Tag: marriage

I’m going to talk about something in this post that is a little more personal than I normally do and what inspired the change of the title from Crazy Dreams and Random Things to Think With Your Heart. I am going to talk about my divorce (currently still going on) and my new relationship. I know people may not care about the things that I am going to talk about and that’s okay but the message of this post is what the new title is all about: Think With Your Heart. Possibly other people can relate to this or find advice or something that could help them if they are in a similar situation. This is also in case someone who doesn’t know the whole story happens to stumble upon this blog they can finally know my side to the story.

I am 25 and going through a divorce. I know that is nothing new, people of all ages go through divorces all the time. I was with this guy from the age of 17 to the age of 24 and he was my first real relationship. I really did like him. I thought he was cute and he was very nice to me and gave me attention. That was also kind of a problem looking back on it now. My best friend was and still is a very pretty girl and while I don’t think I am ugly I don’t have certain assets that she has and that’s okay. I’m quite happy with who I am and how I look. However, when we were younger I was not as confident in myself and guys never really looked at me the way they looked at her. Sure I was funny and could make them laugh but I wasn’t who they wanted to be with. This is also not a post to invoke pity for me from anyone it’s just an honest analysis of my past. Now part of my big attraction to this guy was because he actively chose me to work with (we met at work) and to talk to over my friend. That should not be a part of the decision making process.

I don’t want to diminish my feelings for him by reducing it down to the fact that he paid me attention when not a lot of other people did but for a while it was a pretty big deal. I did have genuine feelings for him though. He seemed to care for me and I really did like him. However, maybe I was naive or maybe I was just a hopeless romantic but I think there were probably a lot of problems from the beginning that I over looked. Now as I share this I do realize that maybe it’s too much information but I still want to get this all out. Okay so from the beginning this guy had told me that he did not want to start a relationship with me even though he liked me because he was about to be going away to college. It was only an hour and a half away but I was in my senior year of high school and I had a car that I could use sometimes and he had a car but apparently wasn’t going to be coming home a lot. I did try and push it a little though and told him that I would be fine with still hanging out though while he was still home even if it didn’t go anywhere. My hopes were to get him to realize we could do a little bit of long distance.

It worked. Now he would come home sometimes and see me and he would call and text sometimes but it was usually in the middle of the night after he had been partying. I feel like this should have been a sign. Why couldn’t he try to take a few minutes to call me after dinner or before 9 or 9:30 which is when I typically went to bed because as I mentioned in a previous post, without enough sleep, I am a monster. But if I heard my phone I would try to answer it and talk to him for a little bit.

It was fine for a few months and then in November of the year we started going out, 2010, he told me he loved me. I was beyond thrilled because I knew I loved him too. However it turns out that a little after he told me that he cheated on me. He had been drinking and while at a party or something he ended up sleeping with someone else. Now I have always been and still am against cheating obviously and if someone were to do that to me I would leave them. I did not find out that he cheated on me until a few months later after he had also wanted to “go on a break” (yes all I can think of is Ross and Rachel too, “WE WERE ON A BREAK!). I was devastated. I had no idea why he would want to and his reasoning was not very clear. He would be coming home either that weekend or the next one though and he said we could meet up and talk about it. So through my tears I said yes and then promptly shut my phone off for two days. When I had turned it back on I had a few messages from him saying things like “hey beautiful” and “I miss you”. Now I was really confused. How can he want to be on a break but yet still say things like that to me. I was not going to be just going along with this. I don’t think I responded for quite a while and then finally decided to tell him I missed him as well and that we would talk when he came home.

He came home on the weekend and we went to Denny’s to talk. Now I still did not know that he cheated on me at this point (which was the real reason for the break) but he told me it was for something different and I believed him obviously because I had no reason not to. I am not going to share the reason he gave me because it is something personal regarding him and I do not feel it is my business to share here. So we decided the break was over and we were back together. Looking back I do not know if I should have agreed to getting back together. You should probably be with someone who wants to be with you all the time rather than someone who can go back and forth (this was also foreshadowing of a recurring pattern for us of possibly taking breaks).

Now months later into the relationship, we are together and happy and he leaves for a week to take a vacation. This vacation took place at a campground where hundreds of people maybe even upwards of a thousand go for a week every year and each night there are parties and stuff that happens. Well, at one of the parties (Mardi Gras themed) he tells me he kissed some girl for beads. Now, this was still before I knew he cheated one me and while kissing isn’t sleeping with someone else, to me it is still cheating and I was hurt. Again, I stayed when I probably should not have. During this vacation though he was with a group of people one of them being his best friend and his friend started to text me one night. Now I probably should have shut it down and I knew that this guy was a bit of a player and would do whatever he could to get girls. But he was being nice enough and I figured there wasn’t much harm in it. I hid it from my boyfriend though because I think I knew I shouldn’t but deep down I feel I was doing it to get revenge even though I didn’t know what for yet. I get gut feelings and normally follow them.

