Relationships Today: Just a Little Advice

I think I’m going to do something a little different this weekend. Instead of something really controversial like politics or religion I’m going to delve into the realm of relationships. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, who am I to give out advice on something that I can’t even keep together? In answer to that question I will reply that I am very experienced in what NOT to do. After being married three times, three times divorced, having children with all three, I would like to think that I have a pretty good idea of what is going on. I may be wrong on that but I’m going to go with it anyway.

I got married the first time when I was twenty and she was eighteen. She wanted away from home and I wanted someone there. Trust me when I say that when a relationship is built like that it will never work out. Two years later, after she and I were separated, along came a beautiful baby girl. Was I ready to be a parent in any way, shape or form? Not on your life. Thank the gods that my ex-wife was a hell of a lot more mature than I was. My daughter grew to be a fantastic woman with children of her own that have grown into pretty great young people. When my daughter was around three I surrendered parental rights and let her step-dad adopt her. I thought I was doing the right thing.

Relationship number two, that ended in marriage and divorce, came along a few years later when I was 27. I met this girl while I was servicing a truck where I worked. I was covered in grease and oil and this cute little thing came wandering into the shop and started complaining about being stood up by some sop that had made a movie date with her. As it ended up my buddy and I got cleaned up and we both took her to the drive in movie. It was a triple feature that I have no idea what was playing. We talked through the whole damn thing. My buddy? He sat along the wall of the drive in bored out of his mind.

This girl had a three year old boy that was adorable. He came to me one day and asked if I minded if he called me ‘Dad.’ My heart melted. After we got married I adopted him. He was a great kid and I love him as much as if he was my own blood. But, once again, the fates decided that this wasn’t the one, either. We fought constantly about everything. I was a jealous SOB and she was an eighth Crow Indian and had an evil streak that made her want to stir me up.

I was working for Schwan’s at the time and came home one night to a note on the pillow. Yeah! Can you believe that old cliché? I wasn’t sober for about three or four months. I quit working for Schwan’s and went back to real trucking.

Number three was a few months later. I picked her up in a truck stop where she was hitch hiking. It was in Columbia, MO and she was trying to get to Minneapolis. You just don’t get from the middle of Missouri to southern Minnesota very easily. I gave her ride from there to Indiana and then back to Des Moines and put her on a truck headed to Minneapolis. A couple of months later she was back and in the truck with me.

To make this story shorter, in the ten years we were together we moved from Des Moines to Portland, my beautiful baby daughter was born four months after her mother turned eighteen and my son was born two and half years later. My boy was born in New York while I was still in Portland, OR. Yeah, I’m a dick and she thought I wasn’t paying enough attention to her so she took my daughter across the country for a year. She came back to Portland and then we moved around the country while I was trucking again. We ended up in Fremont, NE where it finally came to an end.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Every time I got married it was forever but, there is that little problem of me being a dick. When I got together with the last one I told her that I didn’t own her and she didn’t own me; as long as my children were taken care of she did what she wanted and I was not going to change my lifestyle of trucking. I didn’t cheat on her. I am NOT that kind of driver. I am loyal to a fault and once committed that is all she wrote. No.3 and I never fought until that last night when she walked out on me and the kids.

Throughout all three of these relationships there is one common denominator: my attitude that I was not owned by anyone and I was going to do what I wanted regardless. Don’t get me wrong, I did my best to take care of my family and my children are my world. That was probably the biggest thing, I paid more attention to my kids than the other half. Not the best way to keep a relationship together.

In any relationship it has to be a two way street. It cannot just go one way. Give and take and if you give a little more than you take then it will, more than likely, stay together; if there is any chance that one is taking more than the other it will end in disaster. Communication is just as important. If you can’t talk things through, you get angry and go to bed that way, you will end up as bitter enemies. You have to be able to compromise in all things. And, this one is very important, if you try to change someone that you are with, you’ve lost. You didn’t fall in love with what you want to change them into. You fell in love with what they are.

In today’s world I’ve watched these kids from 14 to 20 do their utmost to get into a serious relationship and have kids. Stupidest thing they could do. These kids are just as immature as we were back in the 70’s but they think they are much more grown up. I throw down the BS card on that. These girls today think they can be moms at 14, 16, 18 years old. They can’t. And these boys won’t be ready to be dads until they reach about 30.

I’ve seen girls destroy boy’s lives because they didn’t get what they wanted, which was to have a baby, and then if they do get what they want, they destroy that poor boy’s life and her own. Well, maybe not destroy but definitely make it exponentially harder. Life is NOT easier with a baby on your hip. When I was young and you had a child, that child was yours to take care of. Today, I constantly see posts on Facebook or hear girls cry because they need time off from their children. These girls seem to think that having a living child is like taking care of that stupid doll they have in high school independent living class. It isn’t.

Who is to blame for this social problem? I blame us. By ‘us’ I mean the parents of these children that think they are grown up at 14. We have become so complacent and relaxed in parenting that these kids are basically raising themselves. That doesn’t bring about morally adept children. They start sleeping with the opposite sex at 14 just to have someone to sleep next to. Next thing you know they’re doing the dirty with whoever it is next to them without protection and then, BAM, they’re pregnant and think they’re gonna get a Sony TV. Oh, sorry. That baby that is growing in there suddenly becomes one of two things: an income from a poor, unemployed teenaged boy and the government or, it’s an inconvenience and needs to be aborted.

My best advice to anyone from 14 to 25 – stay single, enjoy life, get set financially then start thinking about getting into a serious relationship. The world isn’t going to end if you don’t get serious with someone before you’re 30. Kids are wonderful gifts that require a LOT of work and a lot of money. Stay children for as long as you can. Being grown up is not as great as what it’s advertised to be. Life is hard enough by yourself and it isn’t any easier when you have others that you are responsible for. Relationships don’t last. I’ve known people that were married for decades that broke apart. Children aren’t mature enough to even know what love is much less what commitment and loyalty are. Most girls are out to get into a boy’s wallet and get a baby for an income. Boys are out to get their wedding tackle wet, period.

Those last two statements are generalities; there are those rare boys and girls that are actually loyal and true. If you can find one, keep them. The biggest problem is that those with good hearts, the loyal, are taken advantage of more often than not by those that are so immature that they can’t see beyond their own noses. Hedonism runs rampant in today’s world and that is the saddest thing that could ever happen. Dorian Grey is king; the only problem there is that these modern Dorian’s aren’t immortal.