Our Anniversary.....

Fifteen years ago, Hubby and I made the trek to Chattanooga, Tennessee to get married. I wrote about it here almost three years ago.

I don't think I wrote about the fact that I was scared to death. Having been through not one but TWO bad marriages, I was beginning to think the common denominator was ME. Well obviously the common denominator was ME, but I didn't want to think I was the problem. At least not all of it.

The first marriage was simply a matter of a youthful bad choice. He was (and still is) a good guy, but it was sort of like being married to a puppy.

I wish I could blame the second marriage on youth. It was just a bad choice, pure and simple. I may have mentioned it before, but when Sweet Girl and I left that house, it was because we came home to find the front door shot up. As in with a shotgun. As in you couldn't close the front door anymore. He was passed out on the couch, so we gathered as many of our things as we could and never looked back. But that's not what this is about.

Without getting too mushy or going into too much detail, I'll just say that the past 15 years have been worth all the frustration and sometimes sheer terror of the other two relationships. In some ways the past 15 years have gone by in a blur that seems like an instant, and in other ways it seems like Hubby and I have been together forever.

We rarely argue, almost NEVER exchange heated words (except in the rare case of a bedroom suit that winds up costing $10,000 in home renovations just to fit it in our bedroom), and always have fun together. We share a love of sports, although I am more passionate than he is. As I write this blog post, Hubby has turned in for the evening and I am yawning as I watch the closing innings of a Braves baseball game. We travel well together and have never had what we could call a "bad" trip, not even the time we spent the night in the Miami airport just trying to get home. We don't necessarily like the same kind of music (on satellite radio, he keeps it on "50's on 5" and I sneak it over to "70's on 7" when he isn't looking), but he has been to at least two Billy Joel concerts with me. I've gone with him on golf/gambling trips when I didn't want to go, and I didn't even bitch about it.

Once several years ago, when Hubby was still working, he wanted to go out of town for a golf tournament, but he was scheduled to work on Sunday. He couldn't find anyone to work for him, so I did it. I put on his Pepsi uniform and worked the grocery stores he was responsible for that day. I had been with him a gazillion times, so I knew what to do (mostly), and even if the store manager HAD been around and noticed I wasn't the usual Pepsi employee, he wouldn't have cared as long as his store was worked properly (and it was). I'm sure in a pinch Hubby would have likewise filled in for me at school, though I shudder to consider what the results might have been.

We have a lot in common, but we also have our separate interests. My blog pal DJan wrote about this very topic several weeks ago, and I need to revisit her post to help sort out my own thoughts on the issue. I recall thinking, "Yeah, it's just like that!" when I read her post, so I think it was something along the lines of having similar interests but not feeling compelled to share every waking moment together. Hubby goes off to golf, and I ride my bike. He wants me to take up golf, and I might, but it still won't be a case of us ALWAYS going to the golf course together. Heaven forbid. He isn't interested in riding a bicycle, mainly because he doesn't want to wear "those silly shorts." Even when we go on vacation, I take my bike and go off for an hour or two by myself, and he reads or watches television while I'm gone.

To celebrate our anniversary today, we worked like DOGS. Hubby mowed the lawn and cleaned off our back porch while I scrubbed the tile floor in the hall bathroom with a TOOTHBRUSH. (It was in pretty bad shape.) We did clean up enough to go out for an early dinner (I even wore a dress - I know, right?), and I picked up some new sports bras for BRAG next week.

It's been an awesome 15 years.

Love Him (or Her) Like a Dog.....

Not that I should be giving advice about marriage to ANYONE, but I have boiled the secret to a happy marriage down to one simple concept:

Don't get married unless you love that person like a dog.

A dog is never in a bad mood. You can leave him for hours and hours, and when you get home he is thrilled to see you again. He doesn't pout that you left him, he just wants to be scratched behind the ears and allowed to lick your hand.

You can go so far as to leave a dog at a kennel or a mother-in-law's house for as long as a week, and even though you might feel guilty while you're gone, he will not punish you with the silent treatment or beg for souvenirs when you get home. He will love you just as much as if you just returned from the grocery store.

A dog never rolls his eyes or makes faces behind your back. He might not get your jokes, but he does listen, and he never scoffs or insults you. He will fetch the ball just as many times as you will throw it, and if you hide it from him because you're tired, he will forgive you.

A dog will curl up beside you and doze happily, but he will also jump up and follow you to the bathroom or the kitchen or the basement or outside every single time, and he won't act all pissed off because you woke him up.

A dog doesn't mind if you gain a few pounds, and he won't notice if you lose a few. He loves you just the way you are. He appreciates your cooking no matter WHAT it is, and he will do a little dance for something special like a piece of cheese.

A dog wants nothing more than to hear your voice speaking in sweet tones.

Until a person can feel like a dog toward another human being, he or she shouldn't get married. Until you can be just as happy to see the other person at the end of a long day as you are after a long separation, don't even bother tying the knot.

I'm only sorry it took me so long (and so many tries) to find someone who still makes my tail wag even after 15 years.

And it isn't even our anniversary.

My Two Exes.....

Why does that sound like the title of a sitcom?

