Divorce. How did we get here? I have been thinking a lot lately about sharing my story that not many people know about how my first marriage ended. It didn’t begin with divorce. In fact it began at a small Nextel cell phone shop when I was 18 years old. My ex husband came in looking for a cell phone and I had casually mentioned to my coworker that he was handsome. Wrong thing to do to a male coworker. As a joke, they gave my ex my business card with my cell number and on the back of it wrote, “I think you are hot! Call me!”. Yes, this is how it all started. One little business card. He called and we started out dating slowly. Our first date was at Ihop and we had lemonade and soda. I remember thinking that this was something bigger then all the other relationships I had been in…After the first date I couldn’t sleep and remember getting up at 3am and going to George Webbs for cheese fries and a patty melt. As I sat there I tried to figure out what this feel was inside me. We dated for three months before we moved in to our first apartment together. That was crazy! We had two dogs Toby and Dunkin and lived on the north side of Racine. We would go for long walk at the dog park and cook together. We would stay up for hours playing video games, drinking,and having a good time just being a young couple. Then I remember the scariest day of my life. We had been dating 9 months when I realized I was late. Like Late late! I called him at work and told him over the phone, ” You are going to be a dad. I’m pregnant.” Apparently he turned whiter then a sheet because the lady who worked with him made him sit down on the floor.
At this time I want to take a moment to say, I was 19, not living at home, really had not been to church much at all and the year before had just gotten out of an abusive relationship. I did not have much guidance in this area. the only example of family that I had was my parents and they had an amazing marriage. How were they going to react to this?
We had Abigail Ryanne on August 14, 2006. We were married August 24, 2007. Aaron James came on July 13, 2008 and we were separated two days before christmas in 2009. What happened between 2006 and 2009 that caused this? A lot of things. First, marriage is not all butterflies and fun times like in the movies. It is full of hardships and growing pains. At 19 I was not ready to accept these and to make decisions in a mature manner. Second, being married to an Italian who is very stubborn but has a huge heart is even harder. I am not much easier. Very stubborn, set in my ways and unable to take a NO. When we fought it wasn’t just arguing it was arguing, swearing, throwing stuff, walking out, walking back in and living in this crazy world of figuring out us and this little family we had created. Third, Finances. I hate money, I hate the love of money. Trying to raise a small family on $13 an hour.. You can only imagine the difficulties we faced. When I felt like I could take no more, I went back to church. He tried, made a really big effort to be the spiritual leader I needed and even accepted Christ on his own terms in our living room after watching Facing the Giants. We had many great times together and did love each other inside and out but there was one thing we hadn’t learned how to do and that was protect our marriage.
Loneliness. PPD. Poverty. Adulterous Relationships.Sexual Sin. Alcohol. Stress. Miscommunication. These things all lead up to the failure of our marriage. We tried, we were both guilty on some of these accounts and did our best to have counseling to help our marriage. In the end we both were just too strong headed. I pushed forward, and he gave up trying. We thought it would be better to just end it.
The hardest part of this was I never thought the challenges now with split parenting, two different house holds, different rules, different relationships, different beliefs, and how they would hurt our children that we both love so much.
It didn’t start with divorce, but it sure ended with one. Divorce is like a death that you have to keep replaying over and over again. There is never closure and it is always front and center in your mind. At least with death you can morn and grieve and move on. It would have been easier had one of us just died.
Blended Bessings 