When Eleanor was pregnant with her second child, her husband started lying about his whereabouts and his source of income. She reflects on the incidents that led her to learn the truth and to file for separation and then divorce.
When Eleanor met Joe in 2012, he was everything that she wasn’t at that time in her life — and that’s what attracted her to him. Eleanor was in intensive outpatient treatment for anshe’d been pursuing since childhood — music — was a mistake. “I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t love myself,” Eleanor says. Joe, on the other hand, was charismatic, upbeat, and free-spirited.
The couple was “broke,” says Eleanor, so Joe took out student loans to pay for his degree, and Eleanor supported their family of three in an entry-level job at the nonprofit where she had interned. Joe helped too; he worked ten to 15 hours a week as a roofer, and later found a part-time job building models for an architectural firm. In the summers, he took on a full-time work schedule.
During that period, though, we did have some nice moments just the two of us. Every three months or so, we’d have a date night and go out and have fun. Or his mom would come and visit so we could go out. Those infrequent moments of connection felt like a preview of the outcome we were working to achieve.When I was pregnant with Jane, Joe was somewhat involved and present at doctor’s appointments, but there was something lacking emotionally.
This wasn’t the first time I’d noticed issues. One Christmas a few years earlier I looked in our bank account and saw we were missing half of our savings. Soon I found out that he had purchased a gun without telling me and had been hiding it. He had also racked up thousands of dollars in parking fines to the point where his car was booted. He asked his parents for money to pay for it without me knowing.
That morning, while Joe was getting our daughter ready for day care, I took a walk around the neighborhood. I was in shock and trying to process it. I looked up and there was a bald eagle, right there flying above me. It was the first time in my life I had ever seen an eagle in nature. It felt like a sign. That was how the end started for us.I later learned that during his fourth semester of the program in the spring of 2019, he hadn’t properly filed his financial-aid paperwork.
He’s smoking too much, but it’s not his fault. He’s got a dependency and I just need to get him better.For the rest of December, Joe stayed at a friend’s house, then went to his parents’ house in Ohio for Christmas, and then he traveled to Florida with friends. This was while I was at home 25 weeks pregnant with our child and taking care of Jane on my own.
I ended up being transferred to the hospital for a few hours because I had a postpartum hemorrhage and lost 40 percent of my blood. While I was getting a blood transfusion, my parents were home with my kids. Joe came and went during that period of time.