While you are reading this, you might feel anger for me, and I appreciate that. You might think it was unwise to marry a person with such obvious and deep problems and you are right. However, I am more whole than I have been in a very long time (including before my marriage) and I am understanding the reasons why I married someone like Josh. My therapist told me I am at the top of the roller coaster with my hands up high, ready to experience the ride. I honestly feel that way. I’m a little scared, often excited, and so ready to feel again.
My marriage to Josh ended a long time before I even met him. It ended before I started dating anyone. It both started and ended when I internalized the belief that I was unlovable. I was a difficult child to raise. I asked questions; I didn’t take no for an answer; I was manipulative and demanding. I was intelligent. I was sweet in public and a tyrant at home. I was terrified. I could sense raising a child like me was out of my mom’s comfort zone. I have known for a very long time my mom and I are polar opposites. We are just now starting to respect each other. When I was young, I could sense my mom didn’t know how to love me and at that age, being loved meant survival. My dad, on the other hand, did know how to love me because we are so similar. However, my perception was he didn’t love my mom and she didn’t love him. My world felt very unstable. Add financial uncertainty on top of everything and as my therapist says, “no wonder you were anxious.”
I do have gratitude for my parents. I’m grateful I had a physically safe home and food and values. When I look back on my childhood, I see a barefoot girl running around the neighborhood, sitting in trees, talking with adults from all over the world, reading on the grass, and loving her friends. I had a beautiful childhood. I know my parents were doing their best. It is also true that someone’s best can still be harmful. I felt a lot of fear during my childhood. It caused me to act out in ways that perplexed my parents. I remember one day, sitting on my sister’s bed (she had the bottom bunk) and being told by them, “If you keep acting this way, no one will want to marry you.” It was not said with malice. It was a desperate Hail Mary effort at parenting me. It was what my parents honestly believed. They hoped my behavior would change. I didn’t know how to change my behavior, so I accepted what I had felt for a long time: the anxiety I experience makes me fundamentally unlovable.
The core belief I held, that I was fundamentally unlovable, is the reason I married Josh.
I want to be very clear: I am not placing blame for what happened. I am not blaming my parents, myself, or even Josh. I am simply observing the influences that shaped the events of my life.
I went on a few dates in high school, but growing up in an extremely conservative Mormon family meant my dating experiences were limited and tainted with shame. I had my first boyfriend during my sophomore year of college. Kyle Pratt. That relationship lasted about a month until I heard through the grapevine he thought he wanted to marry me and I freaked out. My dating life pretty much followed that pattern for the next 5 years. Someone would express interest, we’d go on a few dates or date and then I’d sense they liked me “too much” and I’d break it off. I was afraid someone would think too highly of me and also terrified someone would discover I was actually quite unlovable.
When I found Josh, I sensed he liked me fine enough, but he didn't put me on a pedestal. We met on Tinder. We talked for a few days then he disappeared for two weeks and messaged me again saying, "Sorry I've been so out of touch." After that we talked consistently. He lived in Salt Lake; I lived in Provo. Neither of us had a car. We talked for about a month before even trying to meet in person. That was comforting to me. Our first date was Thanksgiving weekend 2016. He borrowed a car from his friend who owned a dealership and we went to see Dr. Strange. It was one of those movie theaters with reclining seats. In the middle of the movie, I wanted to recline my seat more so I started to move my hand toward the button, but then I got really nervous he would think I was trying to hold his hand. I dealt with a stiff neck for the rest of the movie. Josh told me on the drive home his favorite band was Backstreet Boys. I asked three times if he was serious and I think he got a little offended. While it definitely weirded me out, I was struck by his honesty and his disregard for how it would affect my opinion of him. Josh was also very honest about his depression. He let me know when he felt down and how it impacted his life. We started dating December 10th, 2016 and I left to go home for Christmas a few days later. In the future, we would both refer to those three weeks apart with gratitude because we spent a lot of time just talking and really getting to know each other.
