We met the summer between my Junior and Senior year at college. My spouse attended another college in a different city. We were married before the end of my senior year. We both came from broken homes. My spouse didn’t have to deal with the physical abuse but suffered through mental cruelty, controlling parents and their eventual divorce. We bonded over our shared tragedies. Looking back, this should have been a red flag for us. Our relationship was not built on a healthy foundation. I didn’t know it then, but at that time in my life, I was incapable of a healthy relationship.

After we were married, I found out my spouse had maintained another relationship for almost the entire time we were long distance dating. This should have been another red flag but was something I chose to ignore. I so desperately wanted to have a relationship. I wanted to try to build all those things as an adult that I had missed out on as a child. Out of desperation, I ran helter-skelter into the relationship with my fingers in my ears.

We struggled in our relationship like most couples. There were good days and bad days. Violence was never a part of our relationship, but that never kept my spouse from screaming at me. In retrospect, we never grew emotionally close. There were always walls. As I found out about my spouse’s constant lies and financial infidelity, I built my walls even higher. Yet I was determined to make the relationship work. I knew I would never be one of those people who divorced. My spouse was capable of a lot things but I never believed them to be capable of the ultimate betrayal.

Ten years later the phone rang one night:

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Stan.”

“Hi Stan, how are things out in D.C.? National Academy going well?”

“Hey, uh… you, you need to come out here and check on your spouse?”

“What? Are they ok?”

“Yeah, yeah. You just need to come out here and check on them. Look I’ve got to go.”

I flew to D.C to see my spouse at the academy. My spouse could never lie without me being able to tell. There was nothing left to save. My spouse had made the decision for me. I flew back home. The night I got home, I sat there for hours with a gun in my lap – just staring at it. A small, quite voice said “No, there is more yet to come.” I made a decision. My spouse wasn’t worth my life. My spouse’s actions had also showed me they were not worth the past 10 years I had given them. I stood up and put the gun away.

I never mourned the loss of my spouse – I greatly mourned the loss of my marriage. To this day, I still mourn that loss. Don’t get me wrong, I in no way miss my spouse. I had wanted to be different – I wanted not to be a statistic. I had so longed for a safe and secure place. I thought I had found that in my marriage. I thought I was finally safe. I thought I was finally secure. I found my world completely shattered. I was divorced.

No longer could I ever again believe that there was such a place of safety. Never again could I feel safe. Never again could I feel secure. I made my walls higher, thicker, and stronger. I didn’t believe I could ever trust again. I was completely shattered.

Divorces, no matter the circumstance, are a horrible, painful things. What I didn’t understand at the time was how this hurt was magnified for me tenfold. I wasn’t only feeling the pain of a divorce – another abandonment, another betrayal; I was feeling all the abuse, hurt, and abandonment of my childhood. I was riding an emotional flashback. It would be years later before I would understand this.