[I wonder how many end in widow-dom?]
And the other day I got to thinking.
I was only married six months.
Six very short months.
We did not have a lot of time as a married couple.
How much marriage experience do I really have.
And then I thought:
Would we have made it?
Would we have been celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary someday? 50th?
We had done pre-marital counseling.
We had made a commitment to be in it forever.
But isn't that what everyone says?
I mean, I have some friends that have no problem getting married two or three times due to divorce.
They see no issue in this plan. They feel it is the American way.
I have some friends that have been married less than three years and have already threatened the big D.
But Roger and I said we would do whatever it took to make it work forever.
Forever.
A very short forever of six months.
No matter what came up, we were going to work it out.
It was very ambitious of us.
And now I started thinking, would it have really worked?
Which 50% would we be in?
Would something have happened to change our feelings?
Would we have hated each other by year five?
I know I cannot ask "What if?"
It is not healthy.
It is silly.
And I sort of know where this idea is coming from.
I sort of know what is prompting this new self analysis.
It is from the myth that people only have one true love.
A very stupid myth.
Really? Just one person? Please...
Who made up that rule?
Probably the same person who said widows cannot date for the first year.
So as I am starting to explore my relationship with Mr. X, I am very happy with him.
He is different than Roger of course.
Very different in some aspects.
And I am really happy with these differences.
It is an internal battle right now.
Who was really the Mr. Right for me?
How could I love two guys who are very different than each other?
Was one love fake?
Maybe (quite possibly) I am overanalyzing things.
Maybe I am very different than I was.
And even more quite possibly, a person can truly love two very different people. Maybe even more if they had the chance and/or opportunity?
Maybe Roger was what I needed for the person I was then.
Maybe he prepared me for the next phase.
Maybe he had to happen in order for me to be fixed.
And maybe Mr. X is the person I need now.
Fix all my new issues.
Or maybe I am just insane.
4 comments:
So, you may have figured out by now that I swear by quotes...some silly...some touching. Either way, they somehow have always served as a mantra for me. Hope you'll find some of my (well, not MINE, but I dont' know who they're from) quotes, helpful, healing, inspiring, encouraging, or just plain fun to read :o)
In response to this quote:
"It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives."
I'm happy for you that Mr. X is in your life right now :o)
"was one love fake?" Please don't ever write that.
I find myself to be an open-minded soul and I'm happy that you're happy once again...I really am.
However, please do not doubt/think that your marriage wouldn't have made the distance otherwise - like you acknowledged: "thinking WHAT IF...isn't healthy".
I'm sure you were a great spouse for the six months of being a wife to Roger as was he and it "WAS REAL". As the quote goes "better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all".
Good luck with Mr. X and your transition into a new kind of love/relationship - seldom people find it twice let alone Once in a lifetime, but this new love is starting out so please never doubt if one love was fake.
With love,
-E
I dunno, I think lots of folks find more than one great love. Some folks find more than two!
What you're doing is real, and it matters.
I can barely remember the first anniversary of Gavin's death at this point. I'll bet i just slept a lot and I think my Mom came in to babysit. I think. This year was much better.
X
Supa
I often think the same things about Charley. I always assumed that, based on our history, etc., etc., that we'd never fall into "That" Big-D category. And as I've become so jaded and cynical on this journey these past 4 years, I sometimes wonder those "what ifs" too, if we *would* have made it. Though in all honesty, I think a lot of my cynicism and fear now about never knowing if a marriage can last have come from witnessing some awful, unexpected divorces in my circle of friends over the last 4-5 years...and not because of widowhood.
I've never believed there was only just One True Love for anybody. Perhaps it's because I never, ever thought Charley was my "soul mate" (or whatever other garbledygook name you want to call it). I've had one or two other people who I thought, at the time, were soul mates (most of whom are no longer in my life, really)...but I never thought that of Charley. Partially it's because he would have scoffed and choked at the very notion (Mr. Philosophical, he was not). But sometimes I wonder if it's because a part of me knew that something like this could happen, or if we were never supposed to have a long life together. Which is also not a healthy line of thinking.
And your love with Roger absolutely was not fake, nor was your marriage a failure or too short to know anything about marriage. I've often felt defensive of the same things, that, after being married for only 19 months, how could I possibly know anything about what "marriage" takes? Except you and I--and all the other widows and widowers we know--know more than most people will learn in their lifetimes. We know what matters. And there are a lot of other people who know it too...some through 5, 10, 50 years of marriage...and some even in only 6 or 19 months. Would our marriages have lasted? Who knows? But the fact is still that they did last. We didn't have failed marriages. They ended successfully, to the end of our days.
(And I'm stealing some words straight from the mouth of a guy at my support group; he's the one who always reminds us that our marriages did not end in failures, and all the rest that I said...er, plagiarized. ;o))
(And oops...another long comment from me. I should really go to bed and stop babbling at the fingers. ;o) Hugs, Star!)
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