Sarah and Mark were engaged when she was "a very young 19."
"I truly loved him, but few months prior to wedding, I got cold feet. I just thought I was too young. There was no one else involved."
They were living together at the time, and Sarah went home and told Mark she couldn't marry him.
"Instead of postponing the event, I moved out. Why didn't I suggest postponing it? I don't know."
The break was clean and final.
When Sarah was 24, she married "out of obligation." She was pregnant. She remembers saying to her father as she walked down the aisle, "Well, here I go."
"I was just going through the motions."
The marriage lasted 10 years and resulted in three children.
Sarah said she married "out of obligation" the second time, too. "As if I didn't learn the first time. We'd been living together for five years and it seemed like the thing to do. Once again, seconds before walking down the aisle, I said to my father, 'Well here I go.'"
Sarah would occasionally run into Mark's family. She would ask how they were. She would comment on the weather. But she never asked about Mark. "I always felt bad about leaving. I'm sure he was devastated. Our friends would ask me what happened to him, but I didn't know. Someone told me he moved out of state and got married."
Over the years, Sarah would talk about Mark to her children. She once went to a fortuneteller who told her, "You think about a Mark quite often." Sarah says: "I was shocked because I had never told anyone how much I thought of him or even how much I regretted leaving him. I had too much pride. But she was right. I would always wonder, 'Whatever happened to Mark?'"
Twenty-nine years and two divorces after Sarah broke her engagement, she was on Facebook and got a friend request. She had no idea who it could be. "I thought, all my friends are already here."
She clicked and it was Mark.
"I responded with a message. 'Wow! How are you?' kind of thing."
Mark told Sarah he had also been married and divorced twice, and also had three children.
They messaged back and forth every day for several months. "It was extremely easy to communicate with him. The messages got longer and longer." He was living several hours away and asked her to visit him.
"We were both extremely nervous. But after a few minutes, it was like we had never been apart. He had bought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers, a box of chocolate, and card. We went to a very nice restaurant for dinner and it was so comfortable.
"And there it was — the feeling that I'd had 29 years ago. I realized he had always had my heart."
Sarah and Mark are getting married. When she first introduced him to her oldest daughter, the daughter said to him, "So you're the Mark my mom always talked about."
"I know now that you can't learn to love someone. Never marry out of obligation. I loved Mark then and I love him even more now. When he tells me he loves me, I tell him, 'I love you more.' He says it's not possible."
Did you marry out of obligation? How did it work out? Send your tale, along with your questions, problems and rants to cheryllavinrapp@gmail.com. And check out my e-books, "Dear Cheryl: Advice from Tales from the Front" and "I'll Call You. Not."
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