I met this guy ten years my senior. He seemed nice enough, and I thought we'd be good together.
We ended up dating because we slept together on the first date. Granted, it was pretty decent, but I didn't realize that he was uber-Christian and would end up proposing to me because his parents found out we'd had sex.
His family didn't know about me for nearly three months after we'd started dating.. and he proposed right before he introduced me to them. At the time, I was 19 and desperate to get away from my mom.
His mother is a very very white right-wing Christian weirdo who thinks Dubya was the greatest thing ever. I'm half-Mexican, Catholic, and a Democrat. She called me an idolater to my face, and later said my (formerly) Mormon brother was a cult member.
My husband began to neglect me for Guild Wars and online porn. He wouldn't let me sleep in his bed (or, indeed, even in his bedroom). He also would not let me learn to drive, and barely let me out of the house to see friends or family unless I was with him. He threatened my mother and little brother (which I didn't find out about for ages).
The final straws came when he:
A. punched a hole in a door during an argument we were having, because I left the room to calm down and didn't let him in.
B. left me a note. Let me explain here: the night before, I'd been badly injured and ended up in the emergency room. I got home around 7 am to find him headed to work, and a note on my pillow (which was in a nest of blankets on the floor of the living room, where I slept at his insistence).
What did it say, you ask? Not "I'm sorry you're hurt and I'm worried about you." Not "Feel better, honey, I'll see you later." I will forever have this in my memory as perhaps the coldest thing someone's said to me after an injury (since he didn't even say he was worried when my mom called him from the hospital to let him know I was hurt): "S., Pay the mortgage. It's overdue. - J."
Finally, he snooped through my diary, my conversations with people, and even a forum I belonged to. And going through this, he got the idea that I wanted a divorce. So he threw me out of his house for a night, then agreed to the divorce.
We were married for 2.8 years, and divorced just after my 23rd birthday. As part of the agreement, he had to give me his car once he'd paid it off.
The hand-over happened last week. He tried to get my home address from the back of the title, for some weird reason. Thankfully, he didn't. He doesn't know where I live or work, and has no way of contacting me ever again.
