As you can see from the cute little ticker above, I have started counting down the days until my wedding anniversary. On March 25, A. and I will celebrate our third anniversary.
As we get ready to enter our fourth year of marriage, I have learned two very important things: Marriage is a damn hard business and that little piece of paper really does make things different than if you only “live together.”
I lived with A. only a few weeks before our wedding, but some years before I met A., I was in a long-term relationship where I lived with my ex-boyfriend off and on for about five years. I was just shy of 21 when I moved in with my ex for the first time. We lived together for about a year in bliss. It was fun and I thought I had it made. He owned the place and he never asked me to pay rent or any of the bills.
After that first year though, things started to go sour. He lost his job, I found out that he had a drug problem, he began taking advantage of my financial situation, and I made some friends (namely one guy) that he didn’t like. He began to get jealous and suspicious and instead of talking and/or trying working things out, he simply kicked me out. At that time I began to realize what I vulnerable spot I was in: It was his house and for all intents and purposes, I was a squatter.
But I still loved him and thought we might be able to work things out. After we had been separated for a few weeks, we got back together and I moved back in. It started a vicious circle that in one way or another propagated itself for the next four years. By the time it was over, I was in financial ruin and my heart had been broken so many times by his empty promises and jealous streak that I felt like all that remained of me was an empty shell.
After I ended it with him, I took a “relationship break” break that lasted about two years. When I met A., I wasn’t even sure I was ready for a relationship again, but I decided to take a chance. For the first six months of our relationship we lived many states apart and I think that was a good thing. Every moment we spent together was special and when we weren’t together, we talked on the phone or chatted online and really got to know each other.
At Christmastime I spent three weeks with him and it was then that I knew that I didn’t really want to go back to Mississippi. I wanted to be with him and I found out he felt the same way. He had been talking about moving back to Europe and wanted me to come with him. At that point, things began to move rather quickly: We decided to get married and move to Europe. Six weeks later, I had quit my job and moved in with him. Six weeks after that we went to Las Vegas and tied the knot and then another six weeks after that, we moved to Germany.
Though we have to work at it (and that isn’t always easy) for the most part, I think that our marriage is a good one. A. is really the complete opposite of my ex. He is stable, patient, and I don’t think he has a jealous bone in his body. We probably could have lived together without getting married and still been able to work out the issues that come up between us, but I think that the document that legally binds us together gives us just a little more incentive to do so and I wouldn’t give that up for anything.