Just to Win the Love of a Girl Like You
The love and life of this Dobie.
What is a perfect relationship? What is happily ever after? What should we be striving for in our relationships? What is the American Dream?
Get your degree, get your spouse and get your kids. A lot has been written about the “Millennial Experience” and I suppose that’s really what this entire series is about as well. But I wanted to share a love story with you.
First, some backstory…
I had my first date with Adrianne in 2006, when I was roughly 8 years into the start of my journey. When I was 16, I was barreling toward rock bottom already (having already hit a few versions of it). I was suicidal. I had feelings of loneliness, self-loathing, misanthropy and misogyny that dominated my mental energy. I was a cruel person weaponizing my angst. An emotional bully.
My parents got me in with a therapist. I don’t remember her name. I don’t remember much about that part of my life. I was already drinking - I had started that as a preteen. I’m not going to write about alcohol in depth today, but it’s a part of this story so I’ll touch on it here. I knew I didn’t want medication, I was conditioned to believe that made me weak.
I hated myself. I drank to dull my emotions. I grappled with existentialism. I hurt people that tried to get close to me. I cut myself. I was a generally unpleasant person in a lot of ways. I wasn’t unpopular in high school, though. I had friends in every social circle at my rural high school. I wasn’t always a good friend, but I had a lot of them. I was just miserable.
And I could write a whole series on that time in my life, but the important part here is I was in therapy. She didn’t solve me. She didn’t keep me from hurting myself. But I learned how to cope a little bit. I got my tools to start the work on being a better person.
I went through college and I was a bad boyfriend in a toxic relationship. It was unhealthy and I was still a person I didn’t want to be. When that relationship fell apart, I was terrified because I never thought anyone would ever come close to loving me again.
Because I still hated myself.
I kept drinking. And I am going to write about that period in my life, believe me. But this is a love story remember? I knew what I couldn’t do in a relationship, because of how I had treated people before. And I knew what I wouldn’t accept in a relationship. My therapist taught me how to set and respect boundaries. I was figuring out how to use the tools I was given.
By the time I met my future wife, I was still miserable. I was still drinking. I still hated myself. I was still a misogynist and a misanthrope. I was a well of vitriol that never ran dry, fueled by half gallons of Traveler’s Club Vodka. But I had boundaries and I was learning how to respect other people’s boundaries.
I had a lot of them out of the gate - I didn’t want body modifications. I wouldn’t be with someone who smoked ANYTHING other than pork. I didn’t want kids. I didn’t know if I ever wanted to get married. You had to be fiscally responsible. Make your own friends, I’m going to need my alone time. Couldn’t live at home, I don’t want to be beholden to a curfew as an adult.
Some of those have obviously changed, I even have a tattoo of my own now. I’m not defending any of those boundaries, but they were a starting point for me and for us. She also met my parents and seeing her interact with my family felt right. I told her I love you for the first time soon after.
She had her own boundaries. We did not always communicate them well. I once threw a meatball sub at my then-girlfriend’s feet because we were so deep in an argument and she wouldn’t eat. I got mad and broke a stack of CD’s.
I didn’t understand how my anger was a form of abuse then. But I did see how it crossed a line. My girlfriend set a boundary on me with alcohol. I couldn’t keep drinking as much as I was if I wanted to stay with her. It’s probably the single most impactful moment in my life. I would have drank myself to death if she hadn’t. Directly or indirectly.
So, now I’m still miserable. I still hate myself. But I’m drinking less. No more blacking out intentionally. I even stopped browning out for the most part. 10 years into my journey, I take another Grand Canyon leap forward that took decades to pay off. And I had someone who cared about me. Who loved me in spite of how much I hated myself.
We still had some pretty nasty fights. We broke up once and we were both miserable. When I bought a house, she moved in with me but we had a lease. In part because I didn’t know how us living together would go and she needed to have legal protection if we broke up. I made it mandatory if she was moving in with me. We weren’t married or engaged yet. I still wasn’t sure if we were going to get married.
And the process of buying a house almost broke our relationship.
That changed when she told me she supported me in my band. Not that she enjoyed the band, but she would accept me making a serious go at it. I woke her up in the middle of the night after that conversation and asked her to marry me. Being in a band really helped me confront a lot of my internal issues. I wrote songs about my misery and issues, but I met so many people who helped me grow into a better person.
I was still miserable. I was drinking less. I had started to unlearn misogyny in a tangible way. I was still angry, I still hated myself. But I had someone who loved me when they didn’t have to. I got married ~14 years after I started therapy. Still deeply unhappy. But I was starting to find contentment. I started to see a future, something I never even wanted.
We were given lots of sage advice:
How to argue effectively and not viciously
When to let your partner know something was important (Thanks Trina!)
How to use reflective questions
Understanding that, for communication purposes, intent is irrelevant. What matters is what the other person understands.
Do at least one household chore every day
And yet, we almost called off the wedding because we fought so much about the ceremony and the reception.
We have gotten much better at communication over the last decade. My wife gave me a place to work through my trauma. A person to give me permission to chase my dreams. A person who I could build a foundation with. We purchased a house in Richmond after moving here for her job.
That process almost broke our relationship as well.
My wife asked me early on if I would love her forever. I learned the hard way that absolutes are the death of a relationship. At least for me. But that doesn’t mean I won’t love her forever. I just have to be a person worthy of that love. Because I think I do have a perfect relationship. And it takes a lot of work to keep it that way.
We challenge each other constantly. We reassess boundaries. We have arguments. We’ve had low points and high points, but we know not to let either define our relationship. Communication, effort and kindness have made us stronger than ever. My greatest fear in quitting my job wasn’t that I wouldn’t find another one. Or that we would lose everything. It was that I would damage the relationship I have with my wife.
Because I am in love with her more now than I have ever been. We hang out and share TikToks. We play with our dogs and listen to music. We make board game reviews together. We travel the world and our minds. We grow together. I couldn’t be the person I am today without her.
Like I said, this is a love story, but not that love story. My wife has helped me see that maybe I am a person that I can love. I’m not miserable anymore. I don’t really drink anymore. I am not a misogynist. I’m still angry, but in a much healthier way. And maybe I can have a measure of happiness too.
I would have never done any of this without my wife. I would have never valued myself enough to quit a job with no prospects. To choose my happiness. I would have gotten another job lined up and put in my notice and just kept working. Another way to slowly kill myself.
Continuously chasing success that I don’t actually want. Selling my time to the highest bidder in the hopes that I would no longer have to do this one day. Two things I said damaged my last career. I told one of my bosses that I was motivated by money and that I only wanted to work fifteen more years. Both were poorly received. I had the wrong motivations after all. It’s okay for a company to be money motivated, but definitely not the employees. We have to do it for the love of the job.
To wit, I was only given one reason for not being promoted by that boss. I lacked professional maturity. I wasn’t given a road map to a promotion. Nothing to work on, no benchmarks or timelines. It was relayed (not by me) before the decision was made that if I wasn’t promoted I was going to leave. I was sent a clear message. They did not want me.
So I made the right choice for me. Because I am learning to love myself and happily ever after a destination. I can make my own American Dream. And I couldn’t have done any of it without her. Thank you Adrianne, I love you!
Here’s an hour of music for you, I hope you enjoy! I didn’t realize that the embedded player only does previews, so maybe go to the actual Spotify playlist cause that’s obnoxious! Back to the bottom of the page with you!