He had a look, a stare, the glare of trouble, impending doom and rage. She felt shackled to him and the marriage because eventually she believed all the negative things he had said to her and about her. She had entered into the relationship feeling fairly intelligent, self-confident, and competent....somewhere mid-marriage, she became the words he spoke. She had turned into a defeated and powerless woman without any hope of ever extricating herself from his temper and control. He constantly corrected her. No matter what the setting, social or otherwise, if he didn't agree with her opinion she was admonished. He was always careful, if they were out publicly to be coy and deceptively subtle, with his correction. She knew,  all too well, the angry response that she'd endure later if she didn't conform to his version of events. He was always very cautious to try and uphold what he perceived as his "charming" husband reputation. 

She deferred to him constantly. He consistently reminded her that he knew better and was smarter than she was on every level. She also had come to understand the penalty for deflection. He used numerous and varied forms of manipulation to transform and diminish her. Therapists often use the term - Post Traumatic Stress - to describe those moments  from the past that back up and spill over into today. That term unnerved her. She felt almost disrespectful describing her verbally abusive marriage with the same term veterans use for the horrors they endure from war.  It didnt seem fitting that the verbal atrocities she lived through should be comparable to theirs. Yet, it is the term applicable to both, or anything traumatic that haunts you from the past.

She sometimes, for no apparent reason, felt that lump in the back of her throat that was always there when he started yelling at her. Her body would tense immediately for she now understood the rage that was about to rain down upon her. The tears often pooled in  her eyes. She was  reluctant to let them roll down her face in front of him. He would berate her for being a "cry baby" and unable to take it....The words, the insults that he raged at her, went deep and reverberated in her brain....They became a perverse sort of mantra further diminishing her esteem and independence. It was hard to have your own opinions when he angrily  discouraged them at every turn.Sometimes, the tears slid down her cheeks regardless of her willing them back. She would steel herself for the ridicule, that  almost assuredly would ensue. On rare occasions, he would shock her with a sympathetic gesture, just to keep her off balance and under his thumb. More often than not, he generally, showed no mercy to her emotions. The sobs could roll off her in waves and it would only serve to further incite his anger at her. 
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She remembered a particularly vicious verbal battle where she was wracked with sobs. He screamed a her to stop being a "weak little girl". It was in that moment that she realized she had become what she had feared most, an abused woman. The mark of constant correction.

How we met is actually far less important, than the fact we actually went out on a date ....our initial contact could have been any simple everyday excursion laced with the glances and introductions that are made in all sorts of innocuous places.
That part of it is irrelevant really. What is entirely more meaningful is the rest of the story 
We met, made introductions , were both clearly intrigued, but cautious, careful and somewhat awed by the powerful pull of two people who had never before met.
We texted, chatted on the phone and found ourselves liking the conversation, the shared humor,  past communal heartache, and the common ground we shared with not only where we had come from but more importantly where we saw ourselves going in the future. We were in sync immediately. There were no perceived false steps, no awkwardness, no unnecessary behavior modification to accommodate unreachable or unrealistic expectations. We seemed to innately understand each other. Our vibe seemed to be universally the same. We fell into an easy and effortless exchange of daily texts and calls. Both of us were uneasy about getting overly involved too fast, both in the tangled initial process of having extricated ourselves from prior relationships. Inertia, soul attraction, and incomprehensible forces quite literally beyond our control completely took over, leaving us almost breathless in their grip. We eventually allowed ourselves to try an actual date. We have been inseparable ever since. We have been on a sustained level of happiness - since we first met . Happy is easy, calming and healthy.
Both of us had come from tough and dysfunctional past relationships. Accepting how profoundly happy we made each other, was not an easy adjustment for either of us, initially. We were always ready to anticipate the chaos the drama, or the other shoe dropping.Old habits die hard . None of that has happened. We are constantly amazed at how easy it is -- if it's right, or more accurately, if your right for one another . Nothing wears on you more than the constancy of trying to make a decaying relationship work, or worse still,  trying to make your partner realize your worth and acknowledge your value. We have embraced each other and our worth from the very first text message that we exchanged .
We look at our thriving, healthy and balanced relationship as a blessing and a gift. We are grateful that we conquered our fears, faced our demons, and allowed this relationship to become what it is. Believe! Believe in the right person.
Believe  in happy. Believe that happy is easy and that it doesn't have to come with a price. Believe in chance --  chance meetings, chances to change, chances to dream, chances to find the one! Believe no matter how old you may be or the broken road that you have traveled that you can  find a partner that makes u believe in true love. Believe that it could well be your turn for all your dreams to come true. Believe in soulmates, love at first sight, soulmarkers and real bliss. I believe - because I gave one man the chance to show me .
The mark of my soul mate ...