Marissa Baker always believed in marriage as a child, hoping her trip to the alter would be the start of her “happily ever after.
But after two tough divorces by the age of 30, she thinks kids are given unrealistic expectations about marriage - and adult relationships in general.
Speaking to The Mirror, she says: “The ideal is you get married and you never get divorced. You’re told you go to school, go to college and then get married and live happily ever after.
“That’s genuinely what I believed.”
Marissa, from Florida in the US, says she thinks the possibility of getting married is offered to little girls “as if it’s the only option.”
She argues: “Not everyone is meant to be married. No one ever showed me a true example of what marriage looks like or what intimacy is.”
Although Marissa says she didn’t think much about when she would get married as a child, she admits she never thought she’d be twice-divorced by the age of 30.
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And in terms of her career, she was unsure about that too.
“I played volleyball and I was good at sports, so I thought I should get my degree in sports management. Then I got my masters in sports administration,” she explains.
While studying for her undergraduate degree, Marissa met the man who became her first husband.
“He played football and I played volleyball so it was a good match,” she says.
“We ended up messaging on Facebook and then we started dating.”
When she was in her final year of university, Marissa and her boyfriend got engaged and they married at 22 years old - but looking back, she can see the “red flags” in the relationship that she ignored.
“We were young and it was the kind of love where the highs were really high but the lows were so low. I don’t want to be on that rollercoaster ride - I want to be on an even path.
“He’s a really good man and the issues in the relationship were on both sides,” she says.
During their five years together, Marissa says the pair didn’t ever have a “decent day.”
She recalls: “I was either living my best life or I was curled up in the foetal position.”
Several years on Marissa can see that she was suffering the effects of childhood trauma, which played out in her relationship.
“At the time I didn’t have as much awareness as I have now. I knew it was unhealthy but I couldn’t put it into words,” she says.
After marrying on December 13, 2014, the pair were married for just over a year before Marissa realised she needed to leave.
So on new year’s eve 2015 - which was also her birthday - she ended the marriage. But despite being the one who walked away, she was left broken by the break up.
“I felt like a bad person ending a marriage. I didn’t know who I was - I just thought I was a failure.
“I had this mean inner voice that was telling me I should have done more to save it,” she says.
“I remember sitting on my bed and asking one of my girlfriends to come and be with me. I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t sleep.”
For the next two months, Marissa admits she struggled to get out of bed, but with the support of good friends and a loving family, she says the “sliding scale” of sadness began to shift.
By May of that year, Marissa’s divorce was finalised - and she found love again soon afterwards.
“We already kind of knew each other from school and then we matched on Tinder,” she explains.
“We rediscovered each other I suppose. We’d actually both gone through divorces. It wasn’t the only thing we connected over but it was a big part of it. It was like, ‘Oh, you too’?”
Marissa says there was “a lot of love in the relationship” as the pair proved to themselves they could fall in love again after suffering heartbreak.
And in 2019, after being together for three years, the pair got engaged.
She recalls: “There was a little bit of fear there. A part of me was scared I’d make the same mistakes again.
“But the majority of the time I was thinking, ‘This is great, I’ve found my person’.”
“Overall I was excited. I remember showing my ring off to everyone and people were so happy for us.”
But while the pair didn’t have the same rollercoaster relationship Marissa had experienced with her first husband, she admits there were other problems.
“There were underlying issues but I didn’t realise they were issues. We just didn’t really communicate about the hard things.
“I take full blame for that. I was the avoidant one. I’d avoid intimacy, not realising it felt uncomfortable to me.”
While Marissa began to feel unhappy, she says she felt like she was wearing a mask.
“I’d be like, ‘Everything’s great, look at me’ but I’d have underlying anxiety about who I was. Those things really affected how I could be in a relationship.
“I’d do a lot of finger pointing at my ex because it was easier to say ‘you’re the problem’.
"But now that I look back, I think ‘You, Marissa, you’re the problem’.”
Eventually, Marissa turned to emotional eating and binge drinking to cope with her unhappiness.
At her lowest points, she even self harmed.
“[My ex] just wanted a partner that would show up for hm and take care of him and do the little things everyone wants in a marriage.
“I told him, ‘I don’t even love myself, I don’t know how to love you’,” she recalls.
After making the difficult decision to part ways with her second husband, Marissa says she needed her supportive friends and family more than ever.
“It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” she says about ending the marriage.
But with the help of a counsellor, she eventually started to feel better again - and decided it was time to focus on herself.
She moved in with a friend who was also recently divorced and the pair helped each other through their heartache.
“Having somebody else going through that too was so key because we bounce off each other and we’d lift each other up,” she says.
While she recovered, Marissa started to enjoy the little things in life - like sitting on the balcony with a cup of tea, watching the sunset and buying matching pyjamas with her housemate.
After spending the last year trying to find happiness in herself, Marissa admits she’s doing much better - but also says she hasn’t “perfected the art of dealing with it.”
While in counselling, she has began to confront traumatic memories from her childhood, including sexual abuse.
She also discovered she sways towards having an avoidant attachment style in relationships - meaning she is more likely to struggle with intimacy and be emotionally distant with partners.
But while the process has been difficult, it’s helping her understand why her relationships haven’t worked out.
“I avoided conflict. Part of my healing process has been to be able to feel 100% of my emotions - the good, the bad and the ugly. That’s the full human experience.
“For 29 years I thought I should be positive and happy all the time, but it’s not real,” she says.
Since her second marriage ended, Marissa has decided to embark on a new career as a life coach, and has also set up a podcast called Sun Happens which is about finding things that make you happy.
She has shared snippets of her story on her TikTok account @themarissabaker, where others going through divorce can come for advice and support.
But while lots of people praise her for her openness, Marissa has been the victim of vile trolling from people who say she can’t be a life coach because she’s been divorced twice by the age of 30.
She says she thinks that people leaving comments on her videos forget that she is human, just like them.
Instead of snapping back to trolls, Marissa says she tries to empathise with them - because “all hatred is self hatred.”
Now happily single, Marissa is open to love again in the future - but she’s focused on “self love” for the time being.
She says: “I know who I am and I get to choose how I think about myself. I think I’m a lovely person!
“I have a lot to offer this world and if someone else chooses to view me badly that’s on them.”
She added: “I’m a misfit, but we all are. None of us have it all together.”
Do you have a story to tell? Email jessica.taylor@reachplc.com
