I was just playing Vegas Solitaire and had an epiphany.  You see, in Vegas Solitaire, you only get to go through the deck three times before the game is over.  I’d gone through two times and knew that I had lost.  Instead of quitting though, I decided to play that last round and with the turn of one card was able to win the game.  That’s where the epiphany hit me.  The longevity of my marriage can be explained by my decision to play that last round.

I was immediately attracted to my husband the first time I saw him.  After a year long romance he proposed and we were married.  The wedding was beautiful.  Our first apartment together was perfect.  I can even remember driving down the street, and thinking how lucky I was.  We bought our first home and had our first baby, a beautiful baby girl who started sleeping through the night at 3 months old, and very seldom ever cried or got fussy.  Life was so… good.  Then, I had my second child two months premature, my mother died unexpectedly the week I brought my son home after a long stay in the hospital, my best friend moved away, and everything changed.

I was stressed all the time.  My son had to wear a heart monitor.  I had two babies in diapers.  My mother was so angry with me the day she died that she hung up on me during our last phone call.  Nothing was going good.  My life had completely changed but my husband’s had remained the same.  He worked long hours and when he got off, he would go hang out with the people he worked with to wind down.  He continued to play tennis every weekend when he was off.  He expected sex as often as we had it before we had children.  He didn’t see me as the stressed out mother, except when I complained and whined about things in my life, and I did plenty of that!  I began to feel more anger towards him than I felt love for him and he decided that the less time he spent with me, the happier he would be.  Our marriage was a disaster and I couldn’t see it ever getting any better!  Fortunately, we decided to play the extra hand instead of getting a divorce (which we were definitely heading towards.)

You have stages in a marriage and this was a seriously crappy one!  But, it was a stage, and stages don’t last forever (thank God) and somehow we stayed married through it even though it seemed to take years.  The next stage was totally different.  Our children were older and my time wasn’t always in demand.  My husband began to interact with both children in a way that amazed me.  I developed new friends, and eventually was able to forgive my mother and myself.  A new stage in our life had begun and we weren’t blissfully happy, but we were definitely surviving.

My husband and I are now in our 50′s.  Our children are grown and both in college.  We are living in a beautiful house (not fancy but great for us.)  We have 3 horses, 3 dogs, and 3 cats, so it’s sometimes a zoo here.  It’s perfect!  Last week we went on a week long vacation together to Daytona Beach.  We went to Bubba Gumps for dinner one night while we were there and afterwords, my husband told me that I looked stunning.  He said that the light hitting my face showed how beautiful I was (I am 52 years old, 30 lbs overweight and usually feel anything but stunning.)  I am so glad that we forced our way though those terrible stages.  No one out there could make me happier.

Hey, if you have a similar story please share it in a comment.  Marriage is worth fighting for!