It never fails to amaze me how often I have been “the starter wife.” Ok, not always a wife, but certainly a starter long-term whatever-one-wants-to-call-it-nowadays.
I was the first wife of my first husband. He never remarried after I left but, from what I have learned, straightened up his drinking, abusive ways, got a good job, and had a modicum of success in life.
I was the first wife of my second husband. He did remarry, and still is 30 years later. Nevertheless, I’d like to take some considerable credit for improving his prospects because after I left he stopped smoking, lost weight, and decided try all those activities I had begged him to do together. It probably lasted so long because, as most men do, he mellowed a lot as the years passed (but maybe that had something to do with a more tractable partner.)
I was the first wife of my third husband also. And, like the first, he never re-married. Unlike the first, he didn’t straighten up his drinking ways but has managed to hold down a succession of jobs, keep an apartment, and have a girlfriend, or three, which – I suppose – could still be considered a modicum of success.
I was not the first anything of Mr. Lucky – but I knew it going in. Unlike all my previous long-term relationships, he didn’t change a thing when we were done, just moved swiftly into an odd relationship with a woman described to me by others as “a loser.” Which shouldn’t have been surprising. If he hadn’t changed anything before he started our relationship, why should he bother to improve any habits after I left? However, if he hadn’t learned anything, I did – which gives me a certain feeling of having gotten something from my sixteen year travail.
We won’t discuss Bastardo Romantico© as we are all aware that he certainly didn’t change anything before, during, or after our relationship – including the relationship status with his “ex” who was never an “ex.”
I’m not the starter anything with my current friend who’s a boy. Nor am I his. Maybe that’s the way it should really be. Like the rest of life, we should come into a new relationship bringing the best of what we’ve learned from everything that has come before.