You Don't Know What You Don't Know at 22

 

When you're in your twenties, you think you know all you need to know. And so you make a decision to get married because you know no better path. 

You have a whimsical idea about marriage. You trust in God, if you're a believer, and since God didn't break you up, you assume it will all work out. 

But what you don't know enough of is psychology. In the 70s, I took a sociology course in high school. That was the first time I'd ever heard about abuse. I knew little about dysfunction. People didn't even talk about stalkers in those days until much later when women were being stalked and raped and we learned about it in the newspaper.

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So I was uneducated. I couldn't possibly know the pathology of the man I was about to marry. I didn't know anyone immoral. I only knew Christians. I only knew what my church and family had taught me and the bits I uncovered in the newspaper or in encyclopedias. We didn't have the internet then.

So I married Randy, and was disappointed right on my honeymoon. 

I had started my career, but it was so boring working with adults compared to being in college with peers. Had I had bigger goals and a network of friends to rely on, life would have been so much different. Had I more guts and gusto and strength to defy my cocoon, perhaps I would have skipped ten years of nonsense and lived my life with more adventure. 

But marrying Randy eventually got me to a job I loved in a new city and helped prepare the way to finding my current husband Mark. But was the pain of what I went through worth it? 

I share my story here.