Is Being Happy In Your Marraige Just A state Of Mind?

When my husband Gene and I contemplated getting married, we heard warnings from all sides about how marriage is no longer a truly viable option for informed, independent thinking intellectuals of the new millennium. After all two out of every three marriages end in divorce. Case in point my Husband's first marriage....he married someone that was just plain too young to make a good wife. I can also say with all truth that both Gene and his first wife were dysfunctional to say the very least. Both had come from violent, dysfunctional families that had in no way prepared them to take on the role of husband and wife let alone parents to two small children that were born within two years of one another. Were Gene and his first spouse truly in love with one another? I don't know....she admits now that the only reason she married him was to escape an abusive situation at home....Did HE love her? yes...Did HE want to marry her? He doesn't really know. He remembers that he felt love towards her and what did one do when you loved someone? You marry them of course.

So off they set into the new roles of a "Married Couple". He, thinking that it wasn't appropriate for his wife to work...took several jobs and was hence never home. SHE on the other hand didn't want to work, but, didn't like the fact that he was never home. The solution? Have children....

Suffice it to say that after a few years the marriage failed, causing the family to break and part ways in a most unsatisfactory way that ended up being VERY hurtful to all parties involved....except for possibly the wife who orchestrated a most dramatic departure ensuring that the husband (now MY husband) would never see his two beloved daughters again (even though HE won custody of them twice)

Many years passed and the Husband vowed to NEVER marry again.....until he met ME. I came from an equally violent, dysfunctional background (if not MORE so) than his own,BUT we had both settled into a profound relationship with God by this time and relied heavily on His will for our lives when we met. We had also both made a promise to ourselves (unbeknownst to one another) that if THIS blind date didn't work out that we were THROUGH with dating (blind or otherwise. We found in one another, however, a person that with which we could truly enjoy ourselves...a person that truly seemed to be the other's "Other Half" and it soon became apparent to both of us that it was with one another that we were meant to be...

The one rub in this whole situation was MY family...I was living with my two children and my mother...and was determined to not become serious at least for another couple of years. I also had to consider Gene's past...would it be hurtful to him if he had to raise two children that were not his own? I was well beyond the age of being able to safely bear him a child and this concerned me because the one thing on Earth I REALLY wanted to do was to bear him a child. But this just wasn't to be so....after my mother passed away in 2003 Gene and I decided to marry....and the rest, as they say, is history. Everyday is a new adventure with this man. He admits now that, even though he had been married before...that I am truly the only WIFE he's ever had....and he is truly the other half of me....there is not one thing I could think of that I would rather do WITHOUT him rather than right along side of him...(except for possibly potty time...which I share with NO ONE...which is okay with him because he agrees) and the parenting situation also worked itself out as he became the most wonderful Father that any man could be to my kids....so off we go on this grand adventure that we call Marriage....Come along with us and enjoy the ride!