"And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It will whisper of the garden,
You will understand." ~ Oscar Wilde (written to his wife)
I made a vow I'd never marry again, after a brutal and painful divorce that shook my beliefs to the core. I had been so fastened to those ideals and values that it flipped everything on its head, leaving me to question everything.
My vision of marriage changed completely, and not just getting married, but the idea of marriage, as a whole. You know, there's an illusion people hastily attach to the tenants of marriage. I think we (us - people as a whole) don't embrace the ideals or beliefs or the truth behind what it means to marry, to enter into a committed relationship and take and keep a vow. I didn't want to have to feel that kind of obligation again, with no reciprocation. Why would I want to commit myself again and enter into something I no longer believed in? I had been the one to ask for a divorce. Me - the one raised in church and hell-bent on staying married to the end of time, I had entered into a marriage I had fully believed in and I would die before getting a divorce. That's what I had said, from childhood and years into my marriage, but then so many things went wrong... and I was the one that asked for a divorce. It almost killed me.
I had fallen in love and gotten married by the time I was twenty. I knew exactly what I was doing. I wasn't going to make all the same mistakes of all of the adults around me, I was too smart, too young, too in love, I was so sure I knew it all. Despite many warnings and many things that should have been flags - I got married. I was married for thirteen years.
And so it would be that we would make all the same mistakes and a whole lot of new ones. I find most people rarely truly talk about divorce. Unless it's angry talk. It just isn't something people like to discuss. It's as if its politically incorrect to talk about it, unless its to make a joke or jest or to provide a friend or someone with some unsolicited wisdom on marriage and divorce. Marriage was something you made fun of, something you'd warn the next generation not to do.. or worse, you'd project your eternal grudge. I find rarely do people want to truly share the deeper emotions associated with how you're affected by marriage and divorce. It's disheartening.
Going through a divorce is a major event for some people in their lives - whether it was you that wanted the marriage to end, or the other person. It destroys both people. It destroys everyone! Friends and family pick sides, everything is wrecked! The pain is surreal and some people never fully recover. It's probably one of the most difficult things to go through in life and nothing and no one can truly prepare you. I've been divorced for over a decade now, so when I think about it, it's a lot less painful. We aren't friends, and that's sad because I wish we had been, it would have been far more beneficial to raising our kids. Just because we could no longer be together, didn't mean we shouldn't keep our promise as parents.
It was tough. As time passed, others became involved and interfered and/or were victims. In truth, we never truly understood the vows we took before God. We weren't mature enough to understand the principles of marriage and what that would mean to each of us, individually. I honestly don't think people really think about those vows - they say they do, but we don't. We become consumed by everything else that's going on. We marry because of an unplanned pregnancy, because our parents don't want us to live in sin, because it's what all our friends are doing.
I could tell you it was all his fault. He'll probably tell you it was all my fault. Truth was - we both destroyed our marriage. We had been very much in love. We had built a life together spanning some sixteen years. We had had beautiful children, a home, friends and family that were connected through the years for parties, holidays and events. We had explored our youth even long after we had become parents. We had had many happy times in between lots of indifferent, immature and even miserable moments. We were a mismatch and destined to simply continue to grow apart. We wanted different things and had less and less in common, everything fell apart. It didn't matter that we loved each other anymore. We had been raised differently, our cultures and background had never mattered before, but they certainly played a part of everything coming apart. Our pride got in the way. Lots of things got in the way.
I left. It destroyed him. It destroyed me. It hurt everyone. We had not tried hard enough and at times we had tried too hard. We couldn't turn things around and there were moments of extreme disparity for each of us. It was too little too late and not enough at all. Still for as many times as we had broken up and patched things up - our marriage couldn't be fixed. I take away a lot of wisdom and experience and love from that time in my life. I try to remember better days, without losing sight of what was lost and why it had to be lost. I'm better without him, and he's better without me. I became a Mother which would ultimately be the most important thing in the world to me. At one point, we had a beautiful life - but I remember very clearly why we don't belong together. It wasn't for a lack of trying, we tried like hell. But when things are forced, they're just going to fall apart at some point, anyway.
