The Butterfly Effect of Relationships
the LSD in Spain that brought me to my in-laws in England
I’m at my mother-in-law’s home this week.
Whenever I’m in homes filled with photos of generations, I often get happy tears. Even the first time I went to my sister's boyfriend's parents' home (the second time I met them), I cried when his dad showed me a photo of his parents on one of their early dates.
Tears streamed down my face as I held the framed black-and-white photo of a young Wisconsin couple I’d never met. Because if it wasn’t for those dates going well enough to warrant a photograph, they wouldn’t have made my sister’s boyfriend’s dad, and he wouldn’t have met my sister’s boyfriends’s mom, and they wouldn’t have made the boyfriend and my sister wouldn’t have met him at university and I wouldn’t be here at their farm with my young family.
I call this the butterfly effect of relationships.
I think of it here, with photos of my husband, Joe, as a child — before his brother hit him in the face with a WWI rifle and knocked his teeth out of order, how they were when I met him at The Cock Tavern in Hackney.
This weekend, we went out for drinks with Joe’s teenage bandmates, who’d each taken different paths in life. One started a mechanics business since we’d last seen him — his wife even quit her job to work behind the desk. He looks thinner and tanner and says now he and his Mrs. work the same hours, their sex life is better than ever in their 18 years. The other is now dating a “Bobby,” and his kid turns 18 this year. They waxed on about their fourth bandmember, who’d died not long after Joe and I met.
Seeing people age, and die, and make life makes me reflect on my path. Particularly those throwaway moments that amounted to the best things in my life — inconsequential days and decisions that, if it weren’t for, I wouldn’t be here in the Midlands of England with the love of my life, the people who made him, and the people we made.
It looks like this…
I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t married my husband, Joe, because international couples can’t simply be in the same country without legal commitments.
I wouldn’t have married Joe if I hadn’t confessed I loved him, lying beside him in his dark bedroom.
… which I wouldn’t have done if my ex hadn’t visited the week before that, which took me away from Joe and showed me a mirror of what we had.
… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t told Joe I was a relationship anarchist on our first date, tee-ing up a period of time where I thought this was just another temporary or temporal or non-life-path-and-belief-system-altering relationship.
… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t gotten a pint with him on a Saturday afternoon at The Cock Tavern.
… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t messaged him immediately upon swiping right on his profile on Tinder earlier that morning, my first day at my new flat in London, because I was dazzled by the serendipity that I was humming the song out loud that I’d see on his profile.
… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t helped my dad upload his newest musical obsessions — including that specific song — to his music library earlier that week.
… which I wouldn’t have done if my grandma hadn’t died the week before that (see “Life is all about timing”(!)), prompting me to travel back home and stay with my dad.
… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t already planned to move from Barcelona to London to escape the Schengen Region.
… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t texted that guy with the soul musician’s name that I met at that music venue in Barcelona, while I was at the erotic writing conference in London, and saw how fun it would be to live in London.
… which then wouldn’t have given Joe the chance to swipe right on me long before my first morning living in London, because, as I later discovered, the flat of the guy named after the soul musician was blocks away from Joe’s.
… which wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t shown up at the Razmataz in Barcelona to see if Tommy Cash was as bizarre and creative in person as he was online on a microdose of LSD and waved at a stranger across the room.
… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t gotten the nerve to buy the one-way ticket to Barcelona for that interview with Erika Lust.
… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t noticed my discontent in Duluth, Minnesota, and asked myself a customized riddle to propel my path.
Or maybe it has nothing to do with self-crafted riddles and meet-cutes and butterfly wings. Perhaps, it’s a domino effect. A predetermined Rube Goldberg machine. However it is, I’m glad it is.
And freedom of global movement and immigration sure helped.
Dear reader, I’m grateful for your readership. That time and attention is a form of love. I hope it’s sent back to you and that your week is filled with love in all its forms.
Tell me… How did you get where you are?
I love this article! I'm German, moved to the USA in 2013, at age 52. California because dear friends live here. But the first reason to move so far was my son, then 30 and the future grandchildren I didn't want to be so far away from.
They came soon, we all lived in Oregon for a few years but they moved to Florida again, and I'm back in California.
Before I moved to the States I had said I wanted to be at least on the same continent with him and the future grandkids, and that's exactly what I got. I love where I live and I visit with them twice a year. But I miss them a lot...
We were both on a dating site that no longer exist. There was a thread she started about baked beans. So I sent her a message and we started chatting.
That led to emailing each other for a while since she lived in NJ at that time. She got transferred to Arkansas. Since she moved closer to me that led to phone calls.
I suggested we meet in person. I would drive over since it was only a 5.5 hour drive. She was hesitant because the weekend I suggested was just a few days before she was flying to Prague for a 2 week vacation with her friend Jana.
She finally gave in to meeting me. I couldn't leave until I got off work so it was 10:30 or 11 that night when I got there. She showed me where to put my small suitcase of clothes. I was going to stay from Friday night until Sunday morning when I had to leave because she was going into work to get the project she was working on down.
She had food, snacks and beer all setup for us. We sat up talking until 2 or 3 in the morning. That is when she leaned over to kiss me but she belched right in my face. She was so embarrassed as to what she had done. Well I had to burst out laughing at her. I leaned over and kissed her. Needless to say I never stayed in the spare bedroom that weekend.
That was the start of our relationship. We chatted while she was in Prague and Paris. Her friend Jana and her mother surprised her with a birthday trip to Paris.
Once she got back to the US we saw each other every weekend for 9 and a half months. All of a sudden she was getting ready to be transferred back to NJ. We both knew if she moved back there our relationship would really suffer.
So I asked her to move in with me in Tennessee. She thought about and said yes she would move in with me. We were together for the next 16 yrs until she passed away in Oct 2025.
I was talking to Jana last night about the day Susie passed and what all I went thru that day. I was a total wreck reliving that with her. Now I am a total wreck talking about how we met.
My life is so hard to go on without her being with me. I think you only find true love once in your life. My true love happened when I was 58 almost 59 and she was 60.
Damn I loved that woman and still do today.