Of A Hubby And An Ex

This week flew by, but I am so glad it's Friday. After yesterday's company event I was left with way too little sleep, and empty stomach, and a glass of wine or two too many... It was tons of fun, but the best part of the night was being picked up by my dressed-up husband after his concert.

Tonight's prompt at Finish The Sentence Friday:

When it comes to my past relationships, my husband thinks...

... well, witness a phone call with my ex J. a couple of weeks after we got engaged (about 6 weeks into our relationship):

J: Hey baby, how's it going?
Me: Oh, fine, not doing bad at all...
J: Do you want to hang out some time?      * booty call alarm*
Me: No, don't really have time, busy, you know..
J: So, what's going on?
Me: Oh well, I'm just going to get married soon...
J *loud enough for Richard to hear from across the room*:  WHAAAAT?????
Hubby:  grins

Our philosophy is that our past is just that: the past. I am lucky enough to be married to a man who is not jealous, who trusts me. He accepts my past relationships as part of myself, as I accept his. The past is the past, and if we had wanted any of the people in our past, why would we have married?


Thanks so much for hosting, Janine!

Is That Love?

We were talking at work yesterday and somehow, the topic got to backpackers in Australia. I mentioned that this is not only for young adults taking a year to themselves and travel, but that this was the lifestyle of many Australians: modern nomads who can fit all of their belongings into a backpack, who traveled from one farm to the other and basically worked for food and lodging plus some money to pay for some necessities or small luxuries. I told them about a guy we once met through a common friend, who lived this lifestyle. Dave was a very nice, mid- to end-30s giant with a low voice and an impressive black beard. And how did this Australian nomad end up in Germany? He had met a Swiss lady, who was backpacking through Australia for a year. And at the end of her year, she asked him to go to Switzerland with her; being the guy he is, he packed his belongings and went with her. You may guess that this relationship didn’t last, as his girlfriend kept urging him to finally grow up and accept “real life”. Their ways parted and Dave went to Poland for a while, where his ancestors are from, working on farms to make a living, and finally stopped by our friend before returning to Australia. 

My colleague’s comment on the story: well, obviously he didn’t love her enough to change for her. But is that love? To change in order to please someone else? To be very possibly miserable to make someone else happy? To give up one’s very self to be someone else? I don't think so. Shouldn't we rather ask: why didn't she love him for who he was?

In my opinion, love is about respect, acceptance, and tolerance. How could I truly love a man who is just lovable after he changed to meet my standards? If anything, Richard and I had a whirlwind relationship, getting married less than five months after meeting each other. This is no time to really get to know each other, but it was plenty of time for us to know that we belong together. He was the man I was meant to be with. Over the time, there were little things about him that irked me, as there were things in me that he wasn't all to fond of. But we never ever tried to change the other person; naturally, we adapted to be part of a couply instead of two individuals, but none of us gave up who we are. And neither would or should we.

A Very Difficult Situation...

You think a situation is messed up? Think again!

(Source)

Sorry, couldn't help it  ;-)

Once Upon A Time... (Our Story)

Seven years ago today, I got up, put on a white dress, and pledged my heart and my life to this one special man.

I have hinted before at our story but would like to tell you all about it to honor this special day:

Once upon a time, there was a princess girl, who was lonely and sad; she was approaching a crossroad in her life and didn't know where to go from there. One boring night, she looked in her magic mirror logged on to MySpace, where she stumbled upon the picture of a knight from a far-away land across the ocean a U.S soldier. He had the most beautiful, sad eyes she had ever seen and sent him a fairy message email. He responded and for about a week, they wrote letters emails back and forth every day. After about a week, she asked him to send her a bird carrying his voice to her for his phone number. Their first conversation lasted about two hours, and they kept on talking for hours every day, until she asked him to meet her. The following Saturday, she mounted her horse got into her car to meet the man sh already loved for the first time. When she first laid eyes on him, she couldn't believe that he could be even more handsome than in the picture. They walked together along the river banks, first side by side, then hand in hand. They shared a meal and many, many conversations. Only the next evening did she return home. The following week, he came to visit her and send a message ahead that said: I love you. She was beyond happy and all her worries had disappeared. A week later they were planning their wedding. About a month after their first meeting, he kneeled in front of her and asked her to marry him. She cried and accepted his proposal. However, the king and queen her parents were not happy that their daughter would marry a man like him and tried to prevent their plans. But their love prevailed and less than five months after looking in each others' eyes for the first time, they entered the palace together to speak their vows that would bind them for the rest of their lives.

