The Wife

By Xlibris US

This is my memoir. I know what youre thinkingwhat kind of an unexceptional egocentric thirty-something-year-old writes a memoir? Ill tell yousomeone that had life figured out by kindergarten and, by college, was destined to take on the world with a certifiably impenetrable heart. I was religiously raised thinking that I would never ever screw things up the way my parents had, and unlike most marriages, mine really was meant to be happily forever after, thats until I realized I am really just one in six billion. We arent so different. I am no stranger to love and fear.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499045536

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Anne O. Nimmus.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014911988

ISBN:   Hardcover  978-1-4990-4554-3

             Softcover    978-1-4990-4555-0

             eBook         978-1-4990-4553-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/03/2014

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

540211

CONTENTS

Part 1: Becoming A Rock

Chapter 1:   Agree To Disagree

Chapter 2:   Jealousy

Chapter 3:   Conditional Love

Chapter 4:   Unfixable?

Chapter 5:   Out Of Control

Chapter 6:   New Friends And Old Friends

Chapter 7:   Work Obsessions

Chapter 8:   Under Control

Chapter 9:   I Hate The Way You Lie

Chapter 10:   Resentment

Chapter 11:   The Bombs

Chapter 12:   The Final Bomb

Chapter 13:   Goodbye

Part 2: Turning Over A New Leaf

Chapter 14:   Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

Chapter 15:   The Big Book

Chapter 16:   Disease Debate

Chapter 17:   Media: The Medium For Social Shaming

Chapter 18:   Counseling Retreat

Chapter 19:   Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

Chapter 20:   Groveling

Chapter 21:   Sentencing

Chapter 22:   Remodeling Trust

Chapter 23:   Poor Man’s Treatment

Chapter 24:   Serving Time

Chapter 25:   The Choice

For my husband

Math is the only pure science.

When the variables are precise, the outcome is always predictable.

If an individual’s life is the sum of their experiences, and the individual fails to accurately account all their variables, how then can they ever hope to come close to an outcome that is predictable?

How can we hope to find meaning or purpose?

PREFACE

This is my memoir, a work of nonfiction that has been fictionalized by changing the names of people and places many events occurred. Many of the people in this book are involuntary participants. Because I love and respect them all dearly, I don’t wish any unwarranted attention be given to them or even myself. Yes, I too am anonymous. That’s not because I’m ashamed of my story or afraid to share it. If that were the case, you wouldn’t be reading these words. It’s unimportant who I am. I might be your next door neighbor or a complete stranger. Ultimately, I’m just another person.

My dear friends and family who have graciously agreed to allow their partial stories to be shared as they are integral to mine are truly wonderful people. That being said, I accept full responsibility for the stories I share. These are a collection of my experiences given from my perspective with my own feelings attached. Though some of the stories are shared experiences, I can only claim to own the feelings I associated with those experiences. It’s my feelings about the experience that make them unique to me. The person I shared the experience with may have perceived a completely different event as they attach their own preconceived feelings to events. We are all products of our past, and that would be their unique experience. You’d be surprised how many times people do something together and have a completely different recollection about the event as they attach their own unique feelings to experiences based on preconceived ideas.

Some experiences I share aren’t actually things that I witnessed firsthand but was made aware of when another person shared their thoughts and feelings with me. Though I tried to limit this, there were some experiences shared with me that absolutely affected me in irreversible ways. To leave those shared experiences out wouldn’t have made my story complete. To the many friends and family that have shared with me their experiences, thank you for not only opening my eyes but also for caring enough to share your experiences with me. That is mostly directed at my husband. You have had irreversible effects on my heart.

Though I may share some feelings that are wonderfully joyful, I also have some that are not. Most people’s learning experiences have negative feelings attached to them to avoid repeating them. If I had written a book with all my positive experiences, it would have been longer and less informative.

Finally, I want to thank the many complete strangers that I have never met, and yet I feel close to them regardless. Though it took several hundred pages to tell my story I have selected songs that have been annotated throughout the text. The words and feelings expressed by the artists are so near to my heart. At times, I wonder if they were spying on me when they wrote the words to their songs. Though I have conveyed my feelings through black and white text, these songs evoke emotions I could never do justice. Thank you for unknowingly sharing your feelings and experiences with me through song.

