What I Wish I Knew Before: Getting Married

We met when I was 18. It seemed that the stars aligned and the universe brought us together. I was living with him within a week of meeting him. I wasn't looking for anyone when I met him. Admittedly, I was in a really bad place and he was my savior. We both knew it. We had been dating for five months when I got pregnant. At first, we had the reaction of most young couples, confusion, and panic. We quickly became fond of the idea of being parents. From there to now a lot of things happened but I will summarize,

• Our daughter was born
• She was in the hospital having seizures at 5 days old
• We moved cities and lived on our own for the first time
• We got married
• We moved cities again
• And now we are getting divorced.

That is a full agenda for just over three years of knowing someone. At the time things just fell into place. I was 20 when we got married. I thought that I was ready to be married. And you know what? I was, and I think at the time he was too. We almost eloped. Our wedding was so small and only my family attended (his family couldn't make it from out of town). The whole thing was laughable. We got married at a wedding officiants house that we found online. I wore a dress I got from The Bay and he wore a dress shirt from Wal-Mart. Laughable. But we didn't care. I never needed a big wedding to marry him. But I still had thoughts even on that day that maybe I should have waited.

Here are some notes from the time we met to the time we got married. I am aware that I am a woman but a lot of these issues are genderless. It may sound harsh but this is the obvious advice I wish I had listened to:

How well can you know someone?

If your partner lies about something, they are most likely going to lie about other things. I don't know if knowing my husband long before we got together would have helped me. Looking back he lied to me about so much! Things that happened before we met, who was driving him home from work, who he was talking to, where he was going. And I knew at the time and caught him in these lies. Big or small the lies still hurt. They make you go crazy trying to decipher their every action trying to figure out what's real and what's not. So why didn't I leave? Because every time I thought it would be the last time. I didn't want to just give up. But the thing about relationships is, you can't be the only one trying.

It will never happen... (again?)

Things like cheating and sexual and physical abuse should never be tolerated. We would never tell our friend to stay with someone who has done those things to them, even if it just happened once. The famous "It will never happen again." So why do we stick around when it happens to us? If this doesn't apply to you then I applaud you. You are stronger than I was. No one deserves that and if it's happening to you, no matter how much you love your partner you need to get out. I was so obsessed with the idea that it couldn't happen to me that I blocked out the fact that it happened regularly. You are worth so much more than that. Life is hard enough as it is, your partner shouldn't be another one of the hardships.

Needing to Save Them from Themselves

My husband used to get really down on himself. We all do. But the way he would deal with it was not okay. If I, or my daughter, or work, or anything really upset him he would slam things around and hit himself. When I've talked to some of my friends about this they laughed but in reality it was truly terrifying watching someone you love hurt themselves and not only feeling responsible for the pain but obligated to stop it. This is another for of abuse that I never really knew existed. My heart aches for him because I truly believe he didn't do it to be manipulative and that was genuinely how he deals with his emotions. It's good to help people and to want to help people but you do not deserve that situation. You are not responsible for your partners emotions in that way.

In summary, you deserve the world. You deserve to be good to someone and have them be good to you. You deserve to love and be loved and be happy. You are going to make mistakes and so is your partner and that is totally okay. I hope you are able to see some warning signs that things are not okay if the time comes. Be strong, you have to take care of you.