Married the first time at 22. I wasn’t "in love" with him on our wedding day even. I had chosen him because he was a good man, with a good heart and I trusted him. He made me feel safe. And he had a close family. Parents he played cards with and hung out with on weekends fairly often. A brother he hunted with. The thing of fairy tales and other peoples lives. We divorced when I was 29 but remained what we’d always been. Good friend. Until he met a woman of course. New wives aren’t particularly thrilled with ex wives. But that was good. I was happy for him. He deserved to be loved.

I remarried 10 years later. This time I was a whole person marrying someone I was (am) in love with. I think I’ve been lucky both times actually. The first time my husband and I helped each other grow up. The second time we have loved each other for who we are.

We were both 24 and finishing grad school.  The timing was right.  School was finally behind us, and we were ready for life together and the work force.  While he is shy and quiet and always proactive… researching a car for months before buying one, I am his opposite.  Assertive, out going, and I once bought a car on the way home from work when I hadn’t even been thinking about it that morning.

I’ve never been married, but I wonder what age I might be if I ever do.

First marriage I had been 19 all of three weeks.  I had nothing better to do and that is what was expected of me.  After five years of controlling hell, I got out.  But I made the same mistake a year an a half later, thinking some how if I just loved him enough he would stop drinking and get better, not so much.  Been divorced for 8 years.  Thought I found Prince Charming, but I was wrong again.  I call them mistake number one, two, and almost three. 

Unlike some others-I have not given up hope.  There is someone out there that will love me just for me and be happy to call me his wife and me to call him my husband.  But unlike earlier in life-I am no longer in a rush.  It is not the priority.  I have my kids, lots of really great friends, I date and have a life, and I am much more calm and truly in control of my life.  For now, that is good enough.

I was 20 the first time I married. I did love him, and I knew he was "the one", but looking back - if I’m truly honest - I realize part of it was rebellion to shock my parents. He’d been in prison, he drank beer (though I didn’t realize how much until a week after the wedding), and that close knit family I thought he had turned out to be nothing more than trash. But we hung in there - had our first baby eleven months after the wedding, another one less than three years later, both planned. Later I nursed him for almost three years as he slowly died from cancer. We were married 17 years when he died.

 I was in my mid 30s at that point, and had been pretty much on my own for two years when he died (he’d been in a nursing home, I was working, raising the kids, taking care of the house, seeing to his care, etc.). I was ready for another relationship. When I met this one, I knew he was the one as well. We have been married almost 12 years. It’s good, it’s comfortable, we’ll probably never divorce, but I do have regrets. He’s a good man, wonderful to my adult children, we never argue, he adores me. But he has also become disabled since we married, so now spends his days hanging out with friends while I trudge on to work every day. I have resentment.

 I’ve gotten to the point I think we should have term limits on marriage. Get married, 10 years later re-evaluate it and decide whether to continue or change course!