Looking for Love is Like Gambling

16 years ago I moved home to the Midwestern city I was born in, from the Southwest.  I had lived in a large Southwestern city for 3 years with my job.  I liked it there quite a bit, but I was struggling in a few areas of my personal life and so I needed a change.  Part of my motivation was to take the focus off my career and meet someone, get married and have kids.  I did not want to meet a person from the another state out West and then never have a chance to make the move back to the Midwest.  So, I was essentially on a quest to meet a husband and have a baby. 

I moved back and stayed focused on my career long enough to get established and buy a house.  My job was going well and I got a promotion.  Then I started looking to meet someone about 9 months later.  I had a lot of family back here, so I met people through them.  That was really different from the other 3 cities I had lived in where I had no family.  I really liked the feeling that my family was there and loved get togethers and holidays.  I had a lot of fun with my cousins and my aunts.  I met people everyewhere I went, I was so excited to be home where I had roots as a child and my parents had roots and their parents.  Even though my mom was gone and my dad lived 3 hours south, I felt like I was home. 

This was still sort of early internet, pre Myspace and pre Facebook, at least.  The online thing felt weird.  Like people put their best foot forward and kept other parts of themselves hidden.  It felt like it was not authentic.  So, I decided I would have to meet someone the old fashioned way.  One night while I was studying for a huge test, I took a break and went to a concert with my cousins.  This was late July.  I met a man who was my cousins' friend.  He was very nice and funny.  He sort of followed me around that night and I did not mind.  He was very sweet to me and he was funny.  I could tell my cousins and their friends liked him a lot.  I ended up being the designated driver and drove my cousins, their friends and this guy home, in his large Lincoln sedan.  I had never driven a car that big.  It was fun.  We had all the windows rolled down and we sang songs at the top of our lungs.  Eventually I agreed to go out with this guy and he took me to an amusement park.  This would have been early August.  We had a great time and I enjoyed his attention.  We dated the rest of the summer and I met his kids in late September or early August.  His kids were adorable.  I loved the way he was with his kids.  He loved them so much, it was so sweet.  He was a really great dad.  His kids were really sweet and polite and were very sweet to me too. 

We got serious, mostly, things were fun.  There were warning signs, but I ignored them.  Part of me felt like this was my last chance to have a family of my own.  Part of me felt that I had given up too easily in past relationships and become a "runner".  I really wanted to try to make a relationship work.  I should have listened to my conscience and bailed.  Things went very, very wrong and took me down a really dark and horrible path.  I should have folded.  I tried to fold many times, knowing that I did not have a good hand.  But he convinced me to stay or my own conflicted feelings prevented me from getting out of the situation that I knew was not good for me.  I loved his kids and I loved his parents.  He had a business.  He was stable financially.  What I did not know was that there were a lot of secrets kept from me. 

Some of meeting a person and building a life are timing and luck, sort of like playing poker.  But there are also ways we can increase our odds and part of increasing our odds are knowing when we should fold.  I should have folded, put my cards down and ran.  But I just continued to ante up.  How could I have known he was keeping so much from me.  Did I know deep down.  The signs were there.  Why did I stay?