The Other Ring

One August afternoon, seven years ago, an adorably nervous young man took me hiking in the hills, got down on his knees, and asked me to be his wife. He presented me with an heirloom ring; two-tone with one small diamond. To me, that ring was perfect. It came from the past, from his family, not from a jewelry store. With its slender band, modest stone, and white gold decorations it resembled nothing that graced the ring fingers of my peers.

One April evening, months ago, after learning of this man's betrayal and seeing his persistent self-justification, I gave back the ring and its accompanying wedding band.

One August afternoon, just weeks ago, a confident yet contrite father of two took me hiking in new hills. He got down on his knees and told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. He presented me with a familiar yet transformed ring; a larger diamond flanked by my birthstone and another small diamond on each side. To us, that ring is perfect. It retains its heirloom look, but includes new completely unique designs. The new diamond's value represents his desire to invest in the one he loves. It has been re-shanked, and now faces life's wear and tear with a stronger foundation.

Seven years ago, I received a perfect gift, and I wanted it to stay the same forever.

This year, I lost that gift. And a new one took its place. One that promises better things than I ever knew how to desire.

I Said No

My husband's "mammary fixation" is one stubborn beast. A longstanding, pointless, conflict between us has been his request that I get breast implants. The very idea nauseates me. But I was going to do it. Before he decided to expedite matters and get his "needs" met elsewhere. Even after that, two months ago, I said I was willing. It soon became clear to me that I was not. But I couldn't say anything. His definition of hope for the future was me getting breast implants. I couldn't take away his hope.

Now, he's done a tremendous amount of work to change how he thinks and behaves. He's shot ahead in therapy faster than I dreamed possible.

He became healthy enough for me to drop the bomb.

So I said, "I cannot do this." If this is really what he wants, he must drum up the courage to leave me.

He's devastated. I'm relieved.

Time and Healing

I am happy to say that over the past four months, my husband and I have managed to work our way back to where we left off in our relationship. We're even moving into a better place than we were in before. A new start: the passion of our dating days enacted by the more mature people we both are now.

But it is bittersweet, especially as our physical relationship intensifies (slowly!). When I hear his sincere "I love you," and respond with my own; when I see real desire in his face and feel it in his touch, the pain of betrayal pierces me to the heart again. It's not the all-encompassing greif of the early days of shock or the deep hopelessness of the time afterwards in which he still hated me. It's a poignant sadness intertwined with dual joys: the renewed passion we are enjoying in the present and the beauty of the future to which I look forward.

But for now I still grieve. And finally, I have someone to hold me while I weep--for the pain he himself caused.

Twisted Reality

He still hates me. He still actually thinks I did something to drive him away. The family "values" he picked up say that parents will fight with each other and love their children. So he created conflict where it did not exist.

Once he fights his own demons, he'll have a chance to find out who I really am.

In the meantime, I will be very lonely.

Now I know why people get divorced. I have chosen the more difficult path.

Mommy Issues

"When we got married, I wanted a partnership where we could work together, but you have been constantly fighting to be in control. You use all kinds of weapons to control me."

That's kind of how I feel. Except he was the one who said it. In counseling. To me.

"I don't think I really do that."

"Yes you f***ing do!"

These words still sting, even though I now I am firmly convinced it is not me he is angry with.

It's his mother.

And not the real, kind, strong, wise woman I know, but a frightening amplification of her. The version that a two-year-old might see. I saw it today when she was determined that my two-year-old would give her a hug, and wouldn't let him go play til he did. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with the interaction, but it is easy to imagine how, when repeated over and over, that might erode a child's sense of autonomy. Especially an exquisitely sensitive child. Like my husband.

I was drawn to that sensitive child in him. I longed to give him the unconditional love I thought he needed to help him be the impressive man that I also saw. But the child has taken over. He cannot receive love from me because he sees a controlling gesture when I move a can he placed in the garbage to the recycling bin. He hears a domineering woman when I tell him which dishes need to be hand washed.

He must discover and put to rest the monster-mother in his brain. I fear for his actual mother, when he turns his wrath from me to her as this begins to dawn on him. But she is a strong adult capable of handling it. And eventually, he will learn to separate her too from his demons.

