When I Misplaced This Item, I Knew My Marriage Was Over
The universe was trying to tell me something.
Peopleimages.com | Canva It was late and I was in bed crying and praying. I wanted my marriage to work. I loved my husband. I loved our family. At the same time, I was completely miserable. I was one person trying to make a two-person relationship happy.
I was a faith-filled optimist. I believed God could get my husband’s attention even if I couldn’t. Not long after, I was driving and stopped at a light. It was summer and my hands felt swollen. I took my thick wedding band off and placed it in the coin-filled ashtray.
I looked in my rearview and saw a work van barreling at me. The impact threw me into the intersection. Thankfully, no cars were coming.
A few days later I went to retrieve my band. "I can’t find my wedding ring," I said.
"Where did you leave it?" asked my husband. "It was in the car in the ashtray before I got rear-ended," I said.
We both looked through our Toyota van. Neither of us could find my ring.
That's when I knew: When I misplaced my wedding ring, I knew my marriage was over.
I got desperate enough to have the van detailed. I explained to the guy that my ring must be somewhere in the car because it was there right before the accident.
My gold wedding band was sentimental to me and it came with a story. I had originally ordered a diamond wedding band to match my engagement ring. (What's the most common wedding band color? According to a study from The Knot, it's white gold.)
A week or so before our wedding, the jeweler called to apologize and say it wouldn’t be ready. I was disappointed and chose a thick gold band that I could wear alone since it wouldn’t match my engagement ring.
I came to love the simplicity of the wide gold band. Even after my fifth anniversary when I got my original diamond one.
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I would have been happier if I had lost the diamond band. It didn’t mean anything to me.
The gold band was the one placed on my finger when we said our wedding vows. It was the one I stared at as a newlywed marveling that I now had the moniker of Mrs.
I gave up looking for my lost band, but I genuinely believed it would surface. It had to be in some nook or cranny of that van. Where else could it have gone? I went back to optimistically praying my husband would start to work on our marriage.
I exhausted God with my pleas. Looking back, it wasn’t that fair. To God I mean. After all, it was my husband who refused to work on our marriage.
My husband was the one living in the house with me acting like a party of one when he had long ago committed to becoming a party of two. He should have been the one working on himself and our marriage. I certainly was.
I was not a quitter which took me down a bit in my marriage. I should have given up a long time before I did.
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By the time I lost my ring, I had beaten the marital horse, turned it over, and beaten it again.
As my friend once said, "No one tried harder than you to save your marriage." The signs were all there. My marriage was over. I just wouldn’t accept it. Physically we were together, but emotionally we were cavernously apart. When there's a lack of communication, a marriage is going to fall apart, according to research from 2013.
The universe was trying to get my attention. It was screaming for my attention. It was giving me the final sign my marriage would never recover.
Let it go. It’s gone. If you don't believe it, we'll take your wedding band so you finally get the hint.
Even so, the day we parted with the van was heartbreaking for me. It took a part of me with it because I knew I would never have the chance to miraculously discover that cherished gold. I still wanted that wedding band to be found even if my marriage was lost.
Colleen Sheehy Orme is a national relationship columnist, journalist, and former business columnist. She writes bout love, life, relationships, family, parenting, divorce, and narcissism.