I guess if I'm going to blog about being a single mother I could start with my journey into my current relationship status. T is Rylann's dad, he is charming and gracious. For all intents and purposes he is a simple man. Not stupid by any means, but a blue jeans and Ford kind of guy. When I met him I used to tease him about his daily 'uniform', dark wash blue jeans and a white t-shirt. He came from a different income bracket then I was raised in and would have considered my parents and their friends 'yuppies' had he met them in a different context.
We met when I was 24. I was happy and content with my place in life, settling into a new place & career. I had dreams I was still hoping to fulfill and plans on reaching them. T wasn't a necessary edition, but he seemed to enrich my life.
From the moment we met life seemed easy with him. Of course there were butterflies and passion, but it was just as easy to cuddle on the couch as it was dress up and head downtown. He seemed to blend well with my friends and family. He remembered what was important to me and cerished who I was. He had a slight stutter and every so often his left eye would twitch. I thought both things were endearing and assumed it was just nerves from being out of his element. I've since come to believe that maybe it was due to his fear of being found out.
Our relationship moved quickly and he asked me to marry him just 4 1/2 months after we first began talking. I said yes with the condition that he move to Canada, we were in the midst of a long distance relationship (Portland Oregon to BC Canada). I was nervous about marrying someone I'd only seen on weekends. I wanted to know how he did life 24/7, the good and the bad. Two months later he moved permanently to Canada. My uncle found him a job and life moved on. The economy was bad in Oregon. T had been at a job that made very little and I assumed his willingness to move was not only on my behalf, but because it would ultimately be the best financial decision for the family we were hoping to build together.
Wedding plans moved ahead. We booked our wedding for October, just 1 year since we'd met for the first time. I didn't have a ton of fears with marrying T. Anything that did come up he was able to put to rest, and none of my family or friends raised any concerns. I wonder if we were just all too caught up in the enchantment of it all?
I did logically write out a list of pros and cons that looked something like this.
- We had fun together. (I'd yet to get tired of him... mind you we were only a year in!)
- We shared a similar faith (from different backgrounds, but the basics were solid)
- He loved the things about me that I was most insecure about.
- I didn't feel like he expected me to change who I was, I knew he wanted me for me.
- We shared similar values in family, finances and morals.
- He took initiative in life and our relationship. He was someone I was comfortable allowing to take the lead on things.
- He had a strong work ethic.
- He cared for my family, before they were his own.
- We fought well!
I would like to expand a little on the latter. Fighting may seem like a strange thing to evaluate compatibility on, but it was eye opening for me. In all my past relationships I had dreaded any kind of disagreement. I avoided them like the plague, and they always seemed to end poorly. Tears, screaming, someone shutting down had been my experience. With T it was so NORMAL for lack of a better word. Sometimes we disagreed. Sometimes I hurt him. Sometimes he hurt me. But we never name called, we never screamed and we never left. We both just went in with our heads up and plugged through until there was a resolution. I believed because of this there would be peace in our home.
Cons:
- His family is disfunctional at its best.
I am out of my element with them. I don't understand how they manage to do life with so much drama, gossip and fighting. I knew my relationship with my in laws would never be easy. T had shared too many stories of abuse and neglect in his childhood that I would never be able to open my heart fully to them. And yet how do you judge the merit of a man by the quality of his family? Is that fair? Should I make the decision not to marry him based on something he'd never have the opportunity to change? I sought counsel, I confided in my closest friends and we went went over it in pre-marriage counselling. In the end my decision was no I would not hold it against him. As a person he was what I wanted, the things I wouldn't compromise on were there.
And so we married October 21, 2006 at the most beautiful candlelight ceremony. The fairy tale started, but little did I know the apple doesn't always fall far from the tree or maybe nothing was as it seemed in the first place...
No comments:
Post a Comment