I’ve been here before.
It isn’t exactly a secret that I’ve been married before. In 2010, I married a girl I knew from high school before I’d even graduated from university. She and I had been through a lot already together, and I thought I had found the person I would love forever and grow old with.
Sadly, it was not to be. Whether because we were truly incompatible, or too young, or too afflicted with mental illness and other troubles, we soon realized that being together was driving us apart, she sooner than I, and just after our third anniversary she left. It would take another year for the divorce to be finalized, but we really didn’t make it past three years together.
Today is my (second) third anniversary. I married again in 2019, this time to a woman I had only known about a year. But it was clear from the beginning that we got on very well together. She had never been married, but had experienced enough previous relationships to know what she was looking for. Similarly, having been there before, I also had a clear idea of what marriage meant for me. Once it became obvious where we were headed, we saw no reason to wait and went over to the Justice of the Peace to make it official.
Lots of thoughts have been firing in my brain about my new third anniversary. In some real ways, it feels as if I am on the edge of a precipice. Having been through the failure of one marriage, I am in no way eager to repeat the process. I haven’t exactly been holding my breath for three years, but at the same time, I feel like I’ve been waiting for something to go terribly wrong, and for this one to end in tragedy.
That doesn’t seem to be happening. In fact, it is exactly the opposite: my wife and I enjoy a stronger marriage today than we had three years ago. We have been through many challenges, fights, and upheavals in three years (covid, anyone?) that could end and have ended other marriages. Today we are happy and ready for the future.
Obviously I don’t know what the future holds, but I trust and hope that it will be with my wife beside me, facing what it brings. I wish to reach four, five, ten, fifteen, even as many as twenty (and more!) years together. Honestly that feels an incredibly long time to be together with one person, but I am excited to see how we advance through life as a couple instead of as individual people.
I have many flaws, and still face the challenges of mental illness and other difficulties. She would be the first to tell you she hasn’t arrived at the plane of perfection either. We are works in progress, separately as well as together. The only way to is through, and marriage is hard work. Anyone who says differently either isn’t married or isn’t trying. I don’t care how much love you have for another person, or how attracted you are to them, there is work to be done to love a person at all times in all ways. Love is a verb, and it takes effort to action.
We have built something good here, and I trust it will endure. Neither of us is going anywhere separately, but have committed to going as two together. Three years. Wow, has it been that long already? I can hardly believe it, and yet it has been a good, fun, difficult at times, three years. My previous marriage was in January, and if I were to ascribe meaning in hindsight, getting married when things are at their dead-est may have been a harbinger of the doom to come. This go around, we got married in July, and while in Texas that means some truly hot weather, things are yet growing and enduring. May that be a good omen for us: when things are trying, we can thrive through them.
Some of my favorite memories with my wife are the adventures we have shared traveling to Michigan or Pennsylvania or North Carolina, and the quiet moments hanging out in our studio, she working on crochet or a painting, me taking a toy photograph or watching baseball on my iPad. That is what together-life looks like: the quiet moments with occasional adventures thrown in. It isn’t all excitement and drama and flash, thank goodness!, but it is also quiet and peace and watching a sunset.
I love my wife. I am so thankful that three-ish years ago, I mustered the nerve to send her a Facebook message asking to get to know her better. We met over the lunch line, and soon were taking walks with her quirky dogs, going to see The Lego Movie 2, and getting comfortable with each other. Three years later, we share regular lunches at work, and dinners that we cook side by side, still love on our (sometimes) ridiculous dogs, and enjoy watching The Mandalorian in the evenings while deepening our relationship. I like that I can be me in this relationship, she be her, and that is what continues to attract and draw us closer. In the end, that is what will hold us together through whatever comes next: our individual strengths blended into a strong cord that won’t break.
Three feels good. Tonight we will do our typically fancy thing: go to Red Robin for burgers, and then to the craft store. It may not be wine and high dining and exotic indulgence, but it is exactly what suits us. I can’t wait!
a simple man 