After dating a very short few months, J and I broke up.
 I’m not sure why I made the choices I did in High School. I had great friends and enjoyed my first three two high school years. Then along came J. I never knew really, what he saw in me. He was far too experienced and on one of out first dates took me to his friends apt.  I made up any excuse I could to avoid the pressure of sex, but after a while in the relationship…it happened.  He took me to movies and talked about Colorado and filled up pages of love letters.
 After the hospital time and his threat to commit suicide and telling me it was all my fault…time becomes stressful for me.
After a few months, the loss of many very special friends and the happiness of the end of my Junior year,  I found myself alone, pregnant and scared.
 I spent the summer with a few friends blindly ignoring my condition, until that fall when telling my parents was unavoidable. I thought I would never live through that. The disappointment they would feel about me.  I would do anything to make them happy again…and I did. I married J when he asked.
Looking back on that year, my maturity can easily see the reasons for the choices I made. My sister was against it. She told me I had other options. But I needed to make a wrong …right.
And So..I was married at the age of 17. ..with a baby.
My precious girl was and is a joy. How I love her and the blessing she is. God has done awesome things with her life. I thank HIM for her everyday I am alive.
I remember the fights and the way I never felt accepted by J’s family in those early years. I remember being scared and I remember throwing our wedding photo across the room at him. But somehow, we made it.
It was exciting to move downstairs when A was almost two. We made the rental house a home and I started babysitting to make extra money.
I was focused on the home and child, but J must not have been happy. I remember finding out that he was leaving the house at night to go to the steel mill, but not going to work. He told me he was sleeping in his car. This was the first time in the marriage that I remember feeling betrayed. He worked a few other jobs but eventually found himself at  a comic store. Money was already an issue with him and he had a general problem with purchasing things a married man with a family should have left behind. But he was still young. It wasn’t until his good friend  who owned the shop told me that J was stealing from the store, that I realized a major problem upon us. With the confrontation, J again had emotional issues and threatened his own life.  When I think back on it now, I wonder why nothing was ever done to deal with that issue.
After arguments and pushing him to do something, J applied for the  Police department. He went away to the academy and I was so proud of him. I remember that at this time I was getting involved at church and my spiritual life was growing.  I had been having problems getting pregnant, but suddenly after five years of marriage, I was pregnant with my M.  
But it wasn’t too long of a bliss time. We were getting ready to go on a little camping trip . He had been acting strange. And at 10pm he decided he wanted to get a gallon of milk. We will need milk, he said. We went on the trip but he was crabby and gone all the time and all we did was fight. I remember joking with him in the pool about another woman. But when we got home he disappeared and didn’t come home until the next morning.  I will never forget that day. It was as Sunday. Garth Brooks song, The Thunder Rolls reminds me of it each time I hear it.
He told me about the affair and that he was leaving. I went to his mom and dad’s house with my daughter and lay on the bed and cried. It was over. How was I going to raise two children on my own?
I went home alone, and he had taken his things with no word as to where he was. My brother eventually followed him home from work one day to her house, just a few blocks from me.  He was living there with her.
One night he called. I remember that I finally had let him go. I told him so but the next day he coma back on his knees. I thought he had decided to leave her and stay a family. This was not exactly the truth. She had broken up with him and he came home.  It wasn’t nearly over though. She kept coming over, dropping this or that off. I eventually walked over to her house and talked with her.  I do not recommend that for some people.  She told me all about the sex they had, the things they did, the song that was theirs {everything I do by Brian Adams} and gave me a letter he had written to her.  I gave that letter to my parents to hold on to.
We counseled together and I did separately. I read books and prayed. After giving birth to M, I thought I could go on. Things would be ok. But they were never the same. There was always doubt, mistrust.
I remember catching him with a girl at a wedding, whispering together on the stairs, and with other girls in situations that seemed strange.  The night he found we had crabs, and the pages he would get. I ignored those thoughts however, until the day our neighbor called and told me to come over.  His wife C was crying. She had confessed the affair the two had together.
There was a moving sign in our front yard, J had his accident and I had my grandmother living with me.  P, the neighbor worked as a fireman and told me there were others. There is no way I should stay with him. I remember telling J what P had said. J told me he wasn’t going to “Do those things anymore” Why? Was it because he had an accident or because he was now injured and not going to recover completely?
I don’t know why I ignored the problem again. I was scared. I again felt bitter and betrayed. And I have never been able to satisfactorily discuss this with J. I could never trust him, and didn’t really feel surprised by the events.  J had long ago made me feel less than he was. He made me think I was not nice, and treated people incorrectly or unkind. Its funny, but my whole life I have always felt inferior and un liked by people. This played in with my way of thinking.  I remember spending time with good friends,  and discussing these issues.  They know the pain I have pushed aside for years.  I fasted and I prayed for a change.
We moved out to our new town, started a new life and I meet great new friends, but the past has never left my mind.  The mistrust continued to haunt me each time I would catch him in lies about finances.  The inability to handle money responsibly has always been his issue, and I can’t even remember the times I pleaded with him. I guess I should have taken over the money. I did to an extent. I saved all the money from caring for my grandmother and babysitting to have a down payment for the house,  in an account in mine and my mother in laws name.  I should have kept this up. The only reason I can give for not doing this is the desire to have a husband that was mature and responsible and a leader in the home. I wanted a man that took the well being of his family seriously and put it first.
I remember laying in bed in utter panic. Panic attacks that I gave to God because my husband certainly was not going to address it or be trusted to take care of it. If only he could talk to me, and assure me. But when I would ask him if things were ok, and “You are not using Credit cards Right?” He would say no..and it’s ok. I’d say “There is money for that?” He’d say, all the bills are paid.
When the money for the settlement came it was a Hugh relief . we could pay back dad, have money for the house needs, and something for emergencies.
I realize that a lot of that money was spent on cars for the girls, a wedding, the roof, and the house. But when it started to go down in figures, I pleaded with him to leave it alone.  I told him  that every time he lies to me I bleed a little more trust and faith and love.  The lies were enough but what made it worse is the way he spent hours playing XBOX and watching TV. He never came to bed with me and would, many times, sleep downstairs. I moved my clothes out of the bedroom years ago, ready to call it quits. The lack of intimacy and trust was wearing on me.
We went to Edward Jones to look for ways to safely invest, and he sat with me, knowing all the time he knew stuff I did not.
He told me sarcastically that he was not spending the money on stuff for himself. This thought always affected my heart and thinking but I still do not understand. If it was all on the level why would he lie???
The more time went by the lonelier and more depressed I became.  I remember going to bed many nights alone while he played XBOX.  I’ve felt so distant from him. I have recently been so depressed. So sad in the last three years and he doesn’t seem to care. Why am I not worth him taking care of himself? Why am I not worth the truth about the money? He made me out to be paranoid and a dooms day sayer, but what I’ve said has come to pass. Just after our 20th wedding anniversary  I happened to come across some disturbing information.  I sat on my bed and literally had an emotional breakdown that M walked in on. J had been bleeding the savings into the checking without recording it, hundreds at a time. WHY? I still have never got the answer.
I told him two years ago I was so tired of pulling the weeds he has sown alone. We don't sleep together, we don't talk. emotionally we have been dead for a long time.
I want a divorce. I feel so guilty for that. I need advice to help my children cope. I have found myself spilling emotions on friends, male and female because I never could with my husband.
For those that took the time to read this LONG note...thank you.

Wow.. I feel sorry for you.

I don't think there's a future with him, a person who tried to commit suicide is highly unexpected and it will be a great risk to live with.

Dr S said some pretty wise things, I hope you find love and happiness without this J...