I decided to try one more time really hard with my relationship with my husband. I decided to make love to him every night for two weeks; you see I started seeing the pattern of when things went wrong with our relationship. It was when we had intimacy. It was then that he would begin to push me away emotionally. I figured if I still made love to him even when he pushed me away, then he wouldn’t have a choice but to be vulnerable because we would have intimacy that next night again. This was very difficult for me, knowing the kind of rejection that he was capable of giving, and how sensitive I was about being vulnerable myself. I committed to do it anyway, no matter how much he hurt me. The first week went well, then he started pushing me away, but I had determined to do this. It was like my last real attempt at my marriage, so the more he pushed me away emotionally, the more I tried to convince myself that we should make love anyway. But the distance got really bad and I began to use old behavior, like act like I was tired. I very quickly realized what I was doing, so I started talking to him about the way he was treating me and how he was beginning to push me away. He proceeded to tell me how I didn’t satisfy him, and how others got to have me the way he never gets me (he was talking about my old abusive boyfriends that forced me to do certain things). Now he didn’t say it with any gentleness, it was abusive and extremely painful. I felt like he put a knife right through my heart. Because we had been intimate, I was extremely vulnerable and my guard was completely down. I was completely open. His words pierced me like a sword. He had no idea how much that hurt. That was the beginning of the true end. I vowed that I would never let him get that close to me again, never.
I stuffed that way down and lived my life. Boy nothing was going to stop me. I worked so hard on JSR Promotions. Brenda and I began to really build my business. It was amazing, sales were coming in like crazy and business was booming. We did a lot of on-site heat pressing. We made a lot of contacts and really built a solid business.
As soon as I started getting better, the letters started coming in, apparently the whole year that I was sick in bed, my $10 a month medical bills were not getting paid. I remember during the year that I was sick, bills came and if James didn’t have the money for them, he would put them in a drawer and not even open them. I really didn’t think he was doing that for a $10 per month bill, but sure enough, he was. I found unopened medical bills dating back months. I found collection notices that were never even responded too. All of a sudden, I had all these collection agents coming out of the woodwork. I groveled to each one of them and asked them to give me another chance. Our credit was already ruined from him not paying the credit cards; I didn’t want a judgment against us. I couldn’t understand it. He didn’t have to pay the mortgage for three months, but he couldn’t pay ten stinking dollars on my medical bills! What was wrong with him? I was irate. I was so angry that I had to clean up his mess once again.
Then our income tax refund came and he paid back the mortgage we owed. After a month had passed, our mortgage was due again. Since I had already committed to myself that I wouldn’t get involved, I waited to see if he would pay it. By the beginning of the month, I finally asked him if he paid the mortgage. He said, “nope.” I said, “Are you going to pay it?” He said, “I don’t know,” I said, “How much money do you have for the mortgage?” He motioned his hands into a zero. He had not saved any money for the mortgage. I was beyond irate. I wanted to hurt him. I didn’t want to be his mother anymore and I realized I didn’t want to be his wife either. I couldn’t stand him. I couldn’t stand to be around him, but I wasn’t ready to be on my own yet.
Because of the stress that was going on from getting all these unpaid medical bill notices and finding out that he had no money for the mortgage, I got very sick. I was under so much stress that I had horrible pains in my stomach and I threw up for six days straight. Everything I ate would come back up. I was in so much pain that an ambulance had to take me to the hospital. My stomach was spasming. At the hospital, the nurse gave me several shots of morphine, but as soon as it wore off, I was in horrible pain once again. They kept me in the hospital for four to five days, hooked up to an IV pushing fluids through my body. I was dehydrated from all the vomiting. They took test after test and found nothing. After each shot of morphine wore off, the pain would return with a vengeance. Then the doctor decided to give me an anxiety medicine. It worked, and it settled everything down. It was confirmed that all my symptoms, like the vomiting and pain, were caused by stress. I realized then that this stress that James was causing me was going to kill me, and I didn’t want to be sick any more.
All I wanted to do was go to Maryland for the entire summer. I could then get away from him for two months, oh how I looked forward to that! We had started going to another church, and before the summer started, we went to home group. At this home Bible study, we were doing a study called “How to Build Your Mate’s Self-esteem.” James was so loving and nice, as usual, out in public, but at home he wouldn’t talk to me at all or he ridiculed me about something. He started arguments about everything under the sun. I told him that I wasn’t going to play that game anymore. I would not allow him to act like this wonderful husband around others, and treat me like a dog at home, no way.
One night when we were at Bible study, he bared his soul. He told the truth, for the first time in his whole life, in front of a room of people. He told them that who they saw was not who he really is. He doesn’t act the same at home at all. He was totally honest about how he really was. It was amazing, the naked truth. I was floored. Of course I told him he had to, but he actually did it himself. I thought for sure this would change him. Maybe by speaking the truth, he could be free to be that nice, warm, funny, loveable guy that everyone except for me got to enjoy; but no, it backfired, he got a lot worse. He asked for one of the guys to be his accountability partner (someone that will keep him accountable for his nasty behavior). The only problem was that he hid it all, again, from him. He would be yelling at the kids and arguing with me about whatever (usually something I wanted or needed or about our financial situation, or how he felt left out of my business, but yet he didn’t want any part of it). Then in the middle of our argument, his accountability partner would call and ask him how his day was, and he would say, “great” and he would joke around. It made me want to puke.