I Gave up Adventure for Marriage

When you're in your twenties, you think you know all you need to know. And so you make a decision to get married because you know no better path. 

You have a whimsical idea about marriage. You trust in God, if you're a believer, and since God didn't break you up, you assume it will all work out. 

But what you don't know enough of is psychology. In the 70s I took sociology in high school. That was the first time I'd ever heard about abuse. I knew a little about dysfunction, but not much. People didn't even talk about stalkers until much later when women were being stalked and raped and we learned about it in the newspaper

I remember I didn't even know what the word rape meant back then. I thought it was someone ripping off a woman's clothes. 

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So I was uneducated. I couldn't possibly know the pathology of the man I was about to marry. I didn't know anyone immoral. I only knew Christians. I only knew what my church and family taught me and the bits I uncovered in the newspaper or in encyclopedias. We didn't have the internet then. 

So I married him, and was disappointed right on my honeymoon. 

I had started my career, but it was so boring working with adults compared to being in university with peers. Had I had bigger goals and a network of friends to rely on, life would have been so much different. Had I more guts and gusto and strength to defy my cocoon, perhaps I would have skipped ten years of nonsense and lived with more adventure. 

But marrying Randy got me to a job I loved in a new city and helped prepare the way to finding my current husband Mark.

read more in my book No More Games, by Amy Wittykit.