Living Happily Ever After
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Second Marriage Moment #16

Date: July 4, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” (John Cotton Dana)

Second marriage moment #16? Teaching a marriage and family relations class together.

I had to laugh when our pastor asked #5 and me to teach the course. Yes, we do have 40 years of marriage experience between us but… we also have two divorces.

We’re halfway through our assignment now and I recommend it to everyone, regardless of how long you’ve been married. What a great way to begin a marriage: with a marriage relations class!

We’ve been reminded of a lot, we’ve learned some new things and as it turns out, it has also been a fabulous way to fix “little things.” For example, rather than telling your partner about a potential issue, you can just have them teach the part of the lesson about it and it’s taken care of without you ever having to say a word!

“Learn everything you can, any time you can, from anyone you can; there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.” (Sarah Caldwell)

Learning is how we grow. I’m so grateful that life (and marriage) is a continual process of learning; it keeps things interesting AND fun.

Where’d You Go?

Date: April 19, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.” (Confucius)

A day or two after we returned from our honeymoon, one evening #5 came home from work, excited about his new plan for his 50th birthday:  he had put a deposit down on an east coast cruise in the autumn. He gave me the sales pitch about how wonderful it would be to celebrate his birthday that way and told me we’d only have to be gone from the kids for one week.

I replied, “One week? That is a long time. I’ve only left my children twice, their entire lives, for that long.”

He said, “I know, and I know you always used to take your children everywhere with you, but you’ll be amazed at what it’s like to travel without kids. It’s a completely different experience when it’s only adults. You can do totally different things. It will be a great trip for us!”

I answered, “Yes, I’m sure it would be fun and I know it’s fun to sometimes get away without children. I went on my honeymoon without children and had a FABULOUS time!”

He smiled and asked, “Oh, you did? Where did you go?”

He HAD to be kidding, right? I mean, we’d only been back from our Las Vegas honeymoon for two days! I clarified, “My honeymoon–to Las Vegas? Just a few days ago?”

You’re probably asking, “How could you have had such a wonderful time…and #5 doesn’t even remember it?” I was wondering the same thing!

“OH!” he responded. “I thought you were talking about your FIRST honeymoon—I thought you were going to tell me something nice about your first honeymoon!”

THAT was second marriage moment #2. And THAT was when I realized there were probably going to be a few of them. And I was right, so I’m thankful I’ve at least found them entertaining to one degree or another since I have to live them!

“Everything is ironic to me. There are moments I find hysterical, but I’m probably the only one who would find that, except for a few people.” (River Phoenix)

Real

Date: April 5, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Being a Brady comes with it’s pleasures and its baggage. I’m not one given to a lack of privacy and invasion.” (Christopher Knight)

I know I’ve said I don’t want or need to be like The Brady Bunch, but it’s nice to know I can look to them for inspiration. And to know they feel my pain. Lol.

Despite the commercials, signs and other things that left me feeling unsettled that day in the marriage license office, I didn’t run. Instead, I calmly accepted the clipboard #5 handed me and proceeded to fill out my part of the information. However, as I did that, I realized something. Again.

You lose something in divorce.

Some degree of privacy.

And it seems like it lasts the rest of your life, or at least as long as you have children. Really, the divorce decree only grants you partial freedom; because former spouses, by necessity, are in your business all too often. For example, when you go on vacation or leave town, legally, you have to inform the other parent of your plans and whereabouts. Not to mention the fact that you need to inform them when you have special plans so they don’t make their own special plans that conflict with yours. I confess, sometimes it bothers me. During our over 9-month engagement occasionally I’d think, “Just once, I’d like to make a plan and carry out that plan on my own, in privacy, without having to tell anyone else or involve anyone else in my private business.” I don’t have anything to hide, never have had, but sometimes I feel like “the exes” know our business ALMOST as quickly as we do!

And then not only did the get-married-quick scheme involve informing the former spouses of the plan so that we could have all of our children with us, there I am, applying for a license to marry #5, and even that couldn’t be just about us. The application required we list previous marriages and spouses and other similar information. Although I am not hostile to my ex-husband or #5′s ex-wife, I did have a flash of the thought, “For goodness sake! Can’t we even get a marriage license without having to bring up the previous spouses?”

Such is remarriage, I guess. I never knew to expect that. But we filled out the application and turned it in. One good thing about that flash of frustration, though. It cleared my mind of all fear and enabled me to answer the questions, check the paperwork for accuracy (the only mistake: the clerk listed my birthday for his birthday–or something like that! Since only our birth years are different, it can cause a little confusion in the paperwork occasionally.) We paid our $50 and walked out of the office with…a MARRIAGE LICENSE!

It was getting very real. And about to become totally real…in days.

“Everything you can imagine is real.” (Pablo Picasso)

And VERY exciting, if I do say so myself.

“My Precious”

Date: September 9, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.” (Napoleon Bonaparte)

What to do? What to decide? Discovering the answers to these questions was uppermost in my mind for the rest of that month. Add to that the previous month where I’d simply been “observing” things, and I realized I’d been pondering and thinking about Bachelor #5 for quite some time (even when I was trying not to.)

In the course of trying to come to a decision I thought about my past, I thought about the present, and I thought about my future. I wondered what my parents would advise me to do. I consulted my sister and trusted friends. I prayed. I read the scriptures. I tried to be very thorough in all details; I brainstormed every possible thing related to re-marriage, marrying Bachelor #5, and the impact of such a decision on my family, children, extended family, friends, employment, new life, faith, finances, hopes, dreams, the future…EVERYTHING.

And in the end, “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.” (Albert Einstein)

I just couldn’t come to a decision.