Post by rockstarmom on Aug 7, 2010 1:22:01 GMT -5
Hi everyone,
I've followed this blog and message board off and on for the last several months. I figured it was time to jump in.
I came across your stories while searching for resources and help for a Christian who never thought she'd be getting a divorce but realizing that was the only option that was feasible.
My husband and I have been married 10 years, and while we weren't official "Quiverfull" adherents, we were very close to its ideology in the early years of our marriage-- I stayed home, got pregnant early, was planning on homeschooling, I had no life outside the home but kept my focus on house and home and husband. My husband worked and really was my only contact with the outside world. I had once been very close to my Mom but no longer confided in her after I was married, not wanting to dishonor my husband by speaking of personal matters with her.
At the time I didn't realize it, but my marriage was abusive sexually, mentally, emotionally, and verbally. I always had this feeling inside that something wasn't right, but I chalked it up to difficult pregnancies (pre-term labor and months of strict bed rest and hospital stays) and post-partum depression.
Perhaps it was the difficult child births and depression, but at some point, my husband and I both realized that our way of doing "life" wasn't working very well. I wanted to go back to school (I had dropped out of college when we got married), and to his credit, he supported me whole-heartedly. But in hindsight, it seems like that was the beginning of the end of our marriage. While I loved having a life "of my own" and interests to pursue and friendships for the first time in years, my husband got very jealous, controlling, and manipulative. He became suspicious of everything I did and every person I talked to. If I came home 15 minutes late, he would accuse me of having an affair. He didn't come to my college graduation, he didn't come to the community theater plays I was involved in, and he would use the kids to make me feel bad for having any sort of interest outside of the home. Still, we were both committed to the marriage. We began going to counseling trying to make things better.
He has his own struggles with mental illness/depression/bipolar/borderline personality disorder, and it started getting very bad these last few years. I've done my best to support him and stick by him. But he began blaming me outright for his depression, saying it wasn't depression causing him to feel this way but that I didn't really love him and had rejected him. He started being very nasty to me-- writing me nasty letters, freaking out at me over every little perceived slight. Then he attempted suicide and landed in the psych hospital. Things progressively got worse until we finally separated as a last-ditch effort to save our marriage. He attempted suicide twice in our house when the kids and I were gone, he began engaging in very dangerous behavior, he began e-mailing me and texting me suicidal notes 30-40 times a day, and so on. I finally had the locks changed on the house. He convinced himself I was to blame for all his misery and said he should have left me years ago. Needless to say, between his dangerous behavior, his demands to see the kids whenever he felt like it (even showing up to take them right after he got out of the psych ward), his impulsive spending that was going to sink us financially, and the fact that he had already consulted a lawyer about divorce... I figured I had no choice but to file, mostly to protect the kids and to have some legal form of recourse against his erratic behavior.
There's a lot more to it than that, but I don't want to share too many details on a public site. Suffice it to say that while we never truly identified ourselves with the Quiverfull movement, I do believe that type of mindset early on in our marriage set us up for failure and disaster. Our expectations for what a relationship that honors God is supposed to look like were completely skewed. In his mind, our marriage was terrific and healthy during the first few years-- the years where I was miserable and never left the house and he controlled everything about our lives. In my mind, our relationship was sick and unhealthy during that time. I had hoped by developing a life of my own, we could truly be equal partners. But his fear, insecurity, and dysfunctional patterns of control didn't know how to adjust to it, I guess.
Anyway, I'm trying to adjust to life as a single Mom, I'm going back to school (again!), and I thought this message board would be a good place to find support and encouragement as I try to figure out who I am and who I want to be.
Oh, and I'm a musician as a part-time job... hence the Rockstar Mom moniker.
Thanks in advance to all of you for being awesome.
I've followed this blog and message board off and on for the last several months. I figured it was time to jump in.
I came across your stories while searching for resources and help for a Christian who never thought she'd be getting a divorce but realizing that was the only option that was feasible.
My husband and I have been married 10 years, and while we weren't official "Quiverfull" adherents, we were very close to its ideology in the early years of our marriage-- I stayed home, got pregnant early, was planning on homeschooling, I had no life outside the home but kept my focus on house and home and husband. My husband worked and really was my only contact with the outside world. I had once been very close to my Mom but no longer confided in her after I was married, not wanting to dishonor my husband by speaking of personal matters with her.
At the time I didn't realize it, but my marriage was abusive sexually, mentally, emotionally, and verbally. I always had this feeling inside that something wasn't right, but I chalked it up to difficult pregnancies (pre-term labor and months of strict bed rest and hospital stays) and post-partum depression.
Perhaps it was the difficult child births and depression, but at some point, my husband and I both realized that our way of doing "life" wasn't working very well. I wanted to go back to school (I had dropped out of college when we got married), and to his credit, he supported me whole-heartedly. But in hindsight, it seems like that was the beginning of the end of our marriage. While I loved having a life "of my own" and interests to pursue and friendships for the first time in years, my husband got very jealous, controlling, and manipulative. He became suspicious of everything I did and every person I talked to. If I came home 15 minutes late, he would accuse me of having an affair. He didn't come to my college graduation, he didn't come to the community theater plays I was involved in, and he would use the kids to make me feel bad for having any sort of interest outside of the home. Still, we were both committed to the marriage. We began going to counseling trying to make things better.
He has his own struggles with mental illness/depression/bipolar/borderline personality disorder, and it started getting very bad these last few years. I've done my best to support him and stick by him. But he began blaming me outright for his depression, saying it wasn't depression causing him to feel this way but that I didn't really love him and had rejected him. He started being very nasty to me-- writing me nasty letters, freaking out at me over every little perceived slight. Then he attempted suicide and landed in the psych hospital. Things progressively got worse until we finally separated as a last-ditch effort to save our marriage. He attempted suicide twice in our house when the kids and I were gone, he began engaging in very dangerous behavior, he began e-mailing me and texting me suicidal notes 30-40 times a day, and so on. I finally had the locks changed on the house. He convinced himself I was to blame for all his misery and said he should have left me years ago. Needless to say, between his dangerous behavior, his demands to see the kids whenever he felt like it (even showing up to take them right after he got out of the psych ward), his impulsive spending that was going to sink us financially, and the fact that he had already consulted a lawyer about divorce... I figured I had no choice but to file, mostly to protect the kids and to have some legal form of recourse against his erratic behavior.
There's a lot more to it than that, but I don't want to share too many details on a public site. Suffice it to say that while we never truly identified ourselves with the Quiverfull movement, I do believe that type of mindset early on in our marriage set us up for failure and disaster. Our expectations for what a relationship that honors God is supposed to look like were completely skewed. In his mind, our marriage was terrific and healthy during the first few years-- the years where I was miserable and never left the house and he controlled everything about our lives. In my mind, our relationship was sick and unhealthy during that time. I had hoped by developing a life of my own, we could truly be equal partners. But his fear, insecurity, and dysfunctional patterns of control didn't know how to adjust to it, I guess.
Anyway, I'm trying to adjust to life as a single Mom, I'm going back to school (again!), and I thought this message board would be a good place to find support and encouragement as I try to figure out who I am and who I want to be.
Oh, and I'm a musician as a part-time job... hence the Rockstar Mom moniker.
Thanks in advance to all of you for being awesome.