After another month or so maybe my boyfriend found out that his friend and I had been texting and he was not happy. It also came out during this time he cheated on me. I was heartbroken. Especially since it was after he told me he loved me. How could you cheat on someone you supposedly loved? I should have left and I know that earlier I said I would leave someone if they cheated on me and I would but I figured it was kind of like punishing a puppy for something they did while you were gone and then you come home and they’re just sleeping and then you punish them and they have no idea why. I know that humans have more mental capability and would understand but we had been through so much and it was so long ago and it was just the one time I decided that we had both done things that were not great and we could put it behind us and move on. To anyone reading this and if you are in a similar situation or trying to decide if you should stay with someone who cheated on you, don’t. I mean obviously everyone can make their own decision but for me it ate at me and is partly why I wanted a divorce seven years after the fact. It took me a really long time to go to bed at night and not see him with someone else. I spent so many nights crying myself to sleep. I would not want anyone to go through that. I still don’t know why I didn’t leave though. Anytime I would think about it though I wouldn’t bring it up to him because I didn’t want him to get sad about hurting me again and I didn’t want to cause any problems which is also a huge problem. I don’t like to fight or have any conflicts between anyone really but I do know that sometimes it’s unavoidable especially in a romantic relationship with someone but I didn’t feel like I could ever talk to him about it. That was another sign I ignored.

Now it’s the end of my high school years and I’m going to be going off to college to the same school as my boyfriend. Everything had been fine for a few months and I was excited that we would be able to see each other more and end the distance part of our relationship. Now here is the next sign that should have had me leaving. Being a freshman I had to live in the dorms which was fine but my boyfriend who lived in the dorms his first year out there got an apartment. Which I don’t have a problem with obviously but it was with three girls. Now this apartment is a three bedroom and he was living with two sisters and then a friend of theirs and his. Now first of all he did not tell me about this right away and he also had decided to not mention the fact that the two sisters were each getting their own room. So remember how I said it was a three bedroom, well he was sharing a room with the other girl. Apparently the sisters couldn’t share a room because they fought a lot and needed their own space so that’s why he was sharing a room. Writing this and thinking about it now I really don’t understand why I stayed in this relationship past this point. His family and everyone agreed that he was in the wrong but he was already locked in to the lease. Now I would go over to his apartment quite a bit and stay the night and I met all the girls and the sisters were very nice to me. However, the girl that he shared his room with was not mean but she didn’t send off very welcoming vibes either. I suppose I was a little insecure in my relationship still and I thought this girl was very pretty and that she maybe liked my boyfriend. I don’t know if she did or not this was just the feeling I got. Also, when she would do laundry she would have things that couldn’t go in the dryer and she would hang them up all over their room. They weren’t like sexy things or anything like that just delicate shirts and things of that nature but she would hang them on my boyfriends dresser and on his bed too. Maybe I was reading too much into it but to me that seemed almost a little possessive. Like she was somehow laying some type of claim to him. I decided to bring up how I didn’t think she liked me and some things that bothered me and instead of reassuring me and telling me he would talk to her or tell me everything would be okay, he told me “I don’t know if this is going to work” talking about our relationship. He told me also that I should be the one to try and make her feel okay because I was the girlfriend but I was in THEIR apartment. Shouldn’t she be the one to make me feel welcome in their place? Plus I feel I’m a pretty friendly person and I would try to make small talk or smile at her. He was basically choosing this girl he just met the previous year over his girlfriend of a little over a year now. We had known each other longer though.

I was once again heartbroken and crying. Why couldn’t he just talk to her or reassure me? Again I should have left after this but nope I still stayed. I had left that night and eventually him and I talked about it the next day I think and figured it out but nothing really changed. I just put up with it. On to the next reason of why I should have left, one night my boyfriend messaged me telling me he wanted to talk after his last class. I said okay and freaked out for the rest of the time that I had to wait until his last class. But he finally messages me to tell me to meet him in the parking lot and he was out of class. I made my way to where he described and he gets on with what he wanted to talk about. He tells me “I think you love me more than I love you”. Another stab to my heart. Regardless of whether he felt that way or not why did he have to tell me? All that did was hurt me and make me feel bad for loving and caring for someone so much who didn’t reciprocate it with the same passion as me.

So many signs already not even a full two years into the relationship that I should have left but did not. Now the rest of the years were decent. There were about three more times where “a break” was suggested. Once in the second year, when he had called me and asked if “I ever thought about being with other people” while I could hear him out with a bunch of his friends including girls. I tell him that no I don’t and I ask him if he does and he’s like “I don’t know I guess sometimes”. So we get off the phone and again I am left crying wondering what I am doing wrong. Now just to clarify the girls he was out with were his friends and I don’t care if your significant other has friends of the opposite sex. You can have whatever friends you want but it was the fact that I could hear them and the question he was asking me.

