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
:) )