Leaving

It was 9:15 pm on a humid night in June, and I was just driving home from the office. Lee complained about money ever since getting his hours cut at work, so for a few months I’d been taking overtime shifts at the law firm. When everyone else clocked out at 5, I would start tackling the massive backlog of paperwork left over from a recent merger. Sometimes I only stayed a few hours longer, but this particular night there was plenty of extra work. I didn’t clock out till 9.

Lee and I were supposed to leave on vacation the next day. We had planned a little trip to Montana with a few of ours friends, and there was still a lot to do. Laundry needed to be done so the two of us could pack. Groceries for the trip needed to be bought. The pile of dirty dishes in the sink needed washing, and the house needed to be straightened up before we could go. I hadn’t been able to tend to these things because of the overtime.

I suppose I was hoping Lee would pitch in and help out. After all, he got home from work each day by 2:30 pm and school was out for the summer. Typically, Lee would play computer games from 2:30 to 7:00, when he would stop just long enough to eat whatever I prepared for dinner. Sometimes he would put on a TV show for us to watch. Other times not. He resumed playing games by 9 pm, and would continue until 2 or 3 in the morning.

Lee was looking forward to this vacation much more than I was. I thought that maybe, just this once, he would put his games aside and do what needed to be done.

I was wrong.

I walked through the front door and my heart sank. The living room was in shambles and looked worse than it had the day before. Dirty dishes were still piled high, the counters littered with crumbs and empty snack boxes. The washing machine was silent and empty.

I found Lee on the sofa, engrossed in his latest computer game.

Have you even packed yet?

Lee shook his head no.

A great swell of sadness rushed through me like water through a crumbled dam. Anger followed, and I burst into tears right there in the kitchen. Amid the sobbing I tried to explain about the laundry and the dishes and the packing, only my outburst wasn’t just about that night anymore. It was about all the nights and days that Lee sat back on the couch while I worked my heart out at the office. It was about all those times I came back from my second job to find all the housework undone and waiting for me. It was about me giving and giving and giving…. Until there was nothing left to give.

Lee said the stress was my entire fault, because I’d chosen to work overtime at the law firm and a second job on the side. I reminded Lee that all the extra money went into our bank account, for our expenses.

Lee shut his mouth and glared at me in a way I was all too familiar with. He turned his back to me. This was the start of yet another long silent treatment, only this time I simply did not have the strength to muster up an apology. I had nothing to be sorry for.

That was the moment I knew the marriage was finally over. I couldn’t endure the silence any longer. How do you fix a troubled relationship if your partner doesn’t want to talk about it? Like the line from Counting Crow’s Adam Duritz, “If you don’t want to talk about it then it isn’t love.”

I locked myself in the car and called my mother. I had always been taught that troubles between a man and wife should never be discussed with third parties, but at this point I was desperate. My mother was surprisingly calm as I told her everything that had been happening the past two years. Mostly I cried and tried to explain the silent treatments.

I can’t do this anymore, Mom. I can’t. It hurts too much.

She was thoughtful and quiet for a long time. Then she said, “Sounds like it’s time for you to come home for a while. I’m flying to Salt Lake tomorrow to get you.”

So I went to bed and didn’t sleep all night. Around 1 am Lee came into the bedroom to retrieve his gun and a round of bullets. A part of me kept waiting to hear gun fire.

The next morning I got up for work like always. On my way out I passed Lee, asleep on the couch. His gun lay loaded on the coffee table. I remembered something that Lee told me the last time we had a fight: “I’ll shoot myself if you don’t leave me. That way I’ll be out of your life and you can move on.”

The sad thing: Lee and self-pity don’t mix well. I actually thought he might do it.

I took the loaded clip out of Lee’s gun and left the house. A few stoplights away I received a cryptic text from an angry Lee.

“I don’t need my clip to load a bullet into the chamber.”

I called the police right away, told them I was worried about the mental state of my husband, asked them to please go check on him. Sometimes people ask me why I didn’t turn the car around myself and go back to the house. My response to that: remember Susan Powell? Remember Lacey Peterson? Lee was not behaving normal, and I didn’t want to be another death statistic.

