What goes around comes around. And, in Kristie’s case, goes around again.
She met Phil at the end of 1983. She was 30 and he was “the most eligible bachelor I had ever met. He was smart, funny, well-rounded, cute. He was educated, understanding. He had some money he had earned by working hard.”
The attraction was immediate and reciprocal. They started dating, and it got hot and heavy in a hurry. “Intense” is the word Kristie uses. “He was my hero.” It wasn’t long before she was redecorating his condo.
Still, there were little things about him that drove her nuts. Nothing big, nothing major, nothing you could really call someone on, just annoying little stuff. Kristie could deal with it during the day, but she suddenly started grinding her teeth at night. Grinding them so badly that her jaw ached. She went to see her dentist, a New Age kind of guy, who said, “You’re grinding your teeth, what’s bothering you?”
“I told him about this great guy who was driving me crazy, and the dentist’s advice was to dump him. So I did.”
Phil happened to be out of town, and he returned on Feb. 14-Valentine’s Day.
“I was brutal. Over the phone I told him it was over, fini, done, gone, and he could just give the flowers he had bought for me to his mother. Done! Over!!”
A few years later, Kristie got involved with Steve, a firefighter and an alcoholic. The signs were there from the beginning that this was not going to be a healthy relationship. For one thing, he was too drunk to remember how they met-not a good omen. And then he had a bad habit of standing her up. He stood her up for dates. He stood her up for parties. And he stood her up the day he was supposed to drive her to the hospital for surgery for cervical cancer.
“After that I was ready to call it quits, but that week he went into detox and he begged me to keep our relationship alive. So for the next four weekends I went to visit him and to be his significant other at his meetings.”
What Kristie didn’t know was that Steve had other significant others visiting him during the week. So she said yes when, in January, her firefighter asked her to marry him.
And then, one short month later, he dumped her. On Feb. 14.
“I was depressed for a long time, although I’m still not sure why. By dumping me he saved me from a life of total misery and heartache. But I was sort of screwed up after that, and I made more mistakes with relationships and my career.”
Then one day it dawned on Kristie that maybe to get her life back on track she had to go back to Square 1. Or in this case, Feb. 14, 1984.
She called Phil.
“I told him the truth. I was miserable and I didn’t know what to do about it.”
He did. He married her.
“A miracle happened. It took me a long time to grow up and figure out what I wanted and needed. Turns out what I wanted was the best man I’ve ever known, whom I met in 1983 and whom I treated brutally. I got it back in spades, and I am now totally appreciative of what I’ve got.
“I just pray that I can continue to deserve what I’ve been given. I was an agnostic until we got back together. Now I believe in `something.’ “
The moral of this story: Dentists should stick to teeth.
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What’s the right age for men and women to marry? Send your reply, along with a day and evening phone number, to Cheryl Lavin, Tales from the front, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611. Letters may be used in whole or in part for any purpose and become the property of the column.