“You
learn to love by loving – by paying attention and doing what one thereby
discovers has to be done.” – Aldous Huxley
I refuse to give up on relationship.
As I look back I fight the urge to feel disdain for my
younger self – I was polyanna-ish sometimes in my hope, and I let myself be
duped into believed lies.
Reading author Barbara Brown Taylor’s encouragement to
find an altar in the practice of feeling pain puts some redemptive context to
my refusal to give up on love, be it with God or Gregg or any of the people in
my world.
In speaking of Job and his “blunt refusal to stop
speaking into the divine silence” she illustrates:
“In one of his thousands
of love poems to God, the Sufi mystic poet Rumi takes up the case of a man who
spent his nights calling out God’s name until his lips grew sweet with praise.
Then one night a cynic asked the man if he had ever heard anything back. Since
he had no answer to that, the man stopped praying and drifted into a muddled
sleep. Khidr, the guide of souls, came to him in a dream and asked him why he
had stopped praying.
“Because I’ve never heard
anything back,” the man said.
“This longing you express
is the return message,” Khidr told him.
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that
wants help is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a
dog for its master. That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one
knows the names of.
Give your life to be one
of them.”
(p 166-167 An Altar in the
World)
In fall of 1997 I sense pull back in Gregg but struggle to
stay in relationship. I whine, I moan – I want connection even while fearing
further pain and rejection.
October 15, 1997. Oh God, I am struggling... Gregg
and I had a misunderstanding last night - and have hardly talked through it. He
doesn’t necessarily care to, and I think I need to...
It’s always been that
I’ve felt freedom to say what’s on my mind, and to be who I am with him…
He
doesn’t need me in the same way, which needs to be ok with me, but if he doesn't need me then my human response is to not need him.
And to hold back and not share myself, because it feels too scary or vulnerable to need him and expose myself to great
disappointment.
I am seriously confused: during this same time of noticing
Gregg’s pulling away he is in other ways drawing me in. In October Gregg writes
me a note during church telling me that I am beautiful in body, mind, and spirit,
and that he is so glad I am mother to his children. In November, he buys a John
Piper book, A Godward Life, that he wants us to read together; it is
maybe the first time he initiated doing something of a 'spiritual' focus
together. He relays to me on my birthday that he told his friend Darwin a week
or so previous that he was ready to "go home," and asks me if he can
have the next 20 years or so to show me that he's here to stay.
Still, it turns out I have reason to howl. As I continue to
push into relationship and ask questions I learn more than I bargain for. I
give excessive grace – looking back, I give foolish grace, that was more about
my emotional need than magnanimity. And I beat up
on myself.
Sat, Oct 18, 1997. I had a rather short but good
talk with Allure today - she asked for forgiveness for the deceiving way that
she and Gregg talked and met in the past…
It does sound like it was only two times
that they met, once at Blue Monday, once at the library. And that they didn't
ever kiss. When I asked Allure, she smiled coyly and said, "I wish." It
was cute, not cutting. I do love them both lots and lots.
I feel like in some
ways I've been less pure, and more out there with my thinking/fantasy than
Gregg - so I really can't point the finger and be too hard on him.
Honesty has been a big deal to me
and I’ve expected it from others as well as myself. So, when I ask direct questions, I naively
assume I get truthful answers. In October of 1997 I am still asking them
both hard questions, indicating I suspect lies. Of course I desperately want to
take their answers at face value. Love “believes
all things” we’re told in I Corinthians 13.
Yes, but love is not blind. Loves
believes, AND love is aware.
Both.
I ask myself much later why I
ignored my gut that was informing me all was not well. Hindsight is 20-20, so thinking
back on Allure’s asking “for forgiveness for the deceiving way that she and
Gregg talked and met in the past,” I see the evident manipulation and deception.
With the distance of many years,
I can extend compassion – we all have our reasons for what we do. I had my
reasons for ignoring my instincts. She had her reasons for crafting big lies
(multiply many times two to determine their times of meeting, and far more than
a kiss transpired), and her reasons for looking for love outside her marriage.
Gregg had his reasons too. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t