It’s Not 42

In my first post, I mentioned that I’d eventually talk about the courtship/marriage to my wonderful wife. I was thinking about it some as I got ready for work and decided that there’s no better time than the present. In order to properly tell it though, I need to go WAY back to when I was young.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Fortune aside, I recall wanting to have a girlfriend from a very early age, possibly elementary school. I know it’s a silly idea looking back on it now, there’s a reason why people say that hindsight is 20/20. I suspect the reason is due to the way that the media portrays relationships. I recall old TV shows and movies that showed kids expressing an interest in the opposite gender. The result is life imitating art imitating life. TV showed that it was normal for kids to date, so I needed a girlfriend. Generally “dating” when I was young really just meant that you simply said you had a significant other. There seemed to be very little actual “dating” going on at that time. It became so common for boys and girls to be “going out” though, that I eventually believed that part of my self-worth was linked to having a girlfriend.

My first “girlfriend” was simply a girl that was my friend. She and I met a church camp while we were in Jr. High. As it was, even church camp seemed to promote the idea of teenage dating since the big event that everyone looked forward to was the “formal” dinner at the end of the week. Boys were encouraged to find and escort a date to the dinner. This caused every single awkward teenage boy to scramble to find their own personal 1-week fling before all of the best girls were taken.

One nice thing about this girl was that she didn’t live to far away in comparison to some of the other girls and because our churches occasionally got together for various functions. Another bonus was the fact that one of my friends was dating her sister. We did hold hands a couple of times, and my friend and I did get to spend an afternoon with her family, but most of our “relationship” consisted of occasional phone conversations that went something like this:

Hi.
Hi.
How are you?
Fine, you?
Good.
<insert about 30 minutes of silence>
Ok, well I guess I should go now, bye.
Ok, bye.

In reality, we were simply friends that occasionally saw one another and we were able to tell our friends that we had a significant other.

Time progressed and I moved into high school. I admit that I did have a low self-image. Honestly, I’m not completely convinced that was such a bad thing though because I fear what I might be like today had I been self-absorbed, but I digress. Part of my esteem issue was the fact that I falsely believed that I needed a girlfriend to find self-worth. I was not a whole person on my own.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…
-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Doesn’t that quote sum up high school perfectly? I understand now what my high school band director meant when he said, “I had some of my best experiences in high school, but I’d never want to go through those years again.”

I had three relationships back when I was in high school.

The first of these was the first girl that I went on actual dates with. We held hands and I regretfully experienced my first kiss. I only say regretfully now. Back then it was the best experience ever, but how much better would it have been if my first kiss had been at the altar? In the end, this relationship only lasted a few months (which is a VERY long time in dog highschool years). We met, we started dating, we became good friends, and then we broke up. I was emotionally destroyed.

The second only lasted a couple of weeks. Immediately after I started dating her, I was grounded for some reason. I don’t recall why, but we dated a couple of weeks, broke up, and suddenly I wasn’t grounded anymore. Thanks mom! Seriously, it turns out that she was really not a good person at all. Still, I hadn’t really recovered from my previous emotional wounds so I was emotionally crushed once more.

The third relationship actually lasted close to three years. She and I were very close, got along great, and even discussed marriage. She is a very sweet girl, but that relationship too eventually ended. In this case, I believe the relationship was ended for the right reasons (of course that’s assuming that I should have been dating to begin with). As she and I became more and more serious, I began to consider what our lives together might be like.

I was raised in a Nazarene church and she was raised in the United Church of Christ. I took my faith seriously, she didn’t seem to hold it to the same degree of importance. In addition, she and I had conversations about where we would go to church after we were married and where we would raise our kids. At the time, I expected to remain in the Nazarene church (which ironically I left about a year or so later….for a different girl), and she wanted to remain in the UCC. I brought it up at one point and she suggested that we could each go to separate churches, but that our kids would be raised UCC. Regardless, I believed that it was important for a husband and wife to be united under God. After a lot of prayer, she and I went our separate ways.

Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I’ve come to learn, is women.
-Charles Johnson, Middle Passage

That brings me to the next girl that I dated. She and I met while we were both working at Dairy Queen. To be completely honest, she may have had a part in being the final nudge to end my previous relationship. She and I became friends while working together and eventually started dating. We only dated a few months, but eventually we also broke up. Once again, I experience the emotional agony of having loved and lost. However, in this instance there was a silver lining. I ended up becoming very close with her family, so close in fact that I still consider them all to be good friends, and I consider both of her siblings to be like a younger brother and sister to me. Even more importantly, it was through them that I met my wife.