Two years after we split up, I would become engaged. I thought I had found love again. I thought God had opened a new door for me. Uh - I was wrong, then too, I was so very wrong. I loved him, and maybe he loved me in the beginning. But our love would always be indifferent. I loved him more, than he loved me and I would spend more time trying to save him from himself. Our relationship went only one direction, fast forward, and it wasn't healthy. I couldn't do it anymore, it was tearing me apart, it was tearing apart my kids and friends and family. I had wanted to marry him, and then I stalled the wedding a half dozen times. Hindsight is 20/20 - I must have always known I would never marry him. God gave me a beautiful son, even after I thought I'd never be able to have children again. That would redeem all the pain and suffering - that little boy would become one of the greatest gifts in my life, he'd be the glue between me and my family like nothing else. Again - I walked away, I had to - it was the best and the only choice I could make for the health and safety of everyone I loved.
This broken engagement and failed relationship would epically change how I saw the idea of marriage - once again forcing me to look at it in a different perspective. We had been engaged, had a child and while some of that was good it would also serve to be the ultimate corruption of the idea marriage for me. The idea of getting married again slipped further and further into the abyss. I stopped believing. Marriage was laughable. While friends and family couldn't wait to marry me off to someone - I would laugh at them. How absolutely and irrefutably stupid could they be? I knew of so many unhappy marriages and the fronts people would put up for the world, were insane. People staying together for money, for possessions, for their kids, for all the wrong reasons. I don't know, I guess you could say I was changing, I was swearing off the things I knew or thought could destroy me. I would later realize I had been judging my friends and family for this...fueling my disdain towards the idea of marriage.
Looking back I should have taken more care of how I spoke of love and marriage. Not realizing just how much my kids would be listening. How so many of the statements I had made in anger, would altar younger lives and echo for years to come. They had heard way too much, they had seen way too much. Sadly after witnessing the awful heartbreak of their parents, and many people around them, they didn't believe in love. Understand, I'm telling you they don't believe in love - not marriage. They want to get married some day. They just don't believe in love. It breaks my heart. It sends me on a roller coaster of emotions, wondering how could I have let this happen? Maybe I'm to blame?! Maybe I wasn't, maybe it had nothing to do with my words at all. I can only hope and pray they find that person that changes their minds. I plead with them, all the time, to understand that love is very real, it just (and please forgive my saying this) it just doesn't last forever - life is not a Disney movie. True love is out there, I have witnessed it, but it is incredibly rare.
I was raised to believe in marriage. I watched every known fairytale and romantic comedy you can think of. I still watch them, often begrudgingly. I saw my grandparents and my parents and even friends that have pushed hard to make their marriages work. I know now that even some of them had to go a 2nd round and risk it all over again with a whole other person to understand that vow.
I realized I had been suppressing my feelings of how I truly felt about marriage. Yes, I was sure I didn't want to get married. But what if someone was sure I was worth marrying. Even knowing it could fail. Even knowing I could be a disaster. Even knowing I'd want to change the fundamental principles in today's societal perception of marriage. I knew then, at that moment, that maybe I was embracing a part of me, even if it was that little 3 year old girl with an untainted unbroken heart that was mesmerized by a moon. I had been daydreaming of someday loving someone so much that they could change how I saw everything, including myself. Maybe it was in the spirit of that feisty fiery 16 year old girl that looked through every bridal magazine dreaming of wearing a lovely beautiful gown and gazing into the eyes of her 'prince charming'. Maybe, just maybe I didn't want to let go of the fairytale.
I don't want to write it off anymore. I'd like to believe someday someone will find me worth any part of what it entails to enter into a marriage and possibly a divorce. I'd like to believe that they'd fight as hard as me at making it work. That the sacrifice would be real and in equal measure. I see good marriages and happy couples everywhere. Does marriage change the idea of knowing that that one person will always be there for you and you for them? That you'll grow old together and sit on a bench somewhere in a park and talk of days of past, while holding hands and cursing the younger generations. I don't know, it changes everything. I still want that, or something incredibly close to it. Maybe I've reverted to romanticizing marriage. I've grown as a woman, as an adult, I know what marriage means, now. Maybe just maybe, someday, someone will get on bended knee and ask.
What does marriage mean? What if I was in an amazing relationship and never married again, would that be fulfilling? Is it what I really want or am I mirroring someone else's wants? I know this much, no one is on bended knee. Still, I have hope. It's taken a long time for me to come to this conclusion. And I think I was beating myself up for attempting to come to terms with it. I changed my mind about something I felt incredibly passionate about and I'm no longer going to strictly hold down my own theories, ideas and beliefs without at least hearing or seeing with an open mind. I feel good about this... and people say I can't change - hmph!
