On the other hand, I was a, financially independent, college graduate (Nurse) with a stable employment history...so I had some pluses as well. I paid my bills, I was seen as a success and my life, on the surface, was normal.
My first husband was a very attractive, African American male (I am Caucasian) who was loving and caring and my Mother truly loved him. He had several children, with different women, and he was paying support for them. He had not graduated from high school but had a fairly stable job history. He worked hard and was not a lazy person. Although "uneducated" he was intelligent, charming and very sweet. We had two children (Boys) less than 2 years apart. He was a very nice man but he had been submissive to my face and did what he wanted behind my back...including having numerous extra-marital affairs. This, in concert with undiagnosed major depression for the entire length of my memory, led me to self-medicate and I became a drug addict. I am NOT saying that my first husband DROVE me to drugs...that is NOT the case. I had been an intermittent, "social" user for many years as part of my youthful "party life". My use simply escalated and became part of my "norm" instead of an occasional indulgence. I did receive extensive, excellent treatment and I was doing well in that... but I was very controlling and made attempts to control him, which had failed. Neither of us was happy. Our divorce was amiable. In fact, when the judge ordered a specific amount of child-support, based on an error, I was the one to point out that he would not be able to survive paying that amount. The whole court looked at me in disbelief and, believe it or not, FRUSTRATION! We had been divorced for over a year when I met my "N"...but I believe my first husband held an idea that we would reunite and remarry... something that I had also considered prior to the entrance of my "Prince Charming-AKA the N"
When my first discovered that I was "dating" someone else, he lost control. For a split second he just "snapped". He punched me in the face repeatedly and fractured my nose in the presence of our two children (about ages 4 and 6). He had never shown any violent tendencies, in the entire 7 years of our marriage, but he did "snap" and assault me. He was immediately apologetic and tearful. I never had ANY doubt that this was simply a loss of control and I was not fearful of him. I also knew that it had to be the end of any on-going contact with him. When I was taken to the ER for treatment, and twice after that, the police came to talk to me and tried desperately to get me to press charges against him. As a health care worker, I knew that they felt that I was just another abused woman who was caught in the "cycle" and fearful of pressing charges. That simply was not the case. He was not a violent man, he had no history of hitting me, our children or anyone else. I simply could not see how putting him in a jail cell overnight and giving him a record was going to help the situation. (This ended up being the right decision as he remarried, has been married since and has never again lost control or become violent in any way). I resisted their pressure to go against what I truly believed was the right thing to do. After an initial period of tension, I had, and have, fond feelings for my first husband. His goods outweighed his bad. It was a case of "things just didn't work out". Indeed, my Mother maintained a close relationship with him and contacted him, and his new wife, frequently....baking him birthday cakes and sending his young daughter birthday cards each year until her death.
I do not say that he was perfect, and neither was I. I know that the things that drove us apart would not disappear. It was better that we parted than continue down the road we were on. He was young, handsome, liked other women, prone to shirking his responsibility for our children, EXTREMELY prone to be a "follower", caving to pressure from friend and family to do things like drinking and driving with my children in the car and often did not keep his word to me or to my children. Looking back, I see that I was cold, controlling, selfish, dominant, pessimistic, unhappy, miserable, self-pitying, inflexible, cocky and somewhat "aloof". As you can see...these things led me to see him (at that time) as a weak, unreliable, womanizer with a total lack of priorities. I am making an assumption here as I do NOT KNOW how he saw me...but I can imagine that he saw me as a controlling, angry, cold, prude of a woman who wanted to keep him under my thumb. In some ways, we were both right. Isn't it funny how things are so clear in retrospect!?!.
Enter the "N"...
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