THE kiss

Yes, that's about our story. I can't believe that it's been seven years already, and I'm pretty sure that there a some people out there who can't believe that we're still together. We had a short and intense courtship and engagement, but we knew that we were made for each other.

During the last seven years, we moved four times, had two beautiful daughters together, an have grown into a unitiy. I cannot imagine ever being without him any more. Our relationship hasn't always been perfect, but being with him has always been better than anything else I could imagine.

I am lucky enough to be married to my rock, my partner, my love, and the best daddy to our daughters I could possibly imagine. I love this guy beyond words and can't wait what's ahead of us. I know that it might not always be sunshine, but that I'd rather share my umbrella with him than facing the storm by myself.

Struggling For Air

I guess it's time for this post. I have dropped hints about my not-so-perfect relationship with my mother before, but I think I'm ready to get to the heart of it all. I'm honest, this is my third or fourth attempt of it, and it might not make it either, but it's something I just need to write about to get it off my chest,

I'm by far not the perfect mom, but I try our best to raise the girls with all the love I have to be free-thinking, independent women. All I want for them is to be happy and able to take care of themselves. And while I don't doubt that my mother tried her best to raise her children with love, I always felt that she gave me her love bound on conditions. To have the perfect grades, to have the perfect figure, to be the perfect daughter at home, to date the guys she approves, and to stay with her in eternal gratefulness.

Well, I am not this type of person. As a result, I developed serious eating disorders at a teenager, struggling to take control of at least this part of my life. I suffered from depression and cut my arms with anything sharp I could find just to feel alive in the pain. Later on, I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, which almost always is founded in traumatic incidences in early childhood.


In all my struggling for independence I fought her tooth and nails to break the leashes she had attached to me. The paradox in our relationship always was that on the one hand, she is supportive, like finding therapists or tutors for me or helping me out financially to fund my college, while on the other hand she always tried to hold me back (she was mad when at 14 I told her that I did not want her to make my school lunch for me any more). I am still thankful to my dad that he helped me get out from home at the age of 19, when I took off to college and to my own life.

During my senior year in college, I met my husband. And my mother did everything in her power to prevent us frrom getting married at first. She only relented when she noticed that we would follow through, no matter what. The hubby and I still joke sometimes that it would have indeed been fun just to elope at the court house or in Denmark, the Las Vegas of Europe if it comes to weddings. Three months after the wedding and just days after graduating college, we took off to Richard's new duty station in Kansas. After a last-minute fight at the ariport, my mother did not talk to me for over two months. At this point, it was still hard on me; while I struggled to establish my independence, I still craved her approval to a certain point.

The four years after that, we had two daughters and moved back to Germany. But things didn't get better. We had found a new platform of communication since I was now a mother as well, but still she couldn't respect me as an independent adult and parent. When we first arrived back in Germany, with a newborn, a toddler, and no jobs, we lived in my grandmother's house next to my parents. As soon as I had found a job, we also looked for an apartment; we found one very quickly and moved, which she opposed to the point of accusing me to take her grandchildren away from her again (I commuted for 3 hours every day, and with all respect, our children needed me more than their grandmother).

