|
Hands down - one of the finest episodes of WMN...and, arguably KaTG, this year - perhaps ever.
I got married in my mid 20's thinking I was all in love and it was all beautiful. Part of it was to satisfy a life long expectation that marriage was the thing to do because that's what my parents had done.
In my early 30's the continuing weight of expectation, my inability to open up about a lot of things and an inability on both our parts to communicate effectively lead my wife to call time on our marriage.
Stupidly, I didn't see it coming. Even more stupidly, I didn't expect the 18 months of her trying to reconcile with me, even after I had moved onto a new relationship. I couldn't go back, recognizing that the rot had probably set in about 2 years before it fell apart.
I'm 7 years into my new relationship and though we are engaged, the topic of marriage is not really a priority for us. We have two children - 5 and 2 - and we are both concentrating on the optimum functionality of our relationship. I brought a lot of baggage to this new relationship - both from my failed marriage and more generally from myself, my childhood - so we have spent alot of time unpacking that and squaring it away.
If and when we do get married, we've agreed it will be low key. We'll go to the registry office in town, sign the requisite papers, then invite our closest friends to a party in the back garden - a spit roast or something similar. If we can't do it for under 2k I'll be very surprised.
Bill Cosby once said of marriage;
'And now in a marriage, my wife and I love each other but I will tell you in a minute we've had some arguments!
I've called her some names I was proud I even thought of...And my wife has run some off on me that I've written down!'
|