by Kelly Ismail

Created on: December 14, 2008

I think people lose their identity when they get married because they want so bad to be accepted. They want their spouse to be completely happy with them. It might be a tweak here or there, but the changes are made for many reasons.The problem comes when you completely change who you are because you want to be everything your spouse wants and needs. Or maybe you change who you are because of past mistakes with a relationship and you want something different. You want to be someone different.

I had a horrible first marriage. The man I married had a secret life that I didn't know about. We were together a year before we got married and then we were married for two years before the truth came out. He was a gay man who used the marriage to cover his lifestyle. He ended up dying of Aids. I stayed with him when he was diagnosed with full blown aids and I took care of him until the day he died. I did this because I cherished my marriage vows and the vow I made to God when I took this man as my husband.

During this time, I had a lot of things to deal with emotionally. I was angry , bitter, scared for my own well being, hurt, and overwhelmed. When you find out that your spouse loved men over you , you take a hard blow to your ego. I felt worthless, I felt kicked in the teeth. I felt like the marriage turned out the way it did because it was somehow my fault. Had I been a better wife, if I looked better, if I was more attractive, I thought things would have been different.

I remarried two months after I buried my first husband. My second husband knew everything there was to know about what happened in my first marriage and he supported me and loved me. Two months, I know was very quick, but when you are dealing with your own mortality and trying to overcome something so horrendous, you make choices that you think will help you build yourself. For me, I wanted to erase everything I went through and I didn't want to bury myself next to the man who did what he did in the marriage. I didn't want to lose myself in the grief and anger. I didn't want to give that man the happiness of the rest of my life. He already took so much from me.

So, I remarried. I changed everything about myself and became this other person. I changed my religion, I did everything to be the person I thought my new husband would want me to be. I did nothing to deal with what happened in my first marriage. I felt like that if I changed who I was, then everything that happened before wouldn't happen again.

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