I Made It Four Years This Time

I got married for the first time in March 2013. That was a big, 160-person wedding down in Miami that admittedly was pretty fun, longer-term outcome ignored in this case. In March 2017, I was getting separated from said woman, largely as a result of my own bullshit. So, on what would have been our fourth wedding anniversary, we were living together but essentially actively avoiding each other. It was a rough time. The anger and sadness I felt during that period and extending our from that period could probably power Brazil for a couple of months.

I got married the second time, which is a sentence that I guess you never hope to have to write but 43% of people do end up writing (or saying), in October 2020. This was a COVID-era wedding with a “drive-by” component, and the actual wedding had 20 or so people, 15 of whom I had met maybe four-six times beforehand. It was in Texas, and via COVID, my own parents didn’t even come. It was also one of the last times I received a positive text message from my boy Bobby L., who I mentioned here.

Well, today is Year 4 of Marriage 2, and I am happy to report that I am not in the middle of a separation. Has Marriage II been easy? Absolutely not. For chunks of this relationship, I’ve been a fall-down drunk mess, and we go through infertility. I’m about to be 44, squarely associated as a “dad age” by many, so I feel it on my side — but honestly, I kinda sold the idea of biological fatherhood long ago (around the time of that March 2017 divorce), briefly brought it back into my brain for a bit, then sold it again. However, when your wife is eight years younger than you, and all her friends are doing the Instagram bump shit on Baby 2–3 now, it can weigh on you, for sure. It’s all a graduation reduction in both (a) drinking and (b) triggers.

I also just did a calculation of “total days in relationship” using the date-to-date calculator on Time and Date. I think I spent 2,750 or so days with my ex-, and I’m at about 2,550 with my wife. I guess that’s another 3/4 of a year or so. P.S. in true bullshit male fashion, I believe I dated both start dates to the first time we hooked up, not when a relationship was actually determined.

There is a lot to unpack about all this, and most of it will have absolutely no bearing on you because you don’t know me or either person involved in this story. I cannot over-generalize on this one, because every breakup is very specific to those two people (and their friends), and in our case, we didn’t have kids or own property together, so the logistical process was actually pretty clean. I just had to go to Tucson for a weekend while she moved out, which ended up majorly backfiring on me in terms of my relationship with my friend I visited there, and then I had to spend about 44 days in the apartment we shared, probably 30 of which I got intoxicated for. I had a weird rubber ring deal in that relationship and I vaguely remember walking it to the trash chute sometime in April 2017. I chucked it in, sighed deeply for a second, and headed to the bar. I was 36 years old and starting to realize that no one really gives a shit about you, sometimes including yourself.

If you’re going through this, just realize that it does get better (usually), but it can take years, even close to a decade, and it requires some painful conversations with yourself, the loss of a half-dozen or more friendships (my buddy once told me that his ex-wife’s friends “chose the nuclear option” on him; my ex’s friends didn’t quite do that, but it was close), and just a bunch of bullshit and pain.

You can find a better place if you’re willing to try, though.

Just know that above all.

Oh, I will say this one other thing too. There is a crass line in the universe about “the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.” Personally, I figured that was probably true, but I can tell you in execution that having a “bridge” of sorts from a relationship you once saw as “forever” to a different version of forever is relevant, especially as a guy who maybe feels small and alone in the aftermath of a breakup. I did it, and it worked for me.

Now, I probably have some significant attachment issues, for reasons too elaborate for a Medium post. There was definitely a moment within this fling here where I thought, “Ah, this is the new thing.” It wasn’t, and we’re both married to other people now, but with all the shit I was going through and feeling and trying to sort out in the moment, sometimes it just helped to have someone who wanted to touch me, ya know?

So, I’d nod at that.

In the meantime, take a deep breath and you’re OK.