Prologue
"My brother, ... he sat me right down and he talked to me.
He told me, ... That I ought not to let you just walk on me.
And I'm sure he meant well, ... but when our talk was through,
I said, ... 'Brother, ...
if you only knew, you'd wish that you were in my shoes.'
Yeah, I wanna spread the news ... That if it feels this good gettin' used,
Oh, you just keep on usin' me ... Until you use me up."
Lyrics from the song
"Use Me"
by Bill Withers, 1972.
Intro
Sitting alone at the bar, I was once again waiting for my wife, Linda.
When leaving work at five o'clock, as usual, I first check on the youngest of our kids after school. Our youngest was now a high school senior, and she didn't take much supervision. But it was a habit I developed over the years to ensure our "latchkey kids" were behaving and they would know they had involved parents. I plan! And I always knew where they were and what they were doing after school. After checking on the kids, I would call my wife to plan our evening, sometimes meeting for drinks or dinner at a restaurant if the kids were all busy.
When I call my wife to meet for drinks, we always agree on a place, and when she can get there. But after sitting in this bar, drinking, and waiting, she's now over an hour late.
So, I sent her the text,
'Where are you?'
'Stopped to talk on the way out. Leaving now. ETA 45 minutes.'
This wasn't the first time she stood me up, so it didn't come as a surprise.
She either stops to talk with friends and loses track of time or she gets focused on her work and forgets ... or at least that's what she says. But I was on my third drink and couldn't handle any more this evening.
'Heading home now. See you there.'
Our daughter would come home from her high school play rehearsal in another hour. So, I finished my third drink and left for home to fix dinner.
Early Life
Linda and I were both Army Staff Sergeants in our mid-twenties when we first met in the Basic NCO course. I was an infantryman, and she worked as a clerk in the Corps headquarters. We dated for one year, then she was reassigned to another post a thousand miles away. We stayed in touch with letters and phone calls (paying long distance charges at that time,) with me always the one to call her. Then we planned our leave for two-week long vacations together twice over the next year.
I finally asked her to marry me, so we could arrange our transfers as a married couple to get back together on the same Army base six months later.
During those two years of dating and our long-distance relationship, I missed (or ignored) the early warning signs of the narcissist: always late, never concerned when keeping others waiting, only focused on what she wants, and was always into her make-up, hair, nails, and clothes.
After we married, I found that she would write checks near payday without checking the bank balance. The second time she almost bounced a check, I started keeping a slush fund of extra money in the checking account without telling her, since a bounced check could have ended a military career. And when we were finally living together, I realized she had a shopping fetish, always coming into the house with a bag of something from a store, many times with things we didn't even need.
But Linda soon got pregnant, and we were building a family together. After the second one was born, she ended her Army service to become a stay-at-home mom, while I focused on my military career by volunteering for Special Forces, which I successfully completed.
As an SF weapons sergeant, I even managed to get a slot to attend sniper training. The promotions in Special Forces came faster than in the infantry, so the deployments were worth the family separations, due to the increased pay and the occasional special assignments with per diem. And that sniper school taught me a lot about patience. Waiting for seemingly endless hours in a hide for the right target and shot, and often not even getting the chance to take the shot. Patience and an acceptance of harsh conditions seemed to come naturally to me.
***
We did have good times when the kids were young and during Christmas and birthdays. But Linda's idea of buying the kids presents always went toward buying them clothes (her narcissism wanting them to look their best beside her), whereas I enjoyed finding the best toys they'd enjoy.
After our third child was born, I thought we debated the issue of having more kids, thinking I convinced her we couldn't afford any more on just my Army pay. But although she finally agreed to sign the paper the military doctors required for my vasectomy; in hindsight it was the beginning of the end. Since I was no longer able to give her another child, my sex life dried up. It was as if Linda just needed me to pay the bills and give her another kid. So, now I was just paying the bills.