His Great Pain

Tonight's "date" of marital counseling and dinner left me feeling more affection and compassion for my husband than I have all month. However, I still had to ask him to leave after putting the kids to bed because I needed space to grieve.

What came out in counseling was powerful. Tears filled his eyes as he expressed his "need" for the kind of feelings in sex that seeing large breasts gives him. (Don't laugh! I have made light of this, but can't now that I've seen his tears.) He wants that feeling in sex with me, and has not found it. Apparently he did find it with the prostitute, but it was worth little without the emotional connection he has with me. Right now he feels hopeless ever to have both. He sees faithfulness to me as a death sentence to any hope of the fulfillment of his "need." And he still wants to be with me! I've never received a better compliment, twisted though it is.

Of course, I don't think this "need" is exactly rational. Our therapist hinted that it probably stems from my husband's own body image struggles. It adds up: he has long felt insecure about his skinny body, so of course he obsesses over an aspect of me he feels is too small. And since he feels like an inherently incomplete person, he can't really have much respect for any other person who loves him deeply. Anyone who wants him must be inherently incomplete too.

Boundaries

Why didn't anyone tell me that I can say things like this?:
"If you talk to me that way I will go spend the night at my friend's house."
"If you look at porn you will not be sleeping with me."

In my case, following my parents' excellent example of a healthy marriage went terribly wrong. My parents were loving and giving to each other, putting each other's needs first. But it takes two to have a relationship like that. One person doing it becomes a slave!

My father made it a point to teach my brothers to treat women with respect. Both parents taught me and my sister to only date men who would respect our physical and emotional boundaries. But no one told me I was responsible to see that I was treated with respect after marriage. My husband seemed like the kind of man who would. He was raised to respect women too.

Maybe pornography warped his view of women.

Or maybe I did, by letting him control me.

Either way, it ends here.

Mournful Celebration

We had our anniversary this week. It was the saddest yet, but also the first time in a long while he's given me presents. An expensive piece of jewelry, not something I had been interested in until recently, made a big impression. He's showing me he values me. He was sweet, kind, and continually resolute in wanting to change for me.

And yet being with him wears me out. I'm still caught in a swirl of anger, greif, and hope, and don't really want him to see any of it.

7

Not one time. Seven times. Only one technically. That was bad enough, but this adds a whole new dimension of pain.

First, because I'm stuck in the land of If Only: He told his "friend," who I'd encouraged him to talk to about his issues, exactly what happened the first time, and his friend TOLD HIM NOT TO TELL ME. My husband has always been honest with me about his sexual struggles, often to the point of hurting me. I urged him to save his discontentment with me for talking about with other men, but the actual involvement of another human being in this infidelity is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Ultimately I think he just used his friend's advice as an excuse to begin dishonesty where it had never been before.

But if only he'd not listened, we could have had this crisis weeks ago.

Before he dealt the final blow of going all the way.

Before I had sex with him for the first time(s) after having the baby.

I wish his damn wedding ring had cracked then. (See page: The Ring.)

Religion

Because I want this blog to be accessible to everyone, I've minimized references to my faith throughout most of the posts, so I'll dedicate this one to making it clear that Jesus is the only thing getting me through (with some help from the baby he's allowed me to have at just the right time). And I am sure it is only through Him I will ever be able to forgive completely. My theology is deepening through this: I'm coming to understand the breach of trust humanity has had with God, and soon, I hope, the depth of His forgiveness, through the destruction in my marriage.

I consider myself a basic non-categorical Christian, raised in a variety of Evangelical churches but using in my own life a blend of practices for the worship of Christ throughout history. (Of Christ, only; to put it in theological terms I am ecumenical but not a universalist.)

My husband is from a similar background, but his faith has been a bit shakier than mine (not that mine is very strong!) for a long time now. He admitted yesterday to failing me spiritually. And I had told him, the day before, that this was a crisis point not only for our marriage but for his faith. I will stay with him if he decides he is no longer a Christian, as long as he doesn't cheat on me again, but he needs to make a decision about that as well. His adultery was only possible in a mental environment where he had lost moral certainty. E&M challenged us to decide if our marriage is valuable enough to us to save; I challenge my husband to decide if his faith is.

