I wrote out the back story of mine and Josh's relationship for the girls on ProBoards and figured I might as well post it here too. I've also added pictures that are sometimes relevant to the story line, but some of them are just never before seen for most. A few of them I just found again and cried when I did find them. They're moments I thought I lost forever. Enjoy.
Josh and I met when my family and I moved in down the street from his family. He and my step-brother became best friends so Josh was around the house a lot. I used to hate him with a passion; he did nothing but tease me all the time for being short and immature and whatnot. Eventually I ignored him and went to my room whenever he was around.
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When he and my brother graduated, they fell off the face of the earth for a while. To be honest, I forgot he existed. 3 years later, when I was a senior my brother had to move back in with us, and Josh started being at the house again. He had grown up, lost a bunch of weight and wasn't quite as annoying anymore. He was upstairs on the computer one night while my brother was outside talking to his girlfriend and he walked in on me crying after getting off the phone. I had just been stood up to our Winter Formal the night before the dance. So he was there for me, listened to me cry and talked me down.
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The following Monday he asked me out to lunch, and it was the most awkward thing ever. I mean, seriously, it felt like a huge mistake. We stopped talking for a couple weeks, and then he started texting me again, asking me what happened and I explained it just didn't feel right. After texting for about a month, we went on another date and it started to feel okay, and eventually we started dating and I fell in love. I told him I loved him within the first two months of our relationship.
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At 4 months together (June) we decided we wanted to get married. And for some reason beyond me we decided to get hitched in August of that same year. Only two months later and only 6 months of dating. He never wanted to get me a ring, said that it was a waste of money, but I told him that I didn't feel engaged until I had one. He took me to the mall one day, and while I was in the book store he said he was going to the bathroom. He was gone for about 20 minutes and I started to get worried. I called him and he said he'd only be a few more minutes and all I could think was GROSS. When he came back he had a ring for me, he had went to the jewelry store, picked one out, and bought it in less than 30 minutes.
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I feel awful for this part, but I've always been secretly mad about this. I thought it was supposed to be something you put a lot of thought into. Not just something you go and "oh, that'll be fine" about... I think the only reason I'm mad about it is because I knew how much he had in his account and he could barely drop anything on my ring, it was less than $400. My ring was not only my "engagement" ring to him, but also my birthday and graduation present. Then he went out and blew $2k on a new stereo system for his car the following weekend. Ugh.
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After our "engagement" we became sexually active and quickly got pregnant. We moved in together two weeks before we found out and the rent was high, but we thought that we'd both be working, things would be fine. Then we found out we were pregnant. He called his mom and cried what seemed like sad tears over it while mine were happy, scared tears to my mother. It wasn’t like I was trying to get pregnant, but I’ve always been overly excited to be a mother. I have awful cysts on my ovaries and tubes, so there was a chance I would have too much scar tissue on them to even conceive. I was so happy that I was going to be a mother and he always seemed just… okay with it. Never excited.
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We got married in August, and the morning of our wedding day his car was broken into. They stole every single bit of that 2k stereo system he bought a month earlier, bashed out the windows and stole his credit cards and racked up every one by thousands of dollars. When we got the money back, we had to use every penny we had left to just get by. We used a new credit card to buy us a new car and get back on our feet. We’ve been in debt ever since. The money they stole from us was supposed to be used to finish furnishing our new apartment and finish buying the small things. It was an extra rough beginning to our marriage, but we made it.
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My pregnancy went by and I was the only one excited for it. I talked about my belly all day every day. Talked to him, read to him, sang to him. I poured my heart out to this precious little baby inside of my body. I felt so much love for him, and I wanted my husband to share in it too. Josh wouldn’t read to the baby. He wouldn’t talk to him, he wouldn’t sing to him, he wanted nothing to do with my belly because it felt “awkward.” I was the one to set up his bedroom, all by myself. I set up his playpen, put together his swing, bouncer and his jumperoo. All while 38 weeks pregnant, because he refused to do it. He was “too tired.” I was 40 weeks pregnant when he finally put together the crib.
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I carried Ayden to 41 weeks, then was induced. I was in labor for 32 hours and Josh just sat on the laptop or went outside and smoked or slept. He was barely around the entire time I labored. I labored alone. At about hour 20 of labor I was bawling asking for my mom. I made him call her and get her up to the hospital because I needed someone’s support. I asked him to be there for me, comfort me, anything and he would for about 5 minutes then say he had to go do something else. There was one point at about hour 26 I was almost screaming I was in such bad pain he was like “Do you need me baby?” I screamed back “YOU THINK??!!!” and he came over to the bed and held my hand for 10 minutes then went back on the laptop. I was so pissed off at him, and still am for that matter.