As a stay-at-home mom without a baby to hold, Linda seemed to become obsessed with playing video games. There were times I'd come home from work at dinner time to find the toddlers unsupervised and running amok, with Linda on the computer saying "I'm almost done here. Give me ten more minutes, and I'll start dinner."
One time, when I returned from a six-month deployment, I called Linda telling her when we'd be released to go home after all of the weapons were cleaned and secured in about two hours. While other married NCOs and officers had wives already waiting for them, I knew I had to call Linda with an approximate time I'd be ready to leave, and she promised to come with the kids to pick me up. Later that evening, all the other guys in my detachment and company had already been picked up by their wives, or the single ones were heading out for dates, while I sat along the curb near the company area waiting over an hour alone for my wife to show up. And I could have walked home in thirty minutes!
I understood the tensions between military spouses when one returns from deployments. The stay-at-home spouse often feels like it's an intrusion in their single-parent household routines. But I found that while I was deployed, the kids report cards showed they were often tardy arriving at school. And when I was home, Linda would sleep in, forcing me to get the kids off to school on time.
I finally retired from the Army as a Special Forces Team Sergeant after twenty-two years of service and started looking for a civilian job. The first job I got out of service was one I took out of desperation to keep the paychecks coming in to support the family. It was one of those high-risk, dirty jobs the government employees can't be caught doing, and they can't send uniformed soldiers to do. But my particular skill set was well suited for it. The pay was very good, so when I returned, luckily unharmed, I spent the rest of that year focused on finishing my college degree as a full-time student and looking for a safer way to earn a living.
With the kids older and in junior high and high school, Linda decided to finish a degree in computer programming, and I even helped her get her first job by revising her resume and advising her on an initial salary demand. But within the first year of her full-time employment as a computer programmer, she became even more distant. Now that Linda was employed, the distance she displayed between us was different. She'd sleep in and deliberately go in late to her "nine-to-five job", so she'd come home late. This meant I also had to check on the kids after school, ensuring they did their homework, and preparing their dinner.
I can't say our married life was all bad. There were plenty of good times, too ... when Linda was available. But most of my life after the Army revolved around a full-time job, then supervising the kids, and taking care of the house and bills. I came from a family with parents who didn't believe in divorce. So, even with the trying times my wife made me endure, to me, that was just life. And the type of personalities the Army really wants to find are those of us who DON'T react emotionally. We endure, with the attitude "embrace the suck, the rain shall pass."
***
Now, with the two older boys out on their own and our youngest daughter at seventeen years old and no longer occupying my time, the good times were becoming rare. I found that going straight home after work to an empty house was rather lonely.
Waiting, for What?
As I finished my drink to leave the bar, after my wife stood me up, I thought back to what was going wrong.
When I was in the Army, she was saddled with the young kids at home, so I knew she wasn't screwing around on me when I was deployed. But after she started working full-time, she had more opportunities. There was one time when I called her cellphone wondering why she was late, and there was a male voice in the background asking her to hurry up. And there was the other time I decided to surprise her by showing up at her office to take my wife out to lunch, only to spot her leaving with another guy. That might have been an innocent lunch with a co-worker (I didn't bother to stop them to ask.) But "embrace the suck, the rain shall pass." So, this time with the text messages, ... who knows? She may or may not be cheating. But at this point in our marriage after years of neglect, who really cares?
I've read plenty of stories online about cheating or abusive wives, with their husbands going berserk. I'm sure there are plenty of despondent husbands out there whose wives cheated, and they would look forward to a retired Special Ops sniper going "scorched Earth" to burn his bitch (and her lover?), getting away with it due to my special training. But being a sniper is not about any emotional attachment to your target or trying to inflict pain. It's a job, ... plan the tasks, set up your work space (the hide), wait for the parts to come in (the target), set the machine in place (rifle and scope), and pressing the "on" button (trigger). Then go home to open a beer and relax.
