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Well, that is a rather long story, but here goes. The first time we met I went to my college best friend’s house. He was her brother’s best friend. The guys were sitting in the living room when we came in. Mike (hubby) was sitting there looking like he was in mourning. I guess he was. He was a senior in HS, quarterback of his football team & dating the head cheerleader. He had just found out his father (special forces –army) was being transferred to Germany. He went to Germany. I got married. Skip to 4 years later… I had gone through a divorce & pregnancy at the same time from my terrifying, abusive 1st spouse. We were both back in Clarksville going to Austin Peay State Univ. He was in my 8:00AM Beginning Drawing 2 Dimension class. My daughter Jina was 6 mo old & had a way of almost always making me late for that early AM class. There were several cute guys in the class I had my eye on. But Mike had picked me out. He says he took one look at me & knew I was the one. He managed to have things set up every day so that the only place for me to sit by the time I arrived was by him. He started talking to me, following me out of class, going to eat on campus with me. I really did not take him very seriously because he was younger than me & still lived at home with his parents. I was divorced with a baby. His mother is German & a Catholic & I thought this was maybe his way of being a rebel or something. I told him right away about my divorce & Jina. I always told guys that right away. I figured if they were going to run from that I wanted to know. He pursued me relentlessly and managed to run off all other guys showing any interest in me. We had a rather fiery relationship in many ways. We loved the same music, shared a lot of interests, & had fun together. He was good with Jina. The sparks between us were hot physically…seriously hot. But so were the arguments. Both of us were pretty marriage phobic. I had Jina to worry about & had been pretty thoroughly terrorized by my first marriage. I think he was just afraid of the volatility of our relationship. We stayed together until we both got our bachelor’s degrees. Then I got a graduate teaching assistantship to Univ. of Tennessee. He moved to Knoxville with me. We managed to stay together through graduate school & the first few years of both our careers. We bought a time share condo together, then a house. We finally found the courage to get married when Jina was 9 years old. We have been together ever since. Jina is married now, 32 years old & we had a son together Ryan who is 17 (going on 30).
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