marriage

My husband left me last night.

I don’t know what happened. We haven’t been fighting. None of the signs were there. No strange phone calls or texts, no hot babes at work that might have turned his eye. Sure, he’s been stressed out about work, but that doesn’t make a person just up and leave, does it?

There was no warning. No indication he was anything less than happy.

Until he walked out and crushed my entire world. He came home from work, still in his suit, and when the twins ran to him as usual, screaming, “Daddy!” he took their hands and led them out to the car. He loaded them in their car seats as I watched, asking repeatedly what he was doing and where they were going. For a minute I thought we were going out for pizza, but that’s usually a Friday night thing, and so that couldn’t possibly be it, and then he turned around and his face was stone overwritten with thunderclouds. He marched back into the house, his eyes passing over me like I was nothing more than a kitchen chair.

I watched in disbelief as he picked up the dog. He yelled something over his shoulder about the pineapple on the kitchen counter and then he left. Just like that. He left. My legs rooted to the floor and I wanted to wail, but I couldn’t move. I screamed inside, so loudly that I clamped my hands over my ears.

The screams tore through my whole body, and there was much gnashing of teeth. I clamped the pillow to my head to make it stop, please just make it stop…and then I realized it was all a dream.

“Honey?” The hubster peered down at me, trying to see around the pillow still clutched around my head. “What’s wrong? Do you have a migraine? Do you want me to get your Imitrex?”

I sat up. My clothes were drenched and my body had pummeled itself into one big heap of aching muscles.

“You left me!”

“What? I’m right here.”

“You…you fucking left me!”

By this point he was back in the bathroom, razor in hand. I swept my legs from the tangled sheets and followed.

“How could you do that to me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you leaving me. Walking out of the house and not coming back.”

The hubster had the nerve to laugh. “Honey, it was a bad dream. I would never leave you. You know that.”

“Well, you did! You left me! You took the kids! You took my dog.” I looked in the mirror. Hello, hell. My eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and as I spat my nightguard out, I noticed my cheeks were actually swollen from the aforementioned gnashing of teeth. My head was shot through with the icepicks that herald a migraine. The bastard.

“You’re being ridiculous. I didn’t leave you. You had a bad dream.”

“Oh, you most certainly did leave me. And when I begged, no, pleaded to know why, all you would tell me was some stupid nonsense about how I hadn’t bothered to cut up the pineapple yet.”

“Ok, that sounds awful, but honey, I didn’t do that. My dream self did that. I would never do that.”

“Oh, that’s right you wouldn’t. Because you know what I would do? I would call your mother.”

That stopped him in his tracks.

“My mother?”

“Yes. I would call your mother, and then you’d hear about what a rat bastard you are for leaving your wife. And taking the kids. You even took the dog!”

“Ok, calm down.”

“I can’t calm down, I’m in hell! You left me and you won’t even say you’re sorry!”

The hubster put down his razor and gathered me up. He said, firmly, “I. Would never. Leave you. And I’m sorry my dream self did. He can be an ass.” Then he hugged me to his slightly damp from the shower chest, and even though I could feel him shaking with suppressed laughter, I felt better.

“Yeah,” I said, wiping tears from my swollen cheeks. “Ok, I forgive you. But don’t even think about doing that again. Hey–stop smirking! I saw that! Hell, my whole day is shot. I have a migraine.”

“Why don’t you take an Imitrex and then we’ll go down and have some coffee?”

And so we did.

And I couldn’t help but notice when I came downstairs, that the kids were chowing down on pineapple. Pineapple that my dear hubster cut up, just so I wouldn’t look at it and get mad at his dream self again.

I love this man.

*Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley

This post was written for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop. Prompt: “And then I realized it was all a dream…”

*photo credit to t4n14_phei at flickr

Seven years ago today, I married my own Prince Charming. Not a day goes by that I don’t thank God for bringing him into my life. Without this man I would be completely incomplete.

What makes him my Prince Charming, you ask? After all, he has no white horse and no crown. He is tall, dark, and handsome. But he’ll end up on the cover of GQ around the time I am featured in Vogue. A friend once told me she was so enthralled with his southern accent that she could listen to him read the phone book for hours on end. But to me, he just sounds like my hubster. Of course, that means his voice can make me melt like butter….

Ahem.

What were we talking about?

