Time vs. the Worthless Heart
Geplaatst op 03-04-2025
Categorie: Lifestyle
Is time the enemy of a broken soul? Does a worthless heart predict that love will eventually fail?
Admittedly, today’s post was another that was written in a fury of both heavy contemplation and defeat. Because of that, it took on a life of its own and there is some profanity in it. I apologize if that is offensive to you. It is not the post to read if you’re in the mood for cotton candy and clapping monkeys. That being said, I feel it’s something that some of us might do well to discuss.
There is a question that has been asked again, and again, and again. There is a never-ending stream of people, mostly with good intentions, who want to know why and how “a guy like me” ever got divorced, and they want to know why and how “a guy like me” ended up divorced twice at the age of 30. They want to know how the author of a blog that devotes so much of itself to figuring out personal issues, bettering himself, and encouraging others to do the same can have such a defining smear of failure tarnishing his record.
I am asked this question at least daily, and I’ve skirted around it as long as I possibly could. Not because I didn’t want to answer, but because I haven’t known what the answer actually was. Over the last little while I’ve finally begun to unravel some of the murkier areas of my past, and I guess it’s time I give you all a “real” answer.
That being said, let me reiterate something about this blog that I have for some reason failed to get across to some. The reason I write about fixing shit is because I have a lot of shit to fix. Much of what I write is because I’m either trying to figure out my own problems, I’m trying to give myself a message that I need to hear, or I become desperate to speak my mind about a serious problem that few people with large platforms are willing to touch.
That being said, there are some things most of you don’t realize about me, and to be honest I don’t often realize them either.
Most of you don’t know that I often consider myself a disappointment. I consider myself a letdown. I consider myself a failure. I mean, how could I not? I have been divorced twice. Sometimes it gets to the point where I hate myself for being so.
Get divorced once, anybody can turn a blind eye. It’s easy to blame the other party. It’s easy to pretend like none of it was your fault. Get divorced twice, and the perception is that there is something seriously wrong with you. Only douche bags, idiots, and selfish pricks get divorced twice, right?
And, as I sit here, quite often feeling like nothing but a waste of space and a colossal failure in life, I also get lost trying to figure out why. Why did I get divorced? Why when I was giving it my all, did I have two marriages end for me?
I am forced to sit with myself and my personal history every single day. I am forced to explain myself and my situation to any girl I ever ask on a date. I am so disheartened with myself and my failures that I have locked my heart away, sometimes unable to believe that I am even worth knowing. I am more than convinced that the double marriage notch carved into my belt has ruined any chance for normalcy in the arena of love and commitment.
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So, why? What happened? Is it possible to actually identify a cause? I could straightforwardly focus on final events in both marriages and quite easily cast blame on each of my ex-wives, but in all reality final events very rarely are the cause for any divorce, and they certainly weren’t for mine.
No, I have always known that it goes back much further than the end. It goes back before any anger, any hostility, and any questioning about whether the marriage would work or not. It goes back to before our first fights and before our first quarrels. In all reality, it goes back to before our wedding days ever happened. It goes back to before our first kisses, the first time we held hands, and our first hugs. It goes back to before I met either of them.
As I have pondered just what my poisoned dagger has been, I have come to realize that it wasn’t really the relationships at all.
It was time.
I was not always the person you now know from my blog posts, especially when it came to the ladies. I was severely bullied by girls almost as often as guys in school, and when that finally ended I more than lacked the confidence and self-esteem to ever believe that any girl could truly want me. In the time of my life when every boy is at his horniest, I couldn’t get a single girl to look at me twice. I did my best to make friends. I did my best to act confident. But I never believed a girl could be sincere in her affection for me, and so everything with the opposite sex was approached with hesitancy, fear, and caution.
With every girl’s-choice dance that approached, I hid behind a fictitious smile or fake laugh as I sat through my classes, desperately pleading with all of my energy and thoughts for a girl, any girl, to ask me as her date. Yet even as I did, I knew no girl ever would. And no girl ever did. At the end of high school I was zero for fifteen. My perfect losing streak left me desperate to love and desperate to prove to myself that I was indeed lovable.
The problem was, I didn’t believe that I was loveable at all, and because I didn’t believe it, I found myself looking at time as my worst enemy.
With every girl I dated after leaving home, I got better and better at capturing her genuine interest in me. I got better and better at believing I offered value to a relationship. I got better and better at feeling like I was actually worth something.
Yet, with every start to a relationship I also grew desperate for time to slow down. With every tick of the clock, I knew it was one less tick before I was suddenly unlovable and undesirable to her. I always sensed that it was just a matter of time before the girl saw me as the person I really was. A fat loser, a natural target to be laughed at, and not actually attractive at all.
