So yeah... I’ve been married before. I don’t really talk about it a whole lot, but if it does ever come up, I normally get the response of “What? You were married??” To which I reply: “Yes, for three years.” You should see the look on their face. “How old WERE you?!”
17 year old me before senior prom, with my brother.
I was 18 as a matter of fact. We had started dating our senior year of high school. By Christmas he (let’s just call him ‘the dude’) had went and bought me a ring and asked me to marry him. I seriously thought he was the one, this was it. Our parents were… a little surprised. (unhappy?) We didn’t care though. We were graduating, he was going into the army, and everything was good.
Me, my sister and my dad having lunch after a NHS assembly.
NHS = National Honor Society. Were YOU in it too?
Then a month after we graduated, the dude broke up with me. Out of nowhere. Or well apparently I was being a huge bitch? Whatever though I guess. I was heartbroken, slowly got over it and went off to college (6 hours away).
18 year old me, in my very sparkly and totally unflattering color guard unifrom.
Everything was fine and dandy up at college. (I say up because it was in Northern Michigan) I had a new boyfriend, school was good, my job was awesome- working at a children’s museum- and life was basically just rolling along. Then October comes along, and the dude gets ahold of me, tells me all this “oh I made a mistake, you are all I could think about while I was at training blah blah blah crap.” Okay, maybe not crap, maybe he did mean all that. Anyway. Long story short, we got back together, and for SOME REASON that ring was right back on my finger. Looking back now, that should NOT have happened, at all, for a very long time.
Well Christmas break came and I was back down state at home. One day the dude gets a call from someone in his unit. They’re getting deployed. Get this, they are leaving the very beginning of February. Like a month and a half away. So what do we do? Go get a marriage license, make an appointment with the justice of the peach, and get married 3 days after Christmas. So within the span of 6 months, we go from engaged, to broken up, to back together, to married.
Deployment comes and goes, he made it back safe, we had a “vow renewal” – because we wanted to have an actual wedding, and have our families around – and that was that. The only problem with all of this? Deployment changes people. It’s rough. I’m not just talking about him wanting to drive down the middle of the road, or avoiding potholes like the plague because of what could be in there. I mean, emotionally towards me he was different. ( I don’t think this happens to ALL people who get deployed, this was just OUR case.)
Then he got a job working the night shift at a factory. He would be awake while I was asleep, he was sleeping while I was at school and work. We hardly saw each other. We started fighting. Then we started fighting more. Before I knew it, he didn’t even bother coming upstairs when he finally did go to sleep. He was sleeping on the couch. Which made us fight even MORE.
By the time October 2007 rolled around (only a year after our vow renewal), we were just NOT getting a long at all. We had a trip planned to go to Florida with my family and he said to me the night before we left: “You know we are going to have to pretend we like each other when we are down there, right?” Nice. About a month later I moved out. (In case you were wondering- Florida was a disaster)
Self portrait of me, trying to get my grove back.
Or something like that.
Our divorce was finalized April 2008. You really don’t think you will ever get divorced when you feel like you are marrying your soul mate. Looking back, there was SO much wrong with our relationship. At the end of it all though, I think he just stopped loving me. I’m sure we could have tried harder, but what’s done is done.
And that’s how all of that happened. Obviously there is a lot more to it, with three whole years having gone down. But I don’t really want to re-hash. This isn’t about me and the dude. However throughout a lot of the wedding planning I have used the phrase “the last time I got married….” So seeing how it comes up, I felt you should know what went on.
Any other encore brides out there?
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