I went to work and told my boss about heading back to California for a while. She was kind about the whole thing, said she understood. It only took me 15 minutes to pack up my desk. There was a dachshund calendar, a few birthday cards from my colleagues, my notary stamp, and a framed photograph of me and Lee. The one we used with our wedding invitations.

All afternoon I alternated between crying and running errands. I put gas in the car. Paid our rent for the next month. Busywork kept me sane, kept my mind from sinking too far.

Mom’s plane came in at 5:00 pm.  I remember what the sky looked like as we drove from the airport to the house. Cloudy, dark with a chance of rain. She called up the Salt Lake City police department and requested an escort to meet us at the house.

Lee was gone when we arrived.

I remember hearing music when we walked in. Lee left it going on a loop, the same track playing over and over and over.  It was our song, the one we danced to at our wedding. The song I listened to when the pain got too big and I needed to remind myself that I loved Lee.

The music made me cry like a child. Of course it did. Love is a difficult hurdle to leap, even when reality is staring you in the face. I dropped to my knees and told God I was leaving.

Stop me if I’m doing the wrong thing, God.

We threw the computer and all my clothes into the back seat of my car, and filled the trunk up with a bit of the food storage I’d been collecting over the past 6 months. The only other thing I took was Charlie, my little Dachshund.

A man from the downstairs apartment came out and helped us carry the heavy things. Before we left he slipped me a $100 dollar bill. “For the road,” he said. It strikes me as odd that a stranger would be the one to answer my prayer. His compassion was humbling.

It was dark when we hit the road, a bright full moon peering out behind a sea of silver clouds. All I could do was stare out the window and weep. Outside it began to rain.

What am I doing?

I asked myself that question a hundred times, and thought of every happy moment Lee and I had ever shared. Memory is funny like that. Our minds reshape the past when the heart is most tender, and that night I saw my entire marriage flash before me in glimpses. Laughing, dancing, making love. Lee’s smile, and the shape of his hands. The sound of his voice when he said my name.

The heart remembers love.

I would have turned back if Mom hadn’t been there. Thankfully she was, and thankfully we made it back to California in one piece. I’m not sure I would have been strong enough on my own.

It wasn’t until the next day that I remembered why I left.

A Slow Descent

The breakup of my marriage with Lee was not sudden or abruptly explosive. It’s not as though I caught him cheating with another woman. We didn’t go financially bankrupt. Lee was not in trouble with the law, nor was he ever physically abusive. The marriage did not end because of some catastrophic, catalytic event.

My relationship with Lee fell apart like a poorly built sandcastle, one grain of sand at a time.

The first sign of trouble came three weeks after we were married. One day Lee came home from work sullen and silent, stubbornly refusing to talk when I asked him what was wrong. I offered a reassuring hug, which he promptly rejected. Lee grew more agitated the more I tried to draw him out.  In short, I was completely shut out from Lee’s little world.

This was the first time I ever saw Lee look at me with contempt, and the effect was utterly devastating. At first I thought it was me. Perhaps I had inadvertently done or said something hurtful or offensive. Hours passed as I tried to figure it out on my own. I even tried asking Lee, but all he did was glare and keep his silence.

Lee’s cold-shoulder silent treatment lasted for 3 days.

I reached my emotional breaking point on the third day, in the middle of our church service. The sermon ended and I burst into a loud cacophony of tearful apologies.

“I don’t know what I did to make you angry, but I’m sorry. If you’ll just tell me what I did wrong, I’ll try to change. Please stop punishing me. It hurts too much.”

Perhaps Lee felt compassion for me, or maybe he was just embarrassed because we were still in a public place. Either way, the spell was lifted and Lee magically began speaking again. He explained away his behavior, said he’d been angry with himself over something and didn’t want to worry me. Looking back I suppose we should have had a long conversation about what had happened. I was so relieved when it was over that I chose to let it go.

I don’t mean to make Lee sound disturbed or unstable. I’m not perfect either, and I certainly have my own share of emotional idiosyncrasies. I simply tell this story because Lee’s silent treatments became a frequent occurrence in the two years we were married.

Lee did not like to acknowledge problems in our relationship. If I brought up problems or tried to discuss issues in our marriage, I was inevitably punished with the silent treatment.

