Hi Magoo, nice to make your aquaintance :)
The history of friends you mentioned reads like a list
of the people I grew up with as well (And I'm turning 30
later this month, so we're in the same group here)
I laughed out loud when I read Mommy's remark:
so by the time the wedding is here they are so full of sexual tension they would say,
"I do" to a woman with 3 heads.
{side note to Mommy, your post made perfect sense sweetie *lol* :) }
Now while I'm only one headed, I think that that was the definite
motivator of my first husband. All his friends had married in the year
before and he was the only one who was still, er...deprived. I was 19 and
he was 21 and though we held off on the 'main event'
until our wedding night he definitely had busy hands.
I was horribly uncomfortable with it but was so used
to people running my life that I didn't slap him the way
I wanted to. larc talked about JW girls being cold...I wasn't
I was just terrified of being 'marked'...I so wanted to
be the perfect little JW girl.
I had no way to know at the time that even though his
hormones were raging before the wedding, he was
really a very cold and unfeeling person. I confused
sexual attention with real love and since he was the
first person I'd even kissed (I was that shy, okay! *lol*)
I had nothing to gauge it by.
After our wedding night, he rarely had any use for me, except
when he expected his 'due'.
He tried to make me over into a classic rendition of what
is called the Madonna/wh*re syndrome (please forgive the
word, folks, that's what they call it) Where a man wants
a woman to be two different things, one in public,
one in private. It fractured my personality as his 'tastes'
became more and more apparent as our marriage went on and suffice it to say
if I had known about them before I married him, the
wedding wouldn't have happened.
I have no regrets though, I have a beautiful child
and I would do it over again because of that.
Now, Magoo, back to your original thought about
the importance of marriage: it was very important
to me, I wanted so badly to be a good wife to this man that
I stuck it out for years. Nothing I did measured up, he dictated how much I should weigh,
wear my hair, talk about, think, etc.
I asked him to go into counseling with me for a long time, he said that
I was crazy and needed a shrink. Then the shrink he
took me to told me that it wasn't me, it was him and
if I didn't divorce him I would go insane eventually.
I imagine that I'm on a list similiar to yours with my
old friends. I was thinking about that this morning because
my ex and I were talking last night when we dropped my
daughter off and some old friends came up, and I thought
to myself, I really wish they knew the truth about the
circumstances of my divorce. What they believe is that
I left him for another man, end of story.
They don't know what I lived with for seven years. Since
I got df'd (even though I didn't have a physical
relationship with anyone else until after the legal divorce)
they think that I just left my husband, and Jehovah.
My story is long and involved and is on the web if you're
interested Magoo. Marriage is still the most important
thing in my life. The difference now is that I'm married
to a warm, affectionate, kind, emotionally available man:
something that I was sure of on our wedding day and
the reason that I have had no regrets since...not for
a nanosecond.
My 'leaving' my ex had nothing, not a thing to do with sex.
It had to do with the fact that I was completely emotionally
isolated, I knew that I couldn't change my first husband that
I would never be 'good' enough for him... and
I literally thought that I would have to kill myself to get out
of the marriage. That was my plan.
Then when a friend said to me "Hey, you deserve better than this,
you know..." and meant it, it saved my life and I realized
that the "You'll never do better" speech that my ex always gave
me was a lie.
Now that friend is my second husband, and after four years
of knowing him and nearly 2 of marriage, he's still my best friend.
Marriage is far more sacred to him than any, any of the JW
guys I grew up with.
Interesting topic.
Peace,
Es
The Four Agreements:
Be Impeccable With Your Word
Don't Take Anything Personally
Don't Make Assumptions
Always Do Your Best
