It’s been 27 Years
On January 13th my husband and I celebrated our 27th year wedding anniversary. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long as I look back and reflect on my 22-year-old self in a wedding dress walking down a big cathedral aisle of the Episcopal church. It was a big day, filled with over 200 guests, amazing friends, and an event that people would speak of for years to come.
I look back at my 22-year-old self today and I think wow, “Did you really know what you were committing to at that young age? Your whole life was ahead of you and you made a commitment to spend the rest of your life with someone at 22.” I thought I knew everything there was to know about the world, and I became a stepmother to an 8-year-old daughter the day that I made this commitment. If only my 22-year-old self could have known what was ahead. But then I think if anybody had tried to tell me, or educate me about what was ahead, I would have denied that any of that was true, and felt that I had the knowledge, the skill set, and the tenacity to see it through. Plus, the journey of marriage is filled with vulnerability and there’s no way to engineer that out of it, or prepare for things to try to control what’s ahead.
Challenges and Differences
I think there were some that deep down didn’t believe this was going to last. I was 22 and my husband was 33 when we got married. There were some that thought the 11-year age gap was just never going to work. There were skeptics, and also many who believed in the power of what we had. Newly married, graduate school, and the birth of our first child together just before my 25th birthday was likely a lot for someone to take on. Again, back then I thought I was invincible, I could take on the world, and maybe part of me believed I could do more than the average person.
Yet, despite our age difference, there was one thing that was always very important. Both of us came from families where our parents had never been divorced. Good or bad, there was something about the commitment and the choice that was exemplified that gave us a foundation. It’s not that I don’t believe divorce is sometimes the necessary solution to a bad marriage. In fact, as a therapist, I certainly am privy to toxic couples that probably should never have been married, or even been in a relationship, because they’re so different and their relationship is so hard. But for some reason, the foundation of what our families brought I think, was enough to help us understand that there were going to be challenges and trials ahead, and yet we were going to figure out a way to not just truck through them, but to come out better on the other side.
At 19 Years
By our 19th anniversary our marriage had endured quite a bit of struggle and conflict. While our love was always strong, my husband’s struggle with binge drinking and lack of accountability to those behaviors had wreaked some havoc on trust in our relationship. I honestly was on my way out. I was coordinating behind the scenes extra income, and a path that I felt could be suitable to actually leave something that I could not fix and I couldn’t change. All the therapy and knowledge in the world could not break through somebody’s willingness to let go of something that was a substantial challenge, not only for me but also for our kids and those who were inside our close circle.
Years of prayer, asking God for change, and recognizing my codependent behaviors that facilitated and led to the maintenance of behaviors I didn’t love, had worn down my self- esteem. I was exhausted and emotionally spent. I found myself in a place of resentment and anger… a place I didn’t like, and I wasn’t showing up as my best self. I was so close to letting go of all the hope and the dreams and the expectation of the person I knew my husband to be. I was so close to walking away and changing the trajectory of our family forever, and had there not been a substantial change, I likely would have done exactly that. I was a very different person at that time than I was at 22, and I had done so much work on myself, began to recognize it was time to put some of my needs first, and also acknowledged that this was not how I wanted to live the rest of my life.
Individual Growth and The Power of Change
The day after Memorial weekend in 2015, my husband had what he will call his spiritual awakening, his God moment…call it whatever it was… it was a powerful encounter with something greater than and larger than anything either of us could have known. That was the day that he made a conscious decision to get sober. While those first months might have had a few challenges, by August of 2015 he was the strongest I’d ever seen him, was more present than he had ever been, and for the first time in 19 years of our marriage, he was the person I always knew he could be.
Don’t get me wrong, our marriage didn’t just survive because he had gotten sober. The personal growth and the work that I had done prior to this happening had changed the trajectory of the dance that we did in our marriage. I began to put myself first at times, let go of codependent types of behaviors, and I began to go after my own dreams and recognize that I needed to have an independent life and things that made me happy outside the marriage.
For him, he also had to make some substantial changes in his life, changes in friends, and a drastic transformation of how we engaged in social settings moving forward. At the time, we were in an environment with a circle of friends that lifted us up, that poured into the transformation of our marriage, and who believed and supported all the positivity that was happening in our marriage.
Strength in Telling Our Story
I think we were lucky at the time of our marital transformation, because we had a platform where we were able to speak openly and discuss our experience of our marriage through this addiction, and the journey toward what was becoming of our marriage post addiction. The opportunity to speak, to be able to encourage others and to share the shame of a story that once lived behind four walls, greatly changed the way we felt about that shame, and greatly moved other people toward change. Today, even as a therapist, clients will ask me what did you do? What was the secret sauce? I don’t have any specific answer… I waited 19 years for my Miracle to happen. I can’t tell clients if their Miracle will ever come or if their wishes and desires will ever happen. What I can tell them is that they can’t keep hoping and waiting for someone to change without changing themselves first.
Life After Transformation
Those in our Inner Circle who have seen us and watched the transformation will tell you that it is really a second birth and a love story. We celebrated our 20th anniversary in January 2016 on a fantastic trip to Belize, where we took our first vacation as a married couple without any conflict or struggle related to substance abuse. My husband’s decision to get sober allowed him to be present with me through the process of my mother’s death and to be the rock that I needed after the loss of both my parents.
Our children, who knew the dad who was a drinker and the life of the party, have earned so much respect for the man who stands before them today and leads our family. Every decision that we’ve made since then has been together, moving forward with dreams of building our future and life in the world of an empty nest.
A year ago, we bought an Airstream Van that allowed us to travel together and take vacations, building more memories and experiencing each other outside of the context of our jobs or within the borders of the home with all the responsibilities that exist there. We’ve watched all three kids find their life partners, and I’ve been able to provide the wisdom to each of them of what love looks like, what commitment looks like, and what it looks like to choose each other every single day.
Wherever You Are
Wherever you are in your journey of marriage, I just want you to know that I see you and that life can be filled with many twists and turns. Some of you are in marriages that appear joyful or love is abundant and respect and trust are very strong. Others of you might find yourself in a place where you rather live in separate rooms and coexist. I believe that everybody has a journey of their own and decisions of what path they choose. I believe that not all marriages were meant to stay together just because of a choice or a vow. I believe that individuals need to work harder on themselves to become the best version of themselves. I believe that when our reserves are depleted and there is nothing left to give, we are never our best selves. I believe that learning to forgive, and take accountability is a practice that many need support in order to learn. As a therapist, my greatest joy is in watching people show up and get real with themselves, so that they can be ready to become their best self and then pour into a marriage from a healthier place.