Is This Going to Save Our Marriage?

Yes and no. We're both committed to making it work, so our marriage will be saved. Does that mean his adultery was necessary? I wrestled with this question while reading this yesterday.

My husband claims experiencing this has helped him to value me more. We were both virgins (technically) when we got married, so he always had to wonder what he was missing. Now he's learned it wasn't much. (I wondered too, but I valued monogamy too much to let that get beyond vague fantasy.) I've no doubt he does value me more now. And yet, there is no way it was worth destroying the rare, valuable, beautiful thing we had just to find out how rare, valuable, and beautiful it was.

This will be the catalyst that saves our marriage. It is forcing us to deal with things we didn't before. Even simple actions I failed to take, like sending our two-year-old to spend some time with his grandparents so we could talk uninhibited, or shopping for music to fend off depression, have now been coerced.

But we could have done those things before. This is just the end of the road we were speeding down. We could have gotten out of the car and walked a side trail before we ran smack into the mountain we'll now have to climb. He could have gotten help with his sexual addiction before this. I could have given him an ultimatum before this.

To anyone reading this who hasn't hit the mountain yet, pull over now. There is another way! And either of you can choose it, if you have the courage.

Day 2: Sadness

One reason I'm not glad I'm breastfeeding: until the baby sleeps through the night, I can't turn off the pain for more than 5 hours at a time.

If Act 1 was all about anger, in Act 2 sadness takes center stage. Overwhelmed is the only word for this. By the end of yesterday I had pulled myself together enough to wash a few dishes and bathe the baby. It seemed like the curtain had fallen on the performance of my greif. But as the it opens again on a whole new cast of emotions, I see this was only the first of many vignettes on the same theme. All I can hope for now are generous intermissions of sleep or numbness.

Someday I'll be able to walk out of the theater of my greif. But not until the show has played itself out to the end.

Alert

Nothing is safe in my hands. Anything is likely to get thrown in a bout of anger. Nothing is safe on my feet, either. I'm getting pretty good at kicking off my shoes. I give my last shot a 9.5-ricocheted off the ceiling.

Nothing Will Ever Be the Same

The worst part is losing my best friend.

For the better part of a decade now, he's been the person I turn to when I am hurt. He has also been the one who hurt me the most often. He knew that. That's why he almost didn't tell me. For someone who can't keep a secret, he managed for about 15 hours before he let slip that he had done something wrong.

It's obvious, isn't it, when a man says that. Especially if he had smelled of someone else's perfume. But I let myself hold on to the sliver of hope that he didn't "go all the way." In the middle of a day of taking a sick child to the doctor and a broken car to the mechanic, I couldn't afford to believe otherwise. I had to live through another day, emotions shut off, before we could meet with our mentors, who I will call E. and M. (him and her, respectively), so I could hear the confession with someone else's arms to cry into. I don't want to touch his for a long time.

It's typical of me to shut down, to take bad news with a meek downcast look. Not this time. I blubbered. I insulted. I threw the nearest object at hand at him, which happened to be a pillow. Fortunately I chose more suitable missiles later, my shoes. I would have loved to have had nine or ten more feet today.

Nausea overwhelmed me when I thought about it. I have never stayed mad enough not to touch him for more than a few hours, but the thought of sleeping in the same house with him made my skin crawl. I agreed to drive him to his parent's house.

After talking with M, to whom I am eternally indebted, I drove home, singing church songs to numb my pain and to keep my infant son quiet. Luckily for me the baby slept well in his little carseat even when I blasted a girl-power song while tearing the bedsheets to smithereens. Well, just the fitted sheet. I figure I'd better save the flat one for tomorrow. Maybe I'll shred the bedspread too. If I ever go to bed I'll be in a sleeping bag.

And yet I'll bet I'm the one who sleeps better tonight, of the two of us in this marriage. He's a wreck.