How My Forever Love Came to an End

Well, that title pretty much says it all. Allow me to elaborate. When I was in Highschool I met a boy. I was sixteen when he and I met and a few weeks shy of seventeen by the time we were allowed to go out on our first date. My parents had not allowed me to date up to that point and I had only been in public school for two or three years. I was homeschooled until junior high so my social skills weren't quite what they should have been. He was the first boy to pay me any attention and I felt he made up for what I was lacking at home. We talked for a few months and my dad would not allow us to date.

After three months of asking he finally caved and let us go out. My dad was still very strict and overbearing. He never trusted me even though I never gave him good reason not to. He would take my phone and go through all my texts and emails. He even went as far as to put an app on my phone to restrict who I could call at certain times and he could see my call log from his phone. All these things together simply pushed me closer to my boyfriend and further from my family. Compared to my home life, my boyfriend felt like a safe place. He said all the right things, he bought me gifts and was the shining knight I'd been looking for. The problem was he was also a narcissist and had been love bombing me from the beginning. Everyone could see it except me.

So, long story short, we continued to date for about two years. The summer after I graduated high school, he proposed and the next year we got married. Everything was great at first, he still bought me gifts and took me on dates. I won't act like we didn't have good times; however, our biggest argument was always money. Having seen my parents fight over that my whole life, it seemed normal to me. He started to get meaner about it as the years went on and it got to the point that he was draining our account on whatever he wanted and when I would buy groceries or toiletries it was a problem and I was the reason we never had any money.

I was raised to believe divorce was wrong and that anything could be worked out. I believed that because he wasn't physically hitting me, the marriage was going to be just fine. It was not. Things got progressively worse over the course of 3 years until we had talked about divorce many times. I always shut it down because I believed that the relationship was worth saving. On an unimportant date in August of 2020, I woke up when my husband of three years came home from his overnight shift at the factory. He sat down next to me and told me that he was gay.

Now this seems bad but in hindsight, this was one of the best things that ever happened to me. In the moment; however, not so much. The conversations that followed, the arguments, the finger pointing, the fracturing of friendships and family relationships, was utterly excruciating and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. It was hard, but I'm glad I did it. Not only did I become a stronger and better person from it, but I have found a new family and a new relationship that make me wonder how I ever settled for less. And I wouldn't change a thing that happened, because I love the life I've built.