Married & Divorced 3 Times!

Approximate Read Time: 11-13 min

Warning: This post contains candid discussions of childhood trauma, systemic domestic abuse, and sexual health. Please prioritize your well-being while reading. 

I have been married and divorced three times, and I kind of enjoy telling people that at this point, just to see their reaction. I joke that my partner is looking forward to being number four, but the truth is, marriage is not for me ever again, and we have been together for around 15 years.

Nowadays, I find it amusing and I feel that I am prepared to handle the judgment that comes with it. I believe in live and let live, we can only control how we view things and how we react, not how anyone else will react to us or how they see things.

Many years ago, after leaving my third abusive marriage, a woman asked me a few questions that I had never thought of before, and definitely felt like they came from a place of judgment.

After everything that I have gone through, watched others go through and traveled the world seeing poverty first hand, I try very hard in my own life to come from a place of curiosity, and not judgement. It can be challenging sometimes.

She asked me if I took marriage seriously, and if I really tried to work at them.

I remember looking at her and telling her that, yes, I did take each of them seriously, that my relationships had various forms of abuse in them, that I did go through counseling and/or try to get them to as well, and I asked her if she thought it would be better if I had stayed, while they kept promising changes, that we all know as outsiders, usually do not happen.

She didn't really know what to think of this, and I think that's pretty much where the conversation stopped except for her also mentioning that she was very curious how it was that I got three men to propose to me.  Another funny question that I pondered much later on.

I went into my first marriage adamant not to repeat the mistakes of my parents. They had a really messy divorce, a lot of anger and hate, and games. I remember being in and out of court my whole life, and guess what, I did repeat that pattern, with my children, in a much smaller way.

I went into my first marriage, very young, just wanting to be loved, and still believing 100% in the fairy tale, that Price Charming was coming, and we would live a life of bliss together, while I stayed home and raised children and tended to my husband's every need and desire. I was going to sing and dance with the animals and love would conquer all. 

Yes, I know, it is so embarrassing to realize that I did truly believe this way back when.

I did not choose very wisely in my first marriage. I did not have much guidance, or wisdom in this area at all as you can tell.

However, I was determined to stick it out, and I was also going through a time in my life where I was very involved with the Christian church and I went down the path of ministry for a short while as well.

Looking back, if I had known about the patterns in my family, if I had heard their stories of past relationships, I might have made different choices, then again, we will never know. I stayed in my first marriage for 7 years and had my two sons with him.

I recently spoke with several of the women in my family about their past abusive relationships. I had assumed, like mine, that they were treated nicely in the beginning, and it slowly transitioned, as mine had done, until the third time around.

I was surprised to hear, when they told me that they were just very very in love with their romantic partner, and even though the person was not nice to them, they loved them anyway. This was not something I related to very well,  although I have experienced this in small doses.

I was very determined to do things differently than my family had done, so I did in many ways, but this made me feel like I didn't fit in with my family even more.

I was the one who spoke out about the generational sexual abuse, and it ended up in the town newspaper.

My family just wanted me to stop talking about everything and be quiet, so they could forget and move on, but I couldn't do that.

After leaving my first marriage, I gave it a second shot.

I still believed in the fairy tale, this time around I had a small wedding in my home, but it was very much princess themed, as was my 30th birthday many years later. I went to Disneyland for my honeymoon, and we purchased a painting called The Crystal Palace, it was of Cinderella's Castle in the fairytale. I thought this man was my best friend. If you read my blog titled, “My Deepest Betrayal”, you will get a glimpse of the monster that I did not see, and no, it was not an affair.

I was in that relationship for 7 years as well, before I left. I left for many reasons, one of them, I don't think I truly admitted to myself for many years, I was just too broken of a human being at that point. I couldn’t face some of the things that were going on in that marriage and how it all ended.

After leaving my second marriage, and being so awfully traumatized by the whole experience, my third marriage choice was honestly, I believe deep-seated hate and self punishment.

I felt I had failed myself and my children, in some of the most profound ways that I could. I knew that I was a victim, but I still didn't have the skills to navigate the emotions and the life that I had before me still.

