The Door is Open to Disease and Financial Ruin
How my husband chose a gun over me and our 16 year old
Now my husband starting living in his friend’s AirBnB on February 15th. By this time we were seeing each other twice a week on his terms. Sex hadn’t been this good since we were first together 23 year before! At first I attempted to stop it as I knew it would confuse me. Yet, I also recognized that if he desired me it was a glimmer of the love I had lost. He hadn’t said he loved me in a year. And the last 13 trips the family took he only opted to go on 2 of them. So I was desperate throwing myself on the pyre of lost love. At this point my son and I were on a “diet” where we only got to see my husband twice a week. The sad thing is on the first week he moved out he was only 1 block away yet didn’t find it important to at least see our son every day!
Funny thing is I actually attempted to find him an apartment rather than an AirBnb. My friend’s boyfriend was vacating a 2 bedroom on nearby and I texted him the information. I was strangely relieved when he said he didn’t want a long term rental. Was there hope? I was looking for love and hope in every dark corner of our hearts! I even purchased a “smudging” (bound sage) bundle and burned it in every corner of our bedroom and the guest room where he was staying praying “please heal my husband, please have him stay, please save our marriage, please give me the strength to continue hoping!”. As the vapors wafted away, so did my hope. My husband called this “going to a dark place”. I cannot imagine what human in love wouldn’t go to this place when facing imminent abandonment.
My girlfriend reminded me of something I had told her the year before. She said, “Remember when you came to our ride last year in May and said my husband says he will never leave me because Israelis marry for life?” I had forgotten the words but do remember saying in therapy that after 22 years of marriage when he said this I actually let my guard down! See, I was left after 7 years of marriage with a 1 and 3 year old, so I was slow to trust. Why did I make the mistake of trusting after 22 years of marriage? Did this doom me to the plight I am in now? Did this make me less on guard and perhaps say the wrong thing to turn his heart hard towards mine?
God! The sex was amazing! Often I saw him quite gaunt and unshaven, like a refuge. One time he even came over with dirt on his face from work. But the healing we did in bed was unforgetable! I remember one time looking in his sad eyes and his wonder that perhaps there was hope after all. That perhaps I really loved him despite his conclusions to the contraray. I was awake and on fire. I flipped from despair without him to escatsy with him. We devoured eachother. One night after I was away in San Diego for a week during the lockdown. Yes, I escaped to an AirBnb with our son to visit our Navy son for 10 days! I came home and after dinner I was on his lap and suggested we have sex.
He said nothing worked anymore. He looked so sad. I asked him what he meant and he said he was unable to have sex all week. Did that mean he couldn’t self please? Or, did he attempt to be with another woman? I recalled in therapy he said he was approached by prostitutes in Columbia when he was there in November. They were Venezuelans trying to feed their children! He told the therapist that he could only be with a woman he had a connection to. Did he try to be with a prostitute in Columbia? Or, what? The other thing that was alarming was that in his closet he had this Cobra supplement for erectile disfunction. Then I was very concerned when putting away his things to find Cialis from Mexico, prescription erectile disfunction pills. Yet for me he was perfectly healthy! Was it his depression or was it his trying to be with other women? Even the next day when I texted him questions about it he lied saying it was for his cousin. Yet a pill was missing from the package!
The weekend before March 15th when our governor, Gavin Newsom, locked California down, he and I were going to go hiking. But he decided based on his brother’s advice that we should stock up on food. So we went grocery shopping together something we hadn’t done together in over 10 years! During this time he said that his brother told him if things get worse he should move in with us again. So naturally, when our state was locked down I texted him asking if he would be at home that night. He responded that we could talk about it that night! Again, he viewed my reaction as hysterical when I became upset. I missed the shut down self I was in December when nothing he did could phase me. Unfortunately, the sex we were enjoying woke me up to loving him intensely again and hurting when he repeatedly rejected me!
So when he first moved out and the therapist said he was depressed I hid his handgun under the house. What shocked me was when the governor locked the state down he returned home to retrieve the gun so that he could feel safe in his AirBnb. He left me and our son to fend for ourselves but had enough anxiety to arm himself. Wouldn’t a healthy person stay with his family and protect us? While we didn’t have looting or other civil unrest, it disturbed me that he would make such a strange choice!
