Letting go...

I was in Bikram yoga the other night and I must say the studio where I practice is great. There are many teachers and they are diverse as ice cream flavors. Everyone has a great "something" about them and frankly, everyone enjoys nice ice cream right so even if you aren't in a chocolate mood when you enter class, you find that chocolate is exactly what you needed.

So as it is January and everyone is trying to live the new year's resolution class was packed like sardines. The instructor happened to be one of the two owners. She is funny, witty and demanding. It is easy to absolutely LOVE her classes.

One of her strong suits is her focus on healing. She made a comment that absolutely hit home. She was focusing on why we hold onto our baggage and sited people that are married for three years take the baggage with them for the rest of their lives.

OUCH.

I don't talk in depth about my 14 month marriage. When asked questions, I answer and people are always stunned at the things that I say and I don't go into real detail. My ex, we will call him X for the purpose of this discussion, was a gambling addict. To the day we divorced, he denied this although I had mounds of evidence to prove it. (I mean really when thousands of dollars are withdrawn from your bank account on the same day that you fly to Vegas and no money is redeposited, how hard is it to follow the money???) When people ask what happened I say that I unknowingly married a gambling addict. They say "oh" and fortunately that is the end of the discussion. I was simply a means to continue his habit. I wasn't a human, I wasn't a friend and I wasn't a partner ~ I was a means. It isn't personal, it is an addiction.

Let me break this down since my goal here is to purge and to ultimately let go. I have held these details for so long that I see it is not helping me and that is after all, the point of a blog...

X played blackjack. X was a commercial pilot. X had taken a HUGE pay cut before we got married in order to jump to a profitable airline. X could not afford his current bills and could not find a buyer for his property. I wanted to encourage growth in his career and expected to fund the household we lived in and about 20% of his expenses UNTIL he was able to unload his property. OK, that was the expectation however after the property was under contract I was still sheltering a HUGE percentage of things and the math never added up.

X took a route that took him to Vegas at least 1x a week. I discovered shortly after we were married that he was not necessarily checking in at the hotel where the airline put him up, he was instead taking the comped room at the Wynn or the Mirage or the Bellagio. In order to get a complementary room you must play a minimum of $125 a hand for three hours a day. That means the following:

$125/hand

average casino plays 60 hands an hour

3 hours minimum is $125 x 60 = $7,500 x 3 = $22,500.

Now blackjack has changing odds and the odds can favor the player. X was a good player until he became addicted, then he played with emotions. But on average you will push 28% of the time so $22,500 x 28% = $6,300. Lets take that money out of the equation $16,200 is left.

Again the odds can change in blackjack but the house has on average about a 5 - 6% favor. That would mean out of the hands that are not a push ($16,200) the house is going to take $8910. So you are sitting with $7,290. An average loss of $1,620.

Now this is all probability. Vegas was built by people who win a little, get hooked and keep playing until they pay all the winnings back and throw good money after bad to try to get that high again.

At a loss of $1620 a day of play and four days of play a month you are losing $6,480 a month.

Meanwhile I am not paying for just the household and about 20% of X's expenses, I am paying over 50% of X's expenses as well as the household as well as the incidentals, which ran around $800 - $1200 every six weeks. (car issues, dental issues, and just stuff in general).

As you can imagine, things were tense. After I was legally on the hook to support him (eg married) he was hardly nice to me. He was a complete slob and although he had 12 days off a month (no joke), he would spend his days sleeping and watching tv and trashing the house so every day after I came home my job was to be the maid and servant. That was while I was unknowingly supporting a gambling addict. When I no longer would support X's lifestyle and confronted X about his addiction, I went from a means to an enemy. X moved to the upstairs where he could freely live and ignore me in my own house. X refused counseling, blamed me for everything, etc.. I had a prenup, I went back to my attorney and requested a post nup. I was not going to legally be obligated to his mounting debt. When I asked him for discussions, he would ignore me, insult me and blame me for his behavior. Finally in order to move out of this unbearable situation, after he hung up on me and called me a bitch, I changed the locks to the house and filed for divorce.

He called the cops. He did have a legal right to be in the house as he was married to me even though it was my house for nine years before marriage and he never paid any of the bills of the house. I had a court order preventing him from removing items from the house and a court date where I could appear before a judge and make a case for having him removed if I couldn't get him out. Fortunately, I was able to (after being humiliated by the police department responding to a domestic dispute) convince him to leave and sign the he had received his divorce papers.

Then came settlement.

I had a great lawyer. He warned me. I prenuped my house, my retirement and a few other of my assets. He had blown through my savings (and you can see how with those numbers). Fortunately I was still watching thousands of dollars go into and out of his bank accounts and I saw that he took a large withdraw to Vegas. He must have lost. He could not afford a lawyer as he threatened me with wanting ALIMONY!!!! HOLY COW!!! My lawyer made it all work out. One day I was married, the next I was not. Thank God.

I don't remember ONE nice day in my very short marriage. I am still angry with myself for being so used and humiliated by my poor decision. I am ashamed that I was ever married to X and am so humiliated that aside from my lawyer, this is the first time I have ever detailed the patterns of a blackjack addict. I am so embarrassed and afraid that other people will judge me by my horrible mistake. What is worse is that I never loved him. I just wanted someone that I could travel around the world with and who's company I enjoyed. I married for the wrong reasons and I am ashamed of the truth in my decisions.

I realize that this experience has tainted me in my current relationship. I have been dating an absolutely wonderful man for about a year and a half. I am certain that I do things that offend him because I am either overcompensating or overprotective of my "space", etc.. My ex had a temper that was both irrational and explosive so I find that I am overly concerned with my current boyfriends temperament instead of focusing on myself and my own happiness. I struggle with the desire to move the relationship forward vs the desire to be independent.

Just because I chose poorly in my brief marriage doesn't mean that I will choose poorly again. It doesn't mean that I have to keep carrying my baggage. I am tired of this baggage. It is too heavy. I guess this means that I will relay on the sage advice of my Bikram instruction and learn to let it go. I have held onto it longer now that I was actually married. I should be spending all that energy on my standing bow or full camel any way!