Anniversary Nostalgia. Yuck.

Today has been funky. Sixteen years ago today I went to the most beautiful wedding.

Mine and Stanley’s.

All week I’ve been dreading it as the days got closer to April 11.

 

Last night I was edgy with Al.

I got insecure and quiet. I think a lot of it was because of today.

I don’t know why this year hit me hard.  Last year was no big deal and the first year after my divorce I think I forgot all together.  Possibly I was too depressed to notice days passing.

This morning I woke up sad and just plain funky. Al and I talked on the phone which did help.  He is coming into town next weekend for Easter and I can’t wait.  It’s been 3 weeks already since he left, doesn’t time fly?  I reframed my thoughts about my own anniversary and the grief about that relationship ending by playing the ‘at least I’ game. You know that game.  You start by saying,

I may be divorced, but at least I:

(insert words, i.e.)

• haven’t been to jail.
• still have my teeth.
• have a job.
• have friends in my life.
• don’t have to have sex with him anymore.

(and so on and so on and so on…)

I play that game a lot.

This week I have been adding a whole lot of sex answers to the game.  I went to dinner with some friends the other night and one of them, who is celebrating 20 years of marriage, shared that she wears a maxi pad to bed every night, so her husband thinks she has her period and doesn’t try to have sex with her.  He’s concerned about her gynocological health, but in her words, “at least I don’t have to have sex with him.”

So now I can say to myself,

I may be divorced, but at least I don’t sleep in a maxi pad every night to avoid sex.

Another friend at the table remarked what a wonderful idea it was.  She is celebrating 15 years of holy matrimony.  She said that when her husband hugs her she gives him the brush off so that he doesn’t get his hopes up for bed.

For real.

I myself am guilty of that one in my marriage so,

I may be divorced but at least I don’t have to do the shoulder block anymore.

I’m grateful that I’m not in a bad marriage anymore.

 

But all of that said, I still consider my divorce the biggest failure of my life.  Now, I’m only 49, so the jury is still out on how much more trouble I can get into, but I’m hopeful that my divorce is the biggest failure of my life.  I’m trying to be a good mother, so hopefully I won’t fail at that. I don’t imagine a career in politics at this point, so maybe I’m out of the woods for a national embarrassment. I’m too old to leak a sex tape (because yuck) but that would be a pretty big failure, but I think I’m past that possible fail.

So, really, I’m going to look at the sunny side and say this is my failure and I will get over it and one day hardly even remember that I got married to whoever that was on April 11.

BTW, I did tell my friends after they finished sharing sex avoidance techniques that I highly recommend a lovah since I always want to have sex with my lovah.  (He may need to learn the finger wag technique.  I may be the one getting the brush off!)

 

Relax your panties, I didn’t really encourage them to take a lovah.  I told them to date their husband and make their husband their lovah because really, lovah’s are much preferrable.