Keep My Name Out of Your Mouth

Once the respect is gone from a relationship, the love is soon to follow.

 I know this all to clearly, as I’m sure many of you out there do as well. I could almost change it to say that once the love is gone, so is the respect. These two items seem to go hand in hand. That’s fine if you don’t have anything connecting yourself to the other person, but what about when you have children? What about when you are trying to raise children into strong adults and you have to still try to work with this other person? That takes a decent amount of respect. Especially if your marriage was one that ended on less than amicable terms. Sometimes a marriage just ends, and the two people are able to get along, raise their kids, and be civil adults just fine. Other times, the negativity that brought the marriage to a standstill gets even worse after it is over.

I was in love. I was crazy in love. I’m not going to apologize for loving anyone that hard

I have a lot of theories as to why this is. I think some people are just vindictive by nature and want nothing but the worst for someone they think has wronged them. For many men, a divorce is a blow to their ego. “You’ll never find a man like me.” Or, my favorite, “You never deserved me.” If I had a dollar… Guess what motherfucker, YOU never deserved me! I’ve been dealing with this since before my divorce, but the only difference is that now I don’t have to put up with it. I shouldn’t have put up with it when I was married, but love’s blinders have a way of making you overlook some of those things. I was in love. I was crazy in love. I’m not going to apologize for loving anyone that hard. It’s actually a pretty admirable quality. However, after a while I realized that what I mistook for my undying devotion to a man was, in reality, more desperate that anything else. I had been abandoned by so many family members over the course of my life that I was afraid of being abandoned by another. I felt like I was trapped by my own convictions. I was going to be that woman who stuck by her man no matter what. There wasn’t anything that I wasn’t willing to do for that man, even when deep down I knew I would be left with nothing. He put my loyalties to the test, time and time again. I bent to this man’s will. At home, at work, in the bedroom, in our family, with my own family, and after being tested, I still stood there by his side. I realized something once I had a little more clarity. I had his back daily, but he never really had mine. He would treat me like shit and then make me feel like his behavior was always somehow my fault. Everything was always my fault.  He was a master manipulator, and I fell for his bullshit over and over. I was gaslighted, verbally and physically abused, cheated on, and made to bend to every sexual fantasy he wanted to check off his bucket list. It’s one thing to do these things as a couple, it’s another when you go into the shower immediately afterwards and hysterically try to scrub my body clean from the shame and regret. So, even after my own desperation caused me to sacrifice some of the morals and values that I hold dear, I still can’t seem to get any respect. I know this person will never look back with any regret at the things that were done in the past. There will be no remorse, not even any sort of acknowledgement that he played any role in the failure of our marriage. I can accept that I was married to a narcissist. A megalomaniac of the greatest proportions. For someone who still lives at home with mom, he thinks he’s one of the most amazing men on the planet. He had himself convinced that I was completely to blame. Once I regained my self confidence and self-respect, I stopped tolerating his mistreatment of me. He wants to drag me through the mud with any family member, coworker, or the parade of disgusting skanks that walk in and out of his bed. I’m constantly told what a horrible person I am. According to him, I’m not a good mother, I wasn’t a good wife, and I still can’t do anything right in his eyes. There was a time when his opinion was everything to me. The sun rose and set on him. Maybe it was my desperate need for love and acceptance, maybe because we knew each other since we were teenagers. Whatever it was, the pattern was established early on.

I constantly stand my ground now

Now, he’s nothing. He’s emotionally dead to me. I grieved that loss and realized that I wanted and deserved so much better. Now when he tries to insult me, or put me down, I stand up for myself in a way I never had before. I don’t want to paint this image that I was some helpless, defenseless woman. I gave as good as I got sometimes. I’ve never had a problem with punching someone in the face who deserved a little wake up call. I’m tough in that sense. I’m also very loving, empathetic, and in tune to the energy of others. I constantly stand my ground now. Not just with him, but with anyone who wants to treat me with disrespect or who doesn’t have my best intentions at heart. I’m proud of who I am. I have people in my life who think I’m pretty damn awesome, and, I can tell you, that’s pretty empowering in itself. When he tries to put me down, or gaslight me, I stand my ground and tell him where to go and how quickly he can get there. This is off putting for him. I know that I’ve stunned him more than once with my coldness towards him. I can’t be empathetic with this person anymore, because his intentions are always self-serving. I can see right through fake people now. People who I once thought of as family have tried to bad mouth me, and would delight in watching me fail. Those people need to learn a thing or two about respect. I always tell my children to honor and respect their father. No matter what has been said to me that day, or how much I want to jump in when they vent their frustrations to me, I put my true feelings aside and make sure they know that they need to respect their elders. I raised his daughter as my own. I was still just a child myself, but I accepted her and treated her as my daughter as much as his. I took care of her, cooked for her, taught her right from wrong, like any mother would do. The fact that she wasn’t biologically mine didn’t matter. Love doesn’t need a DNA test to exist and flourish. I no longer have a relationship with her. She, like her dad, places no value on the efforts made in the past to create a stable and loving environment for our family. That still hurts me. I think it always will, but I’ve accepted that she is an adult and free to make her own choices. What bothers me is that he never has my back with the children the way I do with him. He doesn’t reinforce those values that we tried to instill in our children. That disappoints me because I hoped we could be adult enough to put our personal differences aside and work together to raise them with love, respect, and honor. I was hoping we could raise our children together as a family, even though mom and dad are no longer married. There are plenty of families everywhere who seem able to figure this out. In my own life, I have people close to me who manage to reinforce this respect with their exes, even when I know how they truly feel about the other person. I realize that I can’t control the actions of another person. Now I’m forced to be in a position where it’s a struggle to defend someone who isn’t really worth the effort of defending. I’m still trying to understand how a parent can watch their children in pain and not feel any emotion. What kind of person wouldn’t see this reality and want to protect the innocent people involved? I don’t know why that passion wasn’t there. At the end of the day if you love someone you should protect them. Why would anyone want to be responsible for causing someone they love so much pain? That will always be a mystery to me. It’s his loss and he is responsible for causing that pain to our family unit. So, until you can grow up and be a man, keep my fucking name out of your mouth.