MY STORY PLAYLIST

Apologize by OneRepublic

More than Words by Extreme

I Can’t Make You Love Me by Adele

Part of Me by Katy Perry

Titanium by Madeline Baily

My Immortal by Evanescence

Say Something by A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera

Love the Way You Lie Part 2 by Rihanna featuring Eminem

Rehab by Amy Winehouse

Skyfall by Adele

Demons by Imagine Dragons

Be OK by Ingrid Michaelson

Human by The Killers

With or Without You by U2

Try by P!nk

Keep Breathing by Ingrid Michaelson

Love Remains the Same by Gavin Rossdale

PART 1

BECOMING A ROCK

CHAPTER 1

Agree to Disagree

The first real emotion I can recall in my life is fear. This is such a longstanding feeling that the details and origin are unclear. However, I do know what I feared the most—water. This fear of water was ingrained in my mind by my omnipotent mother. On dozens, maybe even hundreds, of occasions, I was told that I needed to be careful not to get any water in my left ear. The reason was simple—if I were to get any water in my ear, the water would seep into my ear canal, past my missing eardrum, and finally into my brain where I could potentially develop an infection that would ultimately lead to my death.

I was never told why I had no eardrum. However, it was made very clear to me that the absence of this vital membrane could potentially kill me. I’ve come to learn that, of all the emotions, fear is the greatest motivator or diversion for a behavior, followed by love. As far as I could tell, there should be nothing to fear more than your own death. My entire life I’ve made choices to ensure that I would not only survive, but thrive. Now the tables had completely turned.

By age thirty, I was living the American Dream. I was blessed to grow up in a home where love was nearly a constant. Now I had my own beautiful home. I was married to a handsome, witty, genuinely fun man. We had what might be considered the perfect marriage. That’s not to say that we didn’t have major trials to overcome. We had successfully sailed through the difficulties of financial distress, completed our respective degrees while raising children that we planned to have later on in life, had major changes in educational choices requiring moving across the country and undergone a major change to our religious belief systems. All the while we loved and respected each other working together to overcome challenges that frequently end in the parting of ways and instead grew closer together.

We had two healthy, adorable children who were thriving in school. My husband and I were both working our respective dream jobs. We were bringing in roughly $161,000—according to CNBC, the statistical income level where people are the happiest. No one had ever accused me of being anything but happy. Outwardly, I was completely put together. Yet no one knew that on the inside I was completely falling apart. I no longer feared death, I welcomed it. This is my story.

We were at a transitional period in our marriage and life. We had been married for just over seven blissful years and expected everything at this point to be coming together. We had both finally finished graduate school and were finally at a point in our lives that we could settle down. Like the period when my husband had decided not to finish law school and was anxiously anticipating his next stage, he was once again anticipating taking his boards and starting another major stage in his life—beginning his career as a pharmacist. During this period, he felt unproductive despite the immense help that he was in taking care of our two children. For many men, not earning a living to support your family is unsettling. He was no different.

As a result, he was upset and anxious. His parents’ attempts to support him by excessively advising him and pushing him to find work only increased his anxiety and feelings of failure. They didn’t seem to comprehend that he had to be licensed to work and hadn’t had the opportunity to take his boards yet a prerequisite for licensing. His $165,00 degree was worthless without a license. He lamented the fact that we moved back to his hometown after just completing his course work in pharmacy school. We had only been there a month.

Things became tense enough that we got into an altercation over the most ridiculous thing—a bill. After all the stresses I had single-handedly dealt with related to moving, including getting all of our banking, utilities, phone, doctors, school registration, setting up new employment while still working, packing and loading boxes, setting up moving arrangements, and the actual process of moving, I had forgotten to pay an irregular bill for the kids’ book club, and now there was a late fee involved. I was berated with accusations of not being responsible and that I shouldn’t have even signed up for the book club in the first place. Now they were going to send it to a collections agency. Before I knew it, the world was coming to an end.

I should have recognized at that point that I wasn’t perfect, and won’t ever be. However, I was pretty damn close when it came to keeping up with bills. That wasn’t the real issue going on. The stress of not having work and the constant harassment from his parents to get a job only worked to increase my husband’s feelings of inadequacy. All of this summed up can really make a person upset and want to project those feelings on to someone else. He wasn’t really yelling at me for making a small mistake, but the anger was coming from everything else going on in life. Still, that’s not what I heard at the time. I heard yelling.

