Love, now and forever

I have felt for some time that I wanted to write about my marriages. Yes, I did say plural and the current one is number 4. This time, I am beginning to know what love really means, the unconditional type that makes you smile whenever you think of them and you look forward to your times together.

I was engaged twice in college so when #1 came along, I was convinced that it wasn’t real. I was already 26 and had seen my share of bad relationships and didn’t know what to think of this persistent younger man. After 4 months we were living together and a year later we got engaged and 10 months later got married. We did spend some time apart during that time due to me going to grad school briefly in another state but we continued to see one another. In the end, he was depressed and our counselor advised we not stay together. We had been married a little over a year. Later, my mom confessed she saw problems and was going to say something but didn’t for fear of me hating her and it succeeding regardless. I should have seen the signs along the way but was too absorbed with just getting along in life and doing the wedding planning thing.

#2 was a friend then later boyfriend in college whom had left on very good terms. We re-connected through a mutual friend and after him talking to me after #1 and I had split, about how his first marriage had split, we decided to see each other again. It was about 6 months after he and I had started talking and he bought me a plane ticket to come see him. I came back "engaged" and ready to quit grad school and the jobs I had been working to move heaven and earth to be with him in Washington DC. He was an Army officer stationed at the Pentagon and had tons of family and friends there. I knew no one and relied on him for everything. He is a control freak, even to this day hasn’t learned his lesson on that one, and controlled every aspect of my life. I was living with him for a month before he started with the marriage talk stating that it would be better if we were married because of his job. We got married 6 weeks later and we seemed to be doing OK. He got deployed a year and a half later to Korea for a temporary assignment but ended up being there for almost 6 months. During that time he got drunk one night and let one of the "bar girls" take advantage of him. I felt so betrayed! He confessed it right away but still, not easy to hear long distance. When he came back, he got orders to move to NM, Land of Disenchantment where we knew no one and I felt so lost. I fell into a depressed state and the only thing that gave me hope during that time is seeing an infertility doctor about helping me have a baby. After surgery we started trying and after 6 months of trying on our own, got more help to the tune of drugs for me. I had to stop taking the hormone boosting drugs since I went through a Jekyll and Hyde sort of transformation. 3 months after I quit taking the drugs, I got pregnant! We moved into a house of our own since our lease was up at the place we were renting and we bought a beautiful home. Buddy was born 6 months later after a difficult pregnancy, #2 being of little help through all that. When Buddy was only 6 months old, #2 had serious health issues, PEs, and was medically retired from the Army. His first job out of the Army was out of town and that put tremendous stress on us. We were separated sometime after Buddy was 2 and divorced a year later.

#3 was someone I met when I was brand new to the SCA (historical re enactment) and thought he was perfect! Little did I realise that he was bipolar and was in a manic state for having met someone who cared about him. This mania lasted until at least 4 months later when he bought a house so we could all live together. He had a teen age daughter who stayed with him part time and Buddy was 6. He would go through boughts of ups and downs but none seemed like much to worry about. He was on several different depression meds but of course, that doesn’t touch bipolarism and he always seemed to borderline on the depressed side. We got married a year after we started to live together, I was teaching and life seemed good. I was diagnosed with breast cancer 5 months later and he went into a deep depression and never came back up again. Finally, after many other changes in our lives together, none of which he was handling well, I went to him one day and said I was very unhappy with our marriage. We took a week of stumbling along in "conversations" and decided to divorce. It was a nasty divorce in parting material goods since the house had always been just in his name. We ended up both hiring lawyers and it got messy before it got resolved. As far as I know, he’s never gotten help for his bipolarism and is still deluded into thinking it’s just depression. I found out how deeply the mental illness ran in his family, his sister having to be institutionalized, his mother paranoid and his daughter dropping out of college because she couldn’t handle it. I’m glad I got out of there alive! He once confessed he wished I had died from the cancer so he could have grieved me and not had to go through another divorce! ARGH!!! I also found out later he had been hitting Buddy when I wasn’t around.

#4 and I got married last December and are very happy. He and I had known each other for 2 years before we started seeing each other. He was in a volatile relationship for awhile but we both ended up single at the same time. We dated for about 4 months before moving in together. We both knew what we wanted to see happen and it’s been happily coming along that way since. We had been together a little over a year when he proposed and got married one year and one week later. He explained that he wasn’t in a rush to do anything along those lines because he had rushed in other relationships and they had ended horribly. He had been married 3 times before too but his second one was with a woman he really and truly loved but she died of AIDS. She had been working in Africa when she contracted it, long before they met. He still loves her but that is OK with me since I know that once a person has loved deeply in their lifetime, they will do so again. I am happy to say we are really in love and laugh often and he tries really had to be a step dad to Buddy. Buddy is difficult at times, being 15 and having Asperger’s, a form of Autism. Our combined household has 7 cats and two large dogs in a comfy but tiny little house. He makes me see what I was missing in relationships all along and I know now that this is the love of my life! The best things in life come to those who wait!