Oh, yes. What makes the hubster my Prince Charming. Or, for you Twilight fans, “my own brand of heroin.”

In no particular order:

He’s unfailingly kind.
He loves my dog. So much that I question whether I can still call the dog my dog.
Despite a lifelong hatred of fresh tomatoes, he takes to his vegetable garden each summer and grows plump, juicy tomatoes, because he knows they make me happy.
He puts up with my not-so-chipper morning self, lovingly rousing me from slumber each morning (while dodging my right hook), and then makes me coffee.
He loves me. (And yes, after seven years of marriage, and about nine years together total, I still marvel at this. Of all the women in the world, he chose me. He loves me.)
He loves my family, and goes above and beyond to help them whenever he can. He sat with my sister at the closing when she bought her first house. He spends time on the phone with my mother whenever she needs help.
He’s a fantastic father. He dotes on our children, but doesn’t spoil them. They, in turn, absolutely adore him.
The hubster is probably the most even-keeled person I’ve ever met. And if you read this blog regularly, you’ll know that I am not. He puts up with my ups and downs, and we balance each other out.
He loves me. And he expresses it in everything he does.
He’s brilliant, and I love nothing more than a discussion or debate with him over the latest news with a cup of coffee. It’s like living with a professor. I could plumb the depths of his brain ten times over and still find new things to learn.
He’s fiercely loyal and honorable. Sometimes I wonder if he was born in the wrong historical era.
He makes me want to be a better person.
Through him I have come to know God.
I have found more peace through the knowledge that he bears an unconditional love for me than I ever would have imagined.
And did I mention he loves me?

Now, before the sugary sweetness of all this has you getting sick everywhere, let me add:

The hubster is not without flaws. He drives me crazy with his passion (obsession?) for Clemson football and penchant for traffic-cone orange polo shirts. We quibble over how the dishwasher should be loaded and what should be served for dinner. He is possessed of that uniquely male capacity to attend an entire dinner party full of juicy gossip and report back to me that everything and everyone was simply “fine” and that they talked about “the usual stuff.” He has been known to leave the toilet seat up, and he does not receive subliminal messages well (at least during football season).

To sum up: the hubster is fabulosity personified. But he’s not perfect. And neither am I. We’ve approached our marriage with intention, and this is the most important thing we’ve learned:

Love is a verb. It’s not a mere adjective to describe your stomach dropping lust-drenched first days or months together. Love is a decision, a choice you make every day. Actually, it’s more like a thousand choices you make every day. Choices to put your partner ahead of yourself. Choices to care for his needs before your own. Choices to give instead of take. Choices that add up to this nebulous thing we call love.

I hate hearing people talk about how serious relationships or marriages have crashed and burned because they “just fell out of love.” In the beginning stages of a relationship, love is a thrilling thing, a feeling not unlike plummeting down the first hill of the latest roller coaster. And when that feeling changes and goes away, there is definite temptation to throw out the relationship and assume it has run its course.

Yes, after a few years, love does feel different. It matures. It feels safe. Secure. Solid. One day you realize that you no longer know where Husband ends and Wife begins, and that’s how it should be when all is right with the world.

Since I know a lot of you gals out there are on the hunt for your very own Prince (Charming or otherwise), I thought I’d take the occasion of my anniversary to dole out some unsolicited advice.

Here it is, straight up: Edward Cullen is fictional. So are Mark Darcy, Romeo, Jack Dawson, Jacob Black, Harry Potter, Cedric Diggory, Mr. Big, and most knights ever to ride on white horses. Pop culture’s reality shows, chick lit, and maybe even your own friends are feeding you a steady diet of malarky about the kind of perfection for which you should be holding out, and as a result, a lot of you are watching birthday after birthday tick by while your ring finger remains bare and naked.

The truth? The perfect man does not exist. But your Prince Charming almost certainly does.

I am not suggesting that anyone settle and get married just to get married. But stop looking for perfection, because while you’re busy rating men on your particular scale, or playing by The Rules, or using tips from the latest issue of Cosmo or Glamour, you’re missing a whole bunch of really good guys right in front of you. Sure, they have flaws. But so do you.

Learn to love someone as a whole. For their flaws, not in spite of them. Learn to see past what you’ve been told to want, and look for what you need.

And to my dear sweet other half, a very happy anniversary. You are everything I could possibly want or need, and I love you.