lost decades

 last night as i was getting ready for bed, a thought came to my mind:

all i ever wanted was to be a mom. a stay-at-home mom. 

he knew, and he NEVER tried to give that to me.

before we got married, we talked about my getting a job to pay off my credit card & save up some money until we got pregnant, and my going back to college to finish my degree since i didn't want to abandon that goal entirely. 

by year 2 of our marriage i was working 2 jobs. i had applied to college again since i got a tuition break where i worked my main job. then his hunting buddy's dog had a litter of puppies. he said if we didn't live in a no-pets apartment that he'd've wanted one the hunting buddy made a comment to the effect of "i'll just keep this one for you till you get a house"

so the househunting began. it was the early 2000's when getting a no-down payment home loan was easy. we really couldn't afford it. especially since i'd have to give up my 2nd job in order for me to go back to school.  

i wasn't comfortable with the idea of buying a house. we had no savings, no down payment & the mortgage would be more than our rent which we could barely afford as it was. but he insisted. he bought into the realtor & mortgage banker's insistence that we'd "grow into" the payment. 

he was offered a promotion at work within a year or two of us moving into the house that he declined. he didn't want to possibly give up an occasional weekend day, or adjust his work shift. he made an assumption that he wouldn't get to use his time off to go hunting when he wanted.  basically: he didn't want to take on more responsibility. he claimed that the increase in pay "wasn't worth it" because he'd supposedly end up working more than 40 hours a week without "enough" overtime. as much as he constantly bitched about his job, he didn't actually dislike it enough to change his situation. 

one of his friends started a construction company a few years before we had our daughter & offered him a project supervisor position at a starting hourly wage more than he was getting & with the possibility of increase as the company took off. even tho i could carry insurance through my job, he declined b/c "what about his 401K" & "what about my employee discount" at the old job. nevermind he could have still socked away money in a IRA to add to the existing 401K, and we wouldn't have needed the stupid discount because he'd've been making more. his friend's company took off in leaps & bounds and was doing huge construction projects within 5 years. 

all other jobs he "applied" for were actually done by me. i found the jobs, i told him about them, i explained to him why they were worth applying for, i filled out the applications. he went to exactly 2 interviews. the rest he blew off instead of calling in sick on interview day like most people in service-industry jobs do. 

he started collecting hunting dogs. i say this because we had dog #1 that got us the house, then we *had* to get another dog to be it's pal & because it was from "good bloodlines" and he saw dollar signs thinking we could breed puppies. that, of course, is not how it works with the most popular breed in the country when they're not show dogs. so then he found a different breed that was "even better" and we spent thousands of dollars to buy and train one. 

then i was done with my bachelor's. then i got a promotion. then my grandma died & we got an inheritance which i took as a sign that it was time to try to get pregnant. i finished my master's while pregnant & with a newborn. and another puppy. because an "opportunity" opened itself for him to get another dog & he again saw the possibility of making money of puppies. 

he was offered another promotion that he again refused, because it might involve us moving and he didn't want to have to navigate the process of selling the house & possibly temporarily moving into an apartment or leased home that would require even temporary rehoming of the dogs. 

all this time i'm working, and being a mom, and he's also expecting me to act as stay-at-home wife because he rarely does any of those tasks unless it's absolutely unavoidable. he was happy to have me as primary-income-childcaregiver-wife-housekeeper-mom proxy. he was okay with my being always uncomfortable and often unhappy but was fine with never changing his behaviors. 

i asked and asked for his help. for him to do more around the house, for us to go to couples counseling, for him to work on his anger. each time he would turn it around as me giving him a "guilt trip" for not being the manly provider, that we didn't have the money for that, that he should be allowed his "feelings" too. he claimed he "wanted" to be the primary earner so i didn't have to work so much, but he never actually tried to do that. 

he turned an optimist into a pessimist. i never had anxiety about the future until about 5 years into our marriage, and then i was constantly concerned about possible catastrophes. 

so here i am, regrouping. reorganizing. it can't get much worse from here, so i'll claw my way back to the top. i'll make a better life for me and my kids, and he can go do whatever he wants.