What’s marriage supposed to look like? We all go in to it (if you’ve been married) with high expectations. Did you imagine the white picket fence life? Maybe, you envisioned conquering the world as a team? Did you expect to be happy? I mean, your hopes and dreams, the perfect guy, the family, the whole shebang! What was it?
Looking back, was it realistic? Where did we come up with these sitcom marriages with trivial issues and blissful unions?
I know at 23, I was looking at parents married for 30 years. Though not picture perfect, the naive girl in me thought I could somehow do it better. I saw grandparents married for over 50 years and thought THAT is what true love looks like. However, I only saw the surface of a marriage I hoped to emulate.
My first marriage was far from my fairytale bliss. Hell, my second marriage isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Looking back, I can remember the first time around and what I remember is having hope for a happily ever after. By the second, I was far too grown up for fairytales and fantasies.
I’m still considered a “newlywed” as my husband and I have only been married for a year, together for three. However, with 15 years under my belt in a extremely toxic and abusive marriage I consider myself much more aware of what marriage entails. The good. The bad. The ugly.
In spite of everything I had (and he) suffered in previous relationship(s), I wasn’t jaded. I was determined to show my threefold what marriage SHOULD look like. I am convinced I have found my person, my soulmate, my twin flame, and my best friend. I truly believe we were always meant to do life together. Nonetheless, we had to wait until we could love each other the right way.
Now, I can finally be the example my children need to see. As a mother and as a wife. I can show my children how a woman should be loved. God knows, they’ve been party to the wrong way for long enough.
Furthermore, I have learned how a person can flourish, grow and be healed by the right person loving them. You become your most authentic self, a better person, and you feel safe.
I don’t know that my expectations were lower the second time around, but definitely more realistic . Nonetheless, this love has thus far exceeded my hopes of what marriage ‘should’ be like.
Now, I look at my husband and I am immediately grateful. I am appreciative of the man who has loved me through some of the hardest moments I’ve experienced with my children. Who has fought for me instead of with me when I’ve lost my fight. The man my girls consider their “dad” even if he isn’t their father. I have a million reasons to be thankful, but today and everyday I am thankful for this man that has shown me exactly the love I’ve always needed, but never knew existed. and that ass though! 😉 This is my forever. I truly pray you each find that in your lives. ☮️❤️😊~M
This is going to be emotional and mushy and ooey.gooey.gross. Maybe even cheesy and make people want to vomit, but I don’t care. I talk enough about the real life drama of my threefold and I. It’s time for the prettier side of our lives. A happier side. A life with promises of happily ever after afters, fairytales and magic. It’s not make believe, it’s all real and sometimes I can’t believe it either. I’m happy and head over heels in love! Love is magical and the most beautiful part of life. It’s what I believe it’s all about. The reason. There are so many types of love and I have experienced them all – parental love, first love, friend love, toxic love, familial love, painful love, and then there is true love. That’s my focus today and that’s exactly what I have found.
In the beginning I was scared. I was weary of anyone with pretty words and big promises. I was coming out of a fifteen year toxic, narcissistic, abusive marriage. I’m 37. I have three kids and I have a lot of damage and baggage. Not sure why anyone would want to get into anything more than a little fun with me. My confidence and my identity was nearly nonexistent. I felt I was good at faking it. Inside I was unhappy and unfulfilled in many areas of my life. Why in the world was THIS man pursuing me? That answer is still lost on me. He is attractive, positive, works hard, funny and unapologetically him. I was so attracted to that energy. He made everything fun and was complimentary. He spoke well of others and was committed in everything he did. He gives his all into everything he does. I was intrigued by a person who seemed so happy, confident and at ease. I resisted at first, the advances, only showing my interest by flirting back and forth. I threw away his phone number but I’m a person who remembers things and his was too easy for me to just forget. I held off and didn’t text him. I didn’t save it in my phone. Weeks went by and he just wouldn’t give up. Finally on a Sunday afternoon I texted him. We texted for hours. The texts began daily and then started my day. I was like a teenage girl full of exhilarated by the easy conversation and very quickly realized that we were a lot alike. He had been divorced for a long time and was coming out of a rather toxic relationship with a long time girlfriend. He has a daughter, just one that’s right in the middle of the two oldest of my threefold. He was sweet and considerate. I found myself having fun again and learning new things about myself and what I wanted in a relationship eventually.