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After 32 hours of labor, I had only progressed to a 6 and that’s where I stayed. Nothing would happen and the baby was starting to show signs of distress, so within 5 minutes I was on the operating table having my son. When I met my son I bawled like a baby, kissed him all over and hugged him close. When Josh met him he just held him and stared. Like he was scared out of his mind.
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The day after I had Ayden, Josh had to go home and pay rent; no big deal. He told me he’d only be about an hour and he’d bring me back food with him so I didn’t order room service. Two and a half hours later I called him and asked him where the hell he was. It was too late to order room service and I was starving! He said that he got sucked into a movie at his parents house. It’d be about another hour. I was in tears when I got off the phone to the point the nurse called down and put in a special order so that I could eat. I found out later that he had taken the camera home with him to show off the pictures and left it there so I have no pictures of Ayden’s firsts. His first bath, his first real outfit, his first successful breastfeeding, or his first car seat ride. I have fuzzy pictures from my cell phone that are too bad of quality to print, but that’s it.
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Fast forward to when we got home. Josh had to immediately go back to work, which was 3pm to 3am. It was a hard, fast paced job so he was always tired when he got home. He never did anything for Ayden. He slept all night every night, went to work, got up at 1pm, went to work at 3pm and that was it. I was pretty much a single parent for the first few months of Ayden’s life. Josh got a new job when Ayden was about 6 months old that put him working 8 hours during the day. It was so much better for our relationship. I really don’t know where things went wrong. If I had to guess, I’d say it was when I realized how much I had to grow up in such a short amount of time while he stayed his immature self.
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He never cleans, and when he does he’ll use it against me. I’ll complain that he didn’t do such&such this week and he’ll be like “I just cleaned the living room yesterday, and did laundry today.” My usual response is “do you want a cookie? I clean everything else every day.” I can clean and clean and clean and things will never stay that way. I know I have a child and things won’t always be clean, and that’s okay. But when things are filthy that Ayden can’t even reach is just ridiculous. He’ll make lunch and his pots and pans will still be on the stove, then his plate, glass and silverware will still be on the table. Sometimes on the counter, never in the empty dishwasher.
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I have even went on a couple boycotts and stopped doing his laundry; when it had been almost two weeks and he was digging through the dirty clothes hamper for a shirt and stunk to high heaven, I washed them. I was embarrassed to be with him in public and quite frankly I didn't want to smell his stink any longer. I’m so sick of being his maid all the time. I’m expected to cook, clean, and take care of his child, all because he’s the bread winner.
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I've tried talking to him in a civil manner about all of this many times, and nothing ever changed. He would do whatever he wanted, spend whatever money he wanted, and I would have to tell him exactly what I bought and how much everything costed every time I went to the store; to the point I stopped going shopping. I only buy things I absolutely need, like formula or bottle liners. I wear stained up, too tight clothes and my maternity pants because I know I’ll just be guilt tripped about spending the money we don’t have.
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The night of our one year marriage anniversary, we went out to dinner, on the way home we talked about finances a little bit and everything came back on me. I spent this, I spent that, ect. I got so mad, because everything I spent was for Ayden; formula, clothes, diapers, you know, the essentials. But I was getting in “trouble” for spending the money. We ended up in a full out yelling match in the car on the way home and I told him that I was done. I was leaving. I called my mom, asked her to come pick me up and told him that I was taking our van and leaving. He told me there was no way I was taking his van (even though he still had a Jeep to drive). I was floored that the only thing he was objecting to was me taking the van; no "please baby don't go" or "you're not taking my son" or anything. Just you're not taking my van. I was in tears the entire time, but I packed Ayden’s things and my essentials and left.
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We were gone for a week, but Josh was still up my butt the entire time. He had to be around 24/7, because he missed his baby. I told him he could take Ayden back to the apartment, do whatever he wanted with him, but Ayden was to return to me at night. It was heartbreaking, but it was an eye opener for the both of us. I got my cloth diapers in the mail that week and dove right in and never looked back. When we moved back home, Josh worshiped the ground I walked on. He helped out with Ayden, he helped out around the house. It was wonderful. A couple months later it started regressing again and I’d talk to him about it; let him know what was bothering me, and he’d get better for a day and then stop all together. There have been a couple times he’s made me so mad I just took Ayden and spent a night or two over at my Mom’s house just to get away from him.
