Strangely Public in Whatever Will Be Will Be

Eight different ways to begin this just charged through my mind at once.
I am here to discuss something which, many years ago, I may have left as a vague-ish nothing on facebook. It appears, even in the wake of a semi-recent break up of a romantic relationship; I can still have emotions and thoughts regarding the divorce. But that also indicates how strange time really is. I was with my ex-wife romantically from July 2005 until November 2019. In truth, only five years have passed since that relationship ended. VEERING WILDLY FROM WHY I CAME HERE TO WRITE: Perhaps that is of most significance regarding the current break up. My now ex-girlfriend was horrified that I could simply walk away from an unhealthy relationship but… after spending 14 years with someone and forcing myself to walk away from that? No short romantic dalliance is sufficient to form the Sunk Cost Fallacy or any other “But I need to stay here because…” This is another area where I mistook Hermia. The first being her Theater experience. As we met doing Shakespeare and she was often commented upon for starring in “Wait Until Dark”… I had assumed her experience or knowledge of the theater was… greater than it was. This was outed when, after we had started dating, I had to explain some rather elementary theater concepts to her.... like a tech rehearsal… and why HOLD means stop everything in a tech rehearsal. BUT this is another similar item. She was with the man she married for a very short time before they wed and then, after the child was born, divorced him relatively quickly thereafter when the violence and the sexual assault happened. So while her divorce relationship spanned a total of 5 to 6 years from beginning to end… mine lasted much longer. So, while she laments and tears her clothes over the treachery of me leaving after “devoting 17 months”… that is still really rather a short time in my relative estimation.

And while that is not at all what I wanted to come here to say, it does actually connect rather poetically. Because while it is true, I am still “only a few short weeks” since leaving Hermia, tonight I find my heart and mind drifting to Nancy. Allow me to explain:

As I have mentioned previously, I am finally catching up on the Marvel Cinematic Universe properties that have released since ENDGAME. I now find myself in the films and shows that came out during the Pandemic and afterwards. And watching something like WandaVision or Shang Chi… I have this compulsion to think “Nancy suffered me on these films. Hermia had troubles doing so, which I automatically chalked up to her blindness. But… what if.” To cease waxing vague… (again captured by too many different ways to segue)

My birthday, as some of you may know, typically heralds the SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER SEASON. Movies that have historically come out on or around my birthday:
Austin Powers, Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man… really just… a shit ton of comic book movies. Nancy knew I was a comics fan and… had her own connections therein. We saw a few Marvel movies in theater before we ever got married, we got married and saw several Marvel films in Omaha together and with Law School friends. And while I’m watching these 2021, 2022, 2023 properties… there is something within me that says, “Imagine if you had a relationship that stretched the entirety of the MCU.” Imagine having the same partner from 2008 to now. Which… on paper doesn’t seem like it would be so fucking impossible! That’s just 16 years. My brother has been married to his wife for the last 19 years! My parents have been married for the last 48 years. Buffy’s been with her partner for the last 20 years!

It just… in part… it makes me sad that Marriage Counseling didn’t work. I was miserable in the marriage. It got to the point where every week, I would just be… desperate for the merest sign that I mattered in any way to my wife… any way at all. The days, weeks, and months where she made it clear that she would rather spend her entire life without me as long as nothing in her life actually changed? That wasn’t fair to me. I’m not sitting here regretting that I got divorced. Nancy was beautiful. She never believed it. Legitimately made my being attracted to her into a frequent argument. Thus some of the “yeah, this is super unhealthy” of it all. But she was beautiful. We had similar interests. She was a hardcore Star Trek, Red Dwarf, Dr. Who kind of “nerd girl.” I’ll say it.... I still am really sorry that things didn’t work out. In therapy, realizing that she never loved me, that she went with me as a convenience because it was easier than being her own person, all of the things in Therapy pretty much meant we had to end… there was no other path there. So, as I said… I’m not sitting here regretting that I got divorced. I’m sitting here regretting that I needed to. I know I had few, if any, options in college. AND my life wouldn’t have gotten to where it is if it took any path than the one it did. I get all of that. I’m just… I’m sitting here lamenting the fact that I don’t have a really and truly CLOSE relationship, one of shared activities and everything, that stretches back to 2008. Oh, I have “friendships” and “acquaintances” that stretch as far back as 2000. But not the kind of people that I can frequently say, “Oh, hey, do you remember when....” I don’t have those people in my life.

It’s funny. Growing up, it always seemed like a binary choice. Either you were some playboy type having meaningless relationships filled with sex that were short-lived and weren’t fulfilling to you OR your partner.... or you were a caring, compassionate partner that had monogamous, serious caring relationships that really lasted. Purity Culture never really prepared you for the third option. None of the above isn’t really… discussed much in those halls.