When someone is yelling at you, it’s incredibly hard not to match it and stay reasonable. During times of stress, like being yelled at, the pathways to our rational brain region, the prefrontal cortex, are blocked by the rapid influx of stress-related neurotransmitters. Naturally, it’s impossible to argue rationally when both parties involved are unable to use their judgment and discretion. In this scenario, our minds become like impenetrable dense rocks. Few can maintain a level of calm when encountered by stress - most sink.

I consider arguments to be irrational conversations. Before that, we were able to have discussions to settle our differences through thoughtful, rational dialog. This was a whole new ball game to me. I have never been one for confrontation. Anger and yelling is something I shy away from.

Growing up, I witnessed this type of confrontation between my own parents for as long as I can remember, and my parents did with theirs. The moment someone starts yelling, it’s natural to match their lead. My parents stopped caring a long time ago how hurtful these confrontations were for their children. I swore I would never sink to that. Yet for that brief moment, I did behind a closed door, probably with the kids on the other side listening.

In the heat of the moment, I snapped and said horrible things that I immediately wished I hadn’t. I said things like you’re lazy, you don’t try hard enough, you never help me out—equally crazy and irrational and simply untrue. My husband had always helped me equally in raising the kids and doing housework. In school he was an incredibly hard working, successful student. He worked as much as possible during school to help provide for our family and didn’t have a lazy bone in his body. In my moment of anger, I said things I didn’t mean. I wasn’t thinking rationally. Unfortunately, words can never be taken back. If there’s a good reason to feel remorse, it’s for hurting someone else, even with words. Later, of course, I felt horrible. I promised myself that I wouldn’t ever sink to yelling with or at him again.

As summer began, I continued working, while my husband kept up with his job hunt doing my best to stay positive and supportive. About mid-July, my husband came across an ad on Craigslist, of all places, for a job in a small locally owned pharmacy and general store in a quaint town just over an hour’s commute north of where we had just moved. Ironically enough, he had taken me up to that little town the previous summer in his attempts to convince me that this town was a great place to raise a family.

Regardless of it being a beautiful little town, the small population with very little industry made me uneasy. There wasn’t much to fall back on if your job didn’t work out. I had been very vocal about my lack of desire to move to such a small town. I couldn’t help but think how coincidental it was that there were no available jobs in the town we had moved to, regardless of it being six times the size of this town that he had hoped to move to a year ago. I wondered if this was his way of communicating we should have moved there to begin with. I felt that finding the only job available in this small town was his actively passive way of ensuring that we moved there.

Though he didn’t immediately sign up for the first job that came his way, he didn’t exactly turn it down either. The owner was a pharmacist who partially bought into the store his own father had started. My husband was really impressed with Shaun, the store owner, and liked the idea that this was an owner-operated pharmacy. He was thrilled when they discussed expansion of the store, new areas of practice in pharmacy, and my husband was under the impression he could buy into the store in the future. He was extremely excited that the owner appeared to be open to some of his ideas to incorporate more modern pharmacy practices. My husband felt like he had found the perfect job.

He did a two-week trial to see how things would work out for both Shaun and him. I’m guessing Shaun wasn’t too sure about hiring a newly graduated pharmacist inexperienced in retail. He had only worked in a hospital pharmacy as a student. The owner had loved working in a hospital pharmacy when he had graduated, working specifically with chemically dependent patients at a large hospital. When Shaun’s father retired, he switched to retail, taking over the store. My husband couldn’t have been more excited about it.

I was also concerned regarding the future prospects of a locally run store competing with big chain retailers that overrun local businesses. Losing a job in a small town is harder to recover from, since there are fewer job prospects to begin with. I had learned by my failure to ask minor details such as these when interviewing for my first job that I ended up losing when the rehab facility went under three months later. The stress of single-handedly supporting a family was tremendous, that was before we had student loan payments and a mortgage. Even then I was grateful that I was able to quickly get another job at that time. I worried this would be unrealistic for him in that small town. But I suppose it’s also possible to worry your life away, so I gave my seal of approval with reservations.