The only thing I really knew was that I wanted to love a girl, I wanted her to love me, and that if I could somehow beat the clock, she would never discover that I was all the horrible things I believed myself to be. Of course, I never thought any of these things at the time. These shadows of the past are only what I have figured out in all my long and lonely hours trying to learn how and why I ended up divorced twice.
Looking back to those years just prior to when I met my first wife, there is no doubt for me now that this was all true and that it was all going on. It took almost no time at all to decide that I was “in love” with any girl who paid the slightest bit of attention to me, and I never hesitated to blurt it out, desperate for her to say it back. Because I always did it so hastily, the girls never responded with the words I longed to hear. They never said, “I love you, too.” Usually it marked the beginning of the end. A sure-fire guarantee to kill the relationship before it could ever find its wings.
With every failed attempt, the clock grew to be more and more my enemy. Every time I said the words and didn’t hear them back, it caused me to be more desperate for reciprocation on the next go-around. I felt worthless, and I needed somebody, anybody to love me. I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t without value.
I needed to know that somebody cared because the truth was, I knew how dangerous my situation was becoming. I knew that I was nearing the edge of a cliff that I never wanted to look over. I knew that I was on the verge of doing something dangerous or stupid to free myself from those enslaving and consuming feelings.
And there, at the peak of it all, when I was most desperate to beat the clock or suffer the consequences, I met Andrea, my first wife.
And when the day came that I said “I love you,” she said it back.
For the first time in my life, a girl said it back.
When that happened, the clock suddenly seemed as if it was strapped to a 20-ton bomb. I pulled out all the stops. I did everything I could to keep that young 19-year old girl loving me. I wooed her, I wined and dined her, and I made her love me before she had the chance not to. The clock wasn’t going to beat me on this one. Not when somebody had finally said “I love you, too.”
Marriage proposal came only months after we began dating. Three months after that, we were married.
As I stood looking at my new bride, I knew I had done it. I had beat that damned clock.
And so, I crossed the threshold of our first apartment, holding the hand of a young girl, having no idea who the hell she was. She walked across the same threshold that day, holding the hand of a 21-year old boy, also having no idea who the hell she had just committed herself to for life. We didn’t know each other, and we had no idea that we didn’t.
Time didn’t stop its relentless torture. It didn’t take long at all to realize that we were not great together. It took barely more time to realize that we weren’t actually compatible at all. Almost as quickly as we ran into all of it, we suddenly found ourselves battling time again, only this time it was counting down to the end of a marriage. I did everything an inexperienced boy could think of to stop the clock from ruining it. My wife did the same. Yet, with time, we were too young and too foolish to do much of anything right. With every day that passed, I lost more hope than I found. It was the same for my wife.
Then, one day, nearly seven years into it, something happened and the marriage ended.
I was worthless once more.
At the end of the marriage I was both slender and attractive, or at least I felt that way when comparing myself to what I had been my entire life. The day our divorce finalized in the courts, I opened an account on a local dating website and set out to prove my value and my worth once more. I set out to prove that I wasn’t at fault for our marriage failing, and I set out to prove that somewhere there was a beautiful woman who would love me the way I’d always been desperate to be loved. Somewhere, there was a woman who would think I was valuable. Somewhere there was a woman who would keep me from feeling worthless.
Again, I never thought any of these thoughts as each of these events unfolded in my life. These are all things that I have figured out in my long and lonely hours trying to figure out how I ended up divorced twice.
One of the first women to reply was a beautiful red-head who later would become my second wife. She was a young widow, and was drop-dead gorgeous according to the world’s standards. I asked her out, and she accepted. She was the first woman I took on a date after my divorce to Andrea, and she was also the last. I was engaged to her just six weeks later, and four months after we met, I was married once again.
I had done it. I had found a girl that would say “I love you” back. I had beat the clock. I was wanted, and I was valuable. Therefore, I wasn’t worthless.
And, once again, I walked across the threshold after we were married, holding the hand of a woman, having no idea who the hell she was.
The reality of it all hit me on our honeymoon. Though I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I stood looking at a woman literally wondering this time who she was and what I had done. I can only assume she stood looking at me trying not to think the same thoughts. After all, she barely new me as well.
After returning home from our honeymoon, the reality of life descended upon us. We were both parents with completely conflicting parenting techniques. We both had relationships with our own families that suddenly began getting in the way. We both had conflicting needs that were important or imperative to us, but which we had never before discussed.
I fought with this woman. I had never been a fighter before. With my first wife I could count our number of fights on one hand. With my second wife, I didn’t have enough fingers and toes to cover a week’s worth.
Once again, time became our enemy number one. Once again, it unremittingly pushed itself across my view, threatening to end another marriage.
I was married to her for barely more than a year. That time was filled with more bitterness, anger, and contention than anyone should experience in a lifetime. Together we went to more than forty counseling sessions just to keep the tender thread that was holding our marriage together from breaking. The marriage never worked. It never functioned. It was doomed from the beginning.
