Changing Him

From The Kay Way :

As I spend time with my younger female friends and hear of their relationships, it occurs to me that generation after generation we fall in love with who we think our mates could be rather than the real man who is standing in front of us. What a shame.

My comment: Very well said. In my case I married a man who said he was in love with me. I did change him. He had been agoraphobic but together we built a life where he was out at a job (which he still has and likes) we had our own apartment, I moved to the US so we could be married all legal and proper for the government. I wanted to be married too but it was not a romantic wedding for sure. After we married he kept changing. He began picking on me and alienating me. We had been friends a long time before he decided he was in love with me. When we divorced it was because he no longer wanted to be married, just over a year after the wedding. He is grateful to me for getting him out of his rut. However, I can’t say things turned out that well from my side of things. I moved back to Ontario with nothing and I felt like nothing too.

Sometimes in a comment on someone’s blog you make a post that gives you some new perspective. I like to save those.

My family still think our marriage could have been saved. I don’t. First, it does take two people to make a marriage work. Second, I never felt so alone as I did when I was living in that one bedroom apartment with him every day. I miss being married, doing things with someone and having fun. But, I’m glad to be out of that too. I felt dead inside when I came back to Ontario again. Everything I had felt happy about being married, working together with him on building our lives and all the pride I had in doing all those things was left in ashes.

It would be nice to say I did the phoenix thing and arose from those ashes. But, I have not. Over ten years later and I am still working on it. Time has helped. Distance, in time and space, has given me perspective.

I wouldn’t say I feel bitter or even angry any longer. I don’t think it’s a regret. Though all the good things are deep in the muck of all the unhappy things. It’s hard to remember them without looking through the glass with all the negative tinting the view.

I don’t do the blame thing very much. I made choices and put myself there. I made choices and took myself out of there too.

I’ve learned more about men from those days and the days after. I’m never going to be a dating diva. But, I do know there are far more important things in picking a man than the shape of his behind or a winning smile or even how well he talks about himself. Those are good things to have learned. It’s a shame learning takes so much time when our time is finite.