Surviving Life's Storm

Having kids destroyed my marriage.  Even from as soon as 4 months pregnant with my first, when my husband insisted upon a feeding method that I did not wish to pursue.  From the first night home, when I was crying from sleep deprivation and all the other postpartum aches and pains, and the baby was crying from hunger, and he looked at me and said "this is what you wanted," when I begged for help.  When he refused to wake up a half hour earlier for work to feed/play with the baby.  When he would sleep in because his sleep was disturbed at night, even when he wasn't the one getting up with the baby. When he went back to work the same afternoon I was released from the hospital after having my gallbladder removed. When he suggested I quit my job so he could devote more time to his work and spend less time at home. When the behaviour I had accepted towards myself became intolerable towards my children and I realized I did not want my children to emulate his attitude...

I realized I didn't love my husband anymore when he told me he went on a coffee date with a woman he had met online.  He didn't call it a coffee date and, in fact, assumed I had already known about it when I confronted him about it again.  He had been acting weird and I searched his phone and saw he had a new Plenty of Fish account, so of course I read the messages.  Nothing indicated an in person meeting. I wish I could say it ended there.  Our oldest son was not even 1 year old then and it would be 4 more years, another child, and several more times of catching my husband with an online dating account before I would call it quits for good.  At that point, I thought life had finally changed for the good and I was finally free. I was wrong; that was just the quiet before the storm.