Text messages turned to stolen kisses and sneaky hot make out sessions. Meet up arrangements were served for lunch or after work just to have a quick kiss before heading back to the real world of life. We kept our kids in the dark and didn’t want to get them involved immediately. We kept work professional and kept friends hidden away. We were each other’s secret that we kept from the world around us. It was easy and we didn’t commit to anything more than a few nights of walking in a neighborhood, sitting in parking lots and window shopping. In the easy, I was comfortable, open but still highly guarded. I was allowed to decide how much of myself I wanted to give or to show.
I found out his birthday was rolling around and I wanted to do something big! I got excited and nervous, not sure how it would work out. I was realizing I had either rebounded and tricked myself into believing we would be more when we were both ready or I was actually starting to fall for this guy despite of my attempts to not go there at the time. I had an appointment out of town on the day after his birthday. I didn’t have much time to plan so I decided to ask him if he wanted to go to the beach with me that weekend. We hadn’t done anything intimate and I was scared to death that I was moving too fast. After all, my divorce wasn’t final and even though I was firm in my decision to leave my husband at that time and knew that our marriage had been over for a long time, I was scared I could be making a decision that could cost me in court. I gave in to the desire to see if this man who had begun to take up a big chunk of my time when I didn’t have my threefold was worth the risk I was continuing to take. I was terrified at what he would say or that he would flake out last minute even after he agreed. He took time off from work and decided to spend 2 nights with me and 16 hours in a car round trip for his birthday. I was nervous, excited, anxious, and completely ready to see what would unfold in those 2 uninterrupted days where we had nothing to focus on but each other. It was more than I could’ve imagined it would be and if I was unsure before then what I found on that trip was assurance that I was right about this one. He was falling for me and I was falling for him. I was more scared and more on cloud nine than I had ever been in my life. I wasn’t ready, not even a little bit, but ready or not it happened.
This is on our wall. I wrote it for my man. ~M
In the months to follow we continued in secret but began being more involved from a distance. We were committed to one another, but due to where we were in our lives, and especially where I was in mine we decided it was best to remain safe in our secrecy. Very few people knew this man existed in my life. Then seemingly all at once I decided it had been long enough. We did an informal meeting with the kids, his and mine, at a Halloween party. It went as smoothly as possible. Though my youngest two were reluctant and didn’t really feel ready for me to have a friend who was a male. I was patient with them. I understood their position. I continued to see him in secret and we had “ninja night” and our own special secret rendezvous plans while I began to slowly incorporate that I was going to date him into my threefolds’ minds. By Thanksgiving everyone knew even if we didn’t say it out loud. We began having outings together with our children included. It was going great and seemed to be exactly what it needed to be and at the pace they were comfortable with. I was happy and they could see that, maybe for the first time.
Then my world fell apart and my other half was not there when it all went so bad in my personal life. My daughter, 2, was admitted inpatient for suicidal thoughts and self harm behaviors. I was devastated. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I cried in my room for hours, and I just wanted to fix it and make her pain stop and make my guilt disappear. I wanted to go into my own dark place and suffer with her. I couldn’t, I had to be strong and I needed to be the mom my threefold needed me to be. I began to push away from the man who was trying so hard to be there for me in the only way he could at the time. I didn’t want to lose focus on my threefold and they needed me more than ever. I gave him every reason to leave. I told him to “take the out” that he deserved someone that could give him all of themselves and I couldn’t be that person. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t just walk away. I wasn’t going to hold it against him. He refused to accept the offer of a less complicated and easier life for himself. He decided that he would be with me through whatever was to come. He never wavered. He was steady and patient. He loved me as much as I would let him and through my resistance.
I moved into my new home and I was excited to have 2 join me. Then 1 and then 3. We made that house a home. We didn’t take but a few boxes of personal belongings from our old life and we began to start over, fresh. Our lives were finally seeming to move forward and we were able to spend our first Christmas together in our new home. I wish I. Could say we lived happily ever after, but the truth is starting over is hard. We had to become more aware of each other and the needs we had individually and as a whole. We were healing, growing, changing, and adapting to a new way of life. In the background of my life was a man waiting for me to be able to give him everything he was giving to me. I struggled as I wanted to be able to give him everything, but I still felt like my threefold would need all of me. I was conflicted and felt guilty about feeling like it would be selfish for me to choose to be happy or if it would be detrimental to a future I could have if I continued to push away from a man that seemed to be everything I had ever hoped to have. I searched for red flags to tell me this relationship was doomed so I could make my decision easier. I picked fights and pushed back harder. I wanted to force the ending that I had imagined would happen if I allowed myself to stay in this relationship. There he stood, taking everything I threw at him and stayed by my side regardless of my attempts to destroy it. He loved me. I still couldn’t see why.
