pondering marriage

In the past couple months I find myself thinking about being married again. Nothing wrong with thinking about it. There are a bunch of reasons why I can't actually do it for a few years, so no need to draw a conclusion yet, right?

Well, right. Except that I spend hours upon hours fixated on it. For some odd reason my mind likes to go there. After my separation less than 2 years ago, still feeling and reeling from the bitter sting of it all, I thought I'd never want or need to get married again. And I proudly said so, to my friends, and to Cam and Rob, both who were in my life at the time. In fact they both said the same, having gone through their own marriage breakdowns. But as time passed, I realized there were things I really like about being married.

I realized I wanted to have someone I could call husband, and to be someone's wife. In a state of love, those terms represent something beautiful. I wanted to take care of someone and have him want to take care of me. To feel so emotionally bonded to a person, I feel like I want to declare our love beyond just the 2 of us. And it's not the legal papers I want, because I don't believe that's worth anything. If you're not married in your hearts, no piece of paper can make it so. And I can't say it's a wedding I want either. I want just a private declaration of our love and intent, in any of God's churches, whether it be in the middle of the woods, the edge of the mighty ocean, or under the desert sky.

So why am I struggling with this? Well, Rob knows I've changed my mind about banishing marriage forever. But he has no idea how much time I spend thinking about it lately. I look into his eyes night after night and imagine him asking me to marry him, but I don't say a single word about it. I feel like I'm hiding something from him. And that feels wrong. It's not what our relationship has been about. Our openness has been one of our best strengths.

And why can't I open up to him about this? Because it's messy.

Basically, he doesn't even have my exclusive commitment in this relationship. You have to understand our history. FLASHBACK: We started out as friends when I separated and I was in love with Cam. (And you can't underestimate the intensity and depth of my relationship with Cam. We had gone out for a year in our teens, then off and on for a few years till he moved away and we both found marriage elsewhere. We kept in touch for a while but I eventually broke it off, which made him very sad. Because although he was married, he said I was still the love of his life. When I separated in '06, he coincidentally did too, and we reconnected in a very powerful way. We reunited in a 4 day tryst after 19 years apart. It was an incredibly spiritual experience. We were very much in love, but he lived 3,000 miles away. After endless hours, days, months of gmail chats and phone calls we realized we had to help each other find love elsewhere. But it still was soooo hard to let go of the greatest love I ever had.)

Back to Rob. Rob was patient and loving from the very beginning, and long story short, I fell in love with him (too). So Rob was surprised when I finally did give him my commitment in the relationship. I'd said goodbye to Cam as my boyfriend. Rob & I went on for 6 months like this, then I started to feel like I wasn't allowing myself time and space to find what/who I really wanted. I thought it was too soon after my marriage ended to have made another commitment. With Rob's understanding I started to date. I still dated him (we were sexually exclusive) but saw someone else too. It took its toll on Rob and after a month of watching what it was doing to him, I gave it up and we became exclusive again. That was September '07. And we had good times and good love aplenty after that.

Fast forward to this past August (08) when I waffled again. I broke up with Rob, so to speak. There were things I felt I wanted to explore that Rob couldn't give me. (This is when Lee came to visit and I had my little adventure with the big shot from the big city.) I also needed to clean up loose ends with Cam. He haunted my soul and I needed to know his feelings for me, for once and for all. I laid all my cards on the table with Cam during one Sunday afternoon phone call, told him what I felt for him and asked him to move here and be with me. He said he couldn't. Surprisingly, I wasn't heartbroken. I felt like I finally had a valid reason to let go. And I've done pretty well with that.

But there was still the issue of my need to experience the things that Rob couldn't give me. We discussed the reasons why, ad nauseum, but he desperately wanted to understand me. He let me go, or at least he tried. I was rather amazed at the depth of his emotion when faced with losing me. Since then, I have realized that that man loves me more than anyone else in this world does. And I truly believe that he always will. I haven't seen anyone since Lee. I haven't wanted to. I've grown very close to Rob. Closer than ever. He's good for me, good for my health, my happiness and sanity.

Every once in a while he'll bring up the relationship issue and ask me where I'm at. Ideally he would like a commitment from me, but only when I'm ready. The last thing he'd want is to coerce one out of me. No victory in that. But I have been too scared to commit. I know you're thinking, how wacky is that???!!! She wants to marry the guy, but she can't give him a commitment to go steady, for God's sake. You know why I can't? I'm scared to let him down. I'm scared to ever need to change my mind again. I just can't bear the thought of doing that to him. I want to be sure, I want to be right, I want to be able to stick with him forever.

So beyond all these lovely and wacky thoughts I have to ask myself, am I really ready for this? I think probably not, especially when there is no pressure to make a decision. I think I still need to clean out the cobwebs lingering from Cam. I have some issues there and I'll likely be using this blog to heal the wounds. Rob's not the answer to everything, but I do love him so. He is ALL THINGS GOOD.

I still haven't picked out a laptop for my Christmas present. I think it's because I really want a ring. What the hell should I do? What about Cam, will he ever be completely gone?