What a difference a year makes.

A little over a year ago I made the very difficult decision to leave my husband, and as it turned out, my home, financial security and for a little while, my sanity.

This decision took me a very long time to come to...it's not an easy thing to tell someone that although you respect them as a friend and father of your child, that you no longer are romantically in love with them. I hurt Ava's Dad very much, and he still, to this day, is very angry and hurt.

The months following Ava's birth, I think her Dad was in a very dark place. He spent a lot of time away from the house, doing a lot of martial arts and other testosterone fueled activities. His temper became shorter and shorter, and he would ridicule me in front of his friends and family. In hindsight, I guess that he was very depressed and felt trapped and unsure of his new role as a father and so he coped by running away. And the more I pushed him to be the family man I wanted him to be, the more he got angry and aggressive. I felt like I was left to do everything: parenting, cleaning, working (I was back at work when Ava was 6 months old), gardening....basically holding the fort whilst he used me as a home base.

I had no idea why the man I loved morphed into this man. I felt like he stopped caring about me and how I felt and he has remained focussed on himself and his needs ever since. I missed the man who would call me his Princess and agree to my crazy adventures. I didn't want to be with someone who was so self centred and full of anger and who made me feel used and miserable.

A man I knew and I became great friends. He showed me what it was like to be respected and trusted and treated well. He was kind to me, didn't put me down or ridicule me, didn't treat me like a piece of meat to be used whenever the urge struck. He liked me for who I was inside and how our relationship made him feel. We were only friends, but we already felt like soulmates.

So, I fell in love with him. Not being a deceitful person by nature, I worked up the courage to tell my husband that I no longer loved him and I thought I had feelings for someone else. It took me a week, but finally Ava's Daddy asked me what was wrong, and I told him. Everything and the truth.

And now it has been a year. A very tumultous year. I have lost so very, very much, but gained things as well. And the biggest thing I have gained is the feeling that I am doing what is right. Right for me, right for my baby, and right for the person that helped me bring her into the world. The harsh truth is always better than sugar coated lies.