Jo Abi

When I met the love of my life I was 22, innocent, naive and totally clueless when it came to relationships. I’m not exaggerating. I had lived at home all my life and I had very strong opinions on who I wanted to marry. He’d be a year or two older than me, never married, Catholic, cute…

My husband is the complete opposite of all that.

He’s almost 12 years older than me, he’s been married once before, he’s a non-practicing Mormon and he’s not cute. He’s handsome but a bit scary looking. If you bumped into him in a dark alley, you’d think you were about to be mugged.

Anyway, I digress….

You’ve probably figured out by now that the aforementioned ‘love of my life’ is my husband, the scary looking, divorced father-of-two who is much, much older than me. Let’s just say that when I first met him, I had no intention of ever falling in love with him. I was teaching scripture at the time, I attended church regularly, I believed everything my Catholic faith had taught me about marriage and divorce, and I had been assured by a fellow Catholic in my family that if I started dating him it was tantamount to adultery in God’s eyes and I would ‘burn in hell’.

Yes, family functions are a bit awkward, even 15 years later.

So there I was, a complete innocent with incredibly strong feelings for this completely inappropriate man and after the ‘burn in hell’ convo, I wasn’t too keen on discussing it with any of my inner circle.

There was a nun at my church called Sister Ellie. She was the most loudly affectionate person I had ever met with sunshine coming out of every pore of her body. She used to say my name “Josephine” with the most Irish of accents, loudly and happily every time I came to see her to discuss the work I was doing with the church. It was during one such discussion that she noticed I wasn’t myself.

“What’s the matter, Josephine. You aren’t your usually sunny self.”

“I’ve fallen in love with a divorced father-of-two,” I blurted out. “What am I going to do?”

“I may not be the world’s best Catholic anymore… but I know my children are a result of Sister Ellie’s unflinching support.”

“Do you love him,” she asked gently. I nodded.

“Then love him,” she loudly proclaimed. “Life is all about love, so love him Josephine. Don’t worry about anything else.”

Life is all about love.

They are words I lived by, words I used to guide me through introducing him to my family, to dealing with their concerns, I used these words to navigate my way through the challenge of step parenting, to dealing with the fallout from his previous marriage and our impending one, to listening to his fears about our relationship and the mistakes he’d made and was desperate not to repeat.

I may not be the world’s best Catholic anymore. I’m way too curious and reasonable to follow all of the church’s teachings. But I know one thing. Sister Ellie was sent to tell me those words. My children are a result of her unflinching support.

I don’t know where she is anymore. I moved away from my local parish and by the time I came back a decade later, she had moved on. But I’ll never forget that the best relationship advice and life advice I was ever given was from the loudest and proudest nun I had ever met who didn’t know how to not love and support everyone she ever met.

What is the best relationship advice you have ever received?

Check out this gallery of some of our favourite couples because life is all about love.