It’s been one year
since he told me…
It was early spring in April 2022. We were outside doing various things. My children were being children — jumping on the trampoline, catching bugs, playing in the dirt. My husband was working in the shop. I was planning the garden and working on setting up a trellis I bought online for my raspberry bushes.
I asked my husband to help me pound some of the stakes in the ground so I could continue. He had been acting distant that day, but by now I was used to it so I brushed it off. When he came around the corner looking super pissed (out of nowhere) I asked him what was wrong. He continued to say nothing until I finally pried it out of him.
“I just don’t like you anymore” he said.
A punch to the gut for me. Raw pain shot through my stomach up to my chest.
“What?” I asked. “You don’t like my attitude today, you mean?”
“No”, he said “I don’t think I like you as a person, like at all”.
Now this had been an issue of argument throughout our relationship. I was the negative one, I was the problem. I couldn’t be happy enough, I was too emotional. I just needed to ‘relax’ and ‘calm down’.
Little did I know that at this point my husband had been having an affair for about a year. He had finally ended it with her (oh lucky me) but I wouldn’t find out until late July.
We had about a two hour long discussion about both of our shortcomings, but what it boiled down to was I was at fault more than him. I created this negativity in our marriage and he was struggling emotionally. I never wanted either one of us to be at fault more than the other.
I still get an aching feeling thinking about that phrase…. “I just don’t like you anymore”…one of many that have shaped the way I viewed myself and still struggle with today (yes I’m in therapy). It hurts and it angers me even though I work daily to try an let go.
