Relationships and Losing Yourself

I grew up playing house and dreaming of getting married and having a family. To me it didn't get much better than graduating college as an engaged woman and getting married shortly after graduation and that's exactly what I did.

I have had a serious boyfriend since I was 16. My high school sweetheart and I dated until my sophomore year of college. We had our problems, but I thought we were meant for each other. He asked me to marry him multiple times, but I always said I was too young. Despite that though, we had picked out a wedding date. While I don't remember the exact day anymore, I know that I was June 2007. We didn't care that I wasn't going to be done with college, we just wanted to be together. Then, like most high school sweethearts, we broke up and went our separate ways. I remember that break up being so very painful and left me feeling completely lost. When I didn't have him in my life anymore, I didn't know what was I supposed to do. I had spent the last two plus years being his other half, doing things he wanted to do, his friends were my friends and I found I had no life outside of him.

Since I had no idea what I was supposed to do without a man I jumped right into a relationship with another guy. This guy was the opposite of my former boyfriend and I thought that's what I needed. Despite learning quickly that wasn't what I needed I felt it was better to stay with him than be alone, so we stayed together for over a year. We broke up because we cheated on each other with our ex's. I justified it to myself because I loved my ex, it wasn't like some stupid fling or something. Still, the fact that I cheated made me feel cheap and unwanted, not to mention causing my current relationship to end.

When that relationship ended my friendship with a co-worker took on a new dynamic. One night I made a joke with him about going out for drinks after work together, and we ended up going on our first date. Despite it starting off as a joke, here I am, 11 years, later married to him.

He was definitely not the guy I would have ever pictured myself with. He was (and still is honestly) a total nerd with an crazy imagination. He was one of the guys playing D&D Friday nights in high school while I was at the football games with the marching band. Did I also mention he seemed way too old for me? When we first met I was 20 and he was 28. At 20 an eight year age gap seemed huge. I mean he graduated high school in 1997, the same year I started middle school. Wow. However, despite my reluctance I fell hard for him. He wasn't romantic by any stretch of the word, but he got me. We could talk for hours and truly enjoyed being together.

We started officially dating while I was living almost 100 miles away and going to nursing school. However, that didn't stop us from pursuing a relationship. I drove back to town most weekends so we could spend as much time together as possible. On the surface things seemed to be going great, however there was one very big hurdle in our relationship...religion. We were raised different religions, but by this time in my life religion was not a major factor. However, for him it was a barrier to us taking our relationship further and getting married. His religion really discourages marrying outside the religion. At the time it infuriated me. It wasn't my fault I was raised differently than him!Why did it matter what church I went to if we loved each other that should be enough right?

Well, love wasn't enough. We had agreed to go to each other's churches to better understand our beliefs. However, once I started going with him I saw that his religion seemed way better than mine. I started to investigate more and eventually joined his church. That caused major problems for me, but that isn't for tonight. I joined his church just prior to our one year anniversary and on our one year anniversary he asked me to marry him. I couldn't have been any happier and felt any more loved than I did that night.  We were married 6 months later, just a short 3 weeks after I graduated nursing school. More on our marriage in a different post.

I didn't realize it until many years later, but I had also lost myself in my relationships with men. Have you ever seen Runaway Bride? The point of that movie is that Maggie went from one relationship to another and in each relationship changed who she was and what she like to match her partner. Looking back over the last 16 years of my life I realized I have done the same thing. While I may know how I like my eggs, I don't really know what makes me tick anymore. Who am I outside of my relationship?

How did I get here?

I'm a 32 year old woman and have completely lost myself in being a wife, mom and nurse.

Almost 10 years ago I married someone completely opposite of me and found myself changing and adapting to him. I changed religions to match his while we were dating. While I still agree with that decision, for the most part, it caused a lot of stress and challenges in my life. Making that big change was the first time I ever felt like my mothers love was conditional. However, I stood firm in my decision for many years. Then about 5 years ago I gave up on religion and doubted everything.

I also come from a family with an obesity problem. I have told myself over and over that I will never let that happen to me. I'm seen the struggles it has caused my parents and I swore I would never let myself lose control of my weight. What a joke that was! After struggling with infertility for years and subjecting my body to all kinds of different hormonal meds, not to mention the emotional eating habits I'd developed as a teen I have found myself in the same boat as my parents...obese.

Another issue my parents showed me and taught me about was finances. I remember many talks with my dad telling me all about the financial mistakes they made and begging me to learn from them so I wouldn't make those same mistakes and end up with crushing debt too. However, as you can already get a sense of the direction this is going, I didn't head that advise. I woke up one day and realized I had a shocking amount of debt. I had ignored budgeting for too long and spent too much money on my child and decorating my house. I love to decorate and shop...both of which are not ideal hobbies to have when it comes to a budget.

So here I am. I'm 32 with no sense of who I really am, obese and no idea how to overcome it, and really broke. All of that can easily be boiled down to...I'm miserable.