My Marriage Lasted Seven Weeks And Yet Eighteen Years Later We Are Still Legally Married

It was 2001 when I met the man that I married, this being my second marriage. It was a very exciting night that we met at a mutual friends house, as we hit it off immediately and thereby started an extremely intense, passionate and soul destroying relationship.

I met Merv, as already stated at a mutual friends house, where we were all having a few drinks and chatting. Merv and I snuck away just before midnight and took a walk down the beach, where we ended up having a swim and our very first kiss. It was all fireworks and butterflies, whenever we were near each other, from that point on.

The next morning was a Monday and I followed my usual routine by heading to work. It was only a matter of hours and I was in excruciating pain with a bad tropical ear infection from our swim the night before. Bad enough that I left work, stopped in at the doctors for antibiotics and headed home to bed.

Merv sent me a text asking if he could see me that night and I explained what had happened. Within minutes he was knocking on my door to take care of me for the afternoon. It was so very sweet of this gorgeous man. All masculine toughness with that soft tender heart inside.

What more could a girl need?

Our relationship over the next three years was tumultuous, extremely passionate, blissfully loving, soul destroying, excruciatingly painful and heartbreakingly cruel, all rolled into one.

Some days would be pure heaven, we would laugh and love, talk for hours, sensual massages and love making, whereby he would totally worship my body, inside and out. He knew during these lovemaking sessions how to correspond with my soul and he would do so for hours on end.

Then there would be days where Merv would turn dark. He would yell and disappear for hours and come back refusing to talk. Telling me things that never happened, in such a way, that I would start wondering if I had indeed gone insane. He would tell me things I did and said, that I would have no knowledge of or wouldn’t consider myself the type of person to say those words or do those things. Was all this just totally confusing or was there something wrong with my memory and I was as truely insane as Merv kept implying?

My life was a mixture of confusion, pain and glorious love but there did come a time, after three years of these seesawing emotions, that I considered leaving Merv. I was afraid that I was starting to get lost in this intense relationship and that I’d never find my way out. It had taken over my entire life until there was no room for much else.

When I tried to discuss this with Merv, he refused to listen to any part of this conversation. In his eyes we were meant to be and if we weren’t then it would be his decision and not mine.

Within weeks of me trying to have these conversations with Merv, he come home with news that would turn our world upside down.

Merv had been diagnosed with an extremely vicious, fast paced, cancer tumour that needed medical intervention as soon as possible. I was shocked and unable to process this news.

How could this be? I had not seen any sign that Merv was ill. Nothing was making any sense. I was, understandably, devastated.

I tried to work with Merv and get him organised to head into hospital but he refused to go. He refused to go to hospital or accept any treatment, unless I became his wife first.

Merv explained to me that I had no rights as his girlfriend but as his wife, his next of kin, I would be by his side all the way. I would be allowed in the hospital with him during treatment. I could make the important decisions for Merv if he became incapable of doing so. I would be his wife!

Of course, if that’s what he needed, then I would agree. His health and keeping him alive was so much more important.

We had to get special permission to marry within the next couple of weeks as we were not blessed with infinite time. We had to get Merv into hospital to start treatment as quickly as we could.

The courts approved our request and I organised the most amazing wedding, in just two weeks. We told no one, except his best man and my matron of honour.

We were married on the beach where we took that first swim and savoured our first kiss, three years before, on the night we met.

It was a Friday afternoon and I surprised Merv by walking down on to that beach in my wedding gown and bare feet. The emotion on his face when he saw me will live on in my memories until the end of time. He had tears running down his face and was so emotional, he could barely stand. His best man was holding him up by his belt.

If I ever had any doubt of the love this man had for me, that very moment in time dispelled those doubts for evermore.

The wedding was just perfect. I could not have had a better, more memorable wedding day, if I’d had years to plan it.

Our small wedding party had a perfect, small, wedding reception at a resort just down the beach from where we married. It was perfect all round.

