My mom always dreamt of a big wedding for me. But, never in her wildest dreams did she think things would turn out the way they did. I have always had issues with commitment. They stemmed from watching how my parents interacted with each other —my father was mean, spiteful and unfaithful. Although my mom tried to hide this from me, I always saw through everyone’s façade. My father’s infidelities taught me a debilitating lesson—the only person I could trust was myself and no one else. Observing him was a great tutorial on human behavior and I credit him with my amazing ability to dissect people as quickly as within the first five minutes of meeting them. My instincts have yet to be wrong.
You can imagine the course my life took. My first engagement was at 18 and lasted about 9 months. We were both too young —enough said. My second engagement was at 25 to an awful, manipulative, abusive man. This story sounds familiar doesn’t it? That’s because it was almost a carbon copy of my mom’s story. The only difference was that I quickly grew tired of his treatment of me and started fighting back. The last straw was when my mom threw my ex-fiance out of our house, not because she was afraid for my life, but because she was scared that her sweet little girl would be lost forever. During our 6-year relationship, the various forms of abuse I experienced changed me. I became a rageaholic with a mean right hook. Imagine a 5 foot tall, 115 pound girl actually kicking the stuffing out of a 200 pound man. The last day I saw him, he had me up in the air by my neck in a jealous rage because he thought I was cheating on him. I wasn’t, but I didn’t care if he knew the truth or not. My goal was to get back on the ground, get a weapon and defend myself—not because I was afraid for my life, but because I hated him for the way he felt about me and the way I felt about myself as a result.
So, you can imagine how thrilled I was with the prospect of emotionally, financially and legally binding myself to someone in marriage. No sir, marriage was not for me. Then I met my husband. We actually knew of each other for years, but he was married and I was respectful, so we never so much as talked to each other. Then one day out of the blue, he asked me out. At this time, I knew he has separated from his wife for a couple of years. The day of our first date, I asked him why he never asked me out in the two years he had separated from his wife and he told me that he didn’t want to ask me out until he knew that he was legally able to be with me forever. The day he asked me out, he had filed his divorce papers. I feel in love with him right on the spot and we’ve been inseparable for over 3 years. This man restored my faith, not just in men and relationships, but in myself. It is now that I realize how badly my parents’ relationship affected me. As much as my mom tried to protect me and my naïve illusion of love and relationships, my father, the world and my bad experiences tainted and jaded me. I never wanted to open myself up to anyone because I knew that I would be gifting them the ultimate weapon against me—the power to hurt me. After all the hurt I had experienced, I just wanted to be like marble – cold and inflexible. I built a fortress around my heart and psyche that only one man was ever able to penetrate. Ironically, that one man, my husband, is so incredibly like the only other person in my life that I trust and love wholeheartedly—my mom. They are so much alike, in fact, that I would swear he is more her son than I am her daughter. So here I am, more than three years later, still in awe of a man who can make me giggle like a school girl, whose love and respect for me causes me to love him more and more every day and more important, who has taught me to love myself unconditionally. What I have today with my husband makes me grateful for every experience I’ve gone through, whether good or bad. You see, all of these experiences created the path that led me to him and for that I am grateful.
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Caridad Pellot is a corporate executive who just looks like she has it all together. In her blog, “Diary Of A Control Freak”, she lets us in on the lessons she’s learning along the way.
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November 21st, 2009 at 10:05 am
I think I have some similar issues. I am 27 and have yet to be engaged but I do realize how my parents marriage wrecked havoc on my dating life for such a long time. I’m trying to get past it because I eventually would like to settle down but it’s still quite hard.