All those material possessions, all those professional accomplishments, yet, at that very moment, Cobbin felt he had absolutely nothing.
“Here I am, having all kinds of success, but it’s dark and cold and nothing in my [friend’s basement] but my bags and my bed,” Cobbin said. But it was there, in that blindly black abyss, that Cobbin’s painful, poignant and powerful book, Before You Wed … Read This, was penned.
“At that moment, the agony was beyond words. I could barely bare the pain,” he said, speaking like someone who’d just returned from a war zone. “At that moment, in that literal and figurative darkness, I said that I don’t ever want my daughters — I have three of them — to ever experience what I was experiencing in that moment. And the best thing that I could come up with is that I was going to write a book to them about what it takes to build, cultivate and sustain a great marriage.”
Since he believed his marriage was irretrievably broken, Cobbin said he wanted to at least try to salvage the one priceless aspect of his life. Actually, three. Therefore, Before You Wed … Read This was really a long letter of fatherly love and instruction for his daughters.
“And even though my marriage was failing and we were headed toward divorce, I wanted to write to them so that they could avoid the same things that their father and their mother were experiencing,” says Cobbin.
Something magical and miraculous happened as Cobbin mentally sifted through the wreckage of his marriage and began to sculpt the book: Cobbin develop a rearview mirror-type vision. He was able to look back and see how the trappings of success seduced him into self-delusion of what manhood was all about: He lived in an expansive house; had the cars; was married with children; his career was on an uninterrupted upward trajectory; and he was stacking some serious chips to ensure his family’s financial security. He felt he was fulfilling all of his responsibilities. But when his whole life suddenly crashed through the floor with devastating force, an epiphany shined before him in that dark, dank basement like neon lights.
“I wasn’t married to my wife. I wasn’t a father to my children, not like I should have been,” he said. “The reality was that I was married to my job. My job was my wife. I’m not proud to say that, at that time, I was saying I was a devoted husband and dedicated father. [But] my behavior didn’t line up with my words.”
Before You Wed … Read This is the personal account of how Cobbin neglected his patriarchal duties, how he was forced into intense introspection, how he peeled himself off his friend’s basement floor and how he bandaged up the gaping emotional wounds that he admits were self inflicted. The result was like emerging from a long, hot shower. Cobbin felt cleansed.
“It came down to me having some integrity and accountability,” Cobbin says, who now writes columns for the ultra-popular Huffingtonpost.com. “And I thought that if I use my gifts and talents, I could make some generational changes for my family. And I thought, ‘I have the opportunity [and] I’m going for it.’ And I put everything into it. I’ve had an incredibly successful career. I was truly blessed.’
He now knows that the blessings didn’t flow into the household, that his family was emotionally malnourished, until he made a conscious decision to change up his fatherly game. Now that Cobbin, whose illustrious career portfolio includes work at 20th Century Fox Films and is now the president of the marketing firm Brand Positioning Doctors, underwent a mental metamorphosis, he reversed the course of a doomed marriage. His family is all the better for it, though they are not anxious to peak in life’s rear view mirror just yet.
“This is an interesting and sensitive part. It’s sensitive because my wife started to read the book and stopped. So did my eldest daughter who is 15. They both stopped for the same reason: they lived it,” he says. “So they don’t feel the need to actually read it. Two, it brings up some very painful moments in our marriage. My wife is very proud that I wrote the book and that it has relevance to my daughters and beyond that.
Since Cobbin’s wife, Valerie, can “read” her husband’s changed behavior and attitude, there is no real need to finish the book. She and the daughters see the finished product everyday.
“My marriage today is eons beyond what it was when she told me to walk out of the door. Eons,” Cobbin said slowly and deliberately, as if he was enjoying the taste of each word. “And we wouldn’t have gotten back there if I hadn’t gone through the growth process and patience to try to save my marriage.”
— terry shropshire
You can get Cobbin’s book, Before You Wed … Read This, at www.BeforeYouWed.com and at Amazon.com. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter (B4UWed)
