I failed.
I always wanted to be married.
I never questioned whether I was ready.
When it finally happened, I wasn’t.
I wasn’t open enough.
Honest enough.
Vulnerable enough.
Proactive enough.
Etc.
That doesn’t mean I’m a failure. I can always try again.
I’m not sure when (or if) I want to, though.
Sometimes when I can’t be with my boys it hurts. It feels like there’s a huge hole in my heart.
Other times I’m fine.
I don’t know what makes the difference.
When I was younger I would dream about marriage. I wanted to get married as far back as I can remember.
Fatherhood was something I rarely gave any thought.
I figured I would have kids at some point. I didn’t think about it beyond that.
Sometimes it’s all I can think about now.
I want to spend as much time with my boys as I can.
I want them to have the best future they can.
I want to do whatever I can to make that happen.
I want to have the best relationships with them I can.
I want them to be the best men they can be.
I want them to learn from my bad choices.
To not go through what I’ve been through.
Sometimes I’m thick-headed.
Sometimes I have to be taught a lesson multiple times.
Those lessons can be painful.
Lessons like, “Get to know someone really well before deciding to marry them.”
Or, “Don’t have sex with someone you’re not married to.”
I think I’ve finally learned those lessons now.
I hope so. They’ve come at a high price.
I was pretty sheltered as a kid.
My dad died when I was three.
My mom kept me home most of the time. I was happy there, so I didn’t mind.
In the LDS church young men are expected to serve a full-time mission for two years. At that time they would go at age nineteen.
I was afraid of being on my own for that long.
I’d been on my own at scout camps and events, but that was it.
I was afraid of being far from home.
I had always wanted to get married. That seemed a lot safer, and I’d always been romantically inclined.
I had a plan.
Right after high school I would go to college for a year. While I was there I would find someone to marry.
Never mind that I had never gone out on a date before.
Never mind that I was afraid to even talk to girls.
My plan was foolproof.
What could possibly go wrong?
Don’t worry about finding the right person. Become the right person.
– Source Unknown
The first step to being the right person is loving yourself.
I’ve hated myself for a long as I can remember.
I’m working on loving myself now. I feel pretty good about myself now. I’ve got a lot of bad qualities, but there are a lot of good ones, too. I can work on the bad ones, and the good ones can always get better.
My relationships with my boys are more important than any romantic relationships right now. I’m a better father than I’ve been in the past, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.
I’m not satisfied with a lot of things in my life right now.
I want to be able to go to the temple, and that’s not something I can do right now. I want to improve my spirituality and get to the temple.
I’ve been doing phone jobs for most of my life. I hate talking on the phone. I ‘m burned out and I really need to do something else.
I’m not healthy. I’m fat. I go for walks, but not every day. I don’t eat healthy. I’m on an antidepressant and blood pressure meds. I want to get off those.
I need to start reading books on a daily basis. I want to learn and develop new skills.
I want to be my own boss. I wants to build websites and make money from those.
I want to be able to afford to support myself, my wife and kids. I want my mom to be able to stop working.
I don’t feel like I have to self-actualize before pursuing a romantic relationship. I do want to get moving in the right direction and make some real progress first.
Making the changes I want will make me a different person. Someone who would fall in love with the man I am now wouldn’t fall in love with the man I want to become.
The woman I really want to marry is someone who’d love that guy.