[clara]

Kasey,

Without boring you and everyone to death with ins and outs and why and wherefore's of a pathologically misogynistic relationship I was in for 18years, 8 of which was marriage, I can put my knowing it was over down to two things:
- loss of trust and
- loss of interest / emotional / psychological/ physical(in this context this was shattered by a specific event - a general sense of "couldn't care less" became the order of my day.

Once I started living my life without him being the focus, without feeling jealous of who he was with(that was never really there to begin with), not feeling the need to have to tell/share anything of my day or thoughts with him - that's when I knew there wassn't much of anything I wanted to keep together.

In my case, it happened shortly after we married: 9 months later: I fell pregnant due, and I am convinced due only to the fact that I had pigged out on New Years Eve on dope cookies, which the Chef at Caesar's Palace - where I worked as Marketing and Membership Manager - had threatened to bake and actually did bake them ...
I hadn't taken his threat seriously at all!!!! Working the entire evening , I had no time to eat and by 1am was starving.... figured only later what I had fallen "victim" too - really funny the way it happened tho'- anyway by mid Jan I was pregnant, ( cannot recall the event for love or money LOL - by the 1st wedding anniversary, hubby-dearest, was pararding a university student to all his friends (one in a long line of them) - one thing led to another and that was it for me:but I was about to have a baby....

It took me eight years to leave: tried to convince myself some kind of life with my daughter's father would be better than her living with split parents: he was the one in the end who asked me how long it would take me to move out as he and his new girlfriend had already decided how they were going to redo the apartment once she moved in.... that was one humiliation too many.. for the me that was.

Were I then, the me I am now - he'd have seen the other side of my driveway on the very first date!!!!!!!!!!!!

The lesson of a relationship that has the seeds to last a lifetime for me, is that a loving meaningful partnership is based on a deep-rooted friendship and respect for one another. I cannot imagine a day now without my real husband and partner and this September it will be our 4th Anniversary.

The emotional fabric of these two relationships are such, that when I look at them, it is clear that those 18 years had nothing at all to do with love...

We live to learn...

all the best Kasey