Finding Both Glass Slippers!

Ok, I admit it, I'm a sucker for a good love story with a happy ending and there are millions of movies available to get a fix on that but I really, really, love it when it happens for real life.

I have a friend that I met through work, she is a fellow manager and she and I are about the same age and we were promoted to managers about the same time. We were both sent to a week of training and we shared a hotel room. We got to know each other during that time pretty well. At the time she had just left her husband of almost 30 years. I'll give her the name of Angie here so I'll have something to call her.

Angie is a soft spoken, very petite woman. She and her husband had two sons. For years and years Angie had lived with an alcoholic, verbally abusive man. When the boys were grown she woke up one morning and decided she didn't have to live like this anymore.

During the time her kids were growing up, Angie had mostly stayed at home or worked part-time jobs that paid hardly nothing. She took the job with our company to get out of the house and it was full time because the boys were grown. Once she was promoted to manager she was making enough money to move out on her own. And she did, and that was the time in her life I met her.

She admitted to me that she really thought and hoped at the time that the shock of her moving out would maybe make her husband stop drinking and clean up his act to try and get her back. That didn't happen. He left her terrible message after message on her cell phone telling her how stupid she was and that she'd fall flat on her face and how she'd be back in no time, that sort of thing.

Angie didn't file for divorce right away, I think she still had some hope but finally after a few years she decided he was never going to change and she got her divorce.

She loved her job and it along with her children and grandchildren became her life. About the time she became divorced a friend of hers died. Angie and her husband had been close to this couple when they were younger but through the years had somewhat lost touch with them. When Angie heard of the wife's death she attended the funeral. A few months later the widower called her and asked her out for coffee. Soon they realized how much they had in common and she fell head over hills in love. He was so different, she had never known a man who opened doors for her, took her out to eat, bought her gifts, sent her flowers. This man did all that sincerely and he loved her. They were married this spring.

And if that's not enough, he's worked his whole life and has invested his money well and she doesn't even have to work anymore. But Angie loved her job and decided to keep working. Today I found out she is quitting. (She and I have talked a lot about how hard managing is, the customers can be abusive, the associates are hard to deal with at times and it's just hard sometimes.) She and her new husband have two homes, one in town and a country home and she has fallen in love with the country home and wants to spend time there. It is really too far to drive to her job and she's had some trouble lately keeping associates and it just got to be not worth it!

I am so happy for her, she deserves so much happiness and I just love it when things like that happen in real life. Though I will miss her as my roomate when we go to meetings, I understand her decision, (had it been me, I'd have quit right off!). So that my friends is a True Love Story with a happy ending.