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Things have just started to get really bad lately. I wanted to go out with my friend Lisa, we had plans to go out to dinner and I was planning on taking Ayden so that she could spend some time with him him, and Josh threw a hissy fit that he didn’t have anything to do, or any friends to call. He was pissed that I was going out and he couldn’t, so in order to see my friend I just allowed him to go with us. I asked him to change Ayden’s diaper and get him in his snowsuit and he was huffy about it so I told him he was on thin ice so he better watch what his mouth. He asked me what I meant and I explained how much I was looking forward to this and he was just ruining it. I ended up going without him, but I left in tears.
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When I got home he had cleaned the apartment a little and he was telling me how he saved the breading mixture from our chicken from lunch in a baggie for the next time we made it. When I told him that we couldn’t do that, that raw chicken had come in contact with it and it would be disgusting and bacteria infected by the time we used it next he got pissed, said it was “fucking stupid” and threw it across the room. I told him he was immature and left it at that.
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We recently found out I sent a payment to my gas company instead of my electric company, so he called and got it all worked out and then was going to call the bank to make sure they wouldn’t charge us extra for it. I tried to explain things to him, tell him the bank wouldn’t have any idea of what he was talking about because it was nothing to do with them yet. Instead of listening to me, he called them and just like I said, they had absolutely no clue what he was talking about and couldn’t do anything about it yet. In the middle of the phone call I was trying to say something to him about the bank and he flat out told me to “Shut. Up!” When he got off the phone I told him he is never to disrespect me like that again. His response was “when I’m on the phone you don’t talk to me” like I was his child or something. He did all of this in front of my aunt, who looked just as shocked as I did.
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This evening, we met up with Lisa and her boyfriend at the mall for smoothies and fun and he said he’d pay for my smoothie, then looked at Lisa and her boyfriend and said “not like I don’t make the money anyways.” I was floored. I was so embarrassed. Lisa just shook her head and gave me a hug behind his back.
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I just don’t know what to do anymore. I feel like I deserve more, but I love him. That’s the hardest part of it all. I absolutely hate him as a person, but I love him. I miss the man I married. Things are so bad that my mom has a room set up at her house for Ayden and I when we need it. I know I have somewhere to go and people who will support me, I just need to get the strength to make the right decision.
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I posted this and got many responses, some telling me to just get out now while I can, others telling us to seek counseling. We had a big heart to heart talk last night and this is what I posted back today:
Last night after Ayden went to bed, I made Josh read all of this and then we sat down and talked about everything. There was yelling, there was crying, but everything that needed to be said was said. I told him I think I resent him so much because of the way he acted/acts like he doesn't want his son. And after outing it all out to you ladies, and then to him, that seems to be the root of my problem with him. Other than the fact that he's a lazy bum who sits on his butt. He got up early this morning for work and cleaned up his messes and started some laundry... So we'll see how long he continues the cleaning.
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I told him I was thinking about leaving him, and maybe even a divorce. That his son and I deserve so much more than what we're getting, and he bawled. I've never seen him cry like that before. I let him know that he has one more chance to make it up to us, I'm not going to take it anymore. He's cutting out his mom almost completely from his life; he even said he could care less if his mom seen Ayden at all, but she can still see him a little, I just don't feel comfortable completely taking Ayden away from her. It doesn't seem fair to me.
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I'm still very confused with this whole situation. I told him that I'm scared that he's becoming abusive, that throwing things and telling me to shut up were completely unacceptable and I wasn't going to tolerate it again. I informed him that I have somewhere to go in a blink of an eye if I felt the need to leave. He profusely apologized over and over, but I'm still not sure what to think about it.
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I have a small bag packed with the absolute essentials so if I feel like I need to leave, I can just grab that and Ayden and escape. It's hidden in the closet, but I'm sure he's seen it since we share everything, so maybe that will just be another eye opener.
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This probably isn't the update you all wanted to see, but I really want to make my marriage work. I want to leave him, but to me, that isn't the mature thing to do. Right now we're taking it one step at a time: talking it out between ourselves, then possibly seeking counseling (we can't afford it right now and insurance doesn't cover), and if worst comes to worst we'll separate. Neither of us really want that, but if that's what we need to do then so be it.
So there it is.
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