Kahuna Belated TMI

Between work and baseball with Dude, it is 10:00pm and I am a little late for an official TMI posting. But considering Babushka spent all that time and effort thinking up the questions for the "Marriage TMI".....

My view of marriage is certainly skewed due to my personal circumstances. In the eyes of the state I am in fact still married, though not due to my lack of effort or mobey spent. In 5 weeks my divorce trial will begin, 2 years after I left the marriage.

I may be jumping questions, but to address the reason I got married - fear. Fear that no one else would put up with the drunk that I was. Fear that I would drink myself to death without supervision. Fear I would end up alone.

Fear is the same reason I spent 15 years in a marriage that I knew I was unhappy in. For 9 of those years, that marriage was a convenient excuse to not take sobriety seriously. The loneliness of being in a marriage where I had no voice was ready-made for the addict in me - to convince myself I might as well drink/drug/medicate again. It was my safe haven - I was a dissapointment and an embarrassment to my wife and in-laws, but that was expected and accepted.

The last 6 years were not a great deal more sober, but the personal loss I felt in my failures could no longer be drank away. I wanted more for my life, just did not know how to get there. I began to feel like I worthy of something other than disdain and rejection. For those last six years a commom statement I made to my then spouse was in the line of "If this is all there is to marriage, I do not want it".

This is dragging on, but to get to the remaining TMI topics:
- Yes I do believe in divorce, but the process of getting divorced is flawed. As with any legal proceeding, the only real survivors seem to be the attorneys.

- I believe in the "concept" of marriage, as Babushka so eloquently described it in her answer #2 but again find the process to get there flawed. I will spare everyone the diatribe of my wedding day - at least for this post :-)

My experience with weddings in general are that you end up spending extensive time and money on people you either do not know or do not like for no other reason then to try and outdo someone else whose wedding you were at or impress some relatives that were snotty or judgemental toward you over the past years. Can't wait to experience that again!

Bottom line - I love Babushka and neither a piece of paper nor some pompous evening with a drunk groomsman and dollar dance will valiidate that. How I treat her on a daily basis is how she will know my love is true, not the kind of wedding cake that is served or the type of gifts given.

As far as same-sex marriage, I am all for it - Why should gay men and/or lesbian women not have to suffer like the rest of us!

Take care and happy TMI