Knowing this doesn't make it easier to repair a broken relationship especially years after a divorce.
So when I began dating my ex husband without anyone's knowledge and sneaking to counseling with him, I was skeptical at best but felt it was worth the "old college try" for a few reasons as follows:
1) After dating several other men I realized that there was really only ONE man in the world that would love my son as much as I did and it was his father.
2) After dating several other men I realized that the one I'd originally chosen wasn't as bad as maybe I imagined him to be at several points throughout our marriage. I hope you know that the word "several" is an exaggeration on all counts.
3) After time worked it's magic anger was replaced with things like respect, excitement to see him take on responsibility I wished for before and affection. There is nothing sexier than watching a man parent his child...nothing.
It was a very sweet time in our lives. There was no pressure, from each other or anyone else since no one else knew what we were up to. (Keep in mind there was no Facebook or gasp....should I say internet during this time period.)
It was peaceful, restorative and healing.
It was fun and it felt like we were doing something uniquely our own that shut out the world and was focused only on us as a couple and our future as a family.
Joe's work had an annual event in McCall so we decided to go together and while I arranged for Alex to be taken care of by my family, we snuck away for the weekend with his company filled with people who didn't really know that much or care about our history and were not surprised by my presence. It was fun to be incognito and to practice being a couple again. I don't remember the second "first kiss" in our relationship but I remember being nervous about it. Evidently things went as one might expect, swimmingly.
It was just what we needed. We decided to give it another try and still didn't want to tell anyone until we were "sure". It wasn't long after this that my mom said we should take another family photo.
Faced with the dilemma of taking a family picture without Joe who I literally thought might be BACK IN THE PICTURE presented a challenge.
I still didn't feel like it was the right time to tell my family we were giving it another "GO" but by the same token I was reluctant to get family photo's without Joe in the picture because I was filled with hope.
I mustered up the courage to ask my mom if she cared using the excuse that Joe was Alex's dad so would always be a part of his life and therefore he should be in the picture. She fell for this clever ruse and said yes, My siblings looked at us like "what the hell" when Joe arrived and either my pleading looks or my mom's silent "mother" glare that can only silence her own children worked. There were questions after but I still didn't fess up. I just wasn't ready to hear what other people had to say about it.
For a woman who thinks she doesn't have good intuition,my mom's radar was going off like mad. Oprah was a new program on the TV and my mom called me one day and told me about how there had been these divorced couples that wanted to get back together but their biggest barriers were their families. She told me that if I ever wanted to get back together with Joe she didn't want to stand in the way and neither would anyone else in our family. I still didn't say a word.
I'm incredibly grateful for that time together to just focus on us as a couple without the scrutiny of others. While I'm not a big secret keeper unless it belongs to someone else, I kept this one close to my heart. It reminds me of that brief time after my dad died that only our family knew...no one else. It's intimate, precious, without prying eyes, judgement and without the opinions of others or the world crashing in. It was just us, deciding about our future.
In that future we envisioned a bigger family, a happier family and hope for a future yet unborn.
Just three years earlier I'd stood in Alex's pediatricians office in Reno, Nevada and told him we were moving to Idaho because I was getting a divorce. This man gave me a gift that day I'll never be able to repay.
He said, "See that little boy who looks so much like his father? As he grows up and looks in the mirror he will see the reflection of his dad and what you say about his dad and how you talk about him to others is how he'll see himself."
What a gift. Really, what a gift.
My thoughts and anger and frustration and all the things we spew when we end a relationship, Alex was shielded from as much as humanely possible. So when we told Alex we were getting married, while he didn't completely understand what that would mean, he was happy and couldn't wait to be a part of the ceremony.
We set our date for May 31, 1989 which was a Wednesday. We decided that we didn't want two dates to remember and it seemed fitting. When we went to the Catholic church to plan the wedding, we were informed that according to the church we were still married and had only been civilly divorced. Head shaking ensued and we commenced with the planning of our renewal of vows.
The big day arrived and as I walked down the aisle toward my two fella's standing on the alter I was struck by how lucky we were to have a second chance. How lucky we were for forgiveness and grace and for the love we just couldn't deny. How very lucky.
When Joe and I clasped hands to renew our vows, this little person came up and stood between us, looking up at us. There is not a picture of this anywhere I know of other than my mind. The audible gasps and aww's from the crowd gathered to bless us that day echoed what was in my heart. Perfection. A little family restored.
Our second marriage began that day and we now count from the first date, not the second. We call those the growing up years that helped us grow together again. If we hadn't had that time to work on ourselves it might never have happened.
I'm not sure I have any sage advice on how to keep a marriage strong, or going or even how to avoid a divorce. All I know for sure is even the second time around, it's still hard, it's still work and it's still terribly rewarding and wonderful all at once.
For us it's a matter of knowing we CAN live without each other but daily choosing not to. It's not something we fantasize about, it's not something we imagine, it's something we lived and by living it made a choice that we are better together than apart.
My friend Janet's mom has an assortment of sayings that resonate with me. The one that perhaps is the best piece of advice, if you will, goes something like this:
"A successful marriage is one where you don't want to get divorced on the same day."
Getting remarried didn't and doesn't make us immune from wondering sometimes why we did it again. It's that choice that is made every time one has the thought that they may want to throw in the towel.
We both know we can throw in the towel but we both know what life is like without our matching Mr. and Mrs. towels side by side. It's been 34 years since that first vow taking and I'm planning on at least 34 more if he'll have me.
