Who knew in 1986 when I first got married that I was so clueless, that I was so confused, and that I’d go so far in the wrong direction? I certainly had the opportunity to make all the right decisions; I mean, I’ve always been smart. However, there’s a huge difference between being smart and being wise. I married my first wife in 1986 in downtown Los Angeles shortly after I’d joined the United States Air Force. But what did that mean, what did I know, who was I, and who was she? None of it meant a thing because I really didn’t have a clue. All I knew was that I’d graduated high school, gotten a job, and had a young lady that I thought I could make happy. But who knew, who knew how immature I was, and who knew how blind I was? I certainly didn’t, and even if I did I don’t know that I would’ve admitted it.
The first signs of trouble surfaced while we were in Kaiserslautern, Germany which was my first assignment in the Air Force. I’d been in Germany for a few weeks when my first wife joined me only to find out that I’d changed. Physically I was still the same person but emotionally I’d changed. I’d gone from being an open, inviting person to being a vindictive jerk; I was displaying the world’s definition of manhood instead of God’s. I made our lives a living hell. It was almost like I’d deliberately married her and taken her to a foreign country only to mistreat her. But who knew how clueless I was? To be honest, we’d had some problems before we’d gotten married, and I had some bad feelings about us before we got married. In retrospect I have to say that this is the perfect example of the depth of my immaturity because I really didn’t have any business being anyone’s husband. I was nowhere near ready to be a husband.

I don’t know why women seem to mature faster than men do, but they do. It’s almost as if they’re biologically programmed to grow up faster. For even then as young as we were, I recall her talking about the importance of us having friendship at the core of our marriage. Well, she may as well have been speaking French because I had no idea what it meant to be a friend to a woman or to anyone else for that matter. Moreover, it really hasn’t been that many years since I’ve actually learned how to be a friend. But there we were, new job, new country, and a new marriage all built with a childish spirit as the main foundation. I recall one ugly situation particularly well. We’d gotten into a big argument at home, and I was my typical self. I can’t remember what the argument was about but one thing I’ll never forget was how she felt afterwards and how I felt as a result of how I’d made her feel. After the argument I remember her sitting in our living room in her bathrobe with tears streaming down her eyes and cutting off her fingernails. Seems sort of uneventful when you say it out loud, but what made me feel bad was nothing that she’d said but the look of pain and anguish that was on her face. I remember walking through the house and seeing her on the couch crying; the look on her face said more about how she was feeling than if she’d spent a thousand years trying to explain it to me. I also realized that her cutting her fingernails was an expression of her hurt. I found out that she’d deliberately gotten her hair and nails done before leaving Los Angeles for Germany because I’d always told her that I liked when a woman kept her hair and nails up. She’d done those things to look good for me. So her cutting her nails was her way of saying, “ I hate him, I don’t want to be associated with anything that will make him happy even if it means removing something that makes me feel good about myself.”

This wasn’t the first argument that we’d had, and it certainly wasn’t the last. But this one particular argument has stuck in my memory like a photograph. I don’t know that I’ll ever forget it. I wish I could tell you that things got better as time went on and that I started to wise up. We continued on with our lives and I continued on with my stupidity. The day to day grind of a marriage between a mature person and a child can be horrible. Unfortunately for a lot of young ladies, what they see is not necessarily what they get. This is actually true for both genders but I believe it’s more prevalent with women. By the time most men get to be nineteen or twenty they’ve grown to be six feet or taller and begun to take on the features of men. Yet they possess little to none of the knowledge that men need to live. That’s where I was in 1986. I had a few of the tools that a man needs to live a happy and productive life, but I didn’t have the most important ones. And which ones were they? What I lacked was: a sense of where I was going in life, what I wanted to do with myself, respect for others, and enough good sense to know that God’s knowledge prevails. But like I said who knew? I certainly didn’t. As my new wife and I were soon to find out, we were both clueless. We were in for a crash course in love, hate, maturity, and life. And neither one of us would ever be the same.