- I was a single mom when I met who would become my husband.
- We met at our job and when we started dating he made me quit my job and become a housewife.
- It's been 15 years since we got divorce and I'm still making up for leaving my job and school.
Years ago, in what feels like another life, I elected to trade my freedoms to be a housewife because my then-husband said it was the right thing to do.
Growing up in the Midwest in a conservative Catholic family, the ideas of marriage and the importance of motherhood are heavily pushed as being the "right" ways to approach life. I didn't expect or anticipate ending up as a wife as young as I did, let alone a mother before that, but, nonetheless, multiple pieces of that conservative upbringing have shaped the course of my life, often in some of the worst ways possible.
It was a decision that affected me 15 years after that divorce. I would never wish this experience to be insisted on anyone, especially knowing everything I do now.
I got accidentally pregnant when I was young
When I was about half my age, after I'd moved across the country, I found myself pregnant. It was not planned. Young and scared far away from my hometown, I considered my options. I talked to my then-partner, whose only response was to send me a link to Planned Parenthood.
My family insisted that they would help me with my son. I believed them and entered motherhood despite my nervousness. I knew it wouldn't be easy as a single mother, but my homegrown values insisted on trusting the process and that they would help me. My dad was initially very warm to assisting me with his first grandchild as I started attending school to pursue graphic design at a local trade school in San Diego.
It wasn't the easiest or the best, but it was what it was.
I met a man at work
When I was going to school, I applied for a job at a video game store to help make ends meet, where I unexpectedly met the person who would later become my ex-husband. He was 10 years older and knew about my struggles and son. He started as a friend, and then it grew into more.
When we became romantically involved, little by little, more of my freedoms coincidentally started to disappear. First, I had to quit working where I was because we had worked together. My ex-husband insisted I didn't need to worry about things because he would care for me. Not long after that, he insisted that I quit school, too.
I believed him because I wanted to believe him and because this is what my upbringing told me I should believe in. I was young and naive.
When we got married, I became a housewife and the mother of two children with him; the freedoms I once had were even further distant than before. I found myself isolated as a housewife without any independence or regard. It manifested in simple things to far larger items. My ex-husband didn't want to take me anywhere or do things with me. He didn't want me to work. He didn't want me to go to school outside a few hobby classes that he would talk me out of attending later, too. I was invisible; it was awful.
Fast forward to a few years after my marriage finally ended in 2009. While my marriage was over before that final paperwork, the pain was far from over. The decision of the past would haunt me.
I have to make up for years lost
The years that followed my marriage were filled with so much pain and hardships, all traced back to the biggest mistake I'd ever made in my life. Everything I had sacrificed compounded in ways that have continued long after that decision. It cost me more than words can express.
Kansas Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker recently made a speech about this, urging women that the best thing they can ever do with their lives is be housewives.
Maybe it might work out favorably for some who marry rich people. But 15 years after my marriage, I'm still trying to compensate for the time and heart lost in that one decision. If I had a time machine, I would, without hesitation, go back and change my choice of being a housewife in my 20s.
I would never encourage someone to give up their independence, as I did willingly. I sadly learned that lesson the hard way. I don't want future generations to learn it and lose everything doing it, too.