Eden Cafe

When my husband was just my boyfriend and he proposed to me, I immediately said “yes.” He immediately decided that his impromptu proposal was not good enough, rushed out of bed to dress and go down on knee for proposal 2.0 but, by then, it didn’t matter because I was already busy considering life as his wife and he was ruining the moment which, to me, had already been perfect. Since then, four and a half years have passed and while those years have ultimately been the happiest in my life and my husband has provided me with more joy and even serenity than anyone to ever cross my path, those years have also included countless mistakes – many of which were avoidable. Now, as we consider a life altering and heart breaking decision (divorce), I have come to realize that sometimes the only way to learn is the hard way.
I suppose it’s accurate to say that I began learning my lessons in love long before I met my husband. I had a string of exes, all of whom I’d thought I’d been in love with and all of whom I gave immense power over myself. I made myself vulnerable to them, not because I was seeking a positive connection but because I was afraid to be alone and because I didn’t know better than to protect myself. I never had a relationship role model and I constantly watched my family members precede through bitter divorce battles as the people I had known as family became nothing more than people I knew in a previous lifetime. It would come as no surprise that as soon as I caught the eye of a member of the opposite sex and flirting became anything more, I became dependent and hung on for dear life.
I became increasingly skillful at some self defeating habits. I became the girl who was blind to the truth. It wasn’t that these boys were necessarily lying to me, they didn’t even have to; I simply didn’t want to imagine that anything unsavory might be going on behind the scenes so no explanations were necessary. Of course, had I been more truthful, I would have seen that one ex was constantly flirting or fucking other women and that our on again, off again relationship was doing nothing but pulling me under. Every time we’d break, I’d beg him to come back. It didn’t matter that he was the problem or that I was hurting. I simply couldn’t stand the idea of being alone and I forgave all his trespasses against me, countless times.
It’s not like I wasn’t warned. It came to a point where none of my friends liked or trusted this guy and they would try to eloquently point out the holes and cracks in his never ending stories. Despite the fact that they were obviously right, despite having all the clues dangled in my face, I never put together all the pieces of the puzzle. I ignored the parts of the picture that didn’t portray my happy ending. Unsurprisingly, our vicious cycle continued for at least a year – a tumultuous year at that – until, one day, instead of breaking up with me, he simply stopped talking to me. At that point, it dawned on me (and quite painfully) that nothing would ever change with him and I was only enabling him to hurt me. I put the entirety of my heart there and he, as jerks are so likely to do, tore it to shreds not once but dozens of times.
I wish I could say that, after this guy, I wised up but, if I did, I’d be a liar. Perhaps I thought I did and the guy I dated throughout my sophomore and junior year of high school wasn’t as loose with his body or heart but he was no saint, either. Although we’d been friends for years, I guess we were never close enough for me to become acquainted with his drug using and promiscuous past. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been as angry as I was when I found out he was still using drugs when we were dating. Yet, I never questioned why he was expelled from college and when he found himself incarcerated for larceny, I found myself 16 and writing to an inmate. Now that he was no longer able to provide me with the attention and esteem boosts that I had come to rely on. I pondered, about my situation for months before I would realize that while I thought I was in love with him, I was only in love with the idea of being in love. The actual subject of my adoration was exactly the sort of person who had nothing productive to offer my teenaged self.
I waited until he was released to break the bad news about us breaking up. I felt I owed him that much but I know better now. I owed him nothing. In many ways, I feel like I got out just in time and. for the first time, I was the one calling the shots. My newfound sense of power enabled me to have confidence without needing someone else to give it to me. I enjoyed being single for a while and it was then, when I wasn’t looking for someone, that I met the man who would become my husband. A few years down the road, my ex’s new wife would accuse me of having his children and when I learned that several other women also had his children (up to seven of them), I knew I’d made the right decision. At the time, it had been hard. Although my mind had been made up for quite some time, it hurt me to be the one hurting someone else and there no way to honestly and kindly tell him he wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be with… ever. As he cried, I found myself understanding why people say things like “it’s not you; it’s me” and I hung up as quickly as possible.
Perhaps I could have avoided some of the sticky situations I found myself in as a teenager has I used my head more than my heart. Perhaps if I had learned to be comfortable with myself and accepted that I was complete without another person or that life wouldn’t end if I single (even if I was always single), I would have valued myself more and made decisions which reflect that – like protecting myself from these toxic people. Of course, then I would not have been where I was to meet my husband or have become the person I am now. I suppose that is the ultimate truth about learning things the hard way.