Nathan: I Married My Best Friend…

The Sparkled Life ♦ November 27, 2019 ♦ Leave a comment

I married my best friend. We were married for 13 years. The discussion to separate was the darkest months of our lives. We were both scared. Our world shifted. We couldn’t stop crying. We needed each other to get through this, but how?

When we separated, I chose not to abandon her. She agreed. Just as couples need time to fall in love, we needed time to fall out of love. In increments of 6 months, we lived in separate rooms, then to separate homes, then we split the finances. When we started to date others, we helped each other with our dating profiles. When we found each other on dating apps, we would laugh. The first overnight dates were strange and nerve-racking. We let the other know where we were for safety. Sometimes we had drinks together after our dates because there was so much we were learning about ourselves. Those conversations were rich, like when we were dating for the first time. Meeting each others dating partner is still surreal. Not unpleasant. Just new. The new is gradually welcomed because it brings out the new in me. As we both evolve, our times together feel more familiar, more nostalgic, and a lot like Christmas. Our reunions are more of a holiday than actual holidays. We still check in with the other like family and support each other during the highs and lows. It took us 3 years before we were officially divorced. By then, we were proud. When our dearest and truest pug in the entire universe passed away that same year, a love that lasted our marriage, that’s when we felt a certain adiue to our marriage chapter. We grieved Sir Winston Churchill who is still alive when we get together. The magic of our marriage years are not gone or dead either. They are alive whenever we hang, talk, or text, and they continue in this post-marriage Judd Apatow sitcom-like form. We didn’t lose our relationship. We didn’t lose each other. It simply changed. So we changed with it. By staying committed to the person than the relationship, I found a more genuine spacious relationship grounded in love than a rigid narrow relationship defined by expectations. (Note: Divorce is not required to learn this.)