When my marriage ended unexpectedly, I felt like my life was over. I had been a stay at home mom for four years, had three kids, three thousand miles from home, and I had no idea where I was going with my life. The last thing I could think about was another relationship. I'm now remarried, and I couldn't be happier. It made me realize a lot of things about myself and my previous marriage.
A little back story about my now husband. We were thirteen when we met online. He lived in Minnesota, and I lived in Mississippi. We talked on the phone for hours a day, talked online, and wrote letters back and forth. We were young and in love without even knowing what love is. We finally met in person when he joined the U.S. Army at eighteen. He went to basic at Fort Benning, Georgia which was only eight hours away from my hometown. Shortly after that, we grew apart. We were starting new lives, and we were young. The distance began to be too much.
We reconnected as friends while I was going through my separation and he was dealing with the death of a friend. We became the best of friends again. Talking all of the time and he made me laugh when I barely wanted to get out of bed in the mornings. After a few months and my divorce papers were filed we fell in love again. It was scary. In the beginning, we tried our hardest to fight the way we felt. We were still hours apart. I had just come out of a nearly five-year marriage. It seemed like things would just end the same way they did the first time. This was also my first time beginning a new relationship with three children which came with its own set of complications.
Each visit it became harder to say goodbye, and he finally met my children and began building a relationship with them. After about four months we decided we weren't going to say goodbye anymore and he moved to Mississippi. A year later we were married.
He is now an amazing stepfather and back in the Army, and we're living in Georgia. Almost as if life has come full circle and we're finally where we were always meant to be.
Falling in love again after a failed marriage was one of the hardest things I have ever done. It was scary, and I still have trust issues and fears of failure despite him doing everything possible to assure me. If you feel like you can't start over despite how unhappy your marriage is or because you have children just remember it is always possible. You are strong enough for a new beginning.