The silence felt like tiny shards of glass lodged deep into the core of my spirit. With the silence came demoralizing shame, and feelings of intense inadequacy. In marriage I handed the most vulnerable parts of myself to Lee, trusting he would handle them gently. The silence hurt me on a profoundly intimate level because it was the intentional exploitation of my deepest needs. Relationships require attention and love to survive. Lee’s silence, for me, was the cold withdrawal of both. Rejection of the highest kind.

Eventually the silence would break me. Eventually my lips would erupt with desperate pleas and frantic apologies.

I’m sorry I tried to talk about our problems. I’m sorry that I said things aren’t 100% perfect between us. You were right, I was wrong. Please love me again.

I learned that back-peddling was the fastest way to get Lee talking again, never mind the fact that giving in for the sake of peace made me feel helpless and small.

I wish I could tell you that things gradually improved.

Instead, the multitude of issues in our marriage festered like a boil because Lee refused to talk about them. Lee played computer games 8+ hours per day and we did not have quality time as a couple. We did not work on daily tasks together as a team. We didn’t do much of anything together, to be honest. The intimacy and trust between us died down to ashes, and soon we lived more like roommates than lovers.

Lee’s rising ambivalence toward the LDS church was the final spike that drove us apart. Perhaps Lee was always spiritually indifferent and I never saw it, or maybe he developed apathetic attitudes towards the church after we were married. I will really never know.

I won’t tell you the specific things he did (and didn’t do) with regards to the LDS faith, because Lee’s religious life is between him and God. Here is what I can tell you: the day Lee expressed his true feelings about spirituality and the LDS church was the day I fully realized that an error had been made.

I was finally able to admit that marrying Lee was a huge, terrible mistake.

I wanted a relationship firmly rooted in a mutual love for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I wanted my children to have a father who could provide spiritual leadership and guidance. I wanted a marriage that would grow deep and strong. I imagined striving for eternal life with my eternal companion.

I realized too late that Lee did not share any of these goals. Depression settled over me like an oppressive cloud. I gained a considerable amount of weight. I cut my hair. I also started to experience a strange physical pain in my chest area, dull at first and then sharp and insistent. It came and went regularly, intense and frightening, almost as though my body was aware of my marital troubles.

Some days I thought the pain was just a physical manifestation of my hushed resentment towards Lee. Other days I was slightly more optimistic. I met twice with my church Bishop, hoping he might have some words of wisdom for me. Even with all its crushing disappointments, I still did not want my marriage to fail.

Here is what I learned: it takes TWO people to make a marriage and it takes TWO people to save it. I was not able to keep the train from crashing on my own.

Believe me, I tried.

The Best of Intentions

Lee was the prince of my God-promise saga.

We met on the mission in Tempe, Arizona. He was a greenie trainer, then my district leader, then a neighboring zone leader. He was the first person in Tempe to show compassion for my situation.

They say love blinds you. In my case, kindness was the start of my ruin. Kindness blurred my judgment, made me weak and grateful.

When the mission was over I attended BYU in Provo, and that’s when Lee and I started seeing each other on a regular basis. It seemed surreal, like a beautiful dream come true. God had promised me a husband, and honestly…. Lee seemed like the perfect candidate.  

I never felt any hesitations when Lee and I were dating. There were no red flags or warning signs, no obvious indications of what was to come. We didn’t have fights or major disagreements prior to the marriage.

If anything, I was more than comfortable with our level of compatibility. Lee and I talked constantly about serious issues – how we would raise the children, how we would split household responsibilities, how we would handle financial issues, how we would resolve conflict. We examined one another’s value systems with the ruthless foresight of forensic analysts. We discussed ourselves to death.

I was clear about my expectations for the future, and Lee was always quick to claim my relationship opinions as his own. I felt lucky to have a man with views so closely aligned with mine. The old saying “Opposites attract” felt like doomsday propaganda. I didn’t want my opposite. I wanted a partner – someone who had the same goals, the same work ethic, and the same vision for the future.

I prayed about Lee constantly. Was he a good person? Would he make a good husband? Was he the one? I remember peace, happiness, and a clear impression that Lee was indeed the fulfillment of God’s promise.  

