True marriage is defined as a spiritual, lifelong covenant and deep partnership based on unconditional love, trust, and mutual commitment between two people. It is often viewed as a God-ordained union designed to foster unity, companionship, shared purpose, and personal growth. 

How do I begin? I always dreamed of being a wife. One marriage and no divorce. I accepted a date even though I had just left a 10-year relationship 6 months earlier and had feelings for a friend back in Georgia, but I was drawn to Derick. On the drive to the theater, I knew I was going to marry him. 

I went in completely honest. I never hid the struggles and conflicts with my children’s father, and I never hid the situationship from him. I was completely open with my ugly side. He said he was completely honest and I was the only one. Throughout the years I slowly learned that it was a lie. From our first date to the last morning we were together.  

I look back now and realize that he never proposed. It was me who did it. I was the one who contacted the officiant. Did he even want to marry me? 

I was acquaintances with his ex, baby mama, and the twins were around my sons age. I was excited to start a new life with a man I was completely in love with. He felt like home. Only did I realize later that the home I felt, was the home I tried so hard to never repeat with my children growing up. 

He flipped a switch right after we got married. People made sure to squash anything good I was feeling about our relationship. His drug use and womanizing came to light. While he’s screaming at me to get a job because we need to feed the children, he was staying out late smoking crack, doing coke and paying FB friends for their porn to “help feed her kids” 

Constant fighting and lying led to trust issues. One night while he was high, he confidently allowed me to go through his phone, only I found a message with his “buddy” from the Army bragging about who the first girl was going to be that he cheated on me with.  

He made me feel crazy. I’d confide in my sisters who also made me feel crazy. He had everyone in my family believing I was the problem. I remember throwing him out one night and my mother offered him a place to stay. 

One day he came home high after he said he was changing his ways. I said I wanted to drug test him and he was fine with that. He failed the test obviously for cocaine. He tried to tell me he grabbed his friends coffee not realizing it had coke in it. I was so angry he thought I was so dumb to believe that.  

I took my ex, my childrens father out to get christams presents for the kids. He did not have his license. Derick hated it so much that he made up a story about getting something in his eye and wanted me to rush home. I told him I was out shopping. He ran to Jades, one of his mistresses throughout the years. To this day he tells me she only checked his eye, but the years to come she played a big role in our division and STD findings.  

I couldn’t take it anymore. I told him I wanted a divorce. How could you want to be married to someone who showed no respect for you? Who lied about everything he was doing the second he stepped out the door. How could I stay married to someone who did not want me as their wife? He asked me to wait till Feb 14 to get better and we could do counseling. It was up to him to get all of that started. The drugs and girls never stopped. He never contacted anyone for marriage counseling.

I hate writing this. I hate feeling this way again. I want to cry for what I allowed and went through. I was so blind. I was so dumb. It just hurts all over again. 

I filed for divorce. He claimed he loved me and only me. He continued to say he wasn’t doing drugs. It didn’t feel like he even wanted this to work. I packed all of his belongings up and put it in storage for him and told him not to come home. I just wanted him to fight for us, not against us. He ran back to Jade not even two hours after I told him not to come home.  

For two nights I cried so hard, my chest hurt and I couldn’t breathe. I had never cried so hard about anything or anyone. It was almost as if my heart knew what he had done with her.  

I wanted him home and he did come home, but my heart was never the same no matter how hard I tried. It’s almost like it had really broken that night.  

I went through with the divorce because I wanted a husband who wanted me. Who loved me. Who wanted to be my husband. 

Derick asked me for help with his drug addiction and custody with the twins. So I stayed. I wanted to help him. I wanted to love him as badly as I used to.  

After four years of lies, manipulation and other woman, I finally realized one morning when Jenna popped up on my suggested friends on Instagram that it was never going to work. She is the one he was going to cheat on me first with. She’s the one he was still saying I love you to and the one he went and saw after our first date. She’s the one he went and sold drugs to after we were married. When I saw her on my suggested list, I asked him why she was showing up already knowing the answer. I went on his phone, Instagram and looked her up and he had requested to follow her. It was over. It was honestly over four years ago but I loved him. Or the idea of him I made up. The moments we spent alone, the moments our arms wrapped around each other, the laughing, the jokes, the feeling of ‘this is where I’m meant to be’ was gone. It was all a lie. 

Nothing about our relationship was easy. I went in wanting him and only him. I said “I do” and took his last name. After everything, even things I didn’t mention here, I still tried.  

I heard someone say 

“I wish I loved me as much as I loved them”. 

Ive never felt something so true.