Ex-husband #1 - I Married the Same Guy Twice. What?

A friend recently asked me “Why on earth did you marry the same guy twice?”  A reasonable question to ask, but much harder to explain. My relationship with ex-husband #1 was extremely complicated. My background prevented me from developing a solid relationship. A relationship was difficult to cultivate due to growing up with a harsh mother and father, plus making bad choices in boyfriends.

I’m going to label him #1 for the rest of this story. Remember, I have had three ex-husbands and I don’t want the other two to feel slighted that I haven’t written a story about them … at least not yet!

I met #1 when I was 24. I had dated guys prior to him, and none of them ever said "I love you" which he did say. After a brief courtship of two months, we were married in front of a Justice of the Peace and two of my girlfriends (who weren’t crazy about the marriage or him).

Three weeks into our marriage, I realized that I took on more than I could handle. He was so much like my father. Prior to our marriage we had lived together and we shared household chores. That all changed the day of our marriage as we were heading out to Estes Park, Colorado for a brief honeymoon.

We were delayed because he didn’t have any clean socks. He informed me that it was now my responsibility to do his laundry. And, of course, I did. I had learned from my mother to do whatever was asked so there wouldn’t be any angry outbursts. And, #1’s outbursts were equal to my father’s.

About a month into our marriage, he declared he was a Southern Baptist and had been for years. This was the first time that religion had ever come up in any of our conversations. He started rambling for about an hour about how his beliefs and those found in the Bible, were identical. I was shocked to say the least.

During our first marriage which lasted 17 months, he did something very interesting when it came to his religious beliefs. If it was beneficial for him to be religious he would be. When something came along that wasn’t religious in nature, and he could benefit by it, religion no longer played a part in whatever he was doing.

Case in point. He had made friends with a co-worker who had a woman on the side while still married. It happened that #1 became interested in a friend of theirs and decided he wanted to date her.

We had plans to invite my mother and step-father over for Thanksgiving dinner. Earlier in the day, #1 announced that he had leased an apartment and was moving out the next day. Wow, I didn’t see that coming at all. No hint that he was thinking of a separation much less a divorce.

During our separation, I was having a hard time with accepting what was happening. I asked him many times what we could have done to save our marriage. He never gave me an explanation as to what was the true cause of our pending divorce.

A few months after the divorce was final, he reappeared in my life. The main reason was he needed my savings to get his commercial license to fly small planes at a flight school in Vero Beach, Florida (same school that one of the 9/11 terrorists went for their training). He convinced me to marry him again, and I did. The day after the ceremony, we left Denver to move to Florida.

Two days into the trip, he lost it and showed his anger issues in a big way. He was driving a U-Haul truck and towing our car. It was late at night, and we missed the exit we needed to head south to Florida. He started cussing which turned into screaming and pounding his hands on the steering wheel. At that moment, I knew I should never have remarried him.

The final straw was two years later when we were living in Columbus, Ohio. We had ants crawling around in our kitchen. I called the landlord and asked for the kitchen to be sprayed. Several days after the spraying, I still saw a few ants in the kitchen and I asked #1, “Why are there still ants in the kitchen?” Well…he went ballistic and threw a frozen juice can at my head. Luckily, I ducked or it would have hit me. It seems, he felt that I was blaming him for the ants still being in the kitchen. Really?

By the way, the frozen juice can hit a plaque on the wall behind me, and dented the plaque. I kept that plaque for years, to remind me of the mistake I made by marrying him at all.

Our second marriage lasted only 23 months. I moved out of the apartment within a week of the frozen-juice can episode, and I immediately started divorce proceedings. 

Until the next time…