I just read last weeks post and I can't get myself emotionally back to that point. I'll simply say I am happy about that...
When all of this first started I didn't understand what was going on. As a husband and a father in the home I worked hard to attempt to ensure that my wife and children did not want for anything. I woke early every morning and made it into my downtown New Orleans office to start the day at 7:00 AM. I would work a regular day most times but at least one day a week I trudged on through lunch to get an extra hour in. I left at 4:30 PM every day in order to be home for dinner and to help with the kids homework. All of this would be fine if it were enough to keep the cash flowing. Any recruiter will tell you that it isn't. I often had calls at night to work with candidates and to manage new changes to the process that inevitably came up. The lifestyle we lived could not be supported on a 9-5 job and it always seemed that there was never enough. I have to take equal responsibility for always wanting more.
In retrospect we were not happy with each other so we looked for other things to fill the void of our dissatisfaction.
In September 2009 I was in position to launch into orbit in my career. I was working several high profile searches to include a CEO and a CFO for two separate small cap E&P companies. I had just completed my CPC certification and attended the NAPS convention in Vegas with my then boss and our team. It was a rough trip on the home front. I took my truck keys with me not even thinking that there was any need for it at home while I was gone. It turned out that there was car trouble and the truck was needed. My minor oversight became a huge point of contention but there was unfortunately nothing I could do. My boss and I agreed to cut the trip short and we left a day early before the rest of the team. I got home around midnight on a Friday and woke up on Saturday to a request for a divorce. At first she said that she wanted to move to CA. I responded with the exact same response as every other time we moved. "I'll quit my job and we'll move." I was serious and sincere. She said, "No. I'm leaving." We went back forth over issues and I tried every tactic I could think of to stop the destruction of our family. Our daughters were 6 and 8 at the time and I kept hearing her voice from just 3 years before. She said, "I want the girls to graduate with the same friends they make in elementary school." I worked ridiculously hard to get the home in the best neighborhood and to begin planting roots in the community. All of this was to no avail and felt like a first class waste of time for the entire effort I had made. All I ever wanted to do is satisfy my wife and as it turns out she was simply insatiable and I had failed her.
There are many more colorful ways to make that statement and she is pretty good at putting them together.
For the month of October she planned a trip away from me and the girls to CA. She moved into another room in our place and began roaming everywhere with ear buds and music blasting in her ears. The girls began to notice that she was unavailable to them and it simply broke my heart to watch them struggle with this. I started working from home in order to make sure that the kids got to school on time and get meals prepared for them. Their mom was nowhere to be found. The body that she once inhabited walked around and stirred emotions but had nothing to offer to anyone except verbal announcements of her discontent. She spent time with my friends wife. Spewing her negativity about anything and everything that was me.
I had convinced her to marry me and have kids against her will.
She never loved me.
I was a horrible husband and inattentive father
The thought of kissing me repulsed her
These were just a few of the things often heard by my friends wife and by my daughters. She was still insistent on spending for the things she desired. She did not want to eat what we had at home and she had quit her part time job so she had no money to spend. She was very free with going to the bank and removing money. She purchased a ticket to go to CA for the month of November. I quickly secured another bank account to protect the remaining funds and had my paycheck moved to that account. The account would not receive a check until the middle of November. I was at least able to get the rent paid for November before she spent it all.
I remember thinking at the time that she would come to her senses soon and that we would get through this time. That wasn't to be... I'll tell you about November next week.
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