Despite these concerns, my husband really liked the fast pace and challenge of learning his new job. More than anything, he loved the autonomy he had working for an independent store where corporate wasn’t breathing down his neck double-checking everything he did. This allowed for individual decision making rather than adherence to strictly outlined protocols. My husband picked up on things quickly and was officially hired.

Though I had my trepidations about this job, I was learning that, in life, sometimes you have to know when to agree to disagree. He agreed to commute and I silently agreed to stop disapproving of that job choice even though it went against my gut instincts as a sound job.

CHAPTER 2

Jealousy

Despite this being his optimum job choice, I made sure my husband knew that I wasn’t willing to move to that small town. I secretly hoped that he would eventually decide to find an acceptable job where we lived. He would be spending two and a half hours a day driving back and forth on a treacherous highway, especially in the winter. He was scheduled for long days and would be gone for over thirteen hours every day he worked. That’s an extremely long day to be working for anyone, let alone in a job requiring so much focus and attention to detail. I couldn’t imagine it lasting very long. Shaun was also aware of my husband’s short-term employment possibility with the long commutes. As a result, Shaun diligently tried to win my husband over. It worked, my husband completely idolized Shaun.

I’ll never forget how excited he was when he got his first paycheck. My husband was so proud to see his years of dutiful studying and dedication literally pay off. He took his first paycheck, converted it to cash, and, with my very guarded approval, bought himself a Honda CR-250 two-stroke motorcycle. I was just slightly perturbed that I had never bought anything fun for myself with my earnings. I had always had a family to support.

I was, however, even more irritated that he had blatantly chosen to purchase a motorcycle when I had been asking him to get a mountain bike, since he had pawned off his old one. Before we had kids, we enjoyed mountain biking together. I was openly hoping that we could do that again now that the kids were older. Motorcycling is definitely not something that I would probably ever do with him. Working as a therapist, I had seen enough motorcycling-accident victims to know better. I was also beginning to realize date nights were just another dream I would have to let go of.

Several months before we had moved back West, I had set up a date night child care exchange with a friend. My friend Jan was trying to repair her broken marriage, as her husband was denying that he was cheating on her. I was trying to reconnect with my husband who had little time for me with all his work and school obligations. This exchange carried on for months, but it ended up being an extremely one-sided arrangement. This was not because Jan was unwilling to take her turn to watch my kids. It was because my husband just couldn’t fit me into his schedule.

At that point in his education, he was spending full-time hours during the day at his internships and commuting for hours to and from the internships, studying much of the evening, and then working every other weekend at the hospital pharmacy for an all-day shift. His weekends off were spent catching up on family time. It’s no secret to my husband that all the gifts, words and hard work mean nothing compared to a few valuable minutes of one on one time. Though I valued family time immensely I felt we barely knew each other anymore. Since having kids we committed very little time to each other. Our firstborn came right after our one year anniversary and the rest is history.

After I had set up multiple date night outings with him and arranged for Jan to watch our kids, I would always end up calling Jan to cancel because something had come up. I was too ashamed to admit we canceled because he just didn’t want to do whatever it was I had planned. After so many failed attempts, I began to feel unwanted, rejected, and ugly.

I encouraged him to plan something that he might enjoy instead, but he made no attempts. I had made it clear that I would be willing to go do anything he wanted, even if that just meant walking down the street and

back. I began to feel that if it weren’t for sex, we would have no relationship at all. Unfortunately, sex had become more of a chore than anything else. Sex was apparently the only way he could connect with me anymore.

The lack of intimacy and my extreme disdain for my ravaged motherly body made sex humiliating for me. Regardless of my demoralizing view of sex, I feared withholding sex the way my mother had as a way to manipulate and control my husband. I absolutely despised that type of behavior and, of course, swore I would never do that to another person. Therefore, I continued to go along with nearly daily encounters, as this

was one of the few ways he had found to bond with me, even if it was just for two minutes. I also worried that if he wasn’t getting any action from me, he could always find another willing person. In some ways, I did use sex for my own personal security purposes. I had inadvertently found myself in the same conundrum as my mother, using sex to control our situation.

