If you are going to get married (even more than once) marry the woman that gets you, no matter what.
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I’ve been married twice now. The first time was to my best friend. So was the second.
I don’t understand how guys can marry someone they love deeply and not want to be with them. I’ve never related to men who want to get away from their wives.
I love my wife. I’m anxious when I’m away from her for too long, and when we’re together, it’s like I’m on a drug that keeps me happy and even-keeled. In over 16 years together, I’ve never been tempted by another woman.
On the other hand, I’m not wired like most guys. A few years ago, I took an online test meant to measure how I fit on the autism spectrum; I tested borderline. Not definitive, more, – you may want to consult with a professional – but it fit with my experiences.
I was odd as a kid. However, I was with the same group of kids from kindergarten through eighth grade, so I avoided the mess that middle school can be for many odd kids. I wasn’t weird, I was just “Jack,” as far as my elementary school classmates were concerned.
My sister thought I was weird, but don’t most sisters? “Jack, just because you think of something, and it’s true, that doesn’t mean you have to say it!”
I found I had become the kind of guy women fall “in like with.”
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Huh? Why not?
Then high school came along, and a school full of strangers, and suddenly I was weird, and wrong, in so many of my choices and the way I talked about things and the way I dressed and almost anything that didn’t deal with academics.
In eleventh grade, it took me months to work up the nerve to ask a girl I was pretty sure liked me, out on a date. It went badly. Not the date, we never got that far; just the asking-out part was a train wreck. College was an improvement, in the sense that I got past the asking-out part and started on dates that were disasters.
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With Navy nuclear power schooling and submarines, I was in a rigid environment, so I learned to blend and fit in. Then things went wrong there, and I ended up on the beach. But I discovered computers and I was good at them, and I could be useful again to the Navy in an IT role. And I tried being social (as in, dating again.)
I found I had become the kind of guy women fall “in like with.” They were friends, and wished me the best, and told me I was going to meet The One some day, just wait.
Then there was the occasional woman who thought I had potential and would try to fix me. I found I don’t respond well to having my ego destroyed so it can be rebuilt.
Oh, nobody does? Then why do people do that to their partners? Ah, it’s For Their Own Good! Gotcha.KMy friends didn’t try to fix me; they thought I was OK. A little odd, sometimes, but hey, that was just Jack being Jack. And then there was this woman who thought I was better than OK.
My first wife, Linda, was wonderful. Still is. Still friends. Still proud of her, still amazed by the things she does.
When I tell people about our marriage, I explain, “We were too much alike. I was in the Navy; so was she. I’m the intellectual type; so is she. I like sex with women; so does she. Turns out, a successful marriage needs a little more difference than we had.”
So yes, sex with me convinced my bisexual wife she was actually pure lesbian.
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I knew she was bi, and she’d mostly been with women before; hell, that was what got us together. She’d have a love affair, and a breakup, and I was there to talk to and just hang out with. We slept together, in the sense that we shared a bed together and cuddled, but we’d never got past second base before she asked me to marry her. Kind of out of the blue, from my end, although we’d talked about marriage before. I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather spend the rest of my life with, anyone with whom I was happier, anyone who got me like she got me, so I said yes.
Turned out sex was more important to her than to me.
After we got married, we were stationed apart, and she found someone else (a woman, of course) who made her feel things I couldn’t. When we were together for our first anniversary, she told me she’d had an affair, but it was over. A few months later, she let me know the affair hadn’t actually, strictly speaking, so much ended. She still loved me. But. And that was it for our marriage. I thought love mattered more than sex — but I’m wired differently.
So yes, sex with me convinced my bisexual wife she was actually pure lesbian.
Not that it’s a sore spot or anything.
Anyway, I liked being married, (while I was.) Just something about being half of a whole that fit with how I looked at life. That felt like how things ought to work.
After our divorce, I tried to get that feeling back. I made (surprise!) some bad relationship choices. Someone who sculpted my ego with a hammer, and walked away when I didn’t work out like she wanted. So like a lot of people, I got to the point that I was OK by myself. Lonely sometimes, not always happy, but safe, and the reduced highs were worth not having to deal with the soul-crushing lows.
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She was single. No kids. Available. Well, crap. Now what?
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And then, as I like to tell people, I met Deb on the Internet. I like to say it that way because she will invariably roll her eyes, and tell whomever, “What he means is…”
What I mean is, I started with a new company as their head of IT. Deb was head of admin support, plus the president’s assistant, and the de facto HR person, so she emailed me my offer/acceptance letter with the usual boilerplate, sign here, yada yada. I had a couple questions, which I emailed back with my usual sense of humor; she replied in the same vein. I suppose it was sort of flirtatious, but I didn’t mean it that way. I knew that IT had to get along with the president’s office, so I wanted to get off on a good foot, and anyway, someone in her position would be old, right? Like 40s? [Wait, how old was I at this point? Ah, also “old.”]
So we traded emails, and then met in person, and got along well, and there was this photo on her desk of her with six kids (wow, she was in really good shape for that many kids!) – so even if she was divorced nothing was going to happen. Over the next couple weeks, she showed me the ropes, and I found reasons to stop by her desk to chat. It was nice. Casual. I could just be me, weird at times, but she was okay with that.
Then I found out the kids were all nieces and nephews.
She was single. No kids. Available. Well, crap. Now what?
I like living with my best friend in the whole world, who gets me like no one else does.
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I asked a friend for advice. “Just be yourself.” Sure, because that had worked so well up to this point. Later, I realized it had—when it counted, with Linda.
I met Deb in May; we had our first date in June; I met her folks in July; she met mine in September, and we got engaged that same day. Married in February, less than nine months after I met her on the Internet. Next month will be sixteen years of marriage.
I’m sharing all this because I miss my wife right now. Her mother has metastatic ovarian cancer and is under Hospice oversight, and Deb is basically living at Mom’s apartment so that Mom doesn’t have to live with a strange caregiver or go to an assisted living facility. I sleep over there three-plus nights a week. It’s a small bed in the guest room, but I get to curl up with my wife and hold her tight. We’re never apart more than 36 hours, which compared to some couples is no time apart at all, and better than we’ve had in the past.
At one point several years ago, Deb had a job that took her out of state most of the week; she’d leave on Monday, come back Friday. That’s how we got the custom of making every Friday night “date night” with pizza and a movie, snuggled up on the couch together. So I see her much more often than I did back then. But we’ve been together that much longer, and I’m older, and I’m just too damn addicted to how she makes me feel when I’m with her. She’s a beautifully awesome lady in more ways than I can list right now, and I love her a lot.
I like being married. I love being married to Deb. I like being half of a whole. I like living with my best friend in the whole world, who gets me like no one else does. I like doing weird and goofy things with someone who enjoys doing them with me and doesn’t remind me that I’m wired different, and doesn’t try to fix me. Who doesn’t think I’m broken in the first place.
What’s better than being married to your best friend? Nothing I’ve experienced.
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Originally published on Medium
Photo: Getty Images