The Thread of Fantastic Failures

[Jesster]

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When I was 21 I got married to my the first girl I'd scored with.  Guess I just wanted to have that honey pot close to hand.  Anyhow we were both fairly cerebral types, especially me.  The book Open Marriage was hot at the time and the concept appealed to me greatly, as it did to my first missus.  So we set up house and had some good times together for the first couple years.  But then she attended a convention associated with her work accompanied by her boss.  We both thought this might be the opportunity to bring more openness into the marriage and I was entirely fine with it rationally.

Perhaps she could have done more to alleviate the insecurities this induced in me.  That might have helped.  But at the same time as I was realizing I didn't like this arrangement at all, I was also shocked that I was being so illogical.  Now I can imagine more than one take away a person might form from this experience.  But for me, the biggest realization was that what I wanted and needed were neither subject to nor responsive to my logic.  It took me a while to work this one out but I finally realized something about the limits of reason.  As a person who didn't orient in the world much based on feeling, I suddenly felt pretty vulnerable.  As a result I did some work on that area.  I read a lot of psychology.  I attended a few encounter groups.  I did one on one therapy.  And I approached relationships as an area in which I had some very basic learning to do.

I couldn't be happier to have made that adjustment.  I'm not sure I would have worked as hard at it as I did if the experience hadn't been so unpleasant and unsettling.  I shudder to think how my life would have gone if I'd stayed more than the three years I did with wife number one.  Wife number two and I just celebrated 33 years together three days ago.  It's good.

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Wow, what a story. I won't share mine, but you aren't alone in making a big mistake with your first marriage. Mine lasted about as long and I'm still hoping to make my recovery like you did.