Ride or die

You are my Ride or Die. Red flag!!! Run my loves, run far, far away!

Why do I say that? Did you read the phrase? The phrase is “Ride or die” which means Death is a real possibility. I do not fear death, however I’m not looking to get into a fight with it either. No one is going to convince me that if you go through hell together then it’s a reason to stay together. In fact if you are going through hell together it is because one of you is putting you both through hell. And in the case of my ex-husband and I the person putting us both through hell was…Me.

It takes a certain amount of maturity to say that. It was for the following reasons.

I wasn’t the one for him. (we were “Incompatible” to use his phrase”)

I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself to be “Perfect”

I passed that pressure onto him.

He wasn’t actually what I wanted, he was what I thought I wanted (read my law of attraction post)

Therefore we had “struggle love” we’d gone through so much, why not get married? There was no loving feeling behind it. Just the natural consequence of me supporting him through a hard time and vice versa. We were both so deficient in our self esteem and so seeking in external validation neither of us saw that we were engaging in classic self destructive behaviour of doubling down on a bad hand.

This is not to excuse any of the bad things that my ex-husband did that ultimately precipitated our divorce. This is merely to take my share of the blame.

I don’t believe love will be easy going forward. I choose it in my platonic relationships, you work on your relationships, you check in with people, you take turns shouldering the heavy burden.

What I do believe is that if you think love is always hard, you are in a relationship with the wrong people and you will definitely, sooner or later, break.

I believe love and marriage is choosing to be your best self everyday and choosing to put work into the relationship everyday. The truth of the matter was that I never actually loved my ex husband.

Cruel as it sounds I loved the status associated with being around him. He used to come off as suave and worldly and I loved the idea that because he was worldly, he could protect me from the cruelties of this world. When he showed his true colours, I had a choice, I either had to face up to the dishonour of divorce, or continue to let the man stress me into an early grave. I chose divorce.

I remember vividly when I was paying for marriage counselling with Relate (hands down the single worst use of money ever (this was because I didn’t’ actually want to be in a relationship with my ex-husband, his weakness repelled me, his body disgusted me and his spending habits terrified me, I wanted to be able to say I was “the good one” trying in the marriage and not cheating) I remember that Relate wouldn’t let me block pay for the sessions, so they’d send out an invoice on a weekly basis and you had until Wednesday at noon to pay otherwise they’d call and email, text and harass you. So I saved their number in my phone as “paying for suffering” that, was the truth of the situation. I was paying to say I was going to counselling, not because I loved my ex husband and wanted him back. And in that vein I suppose the counsellor knew this intrinsically because he took my ex’s side on literally everything, even going as far as to praise him for dumping mistress number 1 when that was a complete lie, and Jude had admitted to that not even 5 minutes before.

We will talk about the travails of the end of days of my first marriage later. However the crux of it was I had “Settled” for a man that I didn’t really want, had nothing in common with so that I could be married. He was easy enough to live with, if I shut my eyes to a lot of stuff. But in the end I couldn’t keep doing it, I couldn’t keep settling. He was a disappointment to me and I think he felt that and that was what he sought in the arms of all those women. Someone he could be a man to, as I was far more masculine than him. I was the planner, the provider, the stable one. But that wasn’t actually my personality, so it was draining for both of us. He couldn’t be the man I needed him to be, so I stepped up and filled the vacuum which meant I wasn’t being feminine for him and he wanted to be a man, and the cycle went on and on.

My next marriage won’t be easy, but I bet it will be a hell of a lot easier than the first.

Now I know what I want, I know I don’t want struggle love. I also know that I am submissive. That is not a sexual point, I know that it is my role to be more traditionally feminine, I expect the man to take care of me, provide for me, emotionally, physically, sexually, and financially and my response to being loved well is that I will submit to his good judgement and obey him in all things. Yes, you heard it here first. I intend to be one of those women who bring back the “obey” in the marriage vows. I’m not a man, I only lead when called up to do so, my natural state is that of obedience and I plan to assume that state in my forever marriage. My true love will understand that that is not unconditional obedience. If he wants to break the law, or hurt another person or harm God’s creation, I’m not for that. However, in matters of family life, I need to be obedient. But with him loving me as Christ loving the church, the true kind of love, that seeks out the other persons best interests. Then that I can live with until death.

Grace and Courage.

Annetta Mother-Smith.