Though some people claim sex makes them feel connected, intimate, and loved, I have always felt that quality time makes me feel loved. To me, flowers, money, or flattering words can never replace thoughtful intentions. That’s how I know I’m loved, even if it’s just a quick stroll in the park. We never had one-on-one time unless it was going to sleep, winding down on a Friday watching a movie, or having sex—all enjoyable but little thought or effort goes into routine activities.

The beginning of the end for me was my final attempt at something out of the ordinary. It was my last attempt to go on a date. I had asked for his input, planned a two-hour movie outing as this was one of his few interests, and arranged for Jan to take the kids. He was completely aware for days of my intentions, and this time there really weren’t any urgent matters with his school or work. The day was completely clear. I had made unnoticed efforts to look presentable, but when it came time to leave, it became more apparent that he had no interest in going at all. I finally clued into his intentions to cancel once again. I suggested several alternatives, and yet nothing interested him. I finally got his point—I just didn’t interest him anymore.

After so many failed attempts, it was just so obvious. He just didn’t want to be with me. When this realization finally sank in, I felt like someone ripped my heart right out of my chest. I had loved him for so long and would do anything for him, but that wasn’t reciprocated. I had held on for so long, thinking that someday we would have a chance to reignite the flame we once had when life wasn’t so busy with family, work, and school commitments. The truth was after seven years of being together, we just hadn’t taken the time for each other, and there was no reason to change that at any point. My desire to change our interactions and grow closer together wasn’t being matched, and I’m a firm believer that you can’t change a person that doesn’t want to change. For the first time ever, the little spark of hope for happily growing old together flickered out.

Instead of putting on a happy face like always, I did exactly what I felt like doing. I solemnly walked to our bedroom, locked the door, and buried my face into a pillow to stifle my sobs. I wept until I had nothing left. I resolved that we were hopeless. I felt completely rejected.

Though I felt rejected for a moment, it was really a culmination of moments. I was growing weary of putting any more wasted effort toward my husband whose only way to show affection was physically. After I was finally able to put myself somewhat back together, I decided that if it was too much to ask of him to spend time with me, then I would find someone else that would. I shared that thought with him just as simply as that.

He knew I was upset, but he was completely crushed by that. He feared that I meant that I wanted to go have sex with other men. Regardless of me stating how important it was to me to spend time together multiple times, he couldn’t imagine that I was really just seeking companionship. To him, love equated sex. My ability to verbalize my needs wasn’t impaired, but our ability to respond to each other’s needs was questionable.

He gave me empty promises, guaranteeing that once he was finished with school, he would have time to spend with me. The stresses of trying to manage school, work, and family life were too immense, leaving him limited spare time to spend with the kids as a family. I didn’t feel like I was being overly demanding, requesting two hours once a month. If I was going to quantify our quality time, this small increase would have amounted to six times our standard time portion. This promise was just more of the same.

Now a year later, with school out of the picture, I expected to collect on my debt. The motorcycle was physical evidence that he never intended to keep that promise. I was immediately jealous of that motorcycle, not for what it was but for what it represented. To me, it felt like another slap in the face, followed by his untold explanation that he didn’t really care to do things with me any longer. He’d moved on already. I tried not to hate that motorcycle, I really wanted him to have a hobby that he enjoyed, but I couldn’t help it. It was just another affirmation that I wasn’t important to him.

On top of that, it didn’t take me too long to figure out that his boss wasn’t the only person at work he idolized. Though I knew better, it seemed as though he only worked with two other people besides Shaun and the other pharmacist. They were female technicians named Brittney and Barbara. One of them, I heard about all the time as she was extremely incompetent. The nights that he got home later than normal were due to the fact that he was stuck closing with Barbara. This meant that there was a lot of additional work that he had to do to pick up her slack.

The other technician, Brittney, was her polar opposite. She was the most intelligent, amazing, and hardworking person he had ever known. Brittney also happened to be right around his age, married, but without children. Though he didn’t outright say it I got the distinct impression that he also found her attractive. He claims she taught him basically everything he needed to know to do his job. He also tried to claim that I would like Brittney, since she dressed really stylishly, liked to go shopping, and was really physically fit.

I’m not sure why that would make us automatic friends. I had little time and even less money to shop for myself. I dressed frumpy, like a mom. I seldom had the time to exercise and felt like I had a hideous mommy body. Though he didn’t directly say it, I felt like he found her appealing in every way. Instead of liking her, I despised her. I didn’t openly make my distaste for her known right away because I wanted to keep lines of communication open. It’s best to know what’s going on, even if you don’t like it, rather than be clueless.

