Genuine beginnings begin within us.....

Curiosity Lessons

His previous marriage had never been a secret. She'd known about it before they had met at the museum, before she got to know him, before the day that led to the night that led to the beginning of the two of them.

At the start it was just for companionship - which was all she was looking for at that stage of her life. But very quickly it had become serious and committed - more serious than any relationship she had been in for many years. And so she had asked him about his marriage and family and he had told her - answering all of her questions - many and detailed - with honesty and, she thought, more than a little courage. 

She, however, knew a lot of his answers already, as several months earlier, left alone one evening in his apartment while he attended a work related event, she had gone 'snooping'. She wasn't a woman on a mission but she was, by then, more than mildly curious about his past.  He wasn't a man who seemed to have kept any secrets, but he was out for the evening and she was the sort of person who, with time on her hands, tended to 'snoop' a little - she occasionally had even peeked in people's medicine cabinets!

She had opened the bottom drawer of his mahogany desk and discovered a padded brown envelope full of pictures - pictures of his ex-wife and family members, significant gatherings, picture memories of his previous life before their relationship had even been a thought.

Hours later, she heard his key in the door and hurriedly closed the drawer so he wouldn't know what she had been up to. Pride prevented her from immediately telling him what she had done - and found - but she couldn't help thinking about the faces and places she had now attached to the names and stories and events he had related to her.

She knew she was free to ask him whatever she wanted to know - and she had wanted to know everything. She thought that if she probed every detail, understood every part of his past, then she wouldn't be able to let her imagination get the better of her - that knowing it would enable her to put it away - that chapter of his life - and not let her worry about it anymore. Not that she had worried that he still had feelings for his ex-wife. That wasn't it. She just couldn't help being jealous about the feelings he had once had. But she did know that her jealousy was immature and she had soon realized that if she truly wanted their relationship to develop and become permanent she needed to accept that he was who he was and that included a part of the woman and family he had loved before. Gradually, within the comfort of the love in which he surrounded her, she embraced his capacity to love and then love again, having realized that his past gave him so much more to offer within their own, now flourishing, relationship.