'What if's' in April

Have you ever looked back on your life and wondered what it would be like now if you had married someone else? Seen the life of one of your old boyfriends and pictured yourself in that situation instead of the one you are in now?

No?

Must just be me.

My husband and I went through bins and bins of scrapbook stuff (took 5 bins down to 2 with all the crap I ended up throwing away and wondering what in the heck I was thinking when I saved it in the first place...), but we saw old photos of ex's....some of his old girlfriends, some of my old boyfriends. And I wondered.

I think I would have driven a lesser man completely insane by now.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Doug is the only guy that could have put up with my idiosyncrasies for this long without killing me--or divorcing me, or at least kicking me in the shin really, really hard.

I hear about what some of my ex-boyfriends lives are like now and think they really got off easy when I made them break up with me. ;) The wives they have now are exactly right for them.

I hear about some of Doug's ex-girlfriends and wonder if he would have been happier with someone with more emotion, better conversation, and a bigger set of...um...mammories.

To his credit, he hasn't complained. (Not even about that last item... ;) )

I'd like to think I have him snowed into thinking I was his absolute best choice. I mean seriously... After reading my previous post about all my talents who wouldn't want to be married to me? The pie I make alone would be enough to convince a man to take a chance on marrying me.

Doug and I both dated a lot of people before we got married. So it isn't like we were scraping the bottom of the dating barrel and decided that we'd better just get married because nothing better was coming along....just to clarify.

We had options.

We ended up preferring each other over everyone else.

Nothing wrong with that.

But I still wonder how it could have turned out differently.

If I hadn't worked for a year after high school before going to college I wouldn't have met him.

If he hadn't had a freak baseball accident in the 8th grade that hurt his vision in one eye, he might have joined the Air Force (he wanted to be a pilot) and I wouldn't have met him.

If I hadn't held up my bargain with Doug's cousin Jason about bringing Portuguese socks back for him from my mission--thus having Doug find out I'd returned home after I dropped them off at his uncle's house--we might not have crossed paths again.

Heck, if the girl he started dating seriously while I was on my mission had chosen to stay home and get married instead of going on a mission herself...he might have married before I got home and reminded him that I was his best option. :)

If, if, if. Lots of ifs in this world. But they all worked out exactly the right way to make it possible for Doug and I to meet and fall in love and get married.

I guess in this rambling I just wanted to vocalize on the 'what-if's'. And in doing this I realized that whether he is thrilled about it or not, I'm glad I married Doug and that he has put up with me for this many years.

Some days I'm sure I exasperate the heck out of him.

Turn about is fair play, after all... (did I 'say' that out loud?)

But that's the fun. Keeps him on his toes :)

This is an old photo of Doug and me in the summer of 1989. We dated until I left on my mission in October of that year.

This is Doug and me on our wedding day. I thought about posting a photo from our photo album instead of this snapshot, but the photo album photos are too detailed--made me realize that I have a huge head. Just like the kid on 'So I Married an Axe Murderer'...

"Look at the size of that boy's heed... I'm not kidding, it's like an orange on a toothpick...Well, that's a huge noggin. That's a virtual planetoid. ...Has it's own weather system....I'm not kidding, that boy's head is like Sputnik; spherical but quite pointy at parts! Now that was offside, wasn't it? He'll be crying himself to sleep tonight, on his huge pillow. "

But again, I ramble myself into a nice digress....

All I'm saying is that even when looking through old scrapbook photos and pondering lightly on the 'what if's' while listening to Little Texas sing 'What Might Have Been', (which is why I added a playlist today so that you can all get the "mood"..) I'm glad things turned out the way they did in my life and that my husband is my husband and my ex's are my ex's...

And I'm pretty sure everyone involved feels the same way. :)