The last man I married

In 1991, I met a man who would be the last man I married. He stood beside me at a business cocktail party as someone introduced us, and an audible click muffled the rest of their words.

If that moment were a movie, Michael Hutchence would be singing about me standing…him being there…and our worlds colliding. Neither of us knew it then.

We became friends instantly, but it would be many years before we became more. We would develop and end separate relationships: a marriage (mine), and an engagement (his), and others. And the song would continue, “They can never tear us apart”.

Except that life did tear us apart. Not before we married, and had children, and adventures, and breathtaking unforgettable moments. But eventually.

Don’t ask why. Marriages are fragile. Some chasm under earth-rending quakes. Others unwind as gradual, unending, blowing bits of sand, dust, and detritus mass between us until we can’t find our way back to each other.

“Uncoupling” is the current term. That could have worked for my first short, childless marriage. It ended with a whimper, an amicable settlement agreement, and a sayonara.

But this man – the last man I married – once we were together I shared my life fully with him, and we were together in one way or another for decades. I lived with him in my life longer than out of it. For much of that time I gave my whole heart with little reservation.

How do you dismantle for parts a life and dreams built together? How is any division of that fair? It demands defining who we are today and want to be tomorrow, and yielding our past for that. Gut-wrenching. For me, there will always be life before him and a different life after him.

He is the last man I married. Not just the previous or most recent man, or a prior man, but really the last I will marry. I did think it was forever, not just that it could work but that it was destined to work. I couldn’t envision a life without him. Everything in the universe had brought us to this, crossed our paths over and over, until winding together they became indistinguishable.

Yet here I am – all these years later – each of us on a separate path again. We can’t even see the other’s path from our own. And that, too, must be fate.

My empty left ring finger became a sad symbol. At first I missed the man, then the flash of diamonds, and the life-long love commitment they had carried. The vacancy highlighted the loss of life shared, of a precious belonging.

It should be no surprise, then, that one day I decided to never feel that way again. I retired that finger. I put a casual $25 sterling Amazon ring on it, sliding it on and off without emotion or expectation, without pledge or promise.

That finger, what a star! But its game days are over. New rings won’t fit in the same way. Among the unknowns ahead stands a certainty: He is the last man I married.