In the last two years, I've changed my pronouns twice. But I'm not talking about my gender identity. I have always been a cis she/her/hers woman. I've also been single most of my life, and Yo in a sea of trailers us.
The world prefers a us still Yoespecially if you are a woman. If someone casually asks you what you did this weekend, answering “I bought a Christmas tree” is a sad and lonely statement for most listeners. Replying “We bought a Christmas tree” is a happy and welcoming statement, reflecting that you will not spend Christmas alone or, it can be inferred, that you will probably die alone as well.
I, like many women, grew up with the myth of marriage. Growing up in the San Fernando Valley in the '70s and '80s, it was inevitable that one day I would get married and have a family. My mom used to say, “Wait until you have your own kids,” when she thought I was being difficult. He continued to say this until I was 40, at which point I would respond, with sadness and self-pity, that, at my age, I was probably never going to have children or get married.
Finally, in middle age, I stopped worrying about getting married and focused on how good my life was as a single woman. I lived in an apartment with an ocean view in Santa Monica. He had built a successful small business. I had great friends. I adopted a dog, Fofo, the best decision of my life.
Then I met the love of my life. Vagner was tall, unbearably handsome, and disarmingly charming.
We met on an app and met for the first time at my community garden on Main Street, then had ramen at Jinya. From that moment on we were together. Vagner loved the Santa Monica Pier, which he had seen in a video game he had played with his teenage son in Rio. The pier was just a few steps from my apartment, and when we walked around Fofo at sunset, Vagner always wanted to climb the wooden stairs and enjoy the glorious view from the pier. It was like a child experiencing something from a movie in real life, and seeing the city through his eyes gave him a new sense of wonder.
When I broke my shoulder six weeks into our affair and needed surgery, he stayed with me in the hospital and moved in to take care of me. Only an amazing guy would do that. One night, Vagner got down on one knee and proposed. We were in love. He was in the United States on a six-month tourist visa, and in order to stay together, we had to get married before his visa expired. Vagner was the most loving and caring man I had ever met, so I said yes.
We got married three months after we met, and Vagner became a different person 24 hours after we said, “I do.”
The toothpaste you bought at Costco lasted longer than our marriage.
But during the 11 months we were married, I experienced the glory of being a us instead of a Yo. Suddenly I was part of a giant club, Partnered People. While it wasn't an exclusive club, it still felt wonderful to finally enter.
I loved speaking in plural. I loved talking to my married friends about us, our marriage, our life. They didn't leave me out anymore.
If I could find love and get married for the first time at age 51 (in Los Angeles, a notoriously difficult city for dating, especially for women over 40), anyone could do it.
When I began telling my married friends about our problems, they unfailingly shared their own marital struggles, things they had never mentioned when I was single. Over sushi and spicy margaritas at Wabi on Rose, an old friend advised me how to give her husband victories, build his self-esteem, and avoid overwhelming him with perceived demands. I appreciated his advice and although I tried the strategies he had suggested, nothing I did made any difference. Vagner was closed off, emotionally absent, and prone to walking away whenever we had a disagreement.
Still, I clung to my new identity as us, although there was very little us in marriage. Even though he was unhappily married, he was still part of the club.
“It doesn't matter if you date for 10 weeks or 10 years, people change after they get married,” I heard from more than one sympathetic person. This comforted me somewhat, as I was beginning to blame myself for getting married too quickly.
The truth of the matter was that we had a much bigger problem than adjusting to being married. Believing that we were simply two good people who had rushed to the altar under the influence of euphoric new love and the pressure of an expired visa was much less painful than the truth.
In our first conversation, he told me he was a lawyer. In reality, he was a former military police officer who had been fired for misconduct. But his biggest omission was not telling me about his second child, a 13-year-old boy who bore his full name, whose existence I discovered three months after our marriage when he revealed it on an immigration form. He claimed that the child was not his but the product of his ex-wife's infidelity.
Furthermore, Vagner rarely wanted to spend time together. At the time he obtained his employment authorization, he announced a plan to take a job in Florida as a long-haul truck driver. On Christmas Eve. That was the beginning of the end.
The reality, which I only slowly began to assimilate after finishing it, is that my husband was not only a prolific storyteller but also a master manipulator. I was lucky to only come out with a broken heart, not a broken life.
As good as it may have felt, at least briefly, to finally be a us, There was no denying that he had been much happier as YO. As I walked Fofo on the beach, snuggled with him on the couch, and threw the ball for him at Hotchkiss Park, I realized that he was a superior companion to my ex-husband.
Fortunately, I hadn't changed my name, so the only thing I had to change was my pronouns. There wasn't a small part of me that missed being able to refer to myself as usso immense was the relief of freeing myself from Vagner.
Although I gave up my membership in the Partnered People club, I became a member of another equally non-exclusive but much less promoted club: Happily Divorced Women.
The author is the founder of Inner Genius Prep, a boutique educational and career consulting firm. She lives in Santa Monica, has a master's degree in creative writing from Brooklyn College, and is working on a memoir about a mysterious illness. She is on Instagram: @smgardengirl.
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