When I met “Mister Perfect for me,”  (Let’s face it… Richard is really pretty much Mr. Perfect for MOST women.. but I digress…) I was 32 years old.

I had already decided I was NEVER going to get married… not like “woe is me… no one will love me…” but like “Heck, no…  I don’t want to get married.  I like my life.”

The average age for women getting married back in 2005 when I met Richard was 26.  (I GTS, so it must be true… and if you don’t know what GTS is… GTS.).  I was 34 when we got married… nearly a decade late.  My friends were already married… had babies… I had actually moved on to a new set a friends, most who were significantly older than I was because I didn’t want to be part of that mess.  (There were a few exceptions.)

And I was VERY independent…  not at all ready to be the kind of married couple my parents were (met at 8 and 12… married when they were 18 and 22); or my brother (met as a freshman in high school, married as a sophomore in college).  They had grown up together… had no life to speak of independent of one and other.  Their hobbies, their social lives, their friends… all the same.. all integrated.  No one went out with the girls or out with the boys… they went out with each other… only… This has worked for them for DECADES.  My parents have been married since 1970; my brother has been married since 1995.  This is how they liked it.  This is how they wanted life to be.  (Granted, my mom has branched out with triathlon stuff… my sister-in-law does plenty with her sisters… but again, digressing…)

I was different

I started college at 17… and moved away from home.  Then, except for summers and a brief uncomfortable month between roommates, I never moved back.  I prided myself on almost NEVER taking anything from my parents.  I worked HARD never to ask…  even when I didn’t have money for food, I’d pick up another job… do SOMETHING so that I could be on my own.  I was as independent as I could possibly be. And either through choice or circumstance I never had a boyfriend.  Ever.

It also meant that I never had to ask anyone permission for anything.  I never had to compromise and do what someone else would do.  I got to make decisions for me… just me.  And I really liked it that way.

Then along comes Mr. Wonderful.

We moved in together a little more than a year after we started dating, and I’m not going to lie.  It was HARD.  I did not enjoy the “where are you going?  What are you doing?  When are you going to be home?” kind of conversations.

I felt like I was asking for permission to do things… and I didn’t like that AT ALL.  I didn’t mind checking in with him.  It had been about six years since I had a roommate… but I did used to check in with them… so that was ok… BUT if we weren’t doing anything else… if we didn’t already have other plans, the thought that he could tell me that I couldn’t do something was completely foreign to me.  When he would question me about choices I made with MY money…  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr….

I think the tipping point was when he told me that I COULDN’T go out of town alone with a mutual straight, male friend of ours who was single.  At the time, I was 38 years old.  We had been married for four years… and he wanted to tell me that I COULDN’T do something?  I was furious.  I gave him all the logic:  If I wanted to cheat, I’d cheat right here.  I don’t have to go out of town to do it.  There is no reason I shouldn’t go.  I have the time. I have the money, and I want to.  You do not have the right to tell me what I can and cannot do.

In the end, I didn’t go out of respect for him, but I continued to bring it up over the next several years… not in a hostile argumentative way, in a logical way.

The thing with getting married later was that I didn’t want to give up any of myself.  I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too.. .and didn’t see why I couldn’t.  I had been on my own for half of my life.  I was ready to be on my own for the rest of it. I was already my own person… and I didn’t need to be someone new.

Selfish?  Perhaps.  But MOST of the time we were very happy.  We did most things together.  We enjoyed eachother’s company…  but I really wanted to be Tamara and Richard…  but also be able to be Tamara OR Richard.

You know what?  It has happened…

Almost ten years into our relationship, we have TRULY figured it out.

Last year I was going to go out of town with a married male friend, just the two of us, but my plans got cancelled.  Richard asked, “What happened?”

I said, “Oh, his wife had a problem with his sharing a hotel room with another woman.”

Richard looked at me, perplexed.  “Why would she have a problem with that?”

Oh, how I love that man!