I was only married for a year the third time, and we were together for 3 years, this is the marriage that I left, and forced me to make some extreme choices so that I was not homeless with my children.

I've spoken about how I don't believe in violence, but I am a realist, and I do believe in standing up for myself and others at times where there may be little to no other options.

There is a story I tell about my third marriage, that we all laugh about in my family to this day. While it is very sad, I hope you can also find the humor and see my strength in standing up to the bully.

Let's call my third husband Dave for now. 

After being with Dave for a while, and getting myself financially entangled in a way that was very hard to get out of, I noticed that the way Dave treated the mother of his children was quite abusive, and not a position I ever wanted to be in myself.

Like so many women after having children, Dave found out that he could tickle me to the point of peeing my pants, and he found this to be very funny. Like so many bullies, they like to humiliate others to make themselves feel better.

When Dave would do this, I would tell him that I didn't want him to. I would be telling him “no, stop, this is not funny.” Of course he's tickling me why this is happening, so I am also smiling and laughing, because he's forcing a physical reaction in my body.

One day, I  came to him alone, and told him how I felt humiliated, and embarrassed when he did this to me, especially in front of other people.  I don't recall what his reaction was, but based on how the rest of this story goes, clearly he didn't care.

The next time this happened, we were in the living room on the floor with all of our children. Dave had two younger than mine. His two children were around the six-year-old range, and my two were around the 9-year-old range I believe. This worked out in my favor very well.

We were laying on the floor, watching TV or who knows what, and he decided to start tickling me, once again, he tickled me until I peed my pants. He was looking at me and laughing, and the kids of course were laughing too, because we learn what our parents teach us.

I was very fed up.

I started fighting back at a very young age, but all gloves came off when I was 12 years old. I remember it well. No one was ever going to physically hit and abuse me ever again, no matter what.

I walked over to Dave, who was laying on his back laughing, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt.

I smiled at him, stepped over his chest, squatted on him, and I peed on him.

I then stepped back, and pointed at him, looking at the children, knowing that they would join me. We all smiled and laughed, as we pointed at Dave, laying on the livingroom floor, not sure what to do next. 

He knew better than to hit me, we had ventured down that road once before as well.

I wish I could have been one of the teachers at the school hearing this story the next day. I laugh at that now, and we make jokes about it, and it did work, he never tickled me again.

It's terribly sad that he didn't have the capacity to find compassion for another human being and how his actions were affecting others. I do know that he was sexually abused as a child. Unfortunately, the effect it had on him, took a very negative turn.

Abuse doesn’t care about gender, because there are also many men and various other genders that get abused as well in relationships, and they come forward even less often than women do.  I've spoken with many over the years, and I've seen men in my own family get abused as well. 

To this day, whenever I'm around someone that starts judging and condemning people who have been through abuse and the choices that they see them making, I gently speak up and tell them that these people who are being abused, are only using the knowledge that they have been given or that they've grown up around, how can they be expected to make a choice based on information they don't understand or have. If they have never seen what a healthy relationship looks like, how can they recreate that? Education helps, but practical application is much harder. 

I’ve spoken in the past about the family cycles of abuse that go on, and how I want to speak out against these, so we can become healthier and more supportive, productive people in our communities.

There's so much shame in our culture in general. Growing up, I didn't know that most of my family members were in their second and third marriages, and this just was not talked about.

People were shamed and ashamed if they left their marriages, and they were also shamed and ashamed if they stayed in them, and they were abused repeatedly. 

Many times there is abuse going on behind closed doors that people are much too ashamed to disclose to anyone. This was the case in my second marriage. 

A good friend of mine at the time sided with my second husband when I left the marriage. I was deeply hurt, and way too ashamed to tell her what was really going on, that my husband was literally drugging me and torturing me in the bedroom.

I hope this helps someone find compassion for others, and allows them to show support for those who may be going through something similar.

Let’s approach life with curiosity instead of judgment.

Truly,

Margot X. Sterling

Author | Speaker | Transformation Expert

Conflict Resolution | Resilience Strategist

Mastering the X-Point: Where shadow meets strength.