I Kept Telling My Husband We Didn’t Have Real Problems

This incredibly painful thing made it so clear that I divorced him

“You need to deal with things,” I say.

“I’m fine,” says my husband.

“You’re not fine,” I say. “You’re getting angry when you’re drinking.”

He ignores me.

“We don’t have real problems,” I say. “These aren’t real problems. Just deal with whatever you’re feeling so you stop upsetting all of us, and we can move on.”

I can’t count the number of times I had this conversation with my husband. It was on repeat while we struggled the last few years of our marriage.

He didn’t care.

Even when I added to the conversation.

“We don’t have financial worries, our children are healthy, work is going well, you have more time off a year than most,” I say. “And we love each other, we can work these marital problems out.”

My husband dug in.

He was upset and angry and he wasn’t going to get over it.

Especially, since he felt I had started it.

I had uttered I felt lonely being married to him and dreamed of meeting someone who actually made me feel they cared. Or in my husband’s words, “I had started the war.”

A year before I initiated the divorce, I was at a local restaurant.

My phone rang.

I almost ignored it.

I had a hundred people coming to celebrate my oldest son’s high school graduation. The entire lacrosse team and their parents and other friends. I was going to call my brother back since they were arriving in ten minutes.

But I picked up the phone instead.

“Colleen,” he said.

That’s all I needed to hear, my brother had never said my name that way.

“Oh my gosh,” I say. “Please tell me everyone’s okay.”

“Colleen,” he says. “Are you alone? Is there anyone with you? You need to sit down.”

I have fight or flight and head for the entrance.

My friend follows me.

“Colleen,” says my brother. “I’m so sorry we lost Matthew today.”

I collapse onto the sidewalk screaming. My friend tries to pick me up. But I can’t move. She yells to one of the waiters outside to call his mother since my other friend lives right next door.

My husband arrives a few minutes later.

My friend gets to him first to let him know what has happened.

My other friend walked me to him, I collapsed into his arms. I have only one thought. I need to get to my sister. I have to be with her. My sweet beautiful sister.

I sit in the passenger seat.

It’s only my husband and me in the car.

“I can’t breathe. I’m going to throw up,” I say. “I can’t breathe. I’m going to throw up.”

I keep saying it over and over.

“Colleen!” my husband says sternly. “You need to breathe.”

I just want to get to my sister. She’s lost her oldest baby. Her beautiful, sweet, selfless Navy fighter pilot. He’s a smart, gentle, kind, selfless, funny, talented, incredible humanitarian.

Her magnificent son.

I walk up the stairs of her townhome.

I stare at the two Navy guys with disbelief.

I can’t describe the devastation. I still say I don’t know how my sister gets out of bed each morning. Out of respect for her, I’ve only written once about my beloved nephew, “When Your Birthday Is in Heaven — Your mother will never be the same.”

My husband and I had separated for a year before we lost Matthew.

He’d only been back in our home for a few months.

“If you don’t let me move back in,” he had told me. “I won’t send our son to college.”

I should never have caved to his threats and manipulation but I didn’t want our son to pay for me leaving his father. It was one of my biggest mistakes. I wasn’t stupid. I knew he was trying to get back in the house before we’d been separated a year.

I also knew guys who wanted to leave their wives…leave.

My husband didn’t want to leave me.

I knew it.

He wanted things to go back to the way they had always been. But I wasn’t going to be the woman who did everything and looked the other way anymore.

I felt God was working in mysterious ways.

We needed our family together in the time following the loss of our sweet Matt.

I needed to be with my sister when I could and he was with our kids.

But as the year progressed so did my husband’s anger and attitude. I had little tolerance for it before. I found it even more intolerable now. It was gross to witness the tantrums of a grown man, especially after such an overwhelming loss.

It was awful because of what my sister and her boys were going through.

I didn’t know this type of indulgence.

I come from nurses, firefighters, and cops. The kind of people who don’t give in to their own problems, at least not for long. They rescue others from theirs.

They don’t childishly ruminate on their own.

I was so angry.

I was tired of living with a spoiled boy.

“I told you we didn’t have real problems,” I say to my husband. “This is a real problem we can’t bring him back.”

Not long after, we were driving our son back to college.

My husband was complaining.

“I’m too old for this drive,” he says. “I’m tired.”

I look in the back seat and see the look on my child’s face.

My husband continued to complain.

“Stop,” I say. “You’re making him feel bad.”

“What?” he says. “It’s a long drive and I’m old.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” I say. “There are 90 year olds who drive all the way to Florida and we are going to Georgia. You’re 51 that isn’t old.”

We got back from that weekend.

I initiated our divorce within days of returning.

It was the straw that broke the camel's back. There had been many other little cracks and experiences that came before this. Each of them is significant in our marital demise.

But listening to the ramblings of an over-indulged man boy…

Was where I would draw the ultimate line.

I made myself a promise when I made a decision to initiate my divorce. My sweet nephew didn’t get another day and I promised myself I wouldn’t waste another day in his honor.

Staying unhappily married to a man…

Who still had no ability to understand what real problems were.

But spoiled personalities rarely can.