You will understand." ~ Oscar Wilde (written to his wife)
I made a vow I'd never marry again, after a brutal and painful divorce that shook my beliefs to the core. I had been so fastened to those ideals and values that it flipped everything on its head, leaving me to question everything.
My vision of marriage changed completely, and not just getting married, but the idea of marriage, as a whole. You know, there's an illusion people hastily attach to the tenants of marriage. I think we (us - people as a whole) don't embrace the ideals or beliefs or the truth behind what it means to marry, to enter into a committed relationship and take and keep a vow. I didn't want to have to feel that kind of obligation again, with no reciprocation. Why would I want to commit myself again and enter into something I no longer believed in? I had been the one to ask for a divorce. Me - the one raised in church and hell-bent on staying married to the end of time, I had entered into a marriage I had fully believed in and I would die before getting a divorce. That's what I had said, from childhood and years into my marriage, but then so many things went wrong... and I was the one that asked for a divorce. It almost killed me.
I had fallen in love and gotten married by the time I was twenty. I knew exactly what I was doing. I wasn't going to make all the same mistakes of all of the adults around me, I was too smart, too young, too in love, I was so sure I knew it all. Despite many warnings and many things that should have been flags - I got married. I was married for thirteen years.
And so it would be that we would make all the same mistakes and a whole lot of new ones. I find most people rarely truly talk about divorce. Unless it's angry talk. It just isn't something people like to discuss. It's as if its politically incorrect to talk about it, unless its to make a joke or jest or to provide a friend or someone with some unsolicited wisdom on marriage and divorce. Marriage was something you made fun of, something you'd warn the next generation not to do.. or worse, you'd project your eternal grudge. I find rarely do people want to truly share the deeper emotions associated with how you're affected by marriage and divorce. It's disheartening.
Going through a divorce is a major event for some people in their lives - whether it was you that wanted the marriage to end, or the other person. It destroys both people. It destroys everyone! Friends and family pick sides, everything is wrecked! The pain is surreal and some people never fully recover. It's probably one of the most difficult things to go through in life and nothing and no one can truly prepare you. I've been divorced for over a decade now, so when I think about it, it's a lot less painful. We aren't friends, and that's sad because I wish we had been, it would have been far more beneficial to raising our kids. Just because we could no longer be together, didn't mean we shouldn't keep our promise as parents.
It was tough. As time passed, others became involved and interfered and/or were victims. In truth, we never truly understood the vows we took before God. We weren't mature enough to understand the principles of marriage and what that would mean to each of us, individually. I honestly don't think people really think about those vows - they say they do, but we don't. We become consumed by everything else that's going on. We marry because of an unplanned pregnancy, because our parents don't want us to live in sin, because it's what all our friends are doing.
I could tell you it was all his fault. He'll probably tell you it was all my fault. Truth was - we both destroyed our marriage. We had been very much in love. We had built a life together spanning some sixteen years. We had had beautiful children, a home, friends and family that were connected through the years for parties, holidays and events. We had explored our youth even long after we had become parents. We had had many happy times in between lots of indifferent, immature and even miserable moments. We were a mismatch and destined to simply continue to grow apart. We wanted different things and had less and less in common, everything fell apart. It didn't matter that we loved each other anymore. We had been raised differently, our cultures and background had never mattered before, but they certainly played a part of everything coming apart. Our pride got in the way. Lots of things got in the way.
I left. It destroyed him. It destroyed me. It hurt everyone. We had not tried hard enough and at times we had tried too hard. We couldn't turn things around and there were moments of extreme disparity for each of us. It was too little too late and not enough at all. Still for as many times as we had broken up and patched things up - our marriage couldn't be fixed. I take away a lot of wisdom and experience and love from that time in my life. I try to remember better days, without losing sight of what was lost and why it had to be lost. I'm better without him, and he's better without me. I became a Mother which would ultimately be the most important thing in the world to me. At one point, we had a beautiful life - but I remember very clearly why we don't belong together. It wasn't for a lack of trying, we tried like hell. But when things are forced, they're just going to fall apart at some point, anyway.
