For 20 years I was in a good heterosexual marriage overall. We both had our faults and we both had our good points. I honestly thought that she loved me, when in fact she did not love me. To be fair, maybe she did love me as best she could, under the conditions she found herself in. At any rate it is difficult to lean that the one person you thought might have been able to love you unconditionally didn’t love you in the most basic ways a marriage implies and was incapable of loving you in that manner.
The point being that when she and I leaned she was lesbian, our world changed dramatically. Over several very difficult months we grew and even forced ourselves apart and we decided to file for a divorce. The divorce took longer than expected but it did eventually go through. I am thankfully able to say that she and I had a “good divorce”. We were adults, reasonable and better still we were kind to each other. We were able to maintain a good friendship. I can say with all honesty that I wish her the best possible life filled with joy, success and love. She is a brilliant human being with many skills and talents. I was lucky to know her and have her in my life as a partner. She helped me grow in many unexpected ways and even our divorce was a learning experience.
After our agreed upon separation I began dating again. Initially, I thought that there is no way anyone is going to want to date a 39 year old divorcée man who has been mutilated in war. I felt deeply ugly, undeserving, undesirable and used. I found that faithfulness and monogamy is not highly valued nor especially desired by the people I took out on dates or dated. Polyamory or hooking up is fine. I fully support the rights of others to engage in such practices if it fits for them. I just realized that for me, I want a strict life-long monogamy. None of the people that I dated or took on dates could offer me that one essential need. They all wanted something far more open than I could reasonably give for my own well-being.
Then I met Isaiah. He posted a question that instantly caught my attention. “Doesn’t anyone believe in monogamy anymore?” He was super sexy and this question, this implied statement of his leveled him up to the power of 1,000 cubed. I asked him out on a date. We went to dinner at Gadzooks. When we touched for the first time, it was like a lighting storm going through my body. We definitely had chemistry. It was surprisingly difficult to not take him right there in the parking lot. We both realized very quickly that we wanted many of the same things, had very similar interests and shared enough of the same views to make us very compatible but enough differences to make it interesting. He was wicked smart and nerdy funny. It was an intoxicating day and evening spent with him. I was honest with him about still being legally married, living as room mates and working on separating our lives of 20 years. I could tell it made him nervous. He asked a lot of questions and I was very open with him. I told him all the stuff he asked and voluntarily told him more than he asked so he would not have to feel awkward asking all the time. We were both a little nervous about our age difference as well. I was 39 and he was 24 (we are 40 & 25 now) years old when we started dating. I knew that 14 years difference would rise some eyebrows. However, I just didn’t care enough to let it bother me for more than about 5 minutes. We talked about it and moved forward.
By many standards, Isaiah and I moved fast. He was more nervous about that fact than I was. He was scared I didn’t know what I wanted. In reality I already knew what I did and did not want anymore. He more than met all the normal stuff desires I had for a partner of any gender. Most importantly, he wanted monogamy, strictly followed, lifelong, beautiful monogamy. He wanted me (to my near disbelief) and he was kind, genuine, compassionate, thoughtful, intellectual, and understanding. His words were never cruel or harsh. He never said things to hurt me on purpose and if he even suspected that I might have experienced his words as an “ouch”, he was quick to apologize and explain his meaning. It was so refreshing and soothing after so much pain and damage. He didn’t teas me just to inflict pain or say anything in anger that would make me feel less than valued.
To this day, we still have not had a single fight or even argument. We have excellent communication with one another and we both strive diligently to be very open with our emotional states, our needs and desires. We offer each other good compromise and the benefit of the doubt. We ask questions of each other and we both answer, even if we first have to ask for a few minutes to collect our thoughts so that we can explain our personal experience in the here and now. It is a true blessing!
After Isaiah moved in with me, he helped me clean, organize and we began building a life together. The money has been tight. Even in a good divorce, things cost a lot of money and a lot of debt had to get paid off in addition to normal bills. Even so, he has been a gem. He has offered to help me financially, work at my side and be a fully functioning member of our partnership. As our home has become really ours, it has transformed into something that actually blends who we both are as people into a fun and beautiful style. We garden, game, talk, cook, do chores and spend time together while we support each other in our life goals. As I near the end of my doctoral internship and very close to getting my doctorate, he is just finishing up his B.S. in Biology. He is thinking about his Masters degree in Medicine and more recently we have talked about the possibility of him seeking his Masters in Bioecology. An area of study that interests him deeply. We have also agreed on places we will think about moving to after I graduate and finish postdoctoral fellowship.
Isaiah has made me feel loved. That is something that has been exceedingly rare in my life. I have always felt unloved and a need to prove myself in hopes that it would make me worth loving. I know how futile that was and how poorly it worked out. However, when your attachment style exists as is because of early and sever familial dysfunction, you act on something like instinct that has a blind, pushing urgency to it. You do so without fully realizing how much you sacrifice for even the most meager scraps of warmth from another person. Isaiah changed that in my life. His kindness makes me cry, not in sadness but in joy. He has become a genuine safe place, someone I can turn to when I hurt. He just loves me and holds me until the pain abates and his love is all I can feel. It is the most unique experience of my life. I no longer have to try to make myself fit, I just fit. We just fit. It comes naturally and easily for us. Our home reflects our love and our life together. He has the worst jokes that are somehow still very funny. He moves with a grace and ease that other envy and he has skills that are cross the sciences into the arts. His voice is heavenly and his strength and softness are perfectly balanced. I got all this with monogamy. It’s a dream come true.
The whole relationship is far different from what I am used to. It is like a summer rain in the cool of the day. I have a new start. I have some very good friends in addition to my relationship with Isaiah. Friends that have filled my life with good things, of both genders and all are important to me. while all of our lives are now filled with complexity and challenging situations, it is still worth living and worth making better as we go.
So, there it is, a toast to getting a new start!