I didn’t get married expecting it to be easy, but I also didn’t imagine that my husband would turn into an entirely different person years down the line. Unfortunately, his behavior ended up making me wonder if the grass might be greener on the other side and for a while, I thought it might be.
- I married a charming bad boy and he became a lazy pushover. This didn’t happen overnight, but over the course of a decade or so, my charming bad boy became someone who needed me to dictate every last thing that needed to be done, from putting his dirty clothes in the hamper to taking the kids to soccer practice and everything in between. I hated feeling like a nag and didn’t understand why he couldn’t get his act together.
- I became the only one putting in any effort. I’d be laying on the charm after I finally got the kids to bed but instead of my partner putting in the effort to seduce me, he would keep binge-watching crap on his iPad in his overstretched boxer briefs. For years, I felt like an afterthought rather than someone my husband loved and was actually attracted to. I was tired and I felt old way before my time.
- A chance meeting ended up being the death knell for my marriage. Of course, I didn’t know it then. I was visiting friends in another state one winter and they introduced me to another friend of theirs that I’d never met before. He was totally not my type, but we did add each other on Snapchat that night. Before I flew home, I ran into him again at a coffee shop and after spending hours chatting, I realized how much we had in common. He was casually seeing someone and I was married so nothing happened, but it was the beginning of the end for me.
- We talked regularly on Snapchat and I started to fall for him. At first we talked a few times a week on Snapchat, but that quickly turned into a few times daily. It was obvious things between us were changing from friends to something so much more. I was both intellectually and physically attracted to him and I couldn’t get him out of my head.
- He made me feel alive and I was addicted to it. Our conversations made me feel less like an old piece of furniture and more like a designer piece someone had saved and invested in. We talked about everything my husband didn’t want to hear about anymore. He asked about my plans for the kids, wanted my advice on how to talk to his daughter about growing up, was curious about what I put in my spaghetti sauce and what about my career pushed me in my current direction. It was the attention I’d been begging for from my husband for years.
- Strangely enough, the guilt wasn’t destroying me. That’s how I knew my marriage was over. I didn’t feel guilty for talking to another man because I finally felt valued again. I ended things with my husband a few weeks after I got home, once I realized I was falling in love. The new guy listened to all the ups and downs associated with my divorce while my husband felt blindsided and reacted very negatively. Still, my new love swore he was going to be everything I’d ever wanted in life and more and I believed him.
- I got divorced and moved. I didn’t move for him, I moved because he just so happened to live in the same town my friends and family were in. It made sense; I needed the support. The icing on the cake was that he was there too. We talked all night prior to the move about how we would slowly integrate each other into our lives. There was a plan, a future, and I was excited about it.
- The grass is NOT greener and everything is a lie. I’m not sure exactly how I knew, but I think as a woman, you just kind of know. Things got a little weird. He stopped answering my messages with the urgency he’d just weeks prior. He tried passing it off as being busy with one thing or another but in my gut, I knew it was over before it ever really had a chance to begin.
- I still don’t regret it—it was a phenomenal lesson. Things between us happened so quickly and fizzled out without a reason. Because he’s a friend of a friend, I run into him and his new girlfriend often. Yes, it’s weird. Yes, my petty side made it uncomfortable in a way only he would recognize. Even though things didn’t last between us, he showed me for a few months how amazing a relationship could potentially be. It was obvious to everyone from the outside looking in that I needed to end my marriage. This guy was what I needed to see it for myself.
