Wedding anniversary
Nov. 4th, 2002 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susandennisToday is the anniversary of my wedding. 1979. I was 30. My husband was 51. I was old enough to know better and so was he. There was no reason for us to marry. We didn't want children. He had 5, I didn't want any. He even had experience - knew better - at being married (I was number 2 out of 4 that I know of) and I was not stupid (well, that could probably be debated).
A friend who had known me for a very long time said that I did it to be able to say I had done it. Sadly, she probably was right. Clearly I did not give it very much thought.
I knew the very day I married that I had made a mistake. I hated every single thing about being married. And I hated the idea of admiting to the world - with a divorce - that I had made such a horrible mistake. So I stayed married. For four years. It was not fun.
There were some highlights. My husband was a newspaper reporter. Except for the year we got married, our anniversary fell on or near election night so he was generally out of town or tied up and we didn't have to pretend to celebrate which was always such a relief.
Once, our house was robbed. I came home from work and the front door was open and his stereo equipment was in the front hallway. We figured out later that the robbers were frightened away before they finished. But, my very first thought when I saw it was: "yahoo! he's leaving!!" Not so lucky.
Finally, on New Years Day, 1983, we'd come home from a party that afternoon and were watching the news on TV and he said 'I think we should get a divorce'. I said 'ok.' And that was it.
I did learn, though. I learned that I am not made to live with another human. I had several subsequent relationships that could have easily ended up in marriage and/or co-habitation. I never even came close. I might not have been too bright the first time around but I didn't forget the lesson.
A friend who had known me for a very long time said that I did it to be able to say I had done it. Sadly, she probably was right. Clearly I did not give it very much thought.
I knew the very day I married that I had made a mistake. I hated every single thing about being married. And I hated the idea of admiting to the world - with a divorce - that I had made such a horrible mistake. So I stayed married. For four years. It was not fun.
There were some highlights. My husband was a newspaper reporter. Except for the year we got married, our anniversary fell on or near election night so he was generally out of town or tied up and we didn't have to pretend to celebrate which was always such a relief.
Once, our house was robbed. I came home from work and the front door was open and his stereo equipment was in the front hallway. We figured out later that the robbers were frightened away before they finished. But, my very first thought when I saw it was: "yahoo! he's leaving!!" Not so lucky.
Finally, on New Years Day, 1983, we'd come home from a party that afternoon and were watching the news on TV and he said 'I think we should get a divorce'. I said 'ok.' And that was it.
I did learn, though. I learned that I am not made to live with another human. I had several subsequent relationships that could have easily ended up in marriage and/or co-habitation. I never even came close. I might not have been too bright the first time around but I didn't forget the lesson.