Cohabitation vs Marriage and Why I am glad I didn't marry at 19

Cohabitants: No matter how great your relationship is and how much you love each other, you are not financially, legally, socially, and emotionally bound to each other. You still have an out if you should ever need one. Your finances are separate, if you were to split there would be details to iron out but not quite the enmeshed unraveling that comes with divorce.

I cohabitated with a man for a year and a half when I was 19. The road we had paved for ourselves was marriage, but apparently he didn’t actually want to go through with that. That is the one thing out of the whole experience that I truly am grateful for more than anything else.

See, my 19 year old self was so naive and romantic that even though I had been hurt before at this age I still believed that when someone said they loved me- that meant unequivocally that they loved me forever; and as much as I loved them. (Go ahead and laugh, call me a sucker). I believed in this so strongly that I moved 1,827 miles from my home, my family, and the few friends I had in order to be with someone that I believed was 'the' one. We had only dated 1 month. The sad part about all of this, is that at that age, I didn’t really wait for the other shoe to drop so to speak. I didn’t calculate the risks, or have doubts, I just knew I loved him and threw caution to the wind thinking that love was enough. Sorry folks, I’m here to tell you that that old adage is completely untrue. It should read “Reciprocated love is all you need” ah la the Beatles. I really took who and what people were at face value and believed that what they said to be the truth and I adhered to it as if it were the gospel. You said you love me? Alright, you love me and I believe in that with every fiber of my being and thus will defend anything that conflicts with that. Little did I expect that conflict would come from the person that I desperately was trying to hold onto.

I cannot imagine if I would have stayed around and had that spiral become my entire life. I was truly lost and so completely sad. Sure, the first six months were great. The next year that I lived there with him was spent trying to ignore the true person that had emerged and attempting to revert back to how things were before. I was willing to be an emotional punching bag because “he loved me”. It’s really quite sick when you dissect it. Why is it so hard to leave a bad relationship? Let’s say you have cancer- you don’t get the news from a Doctor and then say, “I’m just going to hang out and do nothing with my cancer for another year to see if things get better.” You rid it from your life with violent bursts of radiation therapy. Well, my radiation therapy came late one night when I was on our old brown couch and it came swiftly. I wept for my Mommy. Literally, that was what I said in between sobs. Being home was the only thing that would make it all okay. I made one of the most humiliating phone calls of my life. After that, I packed my life into two suitcases, went to the airport, and flew home. I received several other kicks while I was down when I arrived home, but I rebuilt. No one can tell me it’s impossible to do, because I did it. I worked at a Nail salon filling pedicure bowls and sweeping the floor. Adjusting to this was truly difficult from my job as a Preschool teacher. I was humiliated again, but I kept going. Then one night I was on Instant Messenger, and received an IM from someone whose name I recognized- and had one of the best conversations I have ever had. That man, turned out to be my Husband.

My 25 year old self knows that relationships are hard, dirty work. There are days when you want to slap the person you love just for existing. There are bad days at work, bad moods, and turmoil with family. Where you end up after that is all that matters. I realize now that my 19 year old self was not dumb for movin or for rushing into things quickly- but I was dumb for doing that all with someone that I knew in my gut was not right for me. He was just my means to an end. I had no job, no friends, no one that cared if I left. Here was this man who promised me a new life, new friends, and at face value- security. Sure, the other things were good but he didn’t ever make me feel safe, comfortable, or secure. And when you are out of sight, you are out of mind. All the hugs I was greeted with at shows didn’t mean anything either. I was expendable- despite what words were being said. My 25 year old self has no patience for that. I would rather have the hard truth, the hard conversation than all the lies and bullshit that surround relationships when they are new.

I have spent the past 4 years with my new Husband, and I am still constantly learning from him. Not just about him, but about relationships, about love, and about friendship. Every day I love him more. He told me very early on in our relationship that he would always have my back and I am proud to say that that is true. He is the most loyal, and loving person I know. We have walked through hell together. Through tragedy, through anguish, through joy, through loss of employment and just through overall craziness. He has always been a constant. I have never had to wonder where he was at in our relationship. Yes, it was hard to retrain myself to believe and trust everything that he said to me, but I have never regretted it. After all, when I was the most jaded, I got the greatest surprise of my life- true love. The 25 year old in me knows that if I hadn’t been cut down in the first place, I wouldn’t have spoken to Dean that night, and it is very likely he would have found another, and we may not have as easily made our way to each other.

Growing up isn’t all bad I suppose.