After some time I decided with my therapist that it was time I made space for this man in my life. It was time I take chances and that the risk of being hurt was never going to vanish. He deserved and earned a place in my life. He had done exactly what he said every step of the way. He set out to show me he was different and it was time that I acknowledged. I didn’t have to understand his reasons, but that I couldn’t be half in and half out. He had been committed to making me happy and being whatever I needed him to be each day. I needed to return that commitment and decide to allow myself to be happy. I would never be able to control whether he would hurt me, but I began to realize that I was hurting myself by giving up on our future if I didn’t at least take the leap into faith that in fact he could be the exact person who was meant to be with me. I was so scared and so insecure in myself. I was still healing and so unsure, but I decided to take that jump and try to move forward.
Over those next few months, there was a lot of adjusting. I realized that I was far from perfect and still very broken. I stayed guarded and protected myself and my threefold above all else. I was still scared of what the future would bring. In the moments where I could free myself from the anxiety and overwhelming fear of messing it up I was happier than I had ever been. I was able to be me. I was loved for that and accepted just as I was. There was no expectations, no eggshells, no disapproval, and no spiteful or nasty name calling. It was pure in those moments. I was relaxed and carefree. I was exactly where I wanted to be. I was lost in love and it was easy. Things were different. I didn’t feel the weight of everything as heavy as I had before. I began to allow walls to come down. I was in the now. I was present. I was thriving in every area of my life. I was excited and ready to make the big steps and do the hard work to move forward.
Then out of no where it all came back again. I was on a high that seemed would never end and suddenly it’s like my whole life came to a crashing halt reminding me that you can’t predict the future. 2 was in crisis again and after my every attempt to keep her safe and make her feel the love and support she was still very much unable to move past her trauma and move forward. She felt like nothing was going to ever get better. She had struggled as she felt guilty for setting boundaries with her father and felt unable to cope with the emotional turmoil in her life. The past was bound and determined to keep her and she felt if she was unable break free from it she would set herself free in the only way she knew would make the pain end forever. She was readmitted to the hospital and again I felt alone in my struggle to save one of my threefold from herself and from our tumultuous past. I wanted to fix it and I couldn’t find my magic wand. This wasn’t a pain that would end because mommy kissed it and made it better. This was not a scraped knee or a broken bone that would mend in a few weeks or months. There were no surgeries. There were no cures. There were no guarantees. I could only hope and pray that my decisions were being made in accordance to what was recommended by her mental health team and that those decisions would be made with her best interest at the top of mind.
I don’t have all the answers and love doesn’t fix everything. Sometimes it’s not enough. I’m twelve weeks in to 2’s inpatient journey this year. I’ve had breakdowns, I’ve lost sleep, weight, money and peace worrying about the future for my threefold and for myself and for the man that my threefold and I have grown to love and depend on during the past year. My threefold have accepted him fully as a new addition to our lives and they now tell him daily they love him too. They have made room for a man and made room for another sister. We are learning all of us that our family is unique and that we can lean on one another for guidance, support, help and mostly we are learning to love.
Regardless of what life throws at me and what argument we have, disagreements are present, or the hurt that we can inflict on each other we find a way back to the love. We find comfort there. In the midst of everything going on there is always a silver lining if we only choose to see it. We aren’t perfect people. We are however the perfect people for one another. So true love and soulmates exist. Fairytales and romance movies or novels are stories but they can also be present in reality. Choosing love is worth the risk of a broken heart. Being with someone who stands by you and loves you through the ups and the downs regardless of if it’s the best of times or the worst is unconditional love. I am grateful I took a leap of faith and allowed myself to choose happiness. I’ve never been more in love or felt more loved than I have this year. When it felt like everything would fall apart and I couldn’t make myself see the silver lining I am so thankful that the man in my life chose to show me the way. I call him PPP because he is the perky positivity peddler and he always sees his way to the good in all things especially me and my threefold. I am learning, growing, healing, and changing still, we all are, but this year made me see that we are going to have a long journey ahead. The bad may keep happening and our past may be testing us all, but in the love we share we have a direction forward. We are prepared and ready to take on the world and rule that world, unicorn style!