But… we had to make it work. We were determined to make it work.
We needed to make it work.
I was not going to fail again. I was not going to be the guy who gets divorced twice. I fought for that marriage, desperate to not be the guy who freaking gets divorced twice. She fought for the marriage, too. Desperate, I’m sure, for her own reasons.
Then, one day, something happened and the marriage ended.
I sat unexpectedly alone in the dark after the girls left, a worthless man yet again, about to be divorced twice. I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to run away. Instead, I sat down and stared a blog called Single Dad Laughing. I started it to keep myself in check as a parent. I started it to keep from losing who I was completely. I also started it to try and figure out my shit through writing.
It’s taken me seven months of soul searching and journaling to figure all of this out. It’s taken me seven months of writing this blog, hurting a couple of incredible women along the way, and a lot of sad, dark time alone to figure this out. It’s taken the tears that have come while writing several of my heavier posts to realize that it wasn’t the events at the end of my marriages that were the problem. It wasn’t the marriages themselves. It wasn’t my wives. It wasn’t even me. It was time.
This is not to say that other factors didn’t contribute. It’s not to say that either of my wives didn’t also struggle with their own demons, pasts, and choices. It’s not to say that I am shouldering responsibility for it all or even the majority of it. It’s simply to say that because of what my past made me, I was far more likely to fail than not. Until I could recognize the demons that fancied my destruction, there wasn’t much opportunity for anything but failure. No matter how hard I worked, no matter how “good a guy” I was, there was an underlying problem that was more powerful than any of it.
As I write this, I find myself sitting at my computer once again, occasional tears dripping from my chin. It’s what happens every time I unlock a dark mystery that has plagued me and hurt others for so many years. It’s what happens when I finally am able to see something that has controlled me for so long. It’s what happens every time I feel liberation from unhealthy thinking.
And, based on what I have personally seen and heard from others, I don’t believe I am alone in this need for liberation. I don’t believe I’m the only one who has been plagued by the ticking of a clock. I don’t believe I’m the only one who has been so deprived of love that I became far too desperate for it. I don’t believe that I’m the only one who has been carrying around this dark mystery, who has felt worthless, and who has felt so alone that the need for somebody or anybody to love him trumped all reason and rational thinking.
There are many who view time as the enemy when looking for love. There are many who are as certain as I was that time will only destroy what they have. There are many who stand among the ranks of those who hope that others can truly love them, while deep down believing nobody ever will. There are many who hate time for this very reason.
How do we not see? Why do we not understand?
Time is not our enemy.
Why has it taken me two divorces and countless failed relationships to figure it out? Why have the failures and rejections that have all resulted after a desperation to beat time not screamed this truth at me again and again?
Why did I never see that time was in all reality my greatest ally? How did I not understand that time would only solidify and strengthen something that was good and real while giving the opportunity for anything that didn’t have long term potential to fall apart? Why was I always so scared of any relationship suddenly seeing itself for what it was that I continually raced time to awkwardly string it together?
The answer is simple. When one truly believes that nobody can sincerely love him (for of any reason, these are just mine), he will never believe that time is on his side. He will always believe that time will eventually tear whatever he’s built apart. He will always see the end of anything as inevitable. He will always fail in love.
He will become me.
He will find himself alone.
A failure in love. Unable to love. Desperate for love.
[sigh.] Perhaps you wanted a more scandalous answer as to why “a guy like me” could get divorced twice. Perhaps you wanted to know what happened at the end of my marriages. Maybe you wanted some juicy gossip that could put me up on some pedestal which doesn’t exist or which could prove that I was a schmuck once and for all.
I wish I had a better answer for you all. In fact, I really wish my brain functioned differently sometimes. I wish it would take the easy route that could leave me looking like the hero or the victim. I wish I could offer beautifully canned and self-preserving answers. It would certainly be easier for me if I could.
But… then I wouldn’t ever heal. I wouldn’t fix myself. I’d end up divorced a third time and probably a fourth. And, by damn, I am going to find love. True love. Real love. The kind that time only makes better. The kind that lasts a lifetime. Someday it is going to happen for me. Someday the tick of the clock will be among the sweetest of sounds for me to hear because I know that with each tick my relationship grows stronger.
But how to feel that I could truly be loved? How to feel that I am truly valuable and that I am truly worth something to another? In all reality, it’s getting better and it’s getting easier, but sometimes I still don’t. Sometimes I still feel like that fat kid with his face pressed against the cold tile of the lunchroom floor while the bully who just tripped him laughs. Sometimes I still feel like that ugly boy trying not to cry because some beautiful girl just expressed interest in him with the sole intent of laughing at him.
Maybe I don’t need to figure that part out. Maybe now that I’ve figured all of this out, all it will take at this point is time.