The most difficult decisions to make are usually the hardest one’s that need to be done.

Let’s rewind it a bit. I starting questioning if I married the right person for many years, mostly because we didn’t have much in common. The most we had in common was our four children. We didn’t like the same movies, had the same life goals, or anything like that. One thing was for sure and that was I did love him. He was a good person, very controlling, but a good person. Also, he had a very weird obsession that I will share with you in a little while.

Back to sharing about what started out to be the beginning of the end. I realized years before that I wasn’t happy yet, like many women out there, I stayed. I didn’t stay because I was so deep in love or anything like that. I stayed because I didn’t want to break up my family so I endured years and years of pain, hurt, betrayal, and disrespect for the sake of my family and children, oh yes and the church.

The church played a big decision as to why I was staying in a marriage that wasn’t fulfilling me as a person. Mainly because I feared that if I left my husband that I would somehow shame the church all together. Once again, I found myself debating with my decisions. I was changing as a person and growing into my own woman. Yet while I was changing and growing, the one person that was to grow and change with me wanted to remain the same and that was a huge problem. I was stagnated and I didn’t know what to do about it. I discussed my concerns with my then husband, asked him to join me in counseling yet nothing changed. You might ask, “why did I ask for counseling?” . Well my husband and I had lots of issues and while he was not a cheater, he did cheat but it wasn’t a thing that I had to deal with all the time. He probably cheated twice out of our twelve years of marriage. I forgave him of course but I never really got past it. On top of that, he had this obsession with oral sex that he would constantly impose on me. I will not go into too many details about it because I do have children with whom I have shared some things with but not all things with. Now, I know that everyone is doing it and according to the Bible the bedroom is undefiled, however, when it becomes an obsession and it offends me then it’s a problem. That problem would one day cause the total demise of my marriage.

For a long time I’ve dealt with life and situations very quietly because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I kept quite and as bad as I was suffering I had to keep face. I had to keep everyone believing that everything was ok. I also didn’t talk about what I was dealing with because he ex-husband would get upset even if I mentioned the things that was going on in our marriage or that went on in our marriage. His whole thing was that it happened so get over it and he told me that all the time. Honestly, I had been with him for so long that I thought his behavior and the things he did was normal and in a sense, it was. It was my norm. I didn’t think there was a problem with him telling me who I could or could not be friends with, I didn’t like it but I accepted it for what it was. I never even considered that I was being controlled or that I was allowing him to control me and every aspect of my life and that included the way we raised our children all the way down to the career I worked. I allowed him to dictate everything in my life. I no longer knew who I was and he was okay with that.

I had come to a crossroad in my life and I didn’t know which path to take…..

Finally, I decided. I had made up my mind.

In order for me to start something new I must revisit the events which have led me to finally deciding to end it all. As I looked back over my life for the past fifteen years (yes, it’s been a while) I realized that I wasn’t truly in a happy space. Yes, I had the cars, a beautiful home, four amazing kids, and a good job yet I still found myself unhappy. I tried several times to explain how I was feeling to my husband however it came to no avail. I had spoken to several of my fellow church sisters and it seemed as though they didn’t understand where I was coming from. You see, if you were an outsider you would have thought that I had the perfect marriage, as a matter of fact, I made sure everyone believed that I had a perfect marriage. I knew how to say and do the right things at the right time. When I needed to smile I smiled, when I needed to talk I talked, I became the master of deception and no one around me knew simply because I also knew how to keep people at a distance so they only knew me from the surface. To everyone else, I had everything together and my marriage was error-proof and in their minds I had a great man of God who loved everything about me, and that was true. He did love me, however, what he didn’t know was how to treat me as his wife and not as property but we’ll get to that in coming posts.

When I finally admitted to myself that I wasn’t happy it was in 2016. My husband and myself seemed to be going in two separate directions. I was looking to travel start a business and take control of my life while his focus was solely on surviving. I mean we didn’t have real conversations. The most we talked about was bills and often times when I would ask him to go out on dates he would usually decline my suggestion. The things that we did do were things that he wanted. For example, we watched the movies he liked, listened to music he liked, watched tv shows he liked, I even had to be friends with the kind of people he liked. I had no identity at home and I had no idenity in the church. I found myself dying as an individual.

This is my story told by me so if you would like to follow my journey continue to read as I will be posting frequently.