Our Story...by Alex

I know what you are thinking, "But you looked so happy!  We never would have guessed!"  Well to ease your worries, we weren't faking it.  We truly love each other and that's why the situation is so weird and hard to explain.  I know that everyone deserves an explanation.  I know you all have tons of questions and I'm going to try my best to answer all of them in this single post.

The Beginning

When Will and I met, I was just beginning to break free from the shell that I had hidden myself away in for years (that's another story).  Because I was just breaking free, I had not friends. I did but they were surface friends...hand out in class together but nothing more really.  I kept it all in.  I was afraid of looking dumb so I shared nothing about myself.  I was afraid of who I was, I was afraid to live life, and I had zero confidence.  Flash forward about seven months later...I had a friend for the first time in my life.  We talked about everything.  Will was very patient with me when i struggled to find the words to express myself.  I loved him and he loved me.  We were best friends...an unstoppable team.  I had never had a boyfriend before, never had been on a date, never been to a school dance, never had a true friend.  Will was the same except he had tons of friends.  We were each others first kiss.  We didn't know how to differentiate between friends who loved each other and actual romantic love.  We didn't have the experience.

We saw no reason to not get married

I mean we were BEST friends.  We were so compatible.  We liked the same things, had the same views, and yet he was my opposite.  He was funny, loud, confident, compassionate, had a million friends, smart...He was everything I wanted to be.

I think overall we tried to break up three times in the 14 months that we dated.  The first was because I just wanted to be friends.  I think I knew something wasn't right about our relationship...we had no chemistry, no spark.  But we were so comfortable with each other and we did love each other.  We didn't want the friendship to end and Will made it known to me that we could never be friends if we broke up.  I needed Will.  We needed each other, so we continued with the relationship.

I didn't know how to break it off

A month before the wedding I got cold feet.  I prayed about it and it didn't feel right.  But being strictly logic minded at the time, I didn't listen.  How could I let something so stupid as not having chemistry and a spark ruin us being together.  It was just so stupid to me and it wasn't logical. Will was so good to me!  He treated me like a queen.  There was no way I could find that anywhere else?  I loved Will...I didn't want to lose that love.  I thought we could build that chemistry with time.

The feeling kept coming back

About every six months, during summer and Christmas break when school wasn't occupying my mind, Will and I would have the same talk...The lack of chemistry and spark was getting to me.  Sex and intimacy just didn't seem like what it was supposed to be.  We were friends.. not romantic lovers.  We never had a honeymoon stage.  We talked with counselors, read tons of self-help books and articles on the topic and it did help some!  We communicated better and our friendship grew stronger because of it...but the intimacy still wasn't there.  I wanted Will to have that.  He was so good to me.  We just had no idea what it was supposed to be like.  Talking with my friends now, I understand that it was just completely wrong.  But we kept working at it because we loved each other and we didn't want to lose each other.

This Summer 2013

I was struggling tremendously.  I wasn't happy.  I felt like I was drowning, gasping for every last bit of air.  I wanted to bad to just run and feel the air rip through my lungs.  I wasn't free.  I felt trapped by the school choices I had made.  I was frustrated and angry a lot.  I started experiencing panic attacks frequently...too frequently.  I prayed a lot...I kept getting conflicting answers.  It was incredibly frustrating.  The moment I decided to quit the optometry dream was the moment I took my first breath of freedom.

A whirl-wind of change

My world had changed for the better!  I decided that I was going to DO and not let anything hold me back.  I finally took that cake class that I had always wanted and I finally finished all the projects that I had started but never finished.  The journey to a new self-discovery was beginning.  I was finally tapping into my creative side and it felt so right!  I can't express to you the happiness I have felt with myself these past four months.  School felt easier, life happened, new and stronger friendships were built.  It was as if a tied up portion of my soul was finally unbound.  I lived for new opportunities.  I found great happiness in discovering new things about myself.  I shad my fears and found new roads to travel.  I started asking myself what was really important to me.  What did I truly want?  What would make me the happiest and being in an intimate relationship...having that connection, having a complete marriage was important to me and it was important to Will to experience that as well.  I started thinking about kids.  They were a possibility now that school was no longer in my future and I knew Will deserved a family.  I know he would be an amazing dad, but I didn't want to bring kids into a dysfunctional marriage.  There was plenty of love but it wasn't the right kind of love.  It wasn't a marriage/ husband and wife kind of love...friendship love is different and kids are very smart.  They pick up on little things like that.  I didn't want to raise my kids to think that our friendship marriage was normal.  I didn't want it to affect their relationships in the future.  So, another piece to our relationship puzzle was found. 

This new perspective in essence gave Will and I the courage to do what we needed to do six year ago.  

And then we made a choice together

A week before finals...another six months since our last divorce talk, we decided to try something new.  We decided to try option two since option one had gotten us nowhere. We prayed a lot about this choice.  For the first time in my life, I got my answer almost immediately...no patience required (hallelujah!) ...so it was weird and I kind of didn't trust that answer at first...more praying ensued.  We spend a weekend apart to feel it out.  We both continued to pray about it...I got the same answer.  When I got back from our weekend apart, we talked some more and felt even stronger about our choice.  It just felt...right.  We talked with our bishop and afterwards we felt a great comfort in our choice.  He asked us a lot of good, in depth questions, he gave us good advice, and he was very proud at how hard we tried to make it work.  He wanted us to go to the temple together and do some sealing's to see if our answer would change.  Two days later, we were ready to get to the temple to get some more answers...and our recommends had literally expired 15 day ago!  Funny how that happens...lesson learned...not to self, renew recommends months before they expire.  So I settled for a walk around the temple instead, just me by myself since Will had already moved out.  It was really good.  I got a stronger feeling about my answer.  I realized that all this time my happiness goals were completely backwards.  I was looking for happiness and fulfillment in all the wrong places.  What I thought would make me truly and deeply happy summed up to 1. get all the schooling possible 2. become a doctor 3. open my own business and be my own boss 4. live in a big beautiful home 5. have enough money to explore the world with my best friend Will....They were good goals but not the right goals.  School was a very good distraction and I am sad that Will will never see me in that distracted school mind-set.  When I'm not stuck in school, I feel like a totally different person.  So I changed my happiness goals and I also compiled a list of things that I wanted in a relationship.

So, I packed my things and moved out of my big, beautiful home into a bedroom at a sweet and wonderful friends house and I couldn't be happier actually!  Christmas was incredibly hard because I love Will and his family so much!  It hurt to not be with them. I love them with all my heart and I was so excited to be with them this year for Christmas.  I didn't want to miss it for the world.  There is so much happiness in the Bowen home.  They are full of acceptance, love, and laughter.  I learned so much from them. I loved how open they were!  I had nothing to hide and I felt unconditional love from them.  I wanted and needed that in my life.  So Christmas without them was really  hard...not to mention Christmas without Kurt's famous ham that I was missing out on...literally the worlds best ham, I kid you not!  

So that pretty much sums up my side of the story. I hope I was able to answer all of your questions.  We are both excited for the new adventure ahead.  It was a bitter sweet break up and I have hope and faith that things will work out for the both of us.  To all OUR friends and family...I love you with all my heart.  You have filled me with so much love and happiness.  Your acceptance has meant the world to me!  I think one of the hardest parts about divorce is letting go of OUR friends, but since this is a weird and uncommon civilized divorce (I mean, we aren't throwing shuriken's or any other random household items at each other ;) ), I have really high hopes that I can keep all of you!  So, no awkward glances down the cereal isle when you see me please :)  I want to stay hi to you and still be apart of your life!

With all the love of my heart,

Miss Alex ...(always liked the sound of that :) )