One of my former students commented on a blog post the other day that she wasn't aware I had TWO husbands before Hubby (she calls him Sexy Legs, for good reason). It's no accident that she didn't know that; I kind of keep it low-key. [I only allow FORMER students to read my blog, and then only those I like and respect.]

There is a stigma to having been divorced twice. People will forgive you for one divorce -- even expect it -- but if you've been divorced twice, there is a possibility that something is wrong with YOU. If I tell a story about one of my exes, I don't distinguish between the two. If I'm telling the story, it's probably something stupid one of them did, so the stories are pretty much interchangeable.

I didn't understand that whole stigma idea before my second divorce. Prior to that I routinely made stupid and tasteless remarks about Nurse Jane's marriages, and finally she scolded me for it. I didn't understand why until I was in the same situation. (I'm sorry, Nurse Jane!)

It could be a family curse. Everyone in my family has been married three times. [Four for Katydid if you count the fact that she married the same guy twice, but she doesn't like to count him, so we won't mention it here.] My mother finally found a good man, and he died on their fourth anniversary. My brother married a very young girl the first time, because she was SUPPOSEDLY pregnant with his child. Ummm hmmmm. His second ex-wife is the sister of a man who began one of the most successful chain restaurants around these parts, and she frequently jets off to the Bahamas in her brother's plane. But brother didn't love her anymore, and she was, after all, the one who lost her engagement ring when it was on the other hand the whole time. His third wife is a gem who puts up with him and his sometimes-psycho relatives. Score: Love 1, Money 0. I won't talk about Nurse Jane and Katydid's marriages (other than the part that I already didn't mention), because they read my blog. If I run them off, I will be down to roughly two readers. Maybe three. Hubby has also been married three times. I'm telling you, it's a curse.

Here's my excuse: The first two times, I married projects.

It's an ego thing. I thought I could fix them.

Never mind that one of the mantras I heard all my life was "You can't change people." See, it's an ego thing. I thought I would be the first one.

My first marriage was to my baby daddy, right out of college. He is a completely nice guy. I don't think I've ever heard ANYONE say they didn't like him. That sentence has an error of pronoun agreement, but I'm on vacation this week so I don't care. Back to the exes. I may have heard people say they didn't UNDERSTAND him, or wonder why he NEVER SHUTS UP, but I don't think anyone ever said they didn't like him.

He claims to be 6' 10", but I think he's more like 6' 7". His mother was still adding to his height when we divorced (he was seven feet tall by then, according to her), so by the time she died, he was probably in the Guinness Book of World Records. I am 5' 2". We looked a little ridiculous together.

He was a lot of fun. He could party with the best of them, which was important when I was 21. He would go anywhere, and he was always the life of the party. But he was very childlike. It was cute when we first got married, this giant of a man who would cry at the drop of a hat (still does) and loved to watch the Smurfs on television. [Seriously, we had a HUGE fight once because I wanted to watch the U.S. Open tennis tournament on tv, and he wanted to watch the Smurfs. The only way we could settle it was to leave the house, and we went to my mother's house. Where my brother was watching the tennis tournament. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.] After Sweet Girl came along, however, it wasn't too cute anymore. I needed a partner, not another kid. I needed someone who could buy me a birthday present without first consulting with my mother, his mother, his sister, and me. After we divorced, he first hooked up with a woman who was forced to break off their relationship when her husband got out of prison FOR DEALING COCAINE, and then he set up housekeeping with a woman who told Sweet Girl at the age of nine that she could never come back to that house. He cut off all contact with Sweet Girl, caving in to that woman's wishes [we don't know for sure if they were ever married, and she's dead now], and he lost whatever slivers of respect I had remaining for him. They were slim to start with.

When we divorced, I went from one extreme to the other. In more ways than one. My second ex-husband is 5' 6" on a good day, and he says he's 5' 9". And a jerk. Even the guys he golfs with think he's an a**hole. I married him when Sweet Girl was only 3, and we built a house. I stayed years after I should have left because I thought I owed it to my girl to give her a house to live in. At that time I didn't see any possibilities for ever owning a home on my own. Then we got to a point where I just hoped every day that he....... just wouldn't come home from work or one of his occasional regular frequent daily drunken binges. Ever heard of "little man syndrome"? He's the epitome of it. He was verbally and physically abusive, and he enjoyed getting a laugh at anyone's expense. Hate is a very strong word, and it isn't enough. The only good thing I can say about him is that I have maintained the life insurance policy I took out on him.

I despaired of ever finding a decent man until I met Hubby. I'll save the details of our early relationship, but suffice it to say that I was terrified of getting married again. Sweet Girl was at a difficult age for such a traumatic change in our lives (thirteen), and her well-being was most important. I finally decided that she needed to see that the world does contain some decent men. It was a risky move, but the payoff has been huge.

So that's the story of my exes. It ain't pretty, and I'm not proud of it. I've always lived by the philosophy of having no regrets, but that second marriage stretches that idea to its very outermost limit. I certainly wouldn't take back either of my marriages. Sweet Girl came out of the first one, and if I hadn't been married to that jerk the second time, I wouldn't have met Hubby.

Now if I could go back and orchestrate things so that I would still wind up where I am now..... that's a completely different story.