Totally Fulfilled
them and not repeating them is a key part of a successful and ful- filled future, especially when it comes to relationships. I was married for over ten years to a wonderful woman, Melissa, who is still one of my best friends. We seemingly had the perfect relationship. But like with many things in life, we were making small mistakes that were adding up. We focused so much on making everyone and everything around us perfect that we were not in communication enough on the important things. I wanted children right away in our marriage but since we were in our early 20’s Melissa wanted to wait. Looking back, that was smart—we were probably too young. Then, by the time Melissa was ready for children I was so engulfed in work and taking on new ventures that I wanted to put it off. I could not imagine find- ing the time to be the perfect parent I wanted to be. Looking back, you realize there is no perfect time. This led to me working way too many hours and, in our free time, Melissa and I socialized instead of working on a family and our relationship. As my work load grew, our communication got weaker on the important things because when we had time together we just talked about surface level stuff instead of the bigger things that were slowly adding up and pushing us apart. Neither of us liked confrontation. Melissa let things build that were bothering her without me know- ing. I made poor decisions because of things bothering me about some of the choices she made, as well. Instead of communicating, sharing, and expressing what was important, we let a relationship that was 90% okay slip away. Even thoughMelissa and I are amazing friends and would do anything for each other, it’s sad that our marriage failed. It’s sad that we had to make mistakes in order to learn from them, but I was taught such valuable lessons about communication or lack thereof. It was tough for me to transform this from a failure into a learned lesson. I know I would not be the person I am today if Melissa had never been in my life. I also know I would have never learned from my mistakes on such a powerful level if we didn’t
162
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs