Marriage, Divorce, and How I’m Doing

Hi guys! So, I wanted to shift gears a bit, and talk about how things have been going so far, and give you a little bit of background. Here we go…

My ex-husband and I met in 2005. We both volunteered at the church we went to and became friends after meeting each other one night after a youth group service. I wasn’t interested in him initially because he’s just over a year younger than I am, and I didn’t want to be with a younger guy. Time went on, we went our separate ways and connected again in 2010. In December 2010, we hung out for a few days while he was home on leave from the army and started chatting quite a bit. In January 2011, we began a long distance relationship, and in May 2011, we were married via proxy….yea…I know…I know… Not exactly the makings of a solid foundation for a strong marriage. But at the time, we both believed that this was right, and we were meant to be together. It was just like the movies, right? In love, taking life by the horns, and living out our fairy tale. 2 weeks after the proxy, he was deployed to Afghanistan, and we continued living apart until the end of 2015. And now, we’ve been divorced for just under one month.

You’re probably rolling your eyes right now saying, ‘well duh, you dated long distance for 4 months then got married via a proxy…what did you think was gonna happen?’ And you’re right. Our courtship was WAY too short to have the lengthy conversations you need to have with someone before you commit the rest of your life to them. And because the entire relationship was long distance, we didn’t see each other day to day and learn the unspoken things about each other. That is such an important thing. I’m not saying you have to live with your significant other to get to know them, but living close enough for frequent face-to-face encounters is definitely better than what we had. It was a fantasy to think that I knew him well enough to marry him after 4 short months. Which, strange as this sounds, I didn’t fully realize that until the divorce process started.

People say that divorce brings out the worst in people. I don’t believe that’s true, but I do believe that it brings out the true person. You see how wonderful they really are, or how angry they really are, or whatever the essence of that person is – it comes out during the divorce process… you see the other person at face value. In my case, I saw just how incompatible we are. I get upset sometimes when I think about us, and why we didn’t work because the vacations we had together were great, but who isn’t feeling great on vacation? The real test is ‘real life’, and we never had to deal with ‘real life’ together until recently, and the reality I had to face is that we don’t work together and do something about it.

So…nearly one month divorced. How am I feeling? 90% of the time, I feel great and thankful to be divorced. My life is so much more peaceful now that this marriage has ended. There are times though that I do feel sad, and I was not expecting that at all – divorce takes you through all types of emotions – and it took me a long time to realize that I wasn’t sad because I missed my ex-husband, but because I spent 5 years of my life with the wrong person. It makes me a little sad even now while writing this, but I’d rather be a little sad every so often about wasted time, than be depressed all the time in a marriage that never should have happened and all the added problems that come along with it. Bottom-line, I don’t recommend anyone do what I did. Do I regret getting married? To a point, yes I do, but I also see this as something that I went through and learned from so that I can be able to help someone else avoid making the same mistake. When I think about it that way, I’m OK with it. I see this as a testimony God gave me to encourage other people. The best is yet to come!