The Wrong Foot

I have been married to my husband for 19 years. We met in high school and had a child right at graduation. After high school and some college we decided to marry. I really didn’t want to marry him nor did I want to continue the relationship with premarital sex. I wanted my freedom to date people and then see if he was right for me. He didn’t want to break up and he didn’t want me to see other people, so I decided to stay, thinking he must really love me. I couldn’t see my way out. I told him, let’s get married or it’s over. I didn’t think he would marry me because he said he wasn’t ready, but weeks after I broke it off he came back and agreed. So we were married. I felt apprehensive about getting married, but I thought it was just cold feet. At the time I thought marriage would work out the kinks in our relationship, and the love we had for each other would overrule anything. Well, 19 years and two more children later I am utterly miserable. He is now someone I do not like, and I don’t think he likes me that much either, but he doesn’t want to get a divorce. I do but I am afraid. Our oldest daughter moved out and we have two teenagers at home. Raising children together has been the best thing we’ve done. It’s about the only thing we can agree on because everything else is a tug of war. I want out. But with the shaky economy and thoughts of being a single parent, I don’t know if this would be the best time. Plus, if he doesn’t agree to the divorce, it will be expensive and I will have to prove irreconcilable differences. At times I feel like I am pushing a man away from loving me. I am so confused. Jill Jill, in the HBO series “The Sopranos,” Carmela Soprano enjoys the lifestyle provided by her gangster husband, Tony. At the same time, she is dissatisfied with his crude ways. Contemplating divorce, Carmela goes to a therapist to find a simple answer to her dilemma, but she is taken aback by his bluntness. The therapist makes clear her husband is a mobster, and whether she stays or goes, Carmela intends to continue living off blood money. You would like a simple solution, too, but in your own mind you are sidestepping the truth. Immediately after telling us you never loved your husband, you speak of the love you both had. Which is it? It appears you gave him an ultimatum. Marry me, or I will date others. That isn’t the wedding proposal most girls dream of, and if that is what happened, it wasn’t the right way to begin a marriage. Most people don’t like to say no, and that is why they often give in to high-pressure sales people. Is that what your husband did? Look at what happened, examine it, and own it. There is no shame in admitting a mistake, when a mistake is made. Put your cards on the table with your husband, but before that, put your cards on the table with yourself. You are not the only person who ever mistook like, familiarity, and convenience for love. Your yearning is telling you that you never had love and are still looking. Many women in your situation--trapped by economics and the prospect of single parenthood--go looking for another man and leave the marriage only when they have found one. But that is the low road, and you don’t need to take the low road again. We don’t get more from less, and we don’t get something from easy. First, be honest with yourself. Next, be honest with your husband. Then the two of you can decide where you honestly are. Wayne & Tamara