Two years after we split up, I would become engaged. I thought I had found love again. I thought God had opened a new door for me. Uh - I was wrong, then too, I was so very wrong. I loved him, and maybe he loved me in the beginning. But our love would always be indifferent. I loved him more, than he loved me and I would spend more time trying to save him from himself. Our relationship went only one direction, fast forward, and it wasn't healthy. I couldn't do it anymore, it was tearing me apart, it was tearing apart my kids and friends and family. I had wanted to marry him, and then I stalled the wedding a half dozen times. Hindsight is 20/20 - I must have always known I would never marry him. God gave me a beautiful son, even after I thought I'd never be able to have children again. That would redeem all the pain and suffering - that little boy would become one of the greatest gifts in my life, he'd be the glue between me and my family like nothing else. Again - I walked away, I had to - it was the best and the only choice I could make for the health and safety of everyone I loved.
This broken engagement and failed relationship would epically change how I saw the idea of marriage - once again forcing me to look at it in a different perspective. We had been engaged, had a child and while some of that was good it would also serve to be the ultimate corruption of the idea marriage for me. The idea of getting married again slipped further and further into the abyss. I stopped believing. Marriage was laughable. While friends and family couldn't wait to marry me off to someone - I would laugh at them. How absolutely and irrefutably stupid could they be? I knew of so many unhappy marriages and the fronts people would put up for the world, were insane. People staying together for money, for possessions, for their kids, for all the wrong reasons. I don't know, I guess you could say I was changing, I was swearing off the things I knew or thought could destroy me. I would later realize I had been judging my friends and family for this...fueling my disdain towards the idea of marriage.
Looking back I should have taken more care of how I spoke of love and marriage. Not realizing just how much my kids would be listening. How so many of the statements I had made in anger, would altar younger lives and echo for years to come. They had heard way too much, they had seen way too much. Sadly after witnessing the awful heartbreak of their parents, and many people around them, they didn't believe in love. Understand, I'm telling you they don't believe in love - not marriage. They want to get married some day. They just don't believe in love. It breaks my heart. It sends me on a roller coaster of emotions, wondering how could I have let this happen? Maybe I'm to blame?! Maybe I wasn't, maybe it had nothing to do with my words at all. I can only hope and pray they find that person that changes their minds. I plead with them, all the time, to understand that love is very real, it just (and please forgive my saying this) it just doesn't last forever - life is not a Disney movie. True love is out there, I have witnessed it, but it is incredibly rare.
I was raised to believe in marriage. I watched every known fairytale and romantic comedy you can think of. I still watch them, often begrudgingly. I saw my grandparents and my parents and even friends that have pushed hard to make their marriages work. I know now that even some of them had to go a 2nd round and risk it all over again with a whole other person to understand that vow.
I realized I had been suppressing my feelings of how I truly felt about marriage. Yes, I was sure I didn't want to get married. But what if someone was sure I was worth marrying. Even knowing it could fail. Even knowing I could be a disaster. Even knowing I'd want to change the fundamental principles in today's societal perception of marriage. I knew then, at that moment, that maybe I was embracing a part of me, even if it was that little 3 year old girl with an untainted unbroken heart that was mesmerized by a moon. I had been daydreaming of someday loving someone so much that they could change how I saw everything, including myself. Maybe it was in the spirit of that feisty fiery 16 year old girl that looked through every bridal magazine dreaming of wearing a lovely beautiful gown and gazing into the eyes of her 'prince charming'. Maybe, just maybe I didn't want to let go of the fairytale.
I don't want to write it off anymore. I'd like to believe someday someone will find me worth any part of what it entails to enter into a marriage and possibly a divorce. I'd like to believe that they'd fight as hard as me at making it work. That the sacrifice would be real and in equal measure. I see good marriages and happy couples everywhere. Does marriage change the idea of knowing that that one person will always be there for you and you for them? That you'll grow old together and sit on a bench somewhere in a park and talk of days of past, while holding hands and cursing the younger generations. I don't know, it changes everything. I still want that, or something incredibly close to it. Maybe I've reverted to romanticizing marriage. I've grown as a woman, as an adult, I know what marriage means, now. Maybe just maybe, someday, someone will get on bended knee and ask.
What does marriage mean? What if I was in an amazing relationship and never married again, would that be fulfilling? Is it what I really want or am I mirroring someone else's wants? I know this much, no one is on bended knee. Still, I have hope. It's taken a long time for me to come to this conclusion. And I think I was beating myself up for attempting to come to terms with it. I changed my mind about something I felt incredibly passionate about and I'm no longer going to strictly hold down my own theories, ideas and beliefs without at least hearing or seeing with an open mind. I feel good about this... and people say I can't change - hmph!
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