HEART & SOUL: There's a ring of truth to this commitment

— Not long after my 2005 divorce, a neighbor came up to me in my front yard and asked, with no preliminaries, “Why’d you get divorced, Jen? Did you just get bored ?”

I was stunned. It seemed incredible that there were still people who had no clue how painful and devastating divorce could be. To me, at that time, each day was a struggle. While I knew that someday my life would be happy again, I also knew that after two failed marriages my some days would be spent alone.

Fast forward to 2010. Marc and I have been dating for several years. Even though I’ve mentioned him in this column more than once, I’ve been reticent to talk about how serious we were. Since neither of us has succeeded at marriage in the past, early on we agreed to move carefully. If marital bliss wasn’t in our cards, maybe plain old happiness was.

For two years, enough challenges came our way to shake any relationship. Financial hits, medical issues, emotional turmoil - you name it, we withstood it. He was my rock, and I hoped I was his. So last year, when he asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I took a deep breath and spoke my heart. I wanted a commitment ring.

He looked puzzled. Pressed to explain, I enumerated the advantages to a woman of wearing something that resembled a wedding band. It makes things easier, I said, which was true. What was also true was that I was ready for a public sign of his commitment to me. Call it old-fashioned, primal, or silly, when I looked at my hand, my hand looked naked. I wasn’t asking for marriage, I’d forsworn my Mrs. degree for good. No, I wanted something else, something that said, “I’m taken” at the public level and, if I’d been honest, “I’m truly loved” at the private one.

Completely confused as to what the hell a commitment ring was, Marc turned to the resident expert; my then-19-year-old daughter. She minced no words.

“Mom wants a rock,” she told him.

When I realized my commitment ring now had a committee, I called a halt to the whole thing. I didn’t want a rock. I wanted a pretty, carved band that could pass in a pinch for that other thing. Given my past, I had a right to be insecure. “I’ll tell you what I want when I find it,” I told them. “Until then, drop it.”

And that was the end of that. Almost.

Six months later, Marc pulled me aside and said he had something to tell me. He’d been doing a lot of thinking, he said slowly, and he didn’t want to buy me a commitment ring.

I stared at him. This was my biggest fear realized. He was backing out. The rug I didn’t know I was standing on had been yanked out from under me.

“Oh,” was all that came out of my mouth.

“I want to buy you an engagement ring,” he said.

I kept staring. So he said it again. I said something like, “Huh?” and he repeated it very slowly. I started to cry.

Six weeks later, Marc and the children have told everyone they know that we’re engaged. Last week, my daughter asked why we hadn’t changed our status on Facebook. Simple answer for him: He didn’t know how. Complicated answer for me: I’m scared to death that he’ll change his mind or I’ll wake up.

But I haven’t woken up yet. Every time I ask him if he’s still sure about this, he just smiles and nods. After 15 years of chronicling my life in this column, it feels both natural and terrifying to share this news here. Yes, I’m a survivor. We both are. But after more than my share of heartbreak, somehow I’m also still a hopeless romantic.

Today, I watched Marc and the kids laughing at something and wondered how I got so lucky. Then, I wondered that other thing: Do average people really get third chances to be happy?

Dear God, I hope so.

Write to Jennifer Hansen at Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, P.O. Box 7, Springdale, Ark. 72765. Email her at:

[email protected]

Family, Pages 31 on 07/21/2010

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