Wednesday 30 September 2015

Whirlwind Romance

From the outside looking in, my marriage was a whirlwind romance. We met online via a dating site. His profile was pretty minimal where as mine was a page (typed) of traits I looking for (and not looking for) in a man. I had a head shot picture and his were from a ways away (not to mention he had a ball cap and sunglasses). He messaged me and to this day will tell you I was the only one he ever sent a message but only recently I've started to think he was lying about this too. We chatted online for a day or two and asked that we talk on the phone before agreeing to meet in person. We talked and he seemed fairly normal. The thing I like was he was from the same province but was older so we wouldn't have known the same people. 

We met at a coffee shop on a cold December Saturday night. As I pulled into the parking lot I thought to myself "I have no idea what he looks like so hopefully he spots me". He did spot me and we sat down and talked for hours. The coffee shop actually closed and we have to leave. We met up a few days later for dinner. From there it was a date with him every few days. About a month he he dropped a bomb on me, he was a cocaine user in his younger years. He told me this during an argument and I left his place. I should have kept driving and trusted my instincts to flee but I went back. We ended up talking it out and I thought to myself "I used to be a binge drinker, who am I to judge him?"

I had been told by Christian friends to save myself for marriage (though I hadn't done that in previous relationships) and thought that sounded like a good idea. I was trying to live a Christian way of life without actually being one. I stumbled, I slept with him within the first 6 weeks of our relationship. I wanted to stop but he had already wiggled his way into my head and the control had already started unbeknownst to me. He convinced me that he wouldn't continue to date me if I wanted to wait until marriage. This seemed normal to me, I wasn't a Christian so why the heck did I want to live my life their way? 

He decided to sell his house and move into my basement suite instead of me moving in with him. This seemed odd to me at first but then again, it would be cheaper and we could get debt free quicker. He sold his house within a few weeks and was moving in mid-April. The final day at his place he proposed to me. I had told myself the reason it's moving so fast is because we're both old enough to know what we want and ready to settle down. Looking back, he was in a hurry to seal the deal before the truth came out and his true self was revealed. 

Two weeks out from the wedding I had developed a migraine, this migraine lasted over a week and my prescription medication stopped working. Finally, I asked to be taken to the hospital. After waiting in the waiting room for a few hours they put me in a room and hooked me up to an I.V. which resulted in my first panic attack that I can remember. Instead of actually trying to calm me down he said "what did you think they were going to do, of course they were going to give you an I.V." in a condensing way. They started pumping me full of drugs but I asked them to stop after the second of the three they wanted to give me. I asked they give me sometime to see if those two were enough because I didn't want the "hangover" that comes with a migraine to be worsened by a drug hangover. An hour later the nurse comes in asking if I was ready for my morphine. MORPHINE, what the heck made these people think I wanted the hard drugs?! I declined and he kept telling me to take it. This was the drug addict in him talking. 

We married that fall and were proud to say we paid for the wedding ourselves. Honestly, I didn't really enjoy myself at the wedding. I felt faint before walking down the isle (granted I was really sick), I felt awkward at the reception and I had sweat my butt off during photos (it was 30C something at the end of September!). I hated the dancing part, the having to be social.

I woke up the next morning and though "I'm a married woman" and was really excited. We had to go through our wedding cash we'd received to pay our parking and went home. We had nothing in our bank account and I didn't even have a credit card at that time because my credit was so horrible. He didn't have any either, which I later found out it was because he hadn't been paying his bills. 

The first two weeks of our marriage we great, aside from the garnishment of his wages of course. We were getting along (we'd had frequent squabbles during our engagement which I attributed to the stress of planning a wedding). He held it together for less than a month before the abuse became apparent. It was too late, I was married. I didn't want to divorce him and thought "what would I do without him?". 

To sum up the beginning of our relationship, if it seems to be too good to be true, it is so run like HELL!

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