One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I was 16 when I got married the first time. Sure, I felt I was old enough to handle all of the
responsibilities I thought came along with tying the knot: I could keep house,
handle the complex feelings that come along with being sexually active, and I
could cook some. What I wasn’t aware of, was the fact that at the ripe old age
of 16 I wasn’t a formed person yet. I couldn’t anticipate the evolution of my
maturity. I didn’t like who I was at all, but I did love that I had the
unsupervised freedom to be who I thought I wanted to be.

It was fine for the first couple years. I was very easygoing; I just sucked up all of the life I
could as I was pushed over, and over, and over again. I learned a lot about
myself over that time, and was exposed to so many different kinds of people,
places, and things. Over the years I understood that I was working towards
loving who I was becoming, and coming to terms with who I wasn’t.

I always knew that my husband and I had completely different personalities. You always hear
the saying “opposites attract” – looking back now, I don’t necessarily think
opposites should get married. I was trying to think of an example, to explain
the kinds of conflicts being opposites can cause. The very first week of my
marriage, my husband started a heated argument that made it clear to me that we
had completely different ideas and morals. He forced the issue and strong-armed
the right to take our hypothetical son to a strip club on his 18th birthday. I
was an uptight lipstick feminist Mormon, with the opinion that all strippers
have sadly suffered some form of sexual abuse or full-on rape, and I feel this
fact should take away the sexy smoke and mirrors that strippers manipulatively
provide. My husband was so shocked by my morally opinionated reply that he
became ridiculously enraged over it. I was shocked by how fumingly angry he
became over a son we didn’t even have – if we did have a son, the argument was
over an event that was going to take place 18 years and 9 months in the future.

I learned quickly not to feed into his temper over irrelevant topics. I remember thinking
at the time, “Why doesn’t he see my side?” He didn’t, because we were too
different to relate to each other. It was the cause of so many arguments, I’m
humiliated to admit it to print. We just had different outlooks on life.

So what do you do in a relationship where both people are interested in completely different
things, and have completely different opinions about them? Compromise and take
turns doing what the other person likes. It works for awhile; but as the years
pass, you both come to the understanding that you hate doing what the other one
loves, so in truth you spend half of your time miserable. I can only speak for
myself, and I have to admit I was happier when I could do what I wanted without
the annoying look of discontent on my husband's face. This ultimately forced me
to realize that I could only enjoy myself when I was by myself. I was more
fulfilled wrapped up in my own thoughts.

I would still miss the idea of having a good time with my husband and would work constantly to
make him happy thinking it would bring us quality time spent together. I found
more times than not, we would fight about whatever retarded topic we
disagreed on, making it more and more difficult to even be in the same room
together. On a good day I could bite my tongue so it would appear that I was
enjoying myself (while really I was hating every second). Sometimes I bit my
tongue so many times in one day it would swell and ache, forcing me to shout out
a long monologue of word vomit for all of the things I was keeping to myself. I
can only be pushed so far, people!

Now comes my chance at something most people never have the pure pleasure of doing. I get a
clean slate with someone who has the same interests and moral fibers I do, like
we were woven from the same cloth – right down to our politics, food, and
religion (biggies in my book). It’s so refreshing to look back on my past
relationship and know that I will never have to deal with such nonsense
again.

~Jane