2008, I made a huge decision to end my first marriage after 8 years. A single friend of ours told me that he couldn’t believe my then-husband and I were breaking up, because we seemed like we had the perfect relationship. Well, sometimes things seem perfect from the outside…
I decided not to leave, and that same friend told me how happy he was to see us work it out.
Fast forward several months, and I finally got the courage to end it. I was a young, single mother, alone for the first time since high school, and this same friend, who was a town cop at the time, stopped in to check on me and my three young boys often, knowing I was scared and alone and adjusting. We talked a lot about life and what we both wanted, and realized that we had a lot of the same goals in mind. I also realized how smart and witty he was, and so driven to someday start a family to provide for. He loved my kids, who had known him already for several years, and eventually, he told me that he’d loved me since he’d met me, and always wished he could find someone like me someday, but he had never imagined that my first marriage would have ended and I would one day be his.
We were married in October of 2009. He raised my boys like his own, and we added a fourth son to the bunch in 2010.
In 2022, as my kids got older, I started my own career in law enforcement. Through shifting dynamics, stress, and a lot of evolution, we fell apart. We tried to fight, individually, but we never really fought together, and we divorced in April of 2024.
Due to life’s circumstances, and my previous experience and rocky relationship with my first ex husband, we decided to stay living together as roommates, since the house was now down to one son as our older boys had gone out on their own, and there was plenty of room for us to live “apart”. We thought it would be easier for our son if both of his parents were still in the same house. It wasn’t. But, it worked as well as it could, and we stayed friends.
Last Christmas, I had a breast cancer scare, and while going to ultrasounds, mammograms, and biopsies, I was so angry to look at the empty space at my bedside, knowing he should be there. I was angry because I knew he would have been in a heartbeat, had I asked. He was still my emergency contact, and when one of the medical forms asked for his relationship to me, all I could think to write was “Life Partner.”
He’d never left my side. In two years of separation and divorce, he was still the one I talked to about my day, and I was still the one he told about his. We went on countless outings together with our son. Many people in our small town hadn’t even realized that our marriage had ended… not even our neighbor!
A new friend once asked me bluntly why we weren’t together. “He loves you. It’s so obvious.” I just smiled and said, “I know.”
In May, after a clean bill of health, I cried and told him that I could never see my future without him in it, and I was afraid the longer I refused to admit that we were meant to be together, the more likely the chance he would find someone else and move on. He told me that he always meant when he said I was his soul mate and would never find anyone else.
Last week, I cried by our pool (I swear, I’m normally dead inside and cry rarely! 😜) and told him that I couldn’t wait to marry him again. He immediately texted our children asked them to come to our house on Sunday, arranged an officiant (a good friend who was actually a surprise), and put everything together, mostly himself.
Yesterday, I pulled the dress that I bought almost a year ago out of my closet, that I put away thinking it would make the perfect dress to wear to our wedding if we ever got back together, although at that time I thought I had no plans nor desire to do so.
We worked together with our 15 year old son to put together the simplest spot for a ceremony in our back yard, our youngest proudly walked me down the “aisle” and handed over his parents’ rings. We had a BBQ with our boys, my bonus son (my son’s ex boyfriend who will always be a part of our family), and my future daughter-in-law (🤞🏼 but she’s still waiting on her proposal), our friend who officiated, and her husband (my former lieutenant). We had a store-bought tiramisu and cupcakes for a cake, and I made my bouquet out of supermarket flowers.
It was small and simple and beautiful, and now everything feels right in the world once more. ❤️
Size 6, 43 years old. Bananas were brown, so they’ve been turned into banana bread.
***click the second photo to see the whole family***
