In order to show the Ex of my commitment to making the marriage work, I agreed to move.
We had been living a two minute walk away from my school and an hour's commute for him. Our new neighbourhood would be a five minute walk for the Ex and an hour's commute for me. I knew it would lessen the daily toll on him and it was a fair solution. He commuted for a year and a half for me and now I would commute for a year and a half for him. Our new apartment was in a fantastic neighbourhood, as opposed to being in the middle of nowhere. We would be surrounded by cafes, restaurants and pubs; I imagined it would be difficult for us to stay sour with so much excitement about.
It felt like a fresh start for us both. We would be leaving all the bad memories of the old apartment behind and I hope the change of scenery would spark a second honeymoon period.
Instead, the move was the final catalyst for the divorce. This time, it would be me who threw in the towel first.
A big relocation is stressful even under the best of circumstances. We were moving in the hopes of saving a marriage but every minor problem was blown out of proportion. Everything was exacerbated.
To this day, I don't know if fault can be attributed to either one of us for how poorly the move went but it did show me that the Ex and I had very fundamentally different ways of doing things. I'm an organizer; I fret, I worry, I plan. I took care of all the details: hiring the movers, collecting boxes, calling the new building to book the elevators. Anything that I had delegated to the Ex, I ended up doing because I didn't feel as though he was moving quickly enough for me. The Ex packed up his own stuff and it was only after I mentioned that we had to pack up the kitchen that he remembered there were shared goods for which we were both responsible. The day of the move, he went to work - leaving me to coordinate the truck and the movers. He showed up for an hour during his lunch break in order to let the movers into the new apartment and help carry boxes until I arrived, but then fled the scene when his break was over. Our initial arrangement involved him unpacking boxes and I would clean the old, vacated apartment. In the end, my sister drove four hours from out of town to help me unpack. We needed to rent a van to move the odds and ends that the movers did not get a chance to grab; to pack up the final remnants of our old life would have taken two trips but he put up such a fuss that we only did one trip that night, leaving me to drag the rest of the bags and boxes to our new home later, one trip at a time, while riding public transit. The night we had a furniture assembly party with my friends, he put together what he was tasked with and then squatted on the floor (as we didn't have a table assembled yet) in order to play online games with his friends, while my friends and I struggled with hammers and screwdrivers. I know to him, I probably was overbearing, anxious and fussed needlessly over minor points. Nobody was right or wrong - we were just different in our approach.
I know, to the Ex, he had perfectly justified reasons for why he did what he did. Moving was mostly my responsibility because it was mostly my stuff. I know he didn't feel any urgency in unpacking the boxes or assembling the furniture. For him, he knew it would all get done eventually - whether it took a day or six months, it didn't really matter. But for me, I wanted the boxes emptied. I was tired of eating off the floor. I didn't want to sleep every night with suitcases, boxes and bags towering around me. I wanted to start my new life as soon as possible.
The move also highlighted another sore point in our relationship: the Ex thought I didn't have any faith in him. I like to tell the story of our kitchen table because it summed up the ongoing battle so perfectly. He volunteered to put the table together, after work, and in a show of good faith, I agreed. If the Ex always felt as though I didn't believe he could follow through on his promises, then I would show him I could.
The first night, he took the pieces of the table out of the box. He nailed a few pieces together. He poured over the instructions but then it was getting late, so the tabletop, the legs, the nuts, the bolts, the washers and the nails got pushed aside. They languished on the floor, in their sad disassembled state for days. Days became weeks. I bit the inside of my cheek and held my tongue. Have faith, I told myself.
Time marched steadily forward. The pieces started collecting dust. We started losing the screws and we kept tripping over the wooden legs. Finally, one day, I decided I would put the table together while the Ex was at work and I wouldn't make a big deal of it so he wouldn't feel as though I was rubbing it in his face. The Ex came home to see me hammering a table leg to the table top and demanded to know what I was doing. "Um...putting the table together?" I responded, as if the answer was obvious.
"I told you, I was going to do it!"
Have faith. "Ok." I put the tools down. "I just thought I was being helpful. You've been so busy at work..." The table remained in pieces.
Then one night, quite out of the blue, I couldn't take it anymore. I was done. I was exhausted. We were lying in bed, still surrounded by boxes. I said his name to get his attention and when he looked at me, I simply said, "I'm not happy."
I didn't need to say anything else. He deflated; I actually heard his exhale and saw his whole body sink into the mattress. We talked for a long time after that and I was finally able to tell him everything. With the removal of the pressures to keep the marriage together, I was suddenly freed to be as honest as he had always wanted me to be. The things I told him that night, while not unkind, were not exactly nice either. They were not the sort of things you say and then assume things will go back to the way they were. They were not the sort of things a person forgets or forgives.
My honesty was a dagger and I was finally wielding it now that I had nothing to fight for.
The Ex moved out six weeks later.
I assembled the kitchen table the next night.
