I wasn't listening because I thought I was going to hear an epiphany, but I did. Welcome to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life, that you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting, while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries podcast.

Today I'm going to talk about marriage again. I'm going to call this Marriage Part Two. One of my previous episodes was Marriage Part One. Really, I was thinking I should call it. Really. I was thinking I should call it Adventures in Marriage part two, because marriage really is an adventure. It really is. Sometimes it's a challenge, sometimes it's frustrating, like anything else, but marriage is an adventure.

I was listening to a podcast recently, maybe a couple months ago, and I didn't think that I was going to hear an epiphany, but I did, and here it is. The husband said the person that you married today isn't the person that you married when you got married. The person has changed. It's not the same person, and I was so struck by this thought, this statement, this concept, because I realized it's true my husband is not the same person that he was when I met him. I mean, we met and it took us 17 and a half years to get married. So I think now we've been married Um, it's going to be 15 years at the end of uh, 2025. So it'd be 35 and a half years that we will be 35 years in June that we've been together about, 35 years in June that we've been together about. So I'm not the same person that I was when I met him. I'm more confident, I'm more tired. Certainly, I've been through a lot more. I've I've learned a lot. I I guess I have different expectations of everything and I've learned a lot about everything about my life and about others, and certainly about myself. Certainly about myself and just about how to deal with people, how to deal with the world and how to how to approach problems and everything.

Right, I mean, I probably had a chance, and I'm not saying you know that I was walking up the altar by saying I had a chance. I had a chance to probably be married when I was very young. I was asked was I asked seriously. I'm not really sure, but I was asked when I was around 18 and I I I don't really remember exactly what I said, but I think at the time I was, you know, I was swept away with the idea, but I didn't say yes. And then I was asked again when I was probably 20, 21 or so, and I definitely did not say yes.

Then it's not because I didn't want to be with this person, but I recognized that I needed to experience things on my own, that if I was married I wasn't going to experience and I wasn't going to be able to grow emotionally in the same way that I would if I was married. At that point in time. Yeah, that pretty much encapsulates how I felt. So I did not say yes and that was the end of, basically, of our relationship. I mean, not at that point, not at that moment, but it was the beginning of the end of our relationship because we wanted different things and I think that he definitely just wanted to be married and he did. He went off and he met someone else, and I don't know what the exact timing was, but he went off and married somebody else in a matter of probably a few years and I think that they're still married few years and I think that they're still married and I'm that's great, you know, that's great. That worked out for him and it also worked out for me.

So I know that if I had married the first time that I got asked that, that marriage would not have lost, that marriage would not have lasted. And if I had gotten married the second time I was asked, I'm thinking it probably wouldn't have lasted either. So I would have been divorced two times when I met my current husband, and there's nothing wrong with that husband and there's nothing wrong with that. But from what I've seen of people getting married and getting divorced, it's not the easiest process in the world. It's certainly not something that you would hope for when you start your married life together, when you take your vows. It's not something that you want to have happen, right. It's not something that you intend to have happen.

So I think together we're not the same people that we were when we got married in 2010. And that's okay, because as an individual person, you grow and change and develop in different ways. Now, hopefully, you change and develop and learn and grow in similar ways. You don't grow apart. I mean, obviously that happens as well, but things happen. I mean, obviously that happens as well, but things happen. Hopefully you're, you know you're compatible enough that you kind of grow in similar ways and similar directions.

But you know, understandably, that's one of the challenges of getting married, right? So I thought that that was an interesting concept, something that I had never actually thought about or verbalized or read or realized or anything, that you're not. The person that you're married to now is not the person that you were first married to. For what that's worth, am I, am I grateful that I didn't get married when I was younger? Yes, I am. I, I think it's. It's certainly something that I wanted. Um, I really wanted to be married. I wanted to have that special person, that special support that you have in a loving relationship, but that was just not to be, for whatever reason.

