When I Thought Marriage Meant Being a Team

Can someone be naive at 24 years of age? I thought I could change the old rules of marriage when I married my now ex-husband…

Due to the war going on between Ukraine and Russia, I have been thinking of my ex-husband a lot. I hadn’t thought about him all that much since our divorce 30 years ago, but he was part-Ukrainian so he popped into my head recently. I started wondering how he felt about the war in Ukraine. He was also part-Polish although he looked British. So here’s my backstory…

I got married 41 years ago to an American, Polish, and Ukrainian man I met at a job I was only working at for three months. I was a secretary for the company’s customer service department and a relief receptionist and John was a clerk in their shoe department.

National Silver Company was a housewares & clothing company that no longer exists in the year 2023. I worked there, with John, from September 1978 till December 1978.

I wrote John a letter in February of 1979 to share the good news with a friend that I had gotten another job — although I had been out of work for two months after quitting National Silver Co, I finally obtained a job working at Sony Corp of America in Long Island City, Queens NY; they’re now in New Jersey. My commute to work was much closer than riding the subway into Manhattan; just had to take a bus and then walk down two City blocks to Sony. And yes, we were able to get a TV set but only one television a year.