Yes, my marriage failed and I’m okay with that. I’m okay with my second marriage failing for many reasons. It was an experience in life, even though it led to divorce. It’s still better than having no experiences. I took a chance that the relationship would work. Through the good and even the bad we were there for each other. In spite of our differences, starting with our backgrounds, we still tried. We came from different sides of the tracks but that was okay.
During our marriage, we survived one day at a time. We didn’t have money for a nice house, fancy cars or expensive vacations. However, we did have a car that ran most of the time, a roof over our heads and family to go visit a couple times each year. I admit that we often took each other for granted. Neither of us appreciated having another person to be there for us until something dire happened. It was usually a family death. Death tromped everything else. All marital animosity disappeared immediately during moments of crisis.
I could dwell on the negative things that happened like the lying, cheating and backstabbing that led to the end of the marriage. Looking back on it though, why would I want to dwell on the dark days? In order to move forward with my life I had to stop taking two steps backwards, constantly reviewing that chapter in my life over and over again. So, I stopped mentally poking at the things that didn’t make it last and started remembering the things that made it work. Everything balances out in the long run. Sure there were bad times. But there were many good experiences, too.
In the long run, it’s the important things that really matter, and we were there for each other for the important things during our marriage and after:
When my six year-old daughter (his step-daughter) had a fever of 105, he carried her into the minor emergency clinic. He left work in the middle of the night and drove five miles to get me a drink when I was too ill to get out of bed. After we divorced, he loaded up my daughter’s and my belongings in a U-Haul and moved us over a hundred miles so I could be near my mother. If he had not done that, I would have missed the last three years of my mother’s life. When his brother committed suicide, I held him and I drove in heavy rain to get him to the memorial service over a hundred miles away. I begged a person who hated me to give him a grave they owned so his aunt could be buried. I went with him to his dead mom’s 30-year class reunion and cried with him when one of her classmates apologized for making fun of his mom when they were in school. I nursed him back to health after his car wreck.
He taught my daughter to ride a bicycle and how to work on cars. When she was about 11 or 12, together they saved our neighbor’s life. He took her to the monster truck show and to the Hard Rock Casino parking lot to meet a celebrity. When she had a medical issue and vanished for a day, he helped me find her when she finally called and was not sure what town she was in, and then he drove her car home once we knew she was okay.
It’s moments like those that I will never dismiss. I won’t forget the unpleasant moments either, but I will do my best to bury those memories under the good ones. So… yes, my marriage failed. But I’m okay with that because I chose to live.
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