While Josh's depression was severe and influenced my anxiety quite a bit, it was the reason I married him. My dad has depression and I am very familiar with how it impacted our family. I also have a master's in speech therapy and I know health is not guaranteed to everyone for long. I've seen young men who had strokes or traumatic brain injury. I've seen older men with neurodegenerative diseases. I also know many men lie and that someone who seemed "perfect" probably had deep dark secrets that would only come out after marriage. I told myself, "I'd rather dance with the devil I know than the devil I don't know." There's truth to all of this, but the real reason I married Josh is simply because he was so broken. I thought if I loved him enough perhaps he could love me too. I believed I could only be loved by someone who was massively broken and who could not find love anywhere else.
Josh did love me at the beginning of dating. He loved me before his projection of who I was faded and reality settled in. He tried to break up with me but I reached out to him again and we kept dating. I think the last time he was in love with me was before he broke up with me. He cared about me, but he was never in love with me again. So why did he marry me? Josh is from England and was terrified of losing his student visa because of failing grades and being forced to go home again. He had already had that happen once. He basically only left his room at night to eat for two years while he was in England. He managed to save up enough money to come back and try again and that's when I met him. I was a nice enough girl who loved him and most importantly I was an American. I was a way to never have to worry about leaving the U.S. again. I was too trusting to believe he would actually marry someone he didn't love. I always excused his distance and lack of affection as a symptom of depression. I didn't see the truth until about a week after he left. He emotionally checked out from our marriage a long time ago. I first found him messaging girls on dating apps a year ago. He left a month and a half after he got his green card. He refutes that he married me only for a green card, yet he has apologized for what he's put me through and told me he's going to pay me back for the cost of the green card. So you tell me.
He did care about me as a person. Which is possibly what makes this so hard to process. He was my best friend. I think I was his best friend. We laughed together. We spent a lot of time together. We worked through some fucking hard shit together. He often did kind things for me. For my birthday last year, he bought me an annual membership to the aquarium which was a perfect gift. He would get me soup from Panera when I didn't feel well. When I had to go to the ER he was attentive and concerned. However, most of the time he was distant and dishonest. In his mind he was protecting me by lying to me. When I'd say I didn't feel like he loved me, he would say, "It hurts me that you don't think I love you." When I left the Mormon church, I told him I would understand if he was not okay with being married to someone not of the same religion. He said he was fine. When I wanted to move to West Virginia from Utah, he went along with it.
The truth all came out the night he left. When he finally admitted that he was not in love with me, I asked why. His three reasons were because I had left the church, because I had made him move across the country which basically ruined his life, and because I had anxiety. I wish he had been honest with me a lot sooner.
Josh telling me he didn't love me because of my anxiety cut to the deepest wound I have. While I am working through it, I am definitely still hurting. Today I did yoga and started sobbing. At times I cry because I feel unlovable. Sometimes I cry because I loved him so much and I miss having someone to love unconditionally. I cry because I had to bury the future I imagined with him. I cry because I tried so hard to be good and was hurt anyway.
In all of this, I have yet to find peace. I have found emotion definitely. Highs and lows. Such intense hope, and liberation, incredible pain, and sadness. I was in an emotionally manipulative marriage and I am still coming to terms with how that has affected me. I feel like I've walked into the sunlight from a dark room and while I am so so glad for the light, I haven't adjusted to it yet.
In a way, I am grateful for what has happened in my life because I married Josh. I don't believe God planned for this to happen all along so I could become stronger or so I could help other people or any of that shit. However, I can see there that good can come out of crappy situations. I could have married someone who wasn’t deceptive and I would have possibly spent my whole life basing my worth on someone else’s opinion of me. Marrying and divorcing Josh has forced me to cultivate the belief that I have worth on my own.
In a way, I am grateful for what has happened in my life because I married Josh. I don't believe God planned for this to happen all along so I could become stronger or so I could help other people or any of that shit. However, I can see there that good can come out of crappy situations. I could have married someone who wasn’t deceptive and I would have possibly spent my whole life basing my worth on someone else’s opinion of me. Marrying and divorcing Josh has forced me to cultivate the belief that I have worth on my own.
I'll still cry. I'll still be attracted to broken people. I am learning that I am strong and I am choosing to hold on to that.
