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24 March 2013

A Love Story - How things came to be


my parents divorced when i was about six years old. because my father was a military man and was gone a lot of times, his absence in the home wasn't as devastating to me as most expected. my mother told me that she attempted to leave my father before, but i cried for him every day and she decided it was best for them to work it out. i guess i was daddy's little girl.

as i grew older, i came to know my parents and their little quirks. and what i noticed was that my parents were very different people. post divorce, neither of them had anything good to say about the other. they really had nothing in common and i wondered how in the hell they even dated each other. i'm grown now and i decided to ask my dad how he and my mother became a couple.

i remember my dad being a man that yelled a lot when i was a kid. in my adult years, my father now laughs all the time and tells me funny stories. now that we talk more frequently, i felt it was time to ask him about he and mother's relationship. albeit a short story he told, it made me understand my parents and myself.

me: dad, how did you and mom even get together?
dad: ummph i hated your mother when we were growing up.
me: wait, you hated her?
dad: she always thought that she was better than everybody else.
me: but dad how did you go from hating her to marrying her.
dad: well, i guess i was in love with her but didn't know how to express it properly.
me: now that makes more sense.
dad: we were young and didn't know what we were doing.

after that, he began to speak in general terms about relationships. he spoke about honesty and being happy. he emphasized that happiness was the most important thing. "no need for two people to work something out when both of them are miserable". he spoke about the expectations that he had of my mother and that my mother had of him. dad felt like he disappointed my mom and that were just trying to live up to the standards set by their parents. "those people stayed married no matter what. that worked for them but not me and your mother."

this was the most significant conversation i have ever had with my dad, but i'm glad that we had it. i learned a lot that day. this was a conversation that i wished i had prior to my terrible dating exploits. i think that i would have been more comfortable with my relationship mistakes and not let them hinder me in my efforts to move forward. but it's not to late for me, i'm taking this lesson and running with it.