Put the Past Behind You.

>I knew when I met him I had met somebody amazing.

I was, in fact, still married.

On the first day of my first semester, he presented a session in faculty development about getting students engaged in the classroom. He was such a powerful speaker that I chased him out of the meeting room and asked him to mentor me. Those were my exact words. “Will you mentor me?” I have never done that before.

Nobody had ever asked him that before either. Despite 12 teaching awards, etc., he can be intense and intimidating. He loves that he doesn’t intimidate me. He says he immediately checked my left hand, and saw the wedding ring.

Despite my request, I do not think we were in the same room again until after my ex-husband left me. Flash forward four months, and I moved up to the college town. I kept turning him down for a drink after work, thinking it would be inappropriate for a single faculty member to spend so much time with the Boss, and then accidentally sitting in his office until 7 or 8 PM anyway, talking.  It was around this time I realized he was becoming one of my best friends. A stunning, and strange, discovery, given our many significant differences.

By the way, he was dating someone else. But then she faded away. I should thank her.

And then, it all fell into place. All obstacles removed. A drink, a dinner. Another drink, a taco or two on a Saturday afternoon. Soon this little town was gossiping. He knew before I did, but I didn’t believe it.  Scars, I guess. I wasn’t ever getting married again. Couldn’t imagine how it could mean anything.

It doesn’t mean the same thing, I’m not going to lie. My parents were divorced, so I never believed the Forever hoax, but once you see how easy it can be for someone to walk away, there is a danger that the idea of “commitment” can become meaningless. I thought it had become meaningless to me, actually, until I realized one day that the change had already occurred in my mind and heart.  I thought to myself, “I could literally be happy with this man on the Moon.” Being whole in this relationship had crept to the top of my priority list, and there it was. Commitment already made.

Is it some meaningless, “sure, forever sounds good,” promise? No. Is it the kind of promise preachers across the south are afraid of? “As long as we are healthy together, and make each other better off?” Yes. Combined with a real, well-informed commitment to keep it that way, and a solid foundation to do so.

I started wearing his ring, but we couldn’t pick a date. We really wanted a non-event. The idea of a ceremony really clashed with my feelings about the commitment being a) already done and b) completely internal. A wedding ceremony almost seemed to send the exact wrong message, especially when both of us had tried it that way before. I’m sorry, I love all of you, but you don’t belong inside my marriage!

Yet, we did want to honor the idea of “making it official,” having a few loved ones around us to witness our special words. So we got together, had a friend who’s ordained say some things about what we all already know–that SweetiePie and I are better together; that all evidence seems to suggest we encourage each other to be more loving, more compassionate, more effective, more forgiving, never less; that we laugh a lot about each other’s flaws and aren’t blind to them; that we gently and courageously encourage growth in the other but are not cruel in criticism; that we love the same things and literally enjoy each other’s company; and that, if, in the end, we have 20 happy years together, and that is all, we will have been luckier than many many people.

So we got married, in the afternoon, at gorgeous Lake Tahoe, on New Year’s Eve, 2010.