Endings

  I have heard it said that you never know a man so truly as when you go through a divorce with him, that is when his true nature becomes most clear. You sometimes find out things that were hidden from you while in a high stakes relationship. I have experienced the truth of this for sure. In marriage number two, the fact that I discovered my then husband was is fact with another woman only days after marrying me which he must have in fact arranged so that even as he was participating in wedding vows of fidelity, he knew he was lying. He had a belief that "what they don't know won't hurt them". The one who knew the truth but chose not to tell me until after I had filed for divorce (6 years later) told me then only so that I would not be lured back into the relationship by an unrealistic promise of his for fidelity. She felt it important that I know it didn't just "go wrong" it had always been a false foundation. In the current marriage, as horrible as it has been with what was clearly in my face, I have yet again discovered the same truth. Again no one told me what they knew until I had left. This time it went beyond the common place age old infidelity and into plain perversion, criminal behaviors, and 16 years of lying and deception. Again, I was faced with seeing it didn't just "go wrong" it was always so.
      And then there was the marriage of my youth, just barely turned 20. My brother has always felt guilty that he did not counsel us before marrying us, then again as a young pastor of 23 himself I don't know that he truly had the wisdom then to have done so effectively and I suspect that I would not have listened at that time. His reflection has always been that I married my "best friend" so that he wouldn't disappear, as he was completing studies at the Junior College where we had met. My closest friend from age eleven had moved away to Florida and it is true that home was not a nurturing place for me. I didn't see that I was trying to create a safe haven for myself then, but I see it now.
    From the perspective of many years gone by, I see that I was also not so far from having made a good choice. I loved the intellect and honesty and creativity of this man. I did not however comprehend his advice that "love and sex are different", I wanted love and sex all in the same relationship. I didn't appreciate then that the pressure I put on him for the later was probably suffocating. I was suddenly not the friend who just loved to hang out, but wanted him to wear matching clothes, lose the black glasses, and be my lover. Yikes, he was only 20 himself and his family life was not so functional either. Two kids trying to make a home, it would have been a miracle for that to work I suppose. It would have been so much healthier to continue to be close friends. The pain of ending that marriage was in trying to hold on (not losing my best friend) I in fact smothered him most likely and lost my best friend anyway. Now, many years later, having lived through what I have, how very much I appreciate how I must have made him feel always pushing him to "change" rather than allowing him to be himself and feel loved just as he was. I simply at that age did not have the wisdom to do so. Rather than fighting me when I filed for divorce, he graciously let me go.