During the last three years of us living in Germany again, things have gotten better, worse, and even worse. We're going from not talking to each other to her confiding things to me that I never wanted to hear about. The major issue we've been dealing with for well over a year is that Richard and I had decided to end all contact to my "sister", who is my mother's favorite, even though she would never admit it. Well, this person has at some point attacked our daughter with a knife and tried to potty-train her by force within a day to prove our inability as parents while we were moving into our new apartment; after that experience, Lily panicked if she only saw a toilet for a month and we were back to zero in that respect.

In my mother's eyes, I'm a drama queen, who tends to exaggerate and play up things. However, it is my responsibility as a mom to keep our daughters safe. I do not want them to suffer from depression and develop eating disorders just to be able to establish a minimum of control over their own lives. I have never asked my mother to chose sides between her daughters, but it is more than obvious that she has picked her side from the beginning.

I am still learning to accept it, but it's getting easier every time. I feel sorry for our daughters that they don't have the contact with their grandparents as they should. But as they don't know it much different, we will do our best to keep all the drama as far away from them as we can. We have lived as a family by ourselves for so long that the current situation doesn't change much. We have wonderful friends that have become as good as family. Yes, I sometimes day-dream about moving away again, far enough to leave the drama behind me. But I know that I cannot run away forever. I have ran almost to the other side of the world and still couldn't escape the struggle. We have returned to stay and build a good life for our family, and we have succeeded.

I will one day be able to leave behind the guilt, the depression, the panic attacks and become the person I was meant to be before my mother has taken the air from my lungs and tried to bind me to herself. I try to take one baby step at a time, but already feel that I am making progress. My husband is the greatest rock in this process, and I will be eternally greatful to him for all his support in the past, the present, and the future.

Love Is Just Love

I am seriously sick of the whole matter. I planned on writing a more-or-less Pinteresty post for everyone wich kids or spouses who are about as Toy Story addicted as our Lily (which is to follow sometime soon). Instead, when I scrolled through my personal FB page, I was confronted with the religious right bashing an "issue", which should not even be an "issue": gay marriage.

Let me start to say, I even dislike the term "gay marriage". Marriage is marriage. Period. It should not matter who the parties are, as long as they are consenting adults. It's called tolerance!

What I am appalled by most in the entire debate is, that most people who are against same-sex marriage claim to be Christians on a crusade to defend "traditional" marriage. Here, the they start to lose me. What is traditional marriage? Go to different cultures, and you will get a lot of different responses. Heck, there are even cultures where women oftentimes have several husbands (due to a serious shortage of women in the society).

But back to the issue at hand: There's a nice little chart our there on the internet, showing different models of "traditional biblical marriage":

That's all traditional according to the Old Testament!!

To be honest, I would be quite against my husband having any more wives besides me, or concubines, and I would DEFINITELY contest to marrying his brother should something happen to him (since we obviously don't have any sons). Yes, the old testament also mentions homosexual relationships and seriously condemns them. But that is Old Testament anyways, whose laws have been revised by the New Testament (see food laws).

And what does Jesus say about same-sex relationships. Nothing! Seriously?? Yes.

Ok, what does Jesus say about love in general? According to Jesus' teachings, love and compassion should be the supreme forces in all of his followers (sounds a little bit Buddhist to me!). He teaches to love thy neighbor; he himself sat with the outcast of society, the prostitutes, the lepers, and other people deemed scum by the pious ones. He never judged but welcomed everyone with open arms. It is him who said "he, who is without sin cast the first stone". According to the bible, Jesus was the only human being ever without sin, and since he was not judging so should no-one else.

But what are the so-called godly Christian followers today doing? They are judging. They want to take the opportunity and right from people to live in a secure and acknowledged relationship together, with all rights and authorities to take care of each other in all situations of life. I am married, and I want everyone else in this world, who wants to enter into this commitment, to be able to do so as well. I want good people to be able to adopt chidlren, who were cast away, and give them a good home and the love they need to grow to become strong members of this society.

