The Almost Husband Part 2

.....I got caught up in that beautiful moment and found myself saying, Yes! Yes, of course I’ll marry you! The wait staff was snapping our picture and everyone was smiling. Here we were on this beautiful island, I had the most gorgeous ring on my finger and this man who loved me. It was a happy evening. We called our families to share the news of our engagement. Then we got back home and reality sunk in. I loved Drew but I wasn’t sure I was in love with him. I began to panic. This panic led to an escape to Paris for a month long study abroad program with my best girlfriend Raven. She was getting married in 3 months and wanted a last hurrah while I needed time away to sort out my thoughts and feelings. Drew was completely supportive of this trip which only made it harder to realize the possibility of this not working out.

During my time away the main thing that brought me to the harsh realization that my love for Drew was more of a non romantic love was the fact that I didn’t miss him, not really. Not the way a girl should miss her fiancé being apart for a month. Also the fact that I had to stop myself numerous times from cheating with several cute boys who were closer to my age and very persistent. At the end of the month Drew was meeting me at a hotel he’d booked in Paris, and we were going on a Mediterranean cruise to celebrate his birthday. On the day he arrived and knocked on the hotel room door, I was sitting in a robe drinking champagne out of the bottle and crying. I acted like I’d been watching a sad movie so he wouldn’t know I’d been crying about our doomed relationship. What should have been an amazing cruise turned into a time of many arguments. I started picking fights and I felt badly for it yet couldn’t seem to stop myself.

When we got back home, a funny thing happened. As I was trying to figure out how I was going to break up with Drew, he turned the tables and broke up with me instead. For some reason I felt devastated. Here is what I thought I’d wanted yet when he said the words out loud it didn’t seem right. I tearfully tried to give back the ring, and he insisted I keep it and sell it. For some reason him breaking up with me sent me into panic mode and instead of accepting this as the right thing, I fought it and after many talks convinced him to give it one more shot. I decided I would become everything he seemed to want in a future wife. I would become the domestic housewife type if it killed me. I even tried to host a dinner for his best friends, and I made the only thing I knew how to cook. A chicken and cheese casserole which consisted mostly of canned soup and precooked chicken. Looking back that was pretty embarrassing. During this process I became insecure since I was trying to be something I wasn’t, and he became irritated and realized the things he loved about me he wouldn’t want to change after all, it’s just that we couldn’t seem to work together. The moment I snapped out of my Stepford wife phase was one afternoon when we were arguing right before we stepped into Drew’s brother’s birthday party. He snapped at me and yelled “you’re just so goddamned insecure!” Right then his brother opened the door and I had no choice but to blink back the tears that were forming and ignore the anger that was beginning to burn in the pit of my stomach. I said my hellos and faked good spirits, all the while hearing his comment ring in my ears. No man had ever called me insecure. I had never been that insecure girl who changed herself for a man. I was so angry that he would say that to me, and even more angry that he was sort of right. I had become someone I was not a fan of, however he was way out of line in his delivery.

As soon as we left the party I turned to him and told him that he was way out of line and I would never again be spoken to in that way. He looked surprised by my reaction and apologized. Then I told him that he was right when he’d tried to break things off, that this obviously wasn’t working. I told him I should never have tried to change myself. That night we broke up for good as amicably as any two people could have. I sadly sold my beautiful ring and used the money to move into a new apartment, and that’s where I began the next part of my journey in this crazy thing called life.