I don’t think anybody goes into a marriage with plans to fail. I sure didn’t. Members of the LDS faith believe in eternal matrimony, and like any young LDS bride I believed that my relationship with Lee would transcend mortal time. It was supposed to be infinite and forever.

I knew we would experience divergence over the years, as all couples do. Relationships persistently evolve. They grow. People change and adjust. The world keeps turning. Conflict always comes, but I felt confident that Lee and I would be able to work past problems quickly.

We loved each other, and that was enough.

Or was it?

I went into my marriage with the best of intentions.

It Started With a Prayer

When I go through the divorce story in my mind, it always begins with a prayer  -- or rather, a blessing. Members of the LDS faith believe that personal and direct communication with a loving Heavenly Father can occur in a variety of different ways. Priesthood blessings are one of those ways. They are generally used to heal the sick, to comfort the discouraged, and to provide counsel and direction to those who might be facing difficult decisions or trying circumstances. The blessing-giver will say whatever he feels moved upon by the Holy Spirit to say. I was always taught to take Priesthood blessings seriously, as if God himself was speaking.

Before entering the MTC in 2006, I received a Priesthood blessing from my Stake President. He blessed me with strength, love, conviction, and the patience to seek out those who were ready to hear the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Then the blessing changed gears. I was told that on my mission I would develop many friendships, and as a result of these friendships I would meet my eternal companion.

When the blessing was over I felt completely startled. I was almost 24 years old and never had a real boyfriend, never believed I would ever have the chance to get married. But there, in my blessing, God promised me a husband if I kept up my end of the bargain and served a mission.

I’ll be honest here. I used to tell people that becoming rich and famous was my secret dream, that I wanted servants and expensive foods and a fleet of foreign cars with names I can’t even pronounce. The truth is, I said those things so I wouldn’t have to feel disappointed if Mr. Right never came along.

I wanted to marry a good man in the Temple and have children.

 A family of my very own.

The idea of marriage meant permanence and security. It meant having a place in the world where I would always be loved. This was my secret wish, the dream I harbored like a fragile bird, and here God was offering me a way to get it. Things seemed so simple back then: do my time, claim my blessing, badda bing, badda boom. Easy, right?

Except it wasn’t easy. Being a full-time LDS missionary was a brutal experience. Tempe was hot. Most of the people there were suspicious and unkind to us. I was still engaged in a life-long brawl with Social Anxiety Disorder, so knocking on doors and having random conversations on the street with strangers felt more like harassment and less like proclaiming the gospel. Every day was a struggle for me to speak out loud. My mission president had no faith in me. The APs thought I was dead weight and were constantly moving me around to fill space. I had companions tell me I was a slacking coward. The church’s mission psychologists in Salt Lake City constantly called our apartment to tell me I should give up the fight and go home. I felt like a pariah – unwanted, broken, and completely alone.

I am committed to expressing authentic feelings on this blog, so I’m going to tell the truth even if some people find it offensive. For me, serving a mission was one of the most degrading and humiliating experiences of my entire life.

I stayed and finished the 18 months because God’s promise of a husband saw me through. The only thing that got me out of bed in the mornings was unconditional faith in God’s plan for my life. I would have done anything to claim the blessings of eternal marriage, even if it meant suffering and pain. At the end of it all I would get my husband, and have my family.

Honestly, I would have done anything.

A Beginning

My name is Bethany. I am 29 years old, and living in St. George, Utah. I was born and raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I served a full-time mission in Tempe, Arizona and then married in the San Diego LDS Temple on September 19^th, 2008.

In 2010 I made the difficult decision to divorce my eternal companion. The process and its aftermath was a heartbreaking compound of wretched, empty grief. I kept quiet about the divorce for a long time out of fear, out of embarrassment and anger. Even shame.  I hid because my pain was still too overwhelming, my heart still bleeding, wounds still raw.

Two years have gone by and I’ve come a long way. I’m ready to face the demons, ready to talk and tell my story. This blog will be the chronicle of my exodus through the barren wilderness of divorce, and my transition from utter devastation to optimistic happiness.

I have decided to refrain from using my ex-husband’s real name in order to protect his identity. He bears a striking resemblance to the late Bruce Lee, so… I will simply call him Lee.

I want the world to know there IS hope after tragedy. There IS life after divorce.

I’m living mine. This is my story.