Encounter

For most of the last month and a half Josh and I have fallen into a sort of unspoken agreement where we only speak to each other in terms of the children, and everything else is left unsaid.  we avoid each other and on the nights he shows up to be with the kids for a couple hours, I usually go out or avoid him, giving myself a break and him the one on one time with the kids that they so desperately want and need.  Tonight we had items of "business" we needed to discuss and when done I felt the need to ask him some questions.  Questions I have already asked.  However, I felt they were things I needed to hear again as I begin to look toward the end of our marriage.  I no longer desire for him to touch or hold me.  I no longer desire his love or need an admittance of guilt or apologies.  I need the truth so I can reassess the last nine years of my life as I am preparing to let it go. 
I asked when he no longer felt love towards me.  He told me it was a couple of months after he returned home from his deployment, with the explanation that due to his own choices, he felt he had to maintain a certain façade at home, that while on his own for the year deployment, he felt like he could be himself in ways he wasn't able to be at home.  I made it clear to him that had I known his "true" self, I would have been disappointed as I would still feel I was not getting a lot of the promises he made me when married and it would have been a struggle, but that I wouldn't have loved him less, or given up on our love.  I reminded him that I met and fell in love with him before he decided to clean up his life and I had never predicated or expected the love I had for him to be dependent on his religion or life choices.  I loved him, for him.  Ironically it was the opposite for him though.  He admitted that when he came back things that "turned him off to me" was my new role as mother and my deep religious beliefs and convictions, in other words the two things that are the very core of me and who make me what I am, are the things that made him love me less.
I explained to Josh how I no longer loved or desired him, but that the man I man I married, that man, I would always love.  I explained how in my eyes I felt he died and was replaced with the Josh I now know.  I told him how hard it has been to have his face always there as a constant reminder of the loss of the man I married, the man I loved, who died and I don't even know when he died.  Josh thought about this for a while and we both came to the same time frame.  After only a year and a half of our marriage, the man I married died and turned into something else through selfishness and vices and the chains of the devil, completely altering the very being of whom I used to know so intimately. 
I asked why he stayed with me for so long and willingly attempted having children with me when he did not love me.  He said he never intended to leave.  He had planned on staying in a loveless marriage to uphold the promises he made me, although he did not love or respect me.  I cried. I told him I never wanted to be with someone who did not love me and how I wish he could have been honest with me.  I then apologized for all the years I fought to maintain and fix our marriage and told him it was only because I was searching for that man I lost so many years ago. Then Josh cried.  I asked him why he was emotional and he responded that he felt he was a different man just as I described and cried for the loss of that man as well.  I gave him a hug and thanked him for talking with me as it helps me move on.  He walked away with tears in his eyes and what looked to be a troubled heart.  I am sad, so very sad as I will always be for the loss of the man I married. I am sad for the hurt and the deception, but my heart is not heavy as I am nothing but thankful that this finally has ended. oh how many more years it could have carried on.  I am thankful for the opportunity to have loved such a great man before he disappeared.  I know what love is from that brief one and a half years or true bliss.  I am thankful for my two children and I am thankful for the opportunity to have a new start and hopefully find someone who is worthy of my love and just as devoted and loyal to the Lord and to me as I am.