Diamond Ring…I Don’t Need No Stinking Diamond Ring

A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to have been abandoned in the city of enduring clouds and rain by the now-ex-husband. I say “fortunate” because his leaving saved me a lifetime of insecurity, self-loathing and shear insanity. As much as I don’t like to “talk” about him anymore or even visit the prospect that I was once “hitched”, when you are writing about human relationships and your wish is to explore the spectrum to which the human heart endures, you just have to bite the bullet at times to express what you’ve learned.

Don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t and isn’t a bad guy. He never laid a hand on me…. (shortage of chemistry and all) and he wasn’t abusive. Actually, he was / is……(we’ll work in the past-tense for obvious reasons) pretty smart and athletic and driven. He tried to be a husband (eluding the effort portion of the program of course). I mean, you actually have to live under the same roof in most cases to succeed at the whole marriage thing. His ambition at his job superseded any ambition either one of us might have had to conduct our marriage in a serious manner so you really couldn’t call our marriage anything but an occasional effort at playing house. Our relationship revolved around his career, his goals, his wants, his needs, his hobbies and his dreams. This is by no means all his fault though because you actually have to have dreams and goals in order to revolve around them and at the time, I had none. I did make a feeble attempt to make all that was his my own, just as a good little wife should. I took up skiing, tried like hell to kayak and mountain bike and did my best to work out. Tried as I might though, I was lost in an abyss of ever-relenting self-hatred and disappointment because I could never live up to his standards nor my own considering I had constructed this little make-believe world where I actually fit into his life…..I was a square peg trying to push myself into a round hole. I felt trapped and pretty resentful that he had taken me from all I knew and loved. It took 35 pounds (added to my ass of course), him asking me to leave because he wasn’t attracted to my fat ass anymore and about 1 year of hard time in a lonely one-bedroom apartment with an endless supply of Michelob Ultra and Marlboro Lights to make me realize this but gall darn it’, I figured it out.

I was fortunate enough to have figured out that after only a short time of really being together, I hardly even knew this guy. I mean, I hardly understood him and rather than growing to know him better, we just seemed to drift further apart. I needed to grow up and face it like the woman I was finally becoming. I made a terrible mistake when I said those vows; I knew it then just as I know it now. I’m sure he’d say the same thing in retrospect. We were young and doing what we thought was expected of us. We got in over our heads and neither one of us had the guts or self-reliance to take a few steps back to realize the mistake we were making. Our marriage was one of legality and terminology, not the coveted love and respect so many people dream about.

The silver lining though is that I did grow up and I did find the dreams and goals I wanted from this life. I realized that going through what I went through with him, in Seattle, all alone….made me who I am today and events as they were, guided me into this life I lead where I finally understand the true meaning of love, of success, of dreams and of what it means to be yourself. Before I knew it, fate called me home and placed me in the arms of the real meaning of love. I grew up and I found a man that sees me for what I am, for what I stand for, for who I want to be and someone who shares OUR dreams…OUR wants, OUR needs, OUR goals. We have something between us that can’t be described or explained in any justified manner because words just don’t cut it. I was fortunate to have learned from past experiences and now I’m blessed enough to have a man in my life that truly loves me. Sure we argue and occasionally find a fault or two in our actions together but overall, we have nothing but the utmost respect and love for one another. Now although we own no paper that indicates so, the fact that we share this life together and share in all goals, dreams, successes, failures, decisions, etc. makes us more married than any yellow tinted piece of paper could ever exhibit. I guess my point is that although the word and the action can be challenging, the belief in the miracle of love can make even the most skeptical believe in marriage…no matter what avenue of “marriage” you as a couple wish to pursue. I’m married to my best friend and lover in my heart and soul and in all practicality of living with one another and that is enough for us…..no diamond ring required.