When you realize it's over

For twenty years, I waited for the day I could say "Thank God and Greyhound you're gone." No my marriage wasn't as bad as it could have been. It wasn't as good as it could have been either. The first indication that there would be problems was the age difference. My wife was older than I was by twelve years. She also had a child from her first marriage which complicated things a little.

During our first year of marriage we had things happen that we had to endure. Things that was a strain on our marriage and really tested our metal. The first thing was our move from Roanoke, VA to Rapid City, SD. We arrived in Rapid City broke with no food, nor money for food. It took us three weeks before we could afford to eat out. The second thing that happened was we took out a lot of debt, mainly credit card debt. We were managing for the longest time. One night we received a call that my mother in law was in the hospital in critical condition. We headed back home and rented a car for three weeks. This set us back financially. In April of the following year my father in law died. We went back home for that. It got to the point that airfare was costing us a fortune.

As the first year progressed and we returned from Virginia, just before Thanksgiving, my stepson wanted to go hunting with a friend of his from school. My wife said no because she had a bad feeling about it. My stepson argued with his mother and finally convinced her to let him go. The day after Thanksgiving, we received a call that there had been an accident. My wife thought it was her son that was dead. It wasn't, however; it was her son who accidently shot and killed a boy. The police gave her co-worker the details and because of a blizzard we couldn't get to him. That night I rented the movie the Stone Boy.

Also, during our first year my wife miscarried and I was fired from my job at Sears. To add insult to injury on the same day of me being fired my wife had a miscarriage.

After my son was born our problems just continued to magnify and multiply. Daily arguments over how our son was to be raised. When I went to work at night if I told my son no about something my wife would buy what ever it was he wanted when I was at work. Both kids picked up on this. Having our daughter added even more stress and tension to our marriage.

By the fifth year of marriage, it became a completely sexless marriage. It remained that way for ten years. I started having extra marital affairs, mainly with men, I knew I was gay before we were married and getting married was a mistake. When we first got married, I was in college majoring in accounting. My wife wasn't that supportive of my career aspirations because she loved the idea of being the major bread winner for the family as she was a nurse.

One year I was in a near fatal car accident and I was making forty-thousand a year when this happened. I had to have back surgery to fix my back. I received eighty-percent relief of pain,

When I eventually did land a job in my career field that is when things really started to change. My wife started working double shifts and making nearly ninety thousand a year. This was because I was matching her original salary.

We moved back to Virginia and this was our final down fall. We had adopted a teen age girl who wanted to be in my wife's place in the bed, at seventeen. Finally one night it came to a head when told me to take my whore and leave. We left. My wife and I agreed when our first grand-daughter was born that we would be friends and civil towards each other for the sake of the grand children. We have been amicable for nearly twenty years.