The Beginning...

I cannot believe I'm sitting here crying...
I cannot believe how everything has changed...
I cannot believe THIS is now my life...
I cannot believe THIS is how it's supposed to end...
I cannot believe I am writing THIS post!

To fully understand, I'll need to give you a little background.

When I met Him, my life was in limbo...
I was getting divorced from my first husband, I had three little boys, I was hungry for attention, Longing for someone to "see" me.
I was yearning for tenderness & a caring embrace.
Someone who would love me... Really Me.
Not someone needing a mother, not someone wanting a companion.
But someone who truly wanted ME.
Someone who respected me.
Someone who may (if I even dared dream it) cherish me.

We actually met online...
He was also going through a divorce, he was also a single parent who had been treated poorly by his spouse.
We talked for hours and hours, when we met, that sealed the deal.  Whithin the year, we were a happily married blended family working on living our dream.

I couldn't believe I found a man who loved me so much.
He made me feel cherished.
He made me feel safe and protected.
He made me feel special.
We were in love.

I had found the man I wanted to grow old with.
I found the man who made me a better me.
We were truly happy.

In our first 10 years together we hardly ever fought, if we did it was because we had VERY different parenting styles, I felt he was too harsh and over reacted too quickly and with anger.
He thought I coddled and let the kids get away with too much.

I was often concerned at how fast and how ferocious he could become when he got angry at the children.

But, I understood he grew up   very "rough"in an extremely abusive household.
I explained it away, knowing that he thought he was doing better than his parents because he would never go the the extremes that they had gone to with their parenting.
He wasn't physical with the kids..  but he ruled by intimidation, by threats, by fear.
This is how he demanded respect.  We had many conversations about the difference between fear and respect,but that was a topic we had to agree to disagree upon.
These outbursts were not an everyday occurrence, but, in hindsight, I should have taken them much more seriously than I did.

Everything else was great!
He treated me like a queen, he was a great breadwinner, and we were very happy.

We both came into the marriage with full custody of young sons, after that first year,we added a daughter of our own.

There was football, school, weekends spent at the lake, and family work on our small farm.  Things were going great.
We had over 10 years of, except for our parenting disagreements,  blissful marriage.

Then things began to change...