More About Me...

Do you really read “married three times?”
How does someone that loves being married, being a wife and living a domestic life as much as I do, get married and divorced three times???
Seriously, I really love marriage and what it stands for. If any of my friends and family come to me with thoughts of divorce I am the first to do or say anything that will talk them out of going through with it. I don’t condone divorce and it really upsets me to see people make that choice.
But here I am, 43 and single. “What the heck?”
I had had the same boyfriend from 12 years old until I was 18, my parents adored the boyfriend as he had through the years become like their son. His family life was not so great so he relished in what I found to be confining. He was quite charming with them and they would find out his true nature as time would go on. My mom was so very strict and my step father a police reserve so I really was not allowed to do anything or grow up if you will. I was 20, lived at home and the rules and expectations had never really changed since junior high.
I was teaching dance when one of my adult students set me up on a blind date with a cute guy that looked like Michael J. Fox, he was a little older so he was not interested in dating my parents and that attracted me. We had dated a few months, much to my parents disappointment, because they wanted me and my first boyfriend to be together, when my mother found out that I had told a lie and had spent the night with this new guy. Wow, that did not go well and life for everyone in the house became unbearable. My younger sister was really getting the brunt of my mothers endless foul mood and my step father actually took me aside and told me to do what ever I had to do to make it right with her, because she was, and I quote him, ”making life hell for everyone”. So I went to her and told her we would get married to make up for ’sleeping with him’. A wedding was quickly planned pretty much with out my mother speaking to me and 8 months after our blind date we were married. The wedding was a complete disaster because it was then and there that I discovered that my “new” husband had a problem with cocaine and had spent all the money for the band on that instead.
Needless to say that marriage was not made in heaven and with in a year after many many fights over money being spent on drugs I moved back home. The bright side of that story is that he did conquer his battle with substance abuse, 12 years later, and to this day is one of my most favorite people in the world as we are very very dear friends.
A few years later I married my sons father. We had dated briefly when I was 19, I was crazy about him then so this time I was in love, very much in love and soon after we had a beautiful baby boy. I was 25 he was 28, in that first year and a 1/2, we got married, had a baby, started a business and bought a house… Just a bit of stress if you will. When our son was 5 I learned that my husband had been having an affair with my very dear friend for almost 2 years. In fact, many times she would leave her little girl with me, while she and my husband would rendezvous, OUCH! Her husband was also one of my husbands best friends. I reacted so badly and took it so hard. I fell apart actually, I was devastated and a complete wreck! The only one that could comfort me was the one that had hurt me, I felt like I was drowning. It felt like he was pushing me under water yet he was the only one that could pull me out. I couldn’t sleep at night unless I took 2-3 sleeping pills only to wake up about 3am to take 2-3 more. I was a mess for almost a year. I took 100% full responsibility for his affair. I believed that I was not pretty enough, I was not thin enough, I was not subservient enough and so I did everything and anything I could to ensure he would never cheat on me again. I actually use to keep record in my day planner of how often we were intimate. Quite often 2-3 times a day and if we missed a day I honestly would have a panic attack. We went away on mini vacations as well as elaborate just to be alone. It seemed to everyone else that we had over come the impossible and survived the infidelity. We were called by many, Ken and Barbie. My husband, well you can imagine, was elated, he had an affair and ended up being rewarded.
Until, I woke up one day and the pain that I had tried to bury became too much to carry. I wanted to hurt him as he had hurt me. I was really angry and exhausted and just thought if I could make him feel what I had felt it would all go away and we could put it behind us because I got even. So I cheated on him. That really taught him a lesson didn’t it? I told you I was a mess. Well what a surprise, it didn’t fix anything and my reputation and self respect went quickly into the toilet. We separated and spent the next year back and forth and back and forth. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore or where to find it, I just hurt so badly and nothing I did seemed to take the pain away.
We finally divorced and that was that. Because I ultimately was the one that ended the marriage and wanted out, I took very little by legal standards. That meant I needed to get a job as we had our own business, 2 successful ones for that matter. He relocated to another state and I was a single mom with out an income…
I panicked after leaving my now 9 year old in day care for the first time. I also wanted to give back to my son what I felt I had taken away from him; a beautiful home with a family. So I married the man I had cheated with, he loved me, had two beautiful little girls and most importantly PROMISED to have more children with me. (My sons father had had a vasectomy when our son was 10 months old, it was our compromise because he never wanted any children so one seemed fair).
Anyway, I was remarried about 2 weeks after my divorce was final. We also immediately began trying to have a child. We bought a house, blended our families and from there on life was suppose to be great. After about one year we learned that I would have to undergo surgery to conceive. I had 3 in about 13 months and nothing. I finally had to have an emergency hysterectomy and that was the end of my dream of more children. Also the end of my 3rd marriage. I didn’t love him, I was very fond of him as he is a wonderful man, but I didn’t love him. Makes sense doesn’t it, having a baby always makes a marriage what it is suppose to be…? (I type while shaking my head at my logic) I was 38 and just knew there had to be more to life than simply existing. It was time to move on, I didn’t have the child I so badly wanted and the pain of my divorce from my sons father had finally been put to rest. We separated and divorced.
At times I will poke fun at myself and when referring to ex’s and use numbers instead of names. When asked if I ever want to get married again I’ll answer by saying that I think I’ve met my quota, or jokingly respond with, “What am I suppose to say at the alter, “Seriously, for real this time, I’m not kidding…” etc.. But in reality it’s not a joke. I’m not proud how this part of my life has turned out. I really love the entire idea of marriage and everything it should be. I truly am so upset that my son had to grow up in two households because his father and I messed up and then, well ,I appear to have continued to. He, all of our children, deserve so much more than we give them. Sure they have rooms filled with toys, closets filled with name brand clothes and are given cars with they turn 16. But is that what they really want or deserve, at the end of the day it is about family and more and more and more families are torn apart because we make life difficult and live superficially always thinking of ourself and what we want, that we screw things up for them.
I do agree that divorce is necessary in extreme cases like abuse either emotional, substance or physical. But too many divorces are simply because we mess up and that, I feel after having it be the case with me, can say, is just not OK and is truly a shame.
So there you have it, my explanation for how someone that loves marriage and would have loved nothing more than to spend my entire life with one person can and has been married three times.
I still ask myself now and again, “what the heck?”