【轻阅读，看世界】What was the one thing that turned your marriage around?

I will probably hear some negative comments about this but I slapped my wife across the face.

That being said let me go back a little bit in time and then get back to the slapping part.

My current wife and I got together when she was still fairly young. She was twenty when we moved in together. I was 28. Both of us had been married previously. She was married to a guy when she was 16. It was the 4th marriage for him. He turned out to be an abuser and after a couple of years of putting up with it she left him and filed for divorce.

I was married to my first wife for 3 years when she announced one day that she wanted to separate because she had never experienced single life and wanted to do that while she was still young. We had lived together for 4 years before we got married. I was distraught to say the least. She was my first love and the love of my life at that time but that’s a story for another time. Long story short, she was killed in an automobile accident before was resolved matters. We had one child together, a son who came to live with me after she passed.

He was 3 at the time and had been in the car with his mother when the accident happened. After he was released from the hospital and was recuperating from a broken shoulder blade I told him that I would find him a new mother.

I went out on a date with Denise, my present wife one night and we wound up back at my trailer house afterwards. The night turned romantic and it was right after that she moved in with me.

A year or so later I bought some property in Northern Idaho and we took off together to go try to homestead on the land and off the grid.

A year after that in August of 1981 we were married on the property by a Biker minister. The wedding was a day of celebration with cocaine, marijuana and alcohol fueling the party.

At the Wedding - August 29, 1981

Denise - Me and Mike Bartlett our Minister.

The vows - Our son Uriah in the middle in front of the bikes.

Fast forward 11 years and for Denise the party was still going on and she was being dragged into her own path toward death and destruction in the throes of alcoholism.

She was working full time and I could see her heading for a fall but there was never anything that myself or our son could say that would change her. She had taken to whiskey as her drink of choice and upon arriving home from work she would fill up a tumbler with straight Black Velvet and the cycle would start.

By the end of the first glass she was largely incoherent and it got to where my son and I would ridicule her but nothing phased her. We called her stupid and other really derogatory names but nothing changed.

I was ready to leave her and there was no point in the marriage any longer.

One night she became really obnoxious and would not leave me alone. I had to go to work the next morning and all I wanted to do was go to bed and get some sleep. She wanted to party and would not let me be. She was hanging all over me and pulling me so that I couldn’t get off the couch. I finally had, had enough and did the unthinkable. I slapped her hard across the face. I had never done that before and did it reflexively. She immediately got up started crying and went into the bedroom.

I sat there stunned over what had just transpired and was weighing my options. This was the end I thought to myself. I pondered over our years together and our marriage and was trying to decide what I needed to do to find a new life for my son and I when she reappeared in the living room with a little white suitcase. What she said next took me completely by surprise. “Take me to the hospital” she said. “I called them and I am checking into recovery”.

I got my son up and we took her down to town to the local hospital where they had a drug and alcohol recovery center. She was in there for 20-30 days. I don’t remember now the length but it was a long time.

When she got out we made another pact and now this year we will be celebrating 35 years of marriage.

So although a slap is horrible it does not have to be an end but can in some cases be a beginning.

That one thing turned my marriage around and if you read this far thank you for staying with me on this.