What I hope future wives and mothers learn from my experience.
After a 28-year marriage, a series of sad events led to a divorce. That was in 2004 when I was 51. And while it’s common for divorces to take time, mine might have broken some records: My marriage wasn’t fully over for another 16 years.
The series of events began when my brother, whom I adored, was killed in an accident in May 2002. Six months later, my mother was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer. I had an ovarian cancer scare and underwent a hysterectomy in May 2004. A week after the surgery, I traveled to my hometown in West Virginia to care for my mother, taking my seven-year-old daughter with me. My husband did not join us.
God gave my mother and me two relatively good months together before she died in August. During that precious time, she shared that she had never felt “cherished” by a man, even though she’d been married to my father for almost 40 years.
Before she passed, she begged me not to go back to my husband. I knew what she’d lived through, so I knew that her advice wasn’t to be taken lightly. It was almost like she was giving me permission to do something different.
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Not only did my husband never visit us while my mother was ill, but he also didn’t attend her funeral. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when, four days after we buried her, I received divorce papers on my mother’s front porch, along with a restraining order stating I could not return to our home in Ohio. But I had to send our daughter back there — I was told by attorneys that if I didn’t get back to Ohio, it might look like I was jerking my daughter out of her school system, and that’d be held against me.
The threat of potentially giving up my seven-year-old daughter was overwhelming, and I didn’t trust my then-husband not to exhibit the same behaviors with her that he had with me. On the advice of my first attorney, I found an apartment and moved back to Ohio. The court initially gave my husband temporary but primary parental custody of my daughter without ever meeting or talking with me, the legality of which I still question to this day. He’d claimed desertion while I cared for my mother, and the court held that against me.
Throughout several hearings, I fought to get my daughter back. After, my husband and I were given split custody until she turned 15. She was his pawn in the battle — he knew I desperately wanted her with me, more than anything. I felt like shattered glass.
During the 16 years of court battles, my husband was employed as a tenured university professor. He delayed his retirement for about five years just to postpone giving me my marital share of his retirement. When the court battles began, I was a doctoral student working as a graduate assistant with a yearly salary of about $8,000. The court ordered him to pay me $300 monthly in child support, plus $500 in monthly alimony for three years only.
But my husband kept taking me back to court to challenge the terms of our separation in what he told me privately was an attempt to break me financially, which is ultimately what happened in 2020, when we signed the final papers. Financial ruin, sadly, was a constant threat throughout the process, and by the end, a reality. Credit cards had supplemented survival for years. Now, they were a force to be reckoned with. I was fortunate by then to have a third attorney who took a personal interest in my case, and she fought for me as best she could. Because of her, the settlement was better than it would have been otherwise, but all those years of legal bills forced me to pretty much start over financially.
I’d never been involved in anything legal ever before — I’d maybe had a speeding ticket. The entire process was extremely threatening, and my ignorance was used against me. I look back now and wonder how the children and I made it, but we did.
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You might be wondering how I wound up married to someone who would treat me this way, and why I never chose to end it myself. My background goes some way to explaining that.
I grew up in the southern mountains of West Virginia. It was beautiful, and the people were friendly and deeply loyal, but the Appalachian culture back then was very patriarchal. Men barked orders and their women jumped to keep the peace — I saw the same marital examples all around me. At age 23, I met my husband, and we married after a year of dating.
Things quickly changed. My husband never raised his voice, but he controlled me with his withdrawal and passive-aggressive behaviors. He would totally ignore me, sometimes for weeks, and I often had no idea what he was upset about. I always took responsibility for bad moods — a classic Appalachian female mindset. I was so young and he was the only man I had ever been intimate with. I was totally inexperienced and confused about what should be normal in a marriage.
Two months after the wedding, I knew things were not right. After a short argument on our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple, he threw a glass thermos at me, shattering it on the chair behind my head.
My culture had ingrained in me the belief that I’d “made my bed, and now I had to lie in it,” and leaving was not an option a good, strong, Godly woman would consider. I told myself things would get better over time. I had always desperately wanted to be a mother, so I convinced myself that when he became a father, he would change and become more communicative and loving. That the children and I, together, would change him. We didn’t.
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When I faced the divorce process, I knew my three children were watching my reactions to almost everything we experienced. I had to be strong, for them and for me. So, I went back to school and earned a doctoral degree in education. It took me eight years to complete it while teaching at a local community college.
I’ve learned that I can be self-reliant with help from above, and my spiritual faith and trust have grown in leaps. I know I’m resilient. I don’t sweat the small stuff so much anymore, because almost everything seems like small stuff compared to the past. I don’t waste my time spending it with folks who once claimed to be good friends but were never to be found during the divorce. I truly do cherish those who were there, and I will continue to cherish them forever. I’ve got a sign in my office that says, “you don’t know how strong you can be until you have to be strong” — that’s been my motto.
I’m a different person thanks to that heartache.
Would I marry again? For women of my generation, living together meant you had to get married, so I still feel that pressure — even though logic tells me that’s not necessarily what I have to do. I think the thing that’s held me back is the financial threat, and that somebody could threaten my stability again. And at this age, I could never recover.
That said, I’m in a relationship now that for the first time in my life feels very new and different. He’s a special man I have known for most of my life, an elementary school classmate who had a long, happy marriage before losing his wife to cancer several years ago. We have a solid friendship first — it feels so natural and easy! I no longer have to walk on eggshells.
So yes, I’m seriously considering the possibility of a second marriage, even at 68. After some professional counseling (which I would also highly recommend to anyone going through a divorce) I’ve come to realize that the men in my earlier life all shared similar control issues. I think I chose what was familiar, and mistook it for normal. My heart goes out to women or men with similar experiences because when you are in these relationships, you really do not see how abnormal and toxic the relationship is until you get out.
My message to the next generation is: If you think you can dramatically change the behaviors of your marital partner, please think again. What you marry is what you get, and only more so as the years go by. I learned the hard way, and I would not wish that difficult lesson on anyone. My hope is that women who follow me have more choices, are aware of what can happen, and are able to protect themselves. If you’re reading this, and you’re thinking about marriage, you have to make certain that communication with your partner is easy and regular. Mutual respect is mandatory. It sounds so simple.
My children suffered for my mistake, and for 28 years, I lost myself. But I find comfort in knowing that even though I followed my mother’s example, my daughter wouldn’t put up with what I weathered for a second.
