Today’s guest essay is written by Nicki Stapleton (honeybeenicki), who is a contributing writer in the new music magazine The Blacktooth and has a music blog called For The Love of Rock and Metal.
My husband and I wrote our own vows for our wedding. In mine, I didn’t say: “I take you for better or for worse,” but instead said: “We will confront challenges head on and we will overcome them as a team — big challenges, little challenges, difficult or easy,” and I meant it. I stood up in front of our friends and family and pledged myself to my husband for life and never allowed myself to believe that divorce was ever an option. When I wrote those vows, I didn’t realize how quickly those big challenges would come or how hard it would really be to face them.
We got married on April 4th and just over a month later, on May 13th, my husband was arrested for armed robbery of two pharmacies. He didn’t take any money — just pills (and he didn’t actually have a weapon). I knew that he had a prescription drug problem but had been clean for over three years (he got clean about six months before we started dating) and I thought he was still clean. I was livid that he broke the law. I was livid that he didn’t come to me for help, but he said he was worried I would leave him because three things I don’t tolerate are abuse, cheating, and drugs.
I was a criminal justice professional (I lost my job because of my husband’s arrest and conviction) and have a Master’s degree in criminal behavior. In four years of working with offenders, I have seen relationships survive prison but I have seen many more fall apart. If I had known that he was going to be arrested a month after our wedding (or at any point), I wouldn’t have married him. I love him, but love isn’t always enough. Less than nine months after he was arrested, and eleven months after we were married, my husband was sentenced to prison.
The nine months between my husband’s arrest and his incarceration created many struggles for us personally and for our relationship. Right away we had to deal with a custody battle with his ex-wife, which was stressful but by far the easiest part. We started counseling individually and together and started an intensive outpatient treatment program. We prepared ourselves and his children for what might happen when he went back to court. When the Judge handed down the sentence, it became reality that our lives had changed forever. My husband was sentenced to five years in prison and 15 years of probation. [Click to continue]
by Wendy on February 29, 2012
· in Essays,Getting Personal,Guest Column
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