* love, and that means the world to me.  So the question I've been asking myself is this: should I stay with someone that I'm not in love with, even if he is a good person and 'safe', if it means I am so miserable that I need to be on depression medication just so I don't want to physically hurt myself??

I'm sorry, but that's a limit I don't think I can cross.