Guest post by Denise Gabbard of Discount Vouchers, where you will find Argos.co.uk discount codes and PC World discount vouchers among other great discounts.
I am considerably past my twenties now, but as I reflect back on that time of my life, I realize that I did a lot more right than I thought at the time.
For better
Being young and in love, I often made rash decisions that were second-guessed by everyone around me. At eighteen I told my parents I was going to marry my high school sweetheart and not go away to college. They were stunned. After all, I was a great student and could be anything I set my mind to being. Well, what I wanted to be at that point in my life was right by his side, and nobody was going to change my mind about that.
We went to city hall and got married in the middle of a blizzard, joking that it seemed fitting since our getting married seemed to create such a storm of controversy. We settled into a tiny two-bedroom apartment, which we paid little more than nothing for, but still we struggled to make ends meet. Work for someone with just a high school education didn’t pay much, but my husband worked for just a bit over minimum wage and we ate lots of hot dogs, beans, and peanut butter. But we were together, and happy.
Little did we know during that blizzard ceremony that I was already carrying around our first born son. After he was born, I got a job as a bank teller and money became a bit easier to deal with. I also got a grant to go to school and started taking classes when I could, often riding downtown on a bus with my little guy in tow once he was old enough to stay at the school’s daycare facility.
For worse
We had some difficult times, split up more times than I can count, and both of us saw other people during these separations. But something always drew us back to each other. In fact, we laughed about it on many occasions. No matter where we were or who we were with, all the other had to do was look in the right direction, and we were right back together. We worked through a lot of nonsense- drinking, pot, fighting over money, fighting over family —and managed to stick together through it all.
Our second son arrived about three years later, and our daughter just 15 months after him. Apparently, God’s plan was for us to have a daughter, as she was born after I’d had my tubes tied, knowing we just couldn’t afford another mouth to feed. I was happy, but we were broke. How could I possibly work with three little ones under five? Our solution was for me to work nights at the Federal Reserve Bank while he put roofs on houses during the day. We kept up crazy hours for five years this way; thank goodness we were so young.
Forever
We are celebrating our 30th Wedding Anniversary next January, and I have done so much reflecting on our lives together in the past few months. Certainly, it was no fairly tale wedding or relationship, marrying and having babies so young, and our ups and downs, plus some knock down, drag out fights. But through it all, I knew that we would still be together when it was over, because we have a strong love and bond with each other.
I have seen so many people get married and divorced, and it makes me sad. It seems that many people get married with the idea that if it doesn’t work out, they’ll just move on to the next one. But what if that next one isn’t as good as the first one? Many people our age are alone and hurting because they walked away from a marriage or relationship that could have been salvaged with love and time.
I guess the moral of my story is to make sure that you are truly “in love” before you get married. Don’t ask how you’ll know, because if you don’t know for sure, you’re not! Then, when things get tough, vow to work through them and stay together rather than throwing up your hands and walking away.
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