When I was going through my divorce, child support payments were always a problem.  If my ex got paid on the last working day of the month and it was a Friday, but the last actual last day of the month was a Sunday, he would wait until late afternoon or evening on Sunday to bring me a check.

Considering I was earning one quarter of what he was and taking care of three children who needed food and clothing, along with paying the heat and electricity meant he didn’t really care if we struggled as long as he was in control and winning.

He was warned by my lawyer when child support was due but refused to follow the court-ordered rules.  The court then ordered that child support payments were to be taken out of his paycheck and paid to me by his employer.  We were both employed by a school district.  Now everyone would know we were divorcing and it would leak out that his pay was being garnished for child support.

He showed up at the house when the kids were not there and demanded I remove the court-ordered garnishment.  I told him no.  He looked at me and told me to remove it, or someone across the bay was going to die.  My parents, my sister, and my nephew’s family all lived on the other side of the bay.  I reported the threat to my lawyer and told my family that he had threatened them.

I didn’t know until months later that my nephew had given my dad a gun and that my dad kept that gun under his pillow at night.  My nephew also kept a gun ready. 

Did I take this threat seriously?  Yes!  My ex had told me once that he could kill me and dispose of my body in the sloughs, and no one would ever find me.  He had also removed all the bullets from a handgun in front of me and told me to hide them in case he did something while he was on meds for surgery.  But sitting in his top dresser was the box with the remaining bullets, so I knew this was a warning.

 When my first marriage ended after 26 years, I felt like I had been run over by a steamroller, dealing with him acting like the victim and being a narcissist. 

My daughter likes to call romance books smut books.  Some romance books are mild, some very steamy, some are real eye openers.  Reading a few of these, I realized how selfish my ex had been.  Did I experience an orgasm, no!  Did I experience a loving touch, no!  Did I experience a caring husband, no!  What I got was him getting off with no regard for me, and yet he called me asexual and told this to our neighbor who babysat our son while screwing her while our son napped.

How do I know this? She told me after I filed for divorce and said I should never marry again because I was cold, and that is why my ex went to her.  Her husband divorced her several years later, although I don’t know if he ever knew of their affair.

It was a whole new world reading a book and learning all the ways a man could love a woman and in turn, being loved that opened her to loving a man fully. 

I was five foot seven inches but fat if I weighed one hundred fifteen pounds. Yet I was too skinny, and he laughed at me.  Being pregnant was hard because I gained fifty-one pounds with each of my babies.  With the first child, I was only five pounds over my one hundred ten-pound weight he thought was normal thirty days after giving birth.  With my second child, it took me about two months to get back to that unrealistic weight he thought I should weigh.  After my third child, it was almost six months before I lost the fifty-one pounds, and the whole time he told me I was fat and ugly.  Hard to want to have sex with someone who degrades you constantly.

I don’t even think it would have helped if he had read a romance/smut book, as  he was too egocentric, egotistical, and self-serving.

I married for a second time about a year and a half after I filed for divorce from my ex.  Not telling secrets, but this marriage is about love, respect, and being there for each other in every way, and no, I am not asexual.

Sometimes you do have to kiss a frog to find the prince.  The only reason I would subject myself to this if I had a do-over is because of the three amazing children I have.  They are funny, loving, and committed to their spouses, and I am blessed.