A few months after that relationship ended, I dated another coworker. She and I had been friends in high school, so we already had a preexisting friendship to base our relationship on. I began going to church with her which may not have been a bad thing since started my exploration of other denominational beliefs, but that is for another post. Long story short (to late?), we broke up, our friendship essentially ended, and I was emotionally destroyed yet again.

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.
-Harriet Beecher Stowe

At this point, I began to wonder what the point of dating was. I observed that dating was essentially play-acting marriage, and then play-acting divorce. I found that I would meet a girl, become pretty good friends, start dating, become very good friends, and then we would break up and our friendship would be destroyed. That struck me as being backwards of how it should be, but apparently that’s how society says that it should be. The breakup statement from the girl would typically go something along the lines like, “You’re a really nice guy. I don’t want to hurt you…yada, yada, yada…I think we should just be friends.” I always interpreted this as, Ok, lets be friends, but the real intended meaning was always, I never want to see or hear from you again. It seemed to me that there had to be a better way. I went on dates with others, was serious with another, and was hurt yet again, but at least I was finally starting to learn from my mistakes.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
-Douglas Adams

Getting back to the story: I mentioned previously that the family of one girlfriend and I became very close. They even tried to set me up with a couple of single girls that they knew. The first was a disaster and I was not at all interested, but the second was the daughter of a close friend of theirs. They described this girl as being a short, cute, and strawberry blonde. They first called her and asked permission for me to call her, and then they gave me her number. I put off calling for a while, probably due to nervousness and partially due the the fact that I knew and really didn’t care for her sister, but I had been assured that she was nothing like her sister, so I eventually called.

Well, I’ve never been big on phone conversations. Actually, I generally don’t even talk much (not that you can tell that by my posts), but she and I ended up talking on the phone for about three hours. After that, we decided to go on a date. I went to her house to pick her up, saw her when she opened the door, and my first thought was, “wow, she really is short….and her hair is short (I tend to prefer long hair on girls)…….and burgundy?!? I thought she was a strawberry blonde.”  She later told me that her thought was, “wow, he’s really skinny and his clothes are kind of dorky.” Also to comment on her hair, that apparently was when she was going through her experimental grunge stage. So much for first impressions. We went out and had a pretty good time together, but we never really hit it off.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

There is one specific thing that did have an impression on me though. On that first “date”, we briefly stopped by my parent’s house. My dad met her, spoke with her for a little bit, and then later told me in private that I might want to consider “hanging onto this one”. This was significant because my sister had been in a few relationships that my dad expressed concerns about (and yes that is putting it politely). My mom talked to me once about that and said that my dad seemed to be a pretty good judge of character and that we should listen if there’s anyone that he did not like. That was proven with a couple of my friends growing up. My father having a good impression of her stood out to me as a positive thing.

She and I hung out a bit and talked on the phone a few times, but nothing serious ever really came of it at this point.

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
-Graham Green, The End of the Affair

In a sense, this is where the real story begins. One day while I was working at Best Buy, I was filling in at the front security desk while the security officer was on his lunch break. This was not a typical thing for me as I generally worked back in the computer specialist area (now known as the Geek Squad. Thankfully I quit before they adopted that name!) On this particular day, a petite young lady came into the store and caught my eye. This young lady was the very same young lady that my friends had introduced me to. “Heather?” I said. She turned, “Ben? Hi! I didn’t expect to see you here.” It turns out that it was rare for her to be in Best Buy since she never shopped there, but things worked out perfectly for our paths to cross. We spoke briefly to quickly catch up, and then we exchanged AOL screen names. It wasn’t long after that I received a messaged that looked something like this:

Heaz75: Hi! =)

She and I began talking frequently over IM, phone, and began hanging out. We never seriously dated, but always kept our relationship strictly as friends. Typically she’d be my buddy to hang out with when I wanted to go see a movie or go out to eat, but didn’t want to go alone. I would sometimes pay for her to be polite, but we would often go dutch.

As we spent time together, our friendship continued to grow. However I went on actual dates with others and I know now that she did as well, but nothing ever became serious for either of us. Time progressed and we became better and better friends, but continued to keep our relationship strictly as friends (meaning that we never held hands, we never kissed, never really had any physical contact at all).

One summer in particular, we were together several times a week. We attended a weekly bible study together, we went to a Christian music festival with a friend , and she even accompanied my family on vacation to Branson, MO. It was near the end of that summer that I started considering her as a potential wife. However, the summer ended and she went back to college. Suddenly the girl that I had seen and spoken with several times a week was gone. We did write to one another, which is a big deal for me since I never actually wrote and mailed letters. I also called her at least once a week, usually to tell her how well (or poorly) I did in that week’s ice-hockey game.

