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Learning by Painful Experience

The following experience is from a mother in Australia who, after her marriage failed, tried something else

I LIVED with a man for almost three years without the benefit of marriage. With what result? I can honestly say that, emotionally and psychologically, they were the worst three years of my life.

We went into our relationship with the same idea that most people seem to have now, and that is, ‘Once bitten, twice shy,’ also, ‘You don’t know a person until you’ve lived with him.’ So if things didn’t work out, I felt it would be easier to break the relationship than to go through divorce courts.

Insecurity Causes Problems

But it’s those thoughts that cause problems. Right from the start, feelings of insecurity are created. How can you feel secure never knowing if the other person will still be with you this time next year, or even next month?

A de facto relationship has such a temporary sound to it. There is always the fear that someone else will come along and the relationship can just as easily be shifted to that one. So that horrible destructive emotion of jealousy is always there, ready to erupt.

Other Problems

Yes, there’s always tension. You can’t ever relax, because you’re always on guard against saying or doing something that might drive the other person away. And fear is felt, because an argument will nearly always end with one of you using emotional blackmail and saying, ‘I’m leaving.’

That expression de facto was my biggest problem. It made me feel cheap and cost me my self-respect whenever for some official reason, which was quite often, I had to explain I was a de facto wife. I would desperately want to explain that I wasn’t really an immoral person, that I wasn’t the type who flitted from man to man. But, of course, I was immoral, whether it was just with one man or with several, and my conscience gave me quite a battle.

The psychological problems started too. They were manifested in depression, feelings of unworthiness and, eventually, of self-destruction. Even now, five years after this relationship ended, I feel so ashamed and unclean that I want to blank the memories out of my mind forever. But I can’t, because, as the Creator says, ‘we reap what we sow.’ I have a daily reminder in the form of my little boy who was the result of that last union.

Not only do I have this physical reminder, but also, when he was born, for his sake I had my name changed to that of his father. I felt that I could protect both him and my two children from my original marriage against any prejudice. On the surface it looks as if I have been married twice. But it only serves to make me feel dishonest every time I’m called by that name.

In Retrospect

Looking back, I realize that I did much more than damage my own reputation. I put my three children in a position that left them open to attack by other children at school, all on account of the morals of their mother, which, of course, they couldn’t deny. It must have made them ashamed too.