And I was, you know, still in my forties, when, when we got married, my late forties, I'll say so that's what it is, and marriage is a growing process. It's like, really, any friendship, and a lot of friendships, depending on the person. People put in effort in friendships. They put in the effort, they put in the time, they put in the consideration Marriage in order for it to be successful, you have to put in a lot of effort and a lot of time, obviously, and you spend a lot of time with this person and that's what makes it work over the years, my husband or picking the kind of person that you find attractive.

My husband, bill, and I talk about this sometimes because there's some ways in which Bill is so much like my dad and I don't know that when I look across the spectrum of the guys that I dated in my life and the men that I was most attracted to in my life, I don't know that they were all like my dad. My dad had certain characteristics that were very prominent and I'm not going to share what those were, because I don't want to share about Bill's. I want to try to, you know, honor his privacy in that way and also honor our relationship to a certain extent. Right, but there's certain characteristics that Bill has that my dad had as well, and some of those characteristics, yes, are negative and I sometimes find myself thinking, gosh, really, how did I end up with this situation again? But I realized that this is something that happens in relationships is that we're drawn to the characteristics of our parents, to the characteristics of our parents and, for whatever reason, unless we work through that and unless we really analyze why we are drawn to that characteristic, it feels comfortable for us right. There are some characteristics that Bill has that are positive characteristics that maybe my dad didn't have, and one of them is advice.

I've talked about this before, that my dad never gave me any advice and I think the good part about my husband is that he will offer advice. Sometimes he offers very strong advice and he, you know, matter of factly tells me what to do, whether or not I ask him. Sometimes I come to him and I say look, you have a good sense about things. I want to ask your opinion on this situation because maybe he isn't familiar with it or he hasn't heard all the sides of it, or he's not. You know, I haven't complained about it or for whatever reason, and I'll explain it, I'll lay it out for him and he'll tell me what he thinks and he will give me advice. So I think in that regard that's one big part is that my dad never gave me advice and Bill is very, very open to giving me advice, but he doesn't jam it down my throat either, but he doesn't, you know, jam it down my throat. Either he doesn't say you've got to do this or he's not overbearing about, you know, telling me what to do all the time, and I think it's a really good mix of some advice, no advice, more advice, right? I think that in that regard we try to respect each other. I know sometimes I've given him advice he hasn't asked for it and I feel like I've pushed my advice too hard, but in the end he knows what to do. I feel like he knows what to do and he knows the right answer for himself and that's what he does. But certainly we've talked through a lot of things when we've been a little bit confused. We're not sure where our moral center is on a certain topic.

I mean, that's a good part about marriage and finding a person that's compatible with you intellectually, emotionally and physically. I mean, of course there has to be that physical attraction. That goes without saying. This is not the dark ages when you were matched up with somebody that you never met. I mean, I'm not sure exactly how that would work, but I think you have to have that physical attraction, but you also have to have that emotional attraction and you have to have that intellectual attraction and you have to be able to work together to you know common goal, a common thought process. Be in sync in your thought process, right? It's very important because it's not just about one of those things, it's about all of them. And it's not just about one of those things, it's about all of them. So I think that comes with time. I mean it should be there in the beginning, there should be the seeds of it, but it does come in time.

And I think back to my friend, gina, who we lost in 2018. And she had a very complicated relationship with men because men absolutely obsessed over her. They didn't really ever like her or just love her. They obsessed over her and so it was really hard for her to have a real, true, normal kind of relationship. I understand that because men were so obsessed with her. She was beautiful, she was a different kind of a woman and she told me many times, especially towards the, you know, she really didn't have what I could see as a long-term deep relationship. She did, maybe in her earlier years, but when I knew her, the last 30 years of her life, she didn't have that and she said that she was okay being by herself and she had a very full life by herself and I understand that. But I think that and certainly if you're with somebody, if you're married or you're with somebody long term, yes, there are things that you give up, there are compromises that you have to make, but overall it's also a deeper connection to a person and it's a deeper connection to yourself in a lot of ways. So I think that's what I have to say about that today, and I'm going to leave. I'm going to leave my marriage discussion for today at that. So stay tuned. We will have other marriage discussions in the coming weeks. Next week, yes, we will tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me.

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