Then after a couple of months, life threw her a curve ball and she came home early. We both found that we missed one another (although this wasn’t discussed until much later), and we picked things up right where we had left off. We began attending the weekly bible study together again and hung out from time to time, but still just as friends. Our most intimate moment was that we would hold hands on her parent’s front porch and pray together.

Never tell me the odds.
-Han Solo, Star Wars

After much prayer, I decided that I was going to take a big risk. I went to a jeweler and began looking at rings to get an idea of cost. I chose a diamond that I liked, then I chose a ring, and then I placed an order. Those who know me well will know that I have a hard time keeping a secret. This one was huge!!! And of course I ended up telling quite a few people including my friends, her mother, and even a few of her friends (I told you I was bad at secrets). The one person that I managed to keep it from though was her. Due to the fact that she and I had never discussed dating, let alone marriage, I was petrified because I had no clue what she would say. After buying the ring, I simply had to wait.

A couple of weeks passed by and I finally received a call. The ring had arrived! I considered waiting for a special moment, but I decided to go ahead with it and just get it over with. I was just too excited and nervous to wait. I feared that if I waited too long that I’d chicken out. I made a detour to the grocery store to pick up a rose, knowing that it would make me late, but hoping that she wouldn’t mind.

I remember walking out of the grocery store carrying my newly acquired rose with the ring in my coat pocket. As a man and woman passed by me, he turned and snickered, “Ha ha, it won’t work buddy.” Obviously he had no clue what I was about to do, but it still didn’t help my already rattled nerves. During the drive, I ran through my head all that I wanted to say. I don’t know if it really helped because I have no recollection of actually what I said, but it might not have hurt to at least to put forth some effort of rehearsal.

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-Mark Twain

After about a 15 minute drive, I arrived at her house, late to pick her up for our weekly bible study. She opened the door with a glare that suggested her displeasure at my late arrival, but her gaze melted when she say the rose. She thanked me, believing the rose to be an apology for my late arrival, and took it to place in some water. As she neared the kitchen, I asked her to stop. “I’m not finished,” I said. I took her hand and and we sat on the couch. I pulled out the neatly wrapped gift box (the jeweler wrapped it for me), rattled off something (I’m can only assume it was what I rehearsed during my drive), and the asked her to be my wife.

She hadn’t even gotten the box open. She turned with big eyes, hugged me, and started repeatedly saying, “oh my goodness, yes, yes….oh my goodness…..”. Honestly, I’m not sure how much she recalls of that night either, but she recounts her version on her blog. We were engaged for about seven months before we were wed on July 1, 2000.

Now we’ve been married for eight wonderful years! Life hasn’t always been perfect, but we are committed to last.

Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.
-Albert Einstein

There are many things that I attribute to the success of our marriage:

The number one thing is that we are completely spiritually compatible. This will be another topic for later, but despite the fact that she and I both came from completely different denominational backgrounds, we have ended up in the same place and agree and see eye-to-eye on theology and doctrine.

Before our marriage, we also discussed commitment and divorce. We both agreed that neither of us wanted to be divorced. We made a commitment that under absolutely no circumstance would divorce be an option. We are in this for the long haul and are stuck with what we have, so we had better make it work and we had better like it because there would be no way out.

The fact that we also focused on developing our friendship before entering into a relationship is also a big reason why I think we have such a great marriage. We developed a friendship to the point where we were best friends, and then rather than asking her to be my girlfriend, I asked her to be my fiance.  Too many times relationships are built on emotions and/or physical attraction. Neither lasts forever, so once one is gone, you have nothing to hold onto. One thing that Heather told me before we were married was that she had heard that you should never enter into a relationship until you are content being single. That’s a point that I had to reach. I also learned the hard way just how emotionally difficult broken relationships can be. Each time I found someone that I thought that I “loved”, the relationship ended, I lost a friend, and I was left broken.

I have come to learn that love is more than simply an emotion. Love is a decision. When I wake up in the morning, my hair is a mess, my breath is unimaginable (especially if I had garlic the previous day), and I’m sure that I can be a bit grumpy from time to time. An even better example might be anytime I’ve been sick with the flu. I’m sure that my wife doesn’t look at me and feel warm bubbly emotions welling up inside of her. However, she still loves me because she chooses to love me. I likewise make a daily conscious decision to love my wife every day.

Now she is my absolute best friend. We love to spend all of our free time together and miss one another anytime that we have to be apart for an extended period of time. We each have our own separate hobbies, but we also have made a point to take up hobbies that we can do together.

So now as fall approaches, you could possibly find us caving, hiking, or camping, or quite possibly in the river enjoying our newest hobby, fly-fishing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 6:43 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.