I wasn’t about to have him filter his discussion of her with me just yet by cluing him in that I was jealous. Rather, I encouraged him to talk about his work. I got to eventually figure out who else he worked with and the basic day-to-day operations of his job. I was truly interested in what he did, but my ulterior motive was definitely to keep an eye out for suspicious behavior. One of my biggest fears since having a family of my own is having my spouse cheat on me. That had been ingrained in me since childhood as a result of my grandmother’s adulterous activities.

This is possibly one of the biggest family scandals to date. My grandmother had a history of infidelity that had started only a few years into their marriage. I surmised that my grandfather chose to look the other way. After forty-two years of marriage, he couldn’t ignore the problem anymore. My grandmother had been known to confide in my father, her eldest son, about her secret relationships. There were times that she divulged very descriptive information about previous affairs that she had deeply regretted. Her immorality caused her to be excommunicated from her church before my own parents were even married. My grandmother’s longstanding history of unfaithfulness, coupled with my dad’s awareness, created a fear of disloyalty in my father that never left him. As a result, my father had a deeply embedded sense of mistrust he projected on women, especially his wife.

Mistrust was an issue my father had been battling long before he had even met my mother. In turn, my mother was the recipient of misplaced distrust. Trust is one of the major key elements to a healthy working relationship. The absence of trust results in debilitating coping mechanisms if it’s not addressed. My mother had developed her own coping strategies, going into marriage after years of abuse by her elder brothers and her own father. In turn, my mother did what she could to control the emotional abuse based on her own irrational thought patterns she had developed as a child.

My parents were, and still are, guilty of making the same mistakes most dysfunctional couples make. They had both tried to merge lives from two completely separate and dysfunctional backgrounds and never came to terms with how their own personal histories affected their current beliefs and behaviors, however rational they may have seemed to themselves. Unless you live in a bubble, you are bound to experience some form of dysfunction in your life. But I’m not entirely sure a bubble is all that functional either. I have yet to meet someone who comes from a perfectly functioning background, and as a result, we are all subject to our own irrational beliefs.

These core belief systems very subtly and inadvertently guide our behaviors for the rest of our life unless we choose to understand and recognize them. Until an individual can recognize these underlying thoughts, they will repeat the same dysfunctional behaviors. Most people avoid trying to understand their emotional baggage.

Like many failed marriages, my parents refused to collectively address their irrational core beliefs, either because they can’t see them or they won’t see them. They continue in a state of dysfunction. Unlike most failed marriages that end in divorce, my parents’ entire eternal salvation rests on the fact that divorce would destroy their eternal happiness. Divorce may be an option for some, but once you’re bound for time and all eternity in the Mormon temple, it’s better to continue in dysfunction. After all, my parents, like myself, were taught in church that life isn’t supposed to be easy, but someday, when you’re dead, it will be worth it. Endure to the end, my mother always said. When I was a preteen, my parent’s state of dysfunction was in full bloom and hasn’t yet withered. Though I didn’t recognize it then, it affected me still the same. I fear being cheated on.

I’ll never forget the lecture as a senior in high school in my adult roles class about marriage. At that time the lesson sang to me as something as revelatory as the map to the fountain of youth, the key to a lifetime of happiness. The map to eternal marital bliss consisted of three elements. First it’s important to boost your partner’s ego by praising them for their achievements, no matter how big or small. Second, make them feel loved and desired. This could be by either complimenting them on their appearance or maintaining a regime of regular physical intimacy, even if it was a kiss off to work with a love note for more later. Lastly, don’t ever let yourself go, make your every effort to be attractive for your spouse.

I became ever more paranoid of this possibility as he had gradually shown less and less interest in me despite my efforts. On the reverse, he seemed to be showing more and more interest in his work and coworker with increased dedication to his job. He had always been such a hard worker, regardless of the job. It was hard to be upset with him for being overly dedicated to his job. It was in his genetic makeup. I did my best to praise him and show interest in his work, kept a high level of physical intimacy, and tried to put a little more effort into looking good.

One of the main reasons I had let myself go was simply because we didn’t have the money for me