You know what I think is really sad? That I, as an Atheist, have to teach Christians about their faith. I have read the bible cover to cover and studied it intensly for years. I am an Atheist because I am convinced from the bottom of a heart that there cannot be a God. I have dedicated my heart to science and the things I can see and smell and touch. I believe in enjoying the life we are given and to try our best to leave this world better for our children. Not because I fear any retributions or punishment later in life but because I feel that this is the right thing to do. If I believe in anything, it is love, and its power to change everything, one heart at a time.



Linking up with Amanda:

Thirsty Thursday - Confessions

My thanks to Mar for hosting the blog hop!

I noticed something today as I was leaving work about an hour late: I miss girlfriend get-togethers. The other day, I happened to stumble in an unexpected afternoon with three other girls; we hung out, and several bottles of wine later (none for me since I was driving), I was elated.

Today, I closed the office with two of my co-workers, after which we spent some time chatting about the latest TV-shows, relationships, children, and whatever. I don't know if it's the spontaneity, which doesn't happen much any more with two little girls, or spending time with women my age without the little ones; not sure, but I enjoyed the time.

I know that Richard keeps telling me to take more time for myself; but to be honest, at the weekends I just cannot get myself to leave the girls alone. He deserves a break, and I need the time with them. Until a few weeks ago I didn't even miss time with my own friends, most of whom live at least an hour away. But ever since this afternoon I realized, that I need girl's time. Whether it is joking about motherhood, talking men and relationships, or just about TV, movies, and fashion (a bottle of wine doesn't hurt either).

Weird Post On Interpersonal Mechanisms

Is there something like the oldest daughter complex? This question came up between a friend of mine and me last weekend. She vented about a fairly stressful visit of a friend of hers to her house, and that her mother had not been happy with her helping out the friend by letting her stay. But what else should she have done? Told her friend no? And here it comes, the oldest daughter complex. Is it just a coincidence that my closest friends are all oldest daughters? That my friend and I like to vent to each other since we know that we understand each other?

 

The oldest daughter complex, we found, is the urge having to help any- and everyone who asks us, whether it is good for ourselves and destroys us; and even though we do our best, we still feel guilty for not doing enough. We try to be perfect, strive to meet a benchmark that is beyond a normal person. We feel lacking at all times even though we work until we are at the end of our strength. We accept the criticism from outsiders; we allow ourselves to be hurt by it and try even harder (and here the spiral begins). I have watched oldest daughters destroying their families because they were unable to draw the line. Those, who do not have their own lives any more and while themselves being at the verge of a mental and physical breakdown are still not able to say no.

 

As an oldest daughter myself, I started to analyze this behavior about a year ago. And here the problem really started: when I began to break out of this mold that had shaped me for most of my life, I crashed with the little sibling personality, which seems to develop alongside the oldest daughter complex. While the oldest daughter helps and works and supports and still feels inadequate, the little sibling personality often describes a failed person, who never had to take any responsibility for their actions or decisions in their lives but being constantly praised and lifted up so that at last they perceive themselves as some sort of demi-god who cannot do any wrong.

 

During my personal development, which started out of utter exhaustion and depression that became the refusal to acknowledging the superiority of the little sibling personality, I decided to embrace a way that made me the target of scrutiny yet again. After a fairly degrading fist fight and other mud-slinging incidents from the little sibling personality's side, I decided to let the person for once take responsibility for their action and when I was told either to publicly apologize for something I said (and meant) or all ties would be cut, I went for option 2. Of course, this decision was considered by everyone to be completely my fault, but for once I felt like a huge burden being lifted off my shoulders. I knew that for once I had made a decision that helped myself and in turn my family. Working a 40-hour plus week and being a full time mom and wife I cannot waste any of my energy on people who take advantage of me. I still like to help, but I know my priorities. I still overdo it sometimes, but I am learning to read the signs. I am not perfect, but I know that I do my best for my family, and this is all that counts.