Avoiding Divorce

This is a weird post considering our anniversary is on the 16th but it's on my mind. We aren't getting a divorce and aren't thinking about divorce. I hate myself when in an argument I mention divorce. It happens rarely. It started because of Josh's colossal financial screw up that we have been dealing with for years and still have years to go. It's a stress that is hard to cope with when your husband isn't appreciating you and all you do. Normally, it's manageable. Here's the back story, Josh used to be in charge of the finances. This was a problem for two reasons:

1. He didn't realize all the fee tricks banks use when he signed up for stuff and started taking money out of the CD with our wedding gift money in it.

2. He was lying about his paycheck size because the old place he worked for was moving out of state and it was his first offer but he knew if he told me his real pay I would make him keep looking. That was back in 2006.

We are no longer in debt but still have six years before we'd be eligible for a credit card. I was working when he was in charge of the finances but I wasn't making much at all. I believe in 2006 my income was just over $2,000. It had been that way for a couple of years. That's what I'm worth by the way, $2,000 a year so any of you that think all our problems would be fixed if I work can do the math on that one because that was before taxes. No, $2,000 won't suddenly mean we can afford a bigger place and another kid. In fact, working makes things worse for my anxiety which is why I'm home in the first place.

Zach was just shy of four months old when Josh ended up in the hospital (September 2009) thinking he had stomach cancer and was scheduled for surgery. After a bunch of testing they came up with that he was delusional due to Psychosis which happens with Hydrocephalus sometimes. But in his case in May of 2007 he hit is head at work. At that time they found nothing but the doctors in September of 2009 said that the head injury could very well have been the cause for most of his behavior. That's why I stayed.

We fought a lot for months after that but in that time we fixed what was broken. I had taken over the finances in 2007 and a lot of questions were answered that night in the ER. Now it was time to pick up the pieces. Josh was never great at communication but throughout our relationship he slowly got better. This sped things along. No more secrets. I made it clear he could no longer "only answer the questions asked" with me and he couldn't decide what to tell me and what not to tell me. He had to tell me everything and it all had to be documented in some way for me to believe him. He needed to rebuild my trust. He wanted to keep me so he continues to do these things.

We haven't had a problem since. Much like the charts mentioned in the last post, I have been charting in excel every penny that comes in, where it goes, what we need money for, where that money is coming from, ect..... It's a main focus of my life and it's how we manage.

I have been trying to let "the incident" go. I have slowly been trusting him again. He's also been treating me a lot better. We are still holding strong. We still enjoy our time together and laugh a lot. We are still very much in love. All my questions get answered (although there are still a lot of them because he hasn't master the "complete" part). I talk all the time about how I consider him a blessing and am grateful for him and that is still very much true. We're the real deal and have the tools to make it all the way.

I sometimes read the Divorce section of Huffington Post. As I mentioned, I like learning about people and how their influences have molded their life's path. It seems all over there are people who have decided they don't want to marry and site the divorce statistic of 50% as a reason. But there is something forgotten. That 50% also includes the drunken elopements between people who would never marry at that time sober. There is no record of how the marriage started when divorce is filed so we don't know the real divorce statistic which would exclude those marriages since they weren't real marriages. When we see the 50% we think of people who were engaged after dating a while and in time the marriage just fell apart. That's true sometimes but not in every case. That shouldn't be the reason you use when deciding you never want to marry. I respect that not everyone wants marriage but those decisions should be fully informed ones.

I talked about the hardest thing Josh and I have ever gone through as an example of why it's important to be together long enough to have gone through some tough times together before getting engaged. If you make it through those times you have the tools to handle anything but infidelity and infidelity doesn't happen in strong relationships. Don't settle for the wrong guy but don't give up after a rough patch with the right guy. The same is true for men and for same sex couples. As our anniversary nears I think more and more about how wonderful a man he is. No one else understands me like him. Long ago our number of fights decreased, fights happen every once in a while even in healthy relationships. Even when we fought a lot we had a lot of good times too. We both know we will be around when the fight is over because there has been a lot more good then bad. There are marriages like this too. So don't be scared by a 50% divorce rate when there are a lot of marriages that succeed. We've been married for 8 years together for 14. I have a good life. I put my trust in God and somehow everything is always okay. We have each other. We meant our vows.