Duking it out

Years ago I read a magazine article – I was in a waiting room waiting for my turn to see the doctor. It must have been a long time ago, before the invention of cell phones, when waiting rooms still had magazines to entertain the waiters.  The article caught my eye immediately and, although I can’t remember the title or the publication, the premise has stayed with me through the years; apparently studies have shown that every woman actually needs three different husbands over the coarse of her life.  I was intrigued. 

In a nutshell, and to the best of my memory, the study goes as follows:

We choose our first husband based on animal instinct – we are programmed to look for a mate who will help us make strong, healthy babies. This is apparently hard wired into our psyche.  

The second husband we look for is the provider – the steady Eddy who will bring home the bacon and help us raise the babies the first husband initiated.  

The third husband is the friend we will walk into the sunset with, he is probably retired and tired and not all that into the sexy stuff we were after in our early years. He is the guy who accepts his older woman, laughs with her and rocks the grandchildren to sleep.  

It was an interesting theory and read like it was based on research and fact but It only applies to me in principle. 

Admittedly physical attraction is what first caught my eye when I started to date my first husband, the one who would father my children. I chose wisely, our babies were strong, healthy and beautiful.  My animal instinct was obviously right on the money. 

That first husband turned out to be an excellent provider and was dedicated to the kids we had created.  This is where that study takes a sharp left in my experience. Although the relationship with my first husband needed tweaking when we added children to the mix, and inspired some pretty heated discussions (fights), our relationship survived and transformed.  So my first husband became my second husband.

We were in the midst of morphing again, when disaster struck; he died before we could settle into the retired, tired years.  I have little doubt we would have fought our way back to happily-ever-after together had we had the opportunity. 

With each marital transformation came a rocky period where evolving was a real pain, where discussions were intense.  Change is not always welcome. My first and second husbands showed up for every fight I was having with my soon-to-be third.  That third husband had backup. Oddly my husband’s first and second wives showed up for the fight as well. It wasn’t pretty and unfortunately we were still at it when life chucked us the curveball. 

I think this mid-morph finale is what causes me a lot grief these days – we weren’t in the happiest place even before disaster struck. We were duking it out. I will give us credit for coming together for the showdown though – we had always been a formidable team when faced with a common enemy.  We faced our final battle like the seasoned pros we were. And because of that I know with all my heart that our third marriage was right around the corner.

The three husband theory is probably a good analogy – I just happened to find my three in the same man.