A long journey

So my husband and I will have been married three years at the end of December this year. And it’s not been easy. We have one child together.

What makes this so difficult is that we’ve been separated for almost two years now.

We got married December of 2015 after dating for two years. A week before the wedding we found out we were pregnant. Everything felt perfect. But it didn’t stay that way. 3 days after the wedding I had a particularly painful miscarriage. And that’s when things started to get difficult. The miscarriage emotionally destroyed both of us but we didn’t know how to talk about it. He started drinking a lot and shutting me out. But we were working through it.

3 months later we got pregnant again. We were both terrified. What if we lost this one two. Well this lead my husband to confide in someone other than me because he didn’t want to stress me out. But this all lead to the affair.

He started to feel that this girl (she was 17 and he was 21) was the only person who cared about how he was doing. How he felt. He started sleeping with her. He shut me out even more. And then I found out. And all of this was going on while his drinking problem got worse.

We ended up separating when I was 8 month pregnant after a very terrible fight were he lashed out and said he was going to but me in my grave if I kept him away from his son.

I got a protective order and did keep him away. He wasn’t allowed around us for an entire year.

Within that year both of us got into other relationships. Meanwhile we were still married because we didn’t have the money for a divorce. He got his girlfriend pregnant and his daughter was born this past April. And then she left him for his best friend. My relationship just fizzled out. Our divorce was supposed to be finalized this week but while trying to be good parents we’ve fallen back in love.

We’ve talked about everything that happened. He’s taking domestic violence/anger management classes. Our communication skills are better than ever. Once his classes are over we’re gonna start marriage counseling.

We’re still living separately. But we’re taking everything one step at a time. There is a lot of trust that has to be rebuilt. And a lot of healing to be done. But we’re gonna be okay. He loves his children and me.

And I honestly think the time apart let’s grow. And the biggest blessing I could ever ask for came out of this. I have a step daughter. I get to be part of this little girls life. And to me I kinda get to have the little girl I lost in the beginning back.

Any advice would be helpful. I know this is a long painful journey.