So now, here we are married and within days the real world starts to intrude on our happiness. It’s time for Merv to get the treatment he so desperately needs and it’s time to do everything possible to keep my new husband alive. We had no guarantees.

But something was wrong. Merv would not go to hospital. He would make excuse after excuse. What was going on?

After weeks of excuses, I was starting to have some thoughts that were not sitting well with me.

I asked Merv if I could attend his next medical appointment with him. He was so happy when I suggested I go with him and thanked me for my support. I felt bad that I hadn’t offered to do this before. I felt I had let him down by not fully supporting him. I made a solemn promise to myself to do better, to fully support him in any way he needed.

The next day was Sunday and then Monday we had Merv’s next appointment. So I decided to spoil him with breakfast in bed on Sunday morning. Made him all his favourites and joined him back in bed to share breakfast together. A perfect way to start a Sunday. After breakfast we talked and made love for hours and before we knew it, the afternoon had arrived and we decided to go out and meet the day.

It was only a few short hours later, that my pure happiness was going to be torn apart, along with both my heart and soul.

By this time Merv and I had been married seven weeks and two days. That afternoon, only hours after he had worshipped me mind, body and soul, in our bedroom, he sat me down and told me he was leaving me. We were over!

What the fuck?

Merv stated that if we stayed together for eight or more weeks after we married, then I would be legally able to take him for half of everything he owned.

What the fuck?

I’d never heard of such bullshit. Not to mention that he didn’t own anything! The house was mine, the car was mine, all the furniture I’d purchased before I ever met him. What was I going to take? Half his clothes?

Merv hadn’t worked a day in the three years I was with him, so it couldn’t be his money he was worried about.

So I’ll say it again, what the fuck?

But no amount of begging or pleading led to him changing his mind. He packed his clothes, rang his best man from our wedding, only seven short weeks before, to pick him up and he walked out the door.

Just like that, my marriage was over. The last thing Merv said as he walked out the door, was that he would have divorce papers sent over in the morning for me to sign.

Oh my god, I was an emotional wreck. Nothing made sense to me. What happened in those few hours after we made love to destroy our marriage? I was in so much emotional pain that I needed to escape from it. I could not deal with that amount of pain but no matter what I did, I couldn’t escape it. It always come along for the ride.

Of course, Merv could not send divorce papers to me the next day. The law was clear. If you had been married for less than two years, it was mandatory to get marriage counselling before you could get divorced.

There was no way a marriage counsellor was ever going to be able to make sense of this.

Life goes on and I never heard from Merv during the next few months, until his best man turned up to my house one day. He had received a message on his mobile phone from Merv’s brother. The message said he was trying to find Merv’s wife as Merv was in hospital dying. He didn’t have long to live and he was in a coma.

We tried to ring his brother back but no one would answer. Once again I was an emotional wreck. I still loved Merv enough that I couldn’t bear living in a world without Merv in it somewhere. This could not be happening.

I had no idea what hospital he was in. For the next the three days, I called in sick at work and I started ringing every hospital I could, to find my husband. Nothing!

I continually rang both Merv’s brother’s number and Merv’s number to no avail. I put a missing persons report in with the police, hoping they would be able to find him. Nothing.

Then I rang my sister who lived over 5,000 kilometres away from me but more importantly had never met Merv. I asked her to ring Merv’s number for me and let me know if she got an answer.

She rang the number I gave her for Merv and after two rings, Merv answered his phone. See he didn’t know whose number that was ringing him so he thought he was safe.

Merv was not in any hospital. Merv was not and had never been diagnosed with cancer. Merv was not in a coma and dying.

Merv was perfectly healthy, enjoying his life somewhere, while making my life a living hell and to this day, eighteen years later, I still do not know why!

Merv and I are still legally married today, eighteen years after that perfect wedding day.

Why? Because I do not know where Merv is or even if he is alive. I wouldn’t know how to go about organising a divorce after all these years.

So I just let sleeping dogs lie!

Thank you for sitting with me to the very end.

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This was mine and Merv's Song, by Savage Garden.

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Originally posted on Medium