Tammi McCreary: “Who The (Bleep) Did I Marry?”

Tell us a little bit about how you met your former husband. Where were you in life? Were you looking for love?

I was out with my cousin at a club. That’s pretty much where I met Eric. At the time no I definitely was not looking for love, wasn’t looking to be in any type of relationship, wasn’t looking to date. Was really just getting over a divorce. And it took me years to get over the divorce but I was just coming to accept that the divorce did take place. And accept that I was single, that it was over. Just beginning to embrace and enjoy being single. Just accepting that just because I was single, that didn’t mean that I was a loser.

What attracted you to Eric initially?

Well initially when I met Eric I thought he was cute but I thought he was young. But it didn’t mean anything because I wasn’t looking for anything. When I mentioned that I did mortgages in the real estate industry that’s when he kind of threw out that he was looking to buy a home. He mentioned he was looking in the 500 thousand dollar range. To me that’s like music to my ears because my specialty was loans. So I just looked at it like ok, here’s a young guy, he’s cute. If anything, it’s fun. He wants to take me out, whatever. I wasn’t looking at him like boyfriend material or anything like that.

How did the relationship progress?

It progressed when he started sharing with me about his past. I think what really got me was losing his parents and his children in this really tragic car accident. The fact that he was an only child. I’m an only child. I think that’s where we connected and I attached myself to him at that moment. Because I just started thinking about losing my parents and losing my children and having really no one to identify with. He mentioned that he was disconnected from his family. I started thinking oh my gosh, here’s this guy, he has no one. He mentioned the fact that he once was a physician and after everything happened, he just could not practice any more. I was just thinking oh my gosh, that would be very devastating for me as well and I just couldn’t carry on with life as usual either. As he began to share more about his past, that’s when I began to attach myself to him. Also I had never experienced a male who wanted to be around me all the time. I had never experienced that type of attention. At the time I thought it was cool. Everyday he wanted to be in my presence, he wanted us to do something, everyday. That was a little different. Spending that time with him and learning about his past, I think that’s where the connection came in.

How long did you date before you two got married?

We dated… we met in November, like the end of October, and we married in March, so I guess that’s about five months. To be honest with you, initially it was a little weird but I guess I became comfortable about that because there were so many people within my circle, that I’m very close to, that were like, “You know my husband and I met and we only knew each other six months before we married and now we’ve been married twenty years.”

Then also one of close friends with the security firm, I had him check him out and he came back clean. He didn’t come back as this rapist or child molester, that also made me feel comfortable.

Were there any red flags during your courtship?

The only thing I kind of thought about was I could never find anything on the accident with his family. That I thought was weird but I thought maybe I didn’t have enough information to research it. I thought maybe it should have been a big story. Nothing else really stood out about him that I can think of right now. The only other thing was his urgency to get married. He had a real urgency to get married. Whenever I mentioned waiting, he would become very upset. Like “ok well this must mean that you really don’t want to be with me.”