The Third Time Is The Charm

My husband is one of my favorite sources when I write about everyday life. He is funny, we laugh a lot, he likes to rhyme and tease and he is a great family guy. He is in great shape for his 73 years, active, and is a pretty good card player. We have recovery and motorcycles in common.

John is in most of my short books and I have written a couple of books more about him than anyone else. This third husband is the charm for me.

I thought we were going to be just friends and all of a sudden I had the thought, "How can I not date John when I start dating?" I then knew I was falling for him. He makes me happy and that is important. Our intimate relationship is a bonus.

****

Husband number two is remarried and living in New Mexico. He moved there right after our divorce in 1999. He assisted in raising three more children. We were married in 1989. Our children were all preteens when we met.

I told him that I would only marry him if he was committed to being a parent. He later accused me of marrying him just to raise my children. Now that they were raised I was free of him. Of course, that was a part of it. We were together for thirteen years, so there was more than that.

Although he had many qualities that I didn't get with my first marriage, it was things I enjoyed. He sang with the symphony choir, was in operas, and loved attending plays. He golfed and his job allowed a new car each year.

We could afford a season pass to spirit mountain, and vacation yearly. I could go to graduate school and work only part-time or not work. We had recovery in common and I learned more about what switching addictions looked like.

He worked in the medical field and had a huge medical vocabulary that my daughter attributed to her making it through nursing school easier. We went to family counseling which was very important for our blended family and my work with families.

My mother and friends liked him. Sometimes more than I did. I don't regret the past ever now. It is important to remember what I experienced in another life when the only thing my hubby is playing on the radio is old country music.

****

I was fifteen when I met my first husband. It didn't take long until I fell in love. I knew he was probably too old for me, but it didn't matter. He had been in the service and had traveled and liked to party. He was kind and loving. He had manners. My mom liked him.

He had a large family, that I knew well before I knew him. He had been in the service for four years. He had two siblings my age that I was friends with. After we married, we had a party house when I was in high school and after getting my GED and starting college we still had a party house.

We had children when I turned twenty-one and then our baby when I turned twenty-four. The partying was over for me soon after our baby was born.

After several years in recovery, we divorced. I couldn't live the party lifestyle when I was no longer partying. I started recovery soon after our baby was born. I learned to not call into work for him. To tell him that if he wanted to drink to just go. He doesn't have to start a fight anymore to go.

I had been spinning around him and all that he was doing and after recovery, I wasn't doing that anymore. I wasn't calling the hospitals and jails when he wouldn't get home after the bars closed. I could live with him. I could go to sleep at night, leaving him in God's hands.

It got to the point where I sobered up in recovery. Two years after I started. I now couldn't live with him and our children couldn't live with that lifestyle either. They were just babies when we did the back-and-forth thing.

We divorced after thirteen years of marriage, and a year later we tried it again. It didn't work. That was the end. He remarried and had another child. He died young and it was his addiction that killed him.