Red Flags
The first red flag that I should have picked up on was when we were dating. I’d want to hold his hand, but his palms sweated so badly, we both gave up on that. I just thought it was a peculiarity of his. But he was always distant. Even his friends from work commented to him that he’s a hard one to get to know. When he proposed, he never said the words, “Will you marry me?” He said, “I care for you deeply,” showed me the ring, and asked me what I thought about it. I couldn’t believe it when I saw Dina McGreevy’s interview on Oprah! She said her husband said the same thing to her when he “proposed” to her! My husband told me that he talked with friends of his in the Air Force, and he told them that he wasn’t sure if I’d accept. They asked him why. He said, “I don’t know.” Looking back, it was probably because of the “love” thing. He couldn’t bring himself to tell me that he LOVED me, and he was wondering himself if “I care for you deeply” would cut it. I just thought he was shy.
So we got married. At first everything was fine. Then he started getting in little digs at me. First, he called me stupid when I went to the store and didn’t get the right thing that he asked for. Next, he told me how beautiful his sister looked on her wedding day. I told him that he never commented on how I looked on our wedding day, even though I told him how great he looked. Then he said, “You looked nice.” Then there was, “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for my sister.” Their typical manner is throwing you off-guard every chance they get – making you “second-guess” everything they say. So I’m thinking, “Well, he married me, so I am assuming that he would feel the same way about me.”
Six years went by, and I was pregnant with our daughter. I told him then and before that I loved him, to which he replied, “uh huh.” After our daughter was born, he was absolutely NO HELP! I had post-partum depression and an undiagnosed thyroid problem. I was exhausted because of both AND was up at night with the baby. He never once got out of bed to help unless the baby was sick and throwing up in her crib.
I felt like he gave the orders, and I had to obey him, as if I were a child. My opinion didn’t matter to him at all--ever. I realized he was narcissistic, and he made me very unhappy. He never joked; everything was serious with him. He had frequent ‘hissy-fits” and temper tantrums. His behavior got worse with time.
On day when I was pregnant with my second child 17 years ago, I was cleaning the closet and found condoms in his jacket pocket. I confronted him and he told me that he had been to some xxx rated movies and jacked himself off, using the condoms to catch the mess. Gay didn’t even enter my mind. Yes, admittedly I was naïve, but I thought our marriage was based on truth, so I believed him. I do remember one thing he said at the time, and for some reason, it stuck in my head, after all these years. During our conversation, he said, “It just feels so natural.” I thought then, “Hmm – what feels so natural – masturbating?” It just seemed odd.
All the while, I kept thinking that if I tried harder, he would “get better,” until he moved our family on a farm three years ago. He used the farm as a tax shelter and used me to be his farm hand while he was away during the week, coming home on weekends. He needed a tax shelter because he was going through so much cash, and he had expensive charges on credit cards. Just before he asked for a divorce was when his behavior got really weird!
Blame was the Name of His Game
Larry’s behavior began getting ‘twilight-zone’-like, when we were on our family vacation in June, 2006, in Hawaii. He dumped our daughter, son, and me off at one beach while he went to a nude beach. He came back to pick us up four hours later, when it was dark. He hiked to the nude beach on another day while the children and I were at the beach next to the nude beach. I stayed to watch our children while they swam in the ocean, and while Larry walked to the nude beach. He got up in the middle of the night and used his computer. He went on other solo excursions while leaving us alone in the condo. He went on some excursions with us, but never got in the water. He was disconnected. It appeared like he was looking right through me, never walking with me, always well ahead. He didn’t fly over there with us, and he departed a day after us. He said he couldn’t get the same reservations as my son and me because he wanted to use his frequent-flyer miles. I noticed after we got back home that he had a tattoo on his ankle.
He had lost weight, grown a beard, and spruced up his wardrobe. He told me that a female captain at work told him that she liked his beard, and he should never shave it off. Okay, there’s another woman, I thought.
In early October 2006, Larry said he wanted a divorce. He told me, “I don’t love you and I never have. I don’t have empathy, and I don’t know where to get it. We were never meant to be together. We’ve grown apart.” I made it quite clear that I didn’t like “his” farm, while he left me during the week, expecting me to water 400 blueberry bushes. Then he would come home on most weekends, only to work out in the field, and then leave again for another week or more. So he made ME feel like “we’ve grown” apart, because “I” didn’t like his farm. He also added, “You should find someone else now.” He told me multiple times, “There’s no one else.” He also told me about a guy at work whose wife had a stroke recently, and now that guy has to take care of his wife! He was concerned that something similar could happen to us. I simply could not believe what I was hearing!
Prior to this, I asked him to please go to counseling. He said he went to counseling and talked about getting a divorce. I even asked him if he was gay at the request of a few friends of mine who suspected it. He answered, “No,” even with a chuckle!
All those hurtful words didn’t make sense at the time. How could this person I married be so cold? It was like he wanted to hurt me on purpose. It wasn’t until the VISA bill came that I saw that he had charged $3,500 for an attorney. Until I opened the bill, I thought from what he told me, that he was going to mental health counseling. Larry couldn’t even tell me that he had retained an attorney. I had to find that out when I opened the credit card bill.
I began to go for counseling. I tried one counselor then switched to a different counselor. Both counselors told me that Larry would fall under the heading of Narcissist Personality Disorder, which is a recognizable personality illness that is deeply resistant to therapy. His endless criticism of me never ceased. I was reduced to cook, maid, errand girl, and more recently, farm hand. That's all I was. That's all I was worth to him. This is a very painful reality.
I was forced to tell our son, Marc, that his father wanted to divorce me. Larry couldn’t and didn’t tell Marc. He has probably known all along that some day he would muster enough courage to divorce me for his “secret life”.
Why didn’t we at least move near his family in Oregon? Why Washington? We know no one here, and his job wasn’t even here. As usual, my opinion did not matter. He said we would buy it now, and in a few years, we would retire here. This was his excuse for commuting to Las Vegas from here, shuttle to PDX, courtesy of me, for the first year. Then he was able to transfer to Seattle with his company, where he began renting a room during the weekdays. After talking with locals here, they told me that Chehalis/Centralia are mid-point cities between Seattle and Portland, where many gays meet in local hotels. So now the move here finally made sense! He wanted to be close to Seattle AND Portland. I searched on the internet for Portland’s tourist info and found www.travelportland.com/visitors/tours.html. I noticed on the left of the website was a link called “Gay Portland”. I clicked on it, and one of the slogans on the page was, “Keep Portland Queer”. Well, my gay husband is doing his part to keep their city queer, all right!
Most weekends he drove home. I wonder what his employer thought of his constant requests for moving! Larry told me in October 2006 that HIS JOB wanted him to move to ABQ, by Jan. 1, 2007. I called his boss and found out that