Posted by Kimberly on October 13th, 2007 — Posted in Just Like Riding A Bicycle, The Man I Didn't Marry
It’s killing me, having him there, just out of reach. Wondering what his life has been like these past ten years. Is he still bitter? Did he heal? Is he happy? Is his life good? Everything he always wanted? I want all that for him. I always have.
So, I peeked. I messaged the friend we have in common, one of my best friends from highschool and another Facebook reconnect, and asked, “Is he happy? Is he good?” I knew that I really had no right to ask her, have no real right to know, but I had to ask.
He’s divorced, with two kids.
Damn. That’s not the life I was hoping for for him. I wanted him to have the white picket fence and the wife who keeps a spotless house and has dinner ready when he gets home from work. I wanted him to have happily ever after, not just “after.”
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Posted by Kimberly on October 12th, 2007 — Posted in Just Like Riding A Bicycle, The Man I Didn't Marry
The Man I Didn’t Marry is on Facebook. I wasn’t looking for him, I swear. He just showed up on my news feed as the friend of a friend. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this; I knew that we had old friends in common. I just didn’t expect that we’d, you know, have friends in common.
I couldn’t resist clicking on his profile, which turned out to be public. There’s a picture–he looks the same–and a bit of information but not much. He owns his own antique store now and I’m glad. That was always a dream for him. The personal info, though, the stuff you really look up people on Facebook for, is sadly lacking.
I heard he got married and had a daughter, but there’s no mention of that here. Not that that means anything, of course. But I want to know. I wanted to click on his page and see the evidence of his happy life. That it’s not there makes me wonder.
In the normal course of Facebook events, I’d add him as a friend, or maybe send a message. But this situation falls a bit outside of the boundaries of normal. This isn’t my third grade crush or my high school boyfriend; this is the man I all but left at the altar. Somehow, a random “poke” out of the blue seems, I don’t know, a bit tacky.
Other than some nostalgia around my “unniversary,” I haven’t thought much about this man for the past ten years, but tonight as I sit here in a livingroom filled with furniture he didn’t help pick out, surrounded by children who are not his, I find myself wondering about him. Is it a good life? Is he happy? Is he wondering the same things about me?
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Posted by Kimberly on August 11th, 2006 — Posted in Kipple, The Man I Didn't Marry, Scarlet Letters, iVillage
I inadvertently offended a friend’s father the other day. It absolutely wasn’t my intent to do so, and in fact I didn’t even realize I had until my friend mentioned it, but an offhand remark I made about my relationship to the state of matrimony left him deeply offended. While I’m sorry he interpreted my innocent comment to be a denigration of his 30 year marriage, I’m not sorry I made it. To be honest, I’d do the exact same thing again in similar circumstances.
What happened was this: We were having brunch and somehow the conversation turned to the question of why the third finger of the left hand is the wedding ring finger. My friend’s 13 year old daughter, knowing that my lint trap of a brain is chock full of useless knowledge, asked me to clear up the question. My flippant reply, “I don’t know. I try to know as little about marriage as possible,” was apparently seen as an attack on marriage in general, and a devaluing of his in particular.
Let me be clear here that I am not anti-marriage. I have nothing against marriage per se. In fact, I firmly believe that marriage is an institution should be open to anyone who wants to experience it. I just have absolutely no interest in experiencing it myself. And I’m a little sensitive about that.
You see, we may very well be living in the 21st century, and statistics might support the idea that there are a heck of a lot of solo moms out there, but our society is still programmed to assume that all women are either married, or want to be. For example, a moms board I belong to recently added a “Single Moms” section. The first post? A married woman inviting the other married ladies to discuss where they’d met their “dh,” the better to help all us old maids find our own Prince Charmings. Personally, I quite often get called “Mrs.” at parent-teacher conferences, the automatic assumption being that if I have a child, surely I must be married. I’ve endured my share of well meaning friends trying to set me up on blind dates, unwilling to believe that I’m single because I choose to be, not because I can’t find a man. I’ve heard joking comments about finding a rich husband to better support my children and, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t amused.
It’s not that I don’t respect my friend’s father’s choice to marry; it’s that I often don’t feel like my choice not to marry is given the same due. So, yeah, I guess I can be a bit defensive when it comes to the issue of marriage. And we all know what they say about a good offense, right?
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Posted by Kimberly on May 31st, 2006 — Posted in The Man I Didn't Marry, iVillage, Sanity and the Solo Mom
Nine years ago today, I didn’t get married.
I was supposed to. The church was booked, the hall reserved. The menu was set and the flowers were chosen. The invitations were printed and addressed, but never mailed.
I didn’t exactly leave him at the altar, but it was close.
I knew the Man I Didn’t Marry for two years before we dated. And we dated for three years before he asked me to marry him. I wore his ring for a year before I gave it back, five weeks before the wedding.
Leaving that relationship wasn’t an easy or capricious decision. It was incredibly hard, and made more difficult by the fact that I did love him, and he was (and is) a good man. He wasn’t abusive. Or even mean. He made it clear that he loved me. But in the end, none of that was enough. Sometimes, it’s not.
Eventually I realized that the person I would become if I became his wife was not a person I wanted to be. I couldn’t do that to either of us. Become someone I wasn’t, someone who would make both of us miserable, simply because I wasn’t brave enough to face the truth and bear the consequences. That, much though we both wanted it to be, it just wasn’t right.
So I did possibly the hardest thing I have ever done in my life: I told him I wouldn’t be marrying him afterall.
It was the best decision I have ever made. I wouldn’t be the person I am now, or have the life that I do, had I ignored what I knew to be true and just gone through with it. I like who I’ve grown into over these past nine years. I am very close to being the woman I knew I could be, the woman I knew I’d never have a chance to be if I had said, “I do.” I can imagine my life many other ways, but none of them appeal to me. This, right now, is where and how I want to live. I have no regrets about not getting married. I’m sorry the man I loved was hurt in the process (and that my parents lost their deposit on the hall), but it was the right choice to make. It was so right, it really wasn’t a choice at all.
To quote Norma Kelly in Chicago (which I bough myself as a little present today) : “Oh, I’m no one’s wife/but oh, I love my life/and all that jazz!”
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