The Denkers Curse

First some background. My dad was born 'Gary Denkers.' He was the son of James and Kay Antoinette (Toni) Denkers. After these two divorced, Toni married a guy named Wes. He then adopted my dad and his 3 siblings and their last names were changed. This is why my grandpa on my dad's side (who's my only surviving grandparent at this point) has a different last name than my dad and me. My dad spent the first 16, or so, years of his life as Gary Denkers.

Now to the content. There is an interesting phenomenon on my dad's side of the family in which the men tend to get married very young to equally young women who end up being psycho and treating them like crap. My dad and I like to call this the Denkers curse. The Denkers curse has been present in at least the last 3 generations: my dad, his dad, and his dad before him.

My dad got married at age 21 to a woman who's almost six years older than him. I've previously expounded on the relationship between my parents in this blag and how this has done its share of screwing me up in the head, so I won't elaborate too much here. Suffice it to say that my mom has a really weird way of showing her love, even insomuch that those receiving it don't recognize it as love and sometimes wish that she wouldn't so much.

My grandpa got married at age 20 to a woman who could barely be called a woman at age 18. My dad was their first child and I've done the math, he was born about 6 or 7 months after they got married. From what my dad has told me, his mom was totally whacked out in the head. To be fair, she was only whacked in the head when she was drunk, unfortunately her blood alcohol content rarely fell below 0.20 because she chain drank screwdrivers constantly. As I previously mentioned, my dad's parents ended up getting divorced when he was about 8 and his mom remarried a few years later. About the time my dad was 18 (9 years before I was born) his mom committed suicide in their garage by carbon monoxide poisoning. Needless to say, I've never met her. I don't totally know exactly what the time frame is, but my grandpa also ended up getting remarried sometime afterward. I've actually seen the relationship between my grandpa and his second wife. She is substantially less psycho than my grandmother, but I still kind of thought that she treated my grandpa like he was a used tampon that gave her TSS. You can only imagine my surprise when my dad told me that she'd mellowed out in her old age. The moral of the story: my grandpa is very deeply 0 for 2.

I don't know a lot about the relationship between my great grandpa and his wife, I only know what my dad tells me. From what he has told me, my great grandmother was a very physically large woman who had a personality to match. This is where I get my large frame. I hear that she was great if you were on her good side, but that she was totally domineering if you weren't. I can only imagine how her husband was on her bad side more often than not.

I don't say these things to bash on women or to try to garner pity. I say this because I very deeply want to avoid the mistakes that my fathers have made. At this point I am 22 years old and am now over a year older than even the oldest of my ancestors when they got married. Also, even if I met a perfect companion as listed two posts ago today, I would still not get married before age 23. Granted, I only barely escaped the curse with my life. I was engaged to be married to fiancée #1 when I was 20 and to fiancée #2 when I was 21. I am very grateful that these relationships fell apart, because I can now see the writing on the wall of what they would have been.

There's also a factor in these three relationships that I have not yet mentioned. My dad told me a couple of years back, "If you and your prospective spouse stay in the church and keep the covenants you've made, you will do just fine." The biggest problem in these relationships was that these people weren't very active in the church for much of their lives. My great grandparents were what Elders Quorum Presidents would call "Semi-actives." They made it to church every once in a while, but never made a habit out of it. From what I've written here, it should be obvious that my grandparents were keeping the commandments of God much at all. Fortunately, my grandpa and his second wife have returned to the church and been active in their ward. After leaving home at 18, my dad was inactive for right around 25 years before he returned. My mom wasn't a member of the church when they got married and they originally built the foundation of their marriage on something other than the Gospel of Christ. What I take away from this knowledge is not only that getting married when you're young and stupid can be a terrible idea, but also that if a marriage has its piles driven deeply into the bedrock of Christ, there is nothing that remove it. It may be damaged and it may not look pretty from the outside, but it will stand strong.