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 I am often asked how I happened to meet and marry a Frenchman. Women often ask with awe and longing in their voices, like it must be heavenly, like it was magic or something. I guess it must not be that common although you wouldn’t think that if you started looking at all of the blogs out there written by American women married to French men.

 

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  I was married before, for 26 years, to an American. After a very painful divorce and finding out how much of an illusion my marriage had been, I went through years of depression and floating about in life. I became a traveling nurse and moved around the States like a ball in pinball machine. It wasn’t until my oldest son and his wife were expecting their first child, my first grandchild, that I decided I wanted to be back in Texas. I didn’t want to move back to Dallas where I had lived with my ex, so I choose Austin, a city I had always been fascinated with. It’s not like most places in Texas but has a looser ambiance, a hippy feel left over from the 60’s.

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 By then almost seven years had passed since my divorce and I felt ready to start dating again. I even joined a dating club and must have dated a dozen men but nothing clicked. Then I was set up on a blind date by some friends with this Frenchman. Was it love at first sight? No, but I found him attractive and he was a very nice man. A gentle man. He didn’t have that force field and aggressiveness that most American men seem to have and I found that refreshing. It wasn’t until our third date that there was that “bing” as he calls it.

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 We dated for about 6 months and it was wonderful. Then he got transferred back to Paris-he worked for IBM. I visited him there a short time later and loved it, Paris not being the most romantic city in the world for nothing. But, when he asked me if I loved him enough to marry him one day, I really panicked. I wasn’t ready for marriage. I liked being single and in control of my life. So I went back to the States and started dating other men again. I broke it off with Maurice. Maurice is a man who can quietly get things done and get them done his way. He got himself transferred back to Austin a year later. The minute I heard his voice on the phone when he called me after he arrived, I don’t know why, but I knew I would marry him.

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 We had our wedding in France, in a small village near Annecy close to the Swiss border. We ended up back in France via IBM again. Maurice retired a few years later and we still live in France. I know he would move back to the States with me if I wanted but I am enjoying life so much here that, even with guilt and longing for my family in the States, we live in France.

 Why am I writing this? We will celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary this week. Has it all been a fairy tale? Of course not. We’ve had our ups and downs but I have a fantastic life and he really is a wonderful man. I never could have guessed the direction my life would take, how with the closing and opening of various doors in life I would end up in France. I never spoke French, I never had a longing to live in France. I did have the longing to travel and see as much of the world as I could and I certainly have been doing that with Maurice. I wasn’t sure if love would ever come to me again after my divorce, but it did. I feel like I am in part II of my life, and it is fabulous.