Marriage, divorce, love..

People often ask me why my marriage ended. Why did I give up? Or why did I get married in the first place. It’s funny how that works. Someone you hardly know or that you see once a year has the balls to ask you something so personal. No one ever asks why you fell in love. Or why you got engaged after you’ve been together for the exceptional amount of time. But when things go bad, everyone wants to know why? I was at a Social function and was asked to explain to a young girl why myself and my husband aren’t together anymore. My initial reaction was shock and I felt offended, but instead I turned it into the opportunity to explain myself and talk about it positively instead of in a negative way. The youth is our future ;)

I’ve never been someone who follows the crowd. I rarely did what everyone else was doing to fit in. I’m a very stubborn person and it would actually drive my parents nuts sometimes. I would be genuinely interested in something and later find out it was a fad or trend and immediately talk myself out of it (Later to compete in Bikini).  If I wore something and a friend decided they liked it to, rather than be flattered I would be pissed. I would stop what I was doing all together and find something else. I always had to be original and different in ways that I could control.

My love life (if you could call it that) was no different. It seemed as though all my friends were starting to get boyfriends early on in high school and I felt like I was “Linds the fun one”. It probably didn’t help my chances that my dad was Mr. Boechler, ex CFL football player and teacher. The curse of being the teachers daughter is what I will blame it on ;) because it couldn’t have been the braces or the acne. EITHER WAY!  I didn’t seriously date until my later teens  (18-19). My ex husband and I started dating when I was 21.

I want to be clear that I have nothing but respect for him and know that he is an amazing person and I have no ill will towards him, regardless of what anyone else may assume or think.

At the time we both had so much in common. We loved to laugh, stay up late, go out almost every weekend and enjoy the complementaries that come along with the lifestyle. He unfortunately had lost his mother as well and that was something that we shared a bond over through out our entire relationship together. My family adored him and he was always such a fun person to have around and made everyone feel welcome. Like many  relationships, as the years went on you hit “red flags” as I call them. You make your career choices and begin them only to learn that they don’t coincide with each others schedules, so you adjust. You start to have different interests, so you try to find common ground. Your idea of a great night, is the opposite of their idea of a great night. Your outlook on “living” is the opposite of theirs. As a result, your lifestyles have become totally and completely different. But you hold on because you have history and you have that bond with that person and you honestly care for them and don’t want to see them hurt. Many don’t know, but we had discussions of breaking up a few times. One serious discussion was in 2012 and another was in 2013 (the year we got engaged). You also decide that purchasing a house together is the  “next step” as many love to call it. You discuss the differences, but you always come back to the resolution that you care for each other and that has to be enough. So then? you get engaged and a year later, you get married.

That year of engagement was probably the most we have had in common in such a long time. Even though we still had our differences, we had the planning of the wedding in common. Looking back, the year seemed to fly by. I was in total robot mode and just did what I thought I was supposed to do as a bride. It may sound awful but that’s not my intent, I’m just being honest. I put so much unnecessary pressure on myself to be a bride and a wife and plan a perfect wedding that I forgot what I was even planning. A wedding you idiot! and its yours! Every couple has their idea of how their wedding day should be, so there are going to be small disagreements. There were a few things that we disagreed  about right from the start,  but nothing that we didn’t resolve. I think people get so caught up in planning the party and looking forward to the celebration that they forget everything else. They don’t think about what happens afterwards and what this actually means. We all want to be a bride but who is willing to be a wife.

When I’m asked why I got married, my answer used to be “I don’t know”. But the true answer is because I cared about my partner and I wanted to see them happy and I thought this was the answer to being happy. I don’t quit at anything and this wasn’t going to be any different. Maybe we would find common ground again. Because after marriage comes babies and that too will bring us back together and make us whole again. A lot of people blame fitness/bodybuilding for our differences. I even sometimes wonder if things would have been different if I never would have found my passion. The reality of it is that competing is extremely hard on relationships yes, it is very demanding and grueling and you’re constantly exhausted and looking for support. But even when I’m not in prep for a show, I’m still the same me at 28, instead of the me at 21. I go to bed early and I count my macros. I spend my time with people who empower me and inspire me. I NEED to go to the gym for my mental health and to feel positive. Prep or no prep, I’m still me. Which honestly is hard to admit rather than to blame the other person. It would be easier for me to say they’re a bad person and they were mean to me. They don’t care about me and they treated me terribly. That wasn’t the case for me, we are two fun loving people who just have too many differences to continue building a life together. When your paths are on literal opposite ends of the map and they just keep going that way, it’s going to cause more damage than repair to continue to try and force them to meet. So after one year of marriage and breaking up, we both felt like failures. That we had let our friends and family down and that we sold them a lie. Because we were and still are friends (LAME is what you’re thinking). But we are. He was my best friend and that’s what kept us together for so long.

What did I tell the young girl at the function? I told her among others, that unfortunately we thought marriage was the answer. That we grew apart and rather than admitting that  fact earlier on, we kept digging deeper looking for answers to our differences. That I knew deep in my heart that staying together was not the answer to my happiness or to his. Because you should be with someone you can see a future with, not a past.

Marriage is a choice yes, for better or for worse (that’s right! preach!) Till death do us part. Unfortunately, there was a death and it was the relationship that we had once shared. Divorce rate is up they say, but I believe its because people aren’t willing to sacrifice their happiness and the rest of their life to please others anymore. JUDGY will only land you in the positions you once judged. Being at a social function and being a 28 year old divorced chick was sure a hard pill to swallow. But would I go back and not marry? Not a chance. I don’t regret getting married because I married someone who taught me so much about myself and what I want out of life. They watched me grow up in a sense and teach me many valuable lessons that I couldn’t have learned on my own. I am thankful for the lessons I’ve been taught and I’ve realized I don’t always need to be the teacher. My struggles give me strength.