SBI: A Thinning Crowd

I was grading papers and listening to my iPod when “In My Life” started playing. Of course, I mean the Jose Feliciano version, which is the best of all the versions.

It has always been one of my favorite songs, and, when we were picking music for our wedding, it was the first one on my list. I have no idea if it was played. You know how it is with weddings. The people getting married have to stay hidden and miss all of the preliminary activities.

My wife and I first dated years ago, but, for a myriad of reasons, things did not work out. Not least of which was the fact that I had no idea how to be in a relationship. We went our separate ways. The following is the way I went.

In my mind, I fancied myself as an explorer. I was the rider who was always looking toward the horizon and wondering what was on the other side. Others probably thought of me as a player of games. Another term could be serial dater. I was always in a relationship, but I was never in a relationship. As the person I was dating moved closer, I moved further away and started searching for the next person.

I also kept what I considered a back door. I wanted a way to get out quickly if that is what I wanted to do. This meant as few attachments as possible. This meant, among other things, keeping their personal items at their places. God forbid someone start talking about moving in. That would always throw the situation into turmoil.

In short, I was a terrible person to have a relationship with. I was never fully committed, and everyone would eventually figure that out. They may have been thinking about forever, and I was thinking about when it was going to end. When those ends came, they came like hurricanes.

Through those times, I was not trying to be a bad person. I was trying to make my way through life and find the person who was meant for me. However, each relationship felt off. For me, there was something missing in each, and I knew it was not where I was meant to be. I did not handle any of them correctly, but none of them were what I really wanted.

There were probably people out there who envied my life. I was free to do what I wanted whenever I wanted. Nothing was tying me down. They probably saw my life as an adventure with something new happening all of the time. Some of that is true, and I liked my life. However, there were parts of it that people never saw. They never saw me walk into an empty house. They never knew that I wondered why other people could be in successful relationships while I could not. They never felt my feeling of always being in the wrong relationship at the wrong time.

My life was a broken record. Meet a women. Start a relationship. Get restless. Meet another woman. Start a relationship. Get restless.

Looking back on it, I know that it was a miserable existence.

When my wife came back into my life, I was afraid that the pattern would continue. After all, we had broken up years before. However, this relationship felt differently. I felt like I was in the right place at the right time. I did not want to open a back door.

Before we got married, my wife told a story that involved her cousin. As the story goes, her cousin went to work for a lady who used to live across the street from me. She did not know everything about me, but she knew enough to have a conversation. One day, they were talking about me, and the lady wondered why I had never gotten married. She came to the conclusion that I was waiting for someone. That is when my wife’s cousin said that she knew who I was waiting on.

Thinking about that conversation, I know that she was right. There was a reason I was restless. There was a reason that the relationships never felt right. I had already met the love of my life.

I love my wife. I love my life. The past two years of marriage have been the greatest years I have ever known, and I know that future years are only going to be better.

A while back, a friend asked how married life was going, and I talked about how great it is. Then, they asked if I wished I had gotten married earlier. The answer was easy. I am thrilled that I did not get married earlier because I would have been married to the wrong person.

In my life, being married to my wife is the best thing I have ever known.

Tags: Dating, Jose Feliciano, Marriage, Music, Relationships