Pros & Cons of My First Marriage

Why do you think there are more single women than men? I liked being married separate than the fact that my husband was a severe alcoholic.

!. I enjoyed our late night convos on our deck smoking cigarettes and drinking Moroccan tea (sweet green tea with fresh mint), talking about stories---storytelling about our lives and in the stories we have bared witness to in books and films.

2. I liked cooking for my husband. We worked opposite shifts a lot through our marraige--so I'd cook in the evenings and make him a plate of food he could heat up when he came home late.

3. We'd write notes to each other and leave them on our refrigerator. I collected them and I'd look forward to waking up to one of his notes--more like snail mail letters to one another, handwritten.

4. I loved to buy him gifts and he loved to buy me gifts too. I had many tennis bracelets and diamond heart necklaces. He gave me glass blown perfume bottles from Morocco --different colours and shapes.

5. Celebration of Ramadan---he would lovingly prepare food to break fast with him and his good friends and I'd celebrate with them---with candlelight and laughter (and no alcohol for him for a full month!)

6. Cooking---he taught me how to cook all the great Moroccan dishes. There are many recipes I know by heart---chicken with roasted onions and kalamata olives and Moroccan beef stew. Also there's bastilla and a lamb dish with cooked saffron and prune sauce...it is really good.

7. Really good sex life for both of us. Tremendously good. We were both sex addicts.

Although there were these elements, there was devastating addiction in our marriage. Mine was food at the time and his was the bottle. I couldn't take it anymore and left after 4 years.

That was a marriage full of painful lessons and beautiful lessons too. It was a devesting divorce. So sad. We had made family together and it was severed by my choice. It took a lot of courage to leave this man. What a broken man...I have compassion for him--even to this day there is love for him but I do not keep in touch. Don't know his current reality. I had to severe all ties. It was not healthy for me.

Besides some loneliness, the single life has served me well. I have huge handfuls of friends, both men and women all over the world. So that helps with the loneliness...but I long to be in a HEALTHY partnership. God will arrange this when I am ready.