The phone call came.
They had it in.
Leaving my work, mid-sentence, I jumped into the car and drove. Drove for the other side of the state. Only my racing heart could compete with the engine’s RPMs.
They finally had it in!
Months ago I’d found the perfect engagement ring. The perfect setting. The perfect stone. But it was in New York, and someone else wanted the ring.
I didn’t know if my luck would hold. Didn’t know if perfection would slip through my fingers. But the Tiffany’s gemologist apparently called in a few favors.
At least that’s what he told me.
And yet the man, a hybrid of Truman Capote and Peter Lorre, held more than my trust. He held my hopes and dreams and nerves and fears. I’d played over how I’d propose to my girlfriend for every star in the sky. All it needed was a diamond capable of reflecting those stars.
That drive, a murky, cold, overcast day, a day of off-and-on rain, was one of the happiest days of my life.
If only I could have held onto it.
Preparing Yourself
My marriage didn’t last. Like a piece of single-ply toilet paper, it fell apart as soon as the adversary hit it. Truth be told, it shouldn’t have happened.
There are things I can’t change. Experiences I can’t alter. I can’t go back in time and whisper truths into my ear, and even if I could, I don’t know if younger me would listen.
The failures remain with me. They no longer hurt or hinder, but they stand as a reminder. A monument of a future lost, and a declaration to lessons learned.
I can’t do anything about what happened to me and with me, but I can offer my own suggestions to you. Truths I would offer if I could sit in that car, by my side, while driving to the other side of the state to purchase the engagement ring.
It’s not possible to sit in that car. The car, like the experience, has long since passed. But I can offer some advice to you.
Ask. And Listen
“We’re happy as long as he’s happy.”
I discovered my fiance had wandered into the bed of another before our wedding date. Truth be told that should have been the end of it.
But for so many reasons, it wasn’t.
I can say it’s because I had paid for much of the wedding up-front and didn’t want to pay for a second wedding due to a delay. I can say I didn’t want all those flying in for the ceremony to cancel plans and lose out on partial travel refunds. I can say it’s because of several reasons, all of which are partial truths.
But underneath it all, I convinced myself everything would be okay. I told myself if “it was meant to be, it was meant to be.” I think deep down I knew all of this to be false, but I didn’t have anyone else telling me otherwise. Pulling me in the other direction.
When sustaining oneself on lies, one becomes dependent on the lies.
Very few knew of what transpired behind the scenes. Nobody in my family knew. Only a handful of friends were in the loop. I wanted to keep the circle small. And yet I didn’t turn to the circle and ask, truthfully, what they thought.
My fiance apologized to them prior to the wedding for what she did. They waved it off as guys tend to do. One told her as long as I was happy, it’s all that mattered.
But was I happy?
Eating up the lives I served?
I needed to sit my friends down and ask them, truthfully, what they thought. To have them lay out all of their thoughts and feelings. And I needed to listen. Because sometimes we can’t see our own mistakes. Through the tears of possible heartbreak, it’s difficult to see the ground in front of us, yet the very closest of friends can see the world around us.
So ask your friends what they truthfully think. What they feel. What they see. It’s often more real and factional than anything we, living in the moment, can ever hope to see.
Counseling Before Counseling
I’d like to think, for the most part, that seeing a therapist isn’t as taboo as it might have been. I’ve openly talked about it. I know many people who openly do so as well. While the contents of the therapy discussions remain firmly within the session, there isn’t that kind of awkwardness anymore when talking about seeing mental health.
But relationship help? That’s something totally different.
If you were to tell someone you and your significant other were seeing a marriage or relationship counseling, they’d instantly ask you what’s wrong, or how rocky things are, or “Is everything okay?”.
And yet if I was to contemplate marriage again, I think seeing a marriage counselor, even just once, before the wedding would be well worth the price of admission.
I’m a bit more prepared a second time around. At least I’d like to think I’d be. But life has a way of finding the cracks and seeping in deeply. Having a professional walk us through some important, tough, and difficult discussions is critical.
I’d have to assume these questions have evolved over the years. They are probably less centered around someone losing a job, having money issues, or other financial problems, and more centered around topics like how would you support a child if they came out as transgender, to what would happen if both you and your partner received a dream job opportunity, but the jobs were located on other sides of the country. In other words, questions not often asked of one partner to the other.
I didn’t receive any marriage counseling prior to my marriage. I wasn’t against it, but my fiance was, and I didn’t push. She saw it as a waste of time and a waste of money.
In reality, the only waste of time and money was the marriage itself. Perhaps counseling would have flagged that ahead of time.
You never know what life might throw your way. And even if life doesn’t turn in the same direction as the questions a counselor asks, just knowing how your partner reacts (or doesn’t react) to the questions can offer insights you may have never accessed without the counselor’s help.
Listen to the Right Organ
Following the discovery of my fiance’s external excursions with other individuals, I should have listened to my brain. Or my gut. Or my feet. But I didn’t.
I listened to my heart.
The heart is a terrible organ to listen to.
The heart is easily corrupted. It’s a child that’s tasted sugar for the first time and now only has eyes for sweets.
The heart wants the release of those love chemicals and hormones. It craves them. It’s addicted to them.
And that’s the problem. When listening to the heart in matters of life you’re listening to an addict. An addict that wants what's best for itself. Not for your mind. Not for the rest of your body.
If I could do it again, I’d try to listen to what the rest of myself was saying. To my head. To my gut.
Of course, the heart is a difficult voice to ignore. It’s not always logical, but it’s always passionate. And sometimes the passionate argument just feels better than the logical one.
Things can work out. Things can get better. Please release chemicals and hormones now.
If there’s a voice inside of you that’s telling you to stop. To reconsider. To go another path. If the voice is far away, like someone calling your name from a long, dark hallway, try to stop and listen.
Because it’s your gust trying to tell you the truth. Your heart is just getting in the way.
Have you ever listened to a song for the hundredth time, and yet this time, when you slip on your headphones and press play, you hear something new? Maybe it’s a subtle bass riff buried in the mix that you’re only discovering now for the first time? Maybe it’s a mystery instrument or secretly more cowbell.
Whatever it is, despite hearing the song so many times, this sound is new to you. It’s like that with your gut. You’ve listened to your heart so many times that, eventually, you might hear that other sound, that other voice, buried under the mix.
It's the sound, the voice, you really need to be listening to. Because it has what’s best for you in mind. Not what’s just best for an egocentric heart.
Ask, and Listen
When looking over my list, you’ll find almost all of them are nothing more than asking and listening. Not hearing the surface noise or what you want to take in, but listening to the important voices in your life. The voices of close friends, to your significant other, and how they respond to life’s questions. To your gut.
To avoid making the mistakes I made, all you have to do is ask and listen. It might not sound like much, but it’ll add up. And it might just equal you making the relationship decision you want, but the relationship decision that’s right.