Then there was a time when another break was suggested and I don’t remember the exact reasoning for that and there was another time when the break was suggested because of me. I thought that I possibly had feelings for someone else. I did not act on them nor did I hide them from my boyfriend. I talked to him about it and we decided that we could get through it. These feelings were partially because I had never really been with anyone else besides this guy and didn’t feel like I was a priority in his life. I don’t need to be anyone’s world. I’m not delusional and I know that’s not realistic but I do want to feel like I am important enough and valued enough that in some cases I would be chosen first or made a priority. Feeling like I was not led to doubts and led to me thinking that I possibly had feelings for someone else. Ultimately none of these breaks lasted and I became engaged.

I thought and tried to put any lingering feelings or doubts behind me because I viewed the engagement and upcoming marriage as a new beginning. The engagement lasted a little over a year and was filled with mostly happiness and wedding planning which I thoroughly enjoyed. Organizing and keeping track of details and planning is a huge joy for me and I threw myself into it and kept myself very busy. Then the day arrived. The wedding day. It was mostly wonderful and fast. For a little bit I was happy and content and settling into the marriage. I was married less than a year though before I decided I needed to end things.

I was married in September of 2017 and in January of 2018 I came down with what I thought was the flu. But then my ears started to become what I thought was clogged and it was hard to hear and when I would speak I sounded so loud inside of my head. I thought I was going deaf. I was scared and my worst fear was not ever being able to hear my nephew tell me in his cute little voice that he loved me. I finally ended up going to the doctor’s and found that I had a double ear infection. I was given a medication and basically had to wait for it to pass. Once I was better after about a month probably I decided I needed to make changes. Seems dramatic I know but what can I say? I was scared for a month that I was not ever going to be able to fully hear again.

The changes I made were exercising, I did and still do Pilates (I follow Cassey Ho and do Blogilates) and yoga (I follow Adriene Mishler and do Yoga with Adriene). I ended up losing a decent amount of weight, about 40 lbs and I started eating better. I also started doing more things that made me happy such as having more girls nights with my friends. I had them occasionally before but it never felt like enough or as frequent as I would have liked. I also went off of my medication that I had been on for about five years. I was on medication for anxiety and depression and while it did help me especially in the beginning when I was first diagnosed with it over time I think it started to dull me. My feelings and emotions were not as strong as they used to be and I think it made me comfortable but not in a good way. It made me too comfortable and I never wanted to challenge myself. Now I just stopped taking them which I know is not good and if you are in the same situation, you really should talk to your doctor about the best course of action. I got lucky and for me quitting them cold turkey happened to work.

It was after I stopped taking them that February that I felt my old, carefree, happy self start to re-emerge and I had never felt better. It also really made me question my relationship and whether or not I still wanted it. I feel bad that my boyfriend, then fiancé and then husband who had stuck by my side through it all got the short end of the stick by me leaving when I felt better but I also have to make choices that are good for me and for so long I don’t think I was living the way I wanted. Not that my boyfriend was to blame but I became too comfortable and I needed a change. I will always be grateful that my ex stuck by me through the rough times but in the end I think both of us are more happy now.

In April of 2018 I met my current boyfriend. He was kind, sweet, smart and funny and still is. He is also super hot. We met in a pretty unconventional way, I think anyway, through a phone game. For about a month we would text and call and video chat with each other and then in May, I decided to take a trip and meet him in person. He lived in TN and I lived in NY. I made the 14 hr drive and stayed for a week with him. I knew the moment I went back home that I loved him. I know it seems fast and crazy but I had decided that thinking with my heart was how I wanted to live my life. I know that the heart does not always make the best decisions but for too long I didn’t listen to it and it was time to change that. I had went home after that week and told my friend I love him. I continued driving to see him for quite a few weekends until in June he asked me to be his girlfriend and then later asked me if I would move in with him. I listened to my heart and it was screaming yes. By July I was moved down there and so much in love. We had not yet said it to each other though I had wanted to many times but finally in August, I met his family and afterwards he told me. I cried. I was so happy and really felt like I was living life the way I wanted to. I am currently still so happy and in love.

This current relationship has been a bit of a whirlwind and pretty fast especially since I picked up everything and moved myself away from my family to be with a man that I had just met but felt like I knew for much longer. It was pretty uncharacteristic for me but had also never felt so right. As with every relationship there are problems sometimes but we talk about them and ultimately I feel content and happy and like this is where I was suppose to be and who I was supposed to be with all along. He treats me the way I feel I should be and I still think he is the same sweet, loving, caring, smart, funny, incredibly hot man that I first met and he makes me feel like I matter and am a priority sometimes.

The point of sharing all this was not to look for pity from people for the the previous relationship or to gush about my current one although I know I did a little but to say think with your heart. I know that most people believe you should think things out and use your head but I think that ultimately the heart knows best. It isn’t letting anything cloud it’s judgement, it’s pure feeling and emotion and after being dulled so long in my feelings and emotions I think my heart is the perfect thing to follow. It led me to where I am now and I have honestly not felt more like myself or been this happy in a long time. I know not many people read this but I hope that eventually it gets around and people can relate or even learn something from what I went through. The most important thing though is that you have to live your life for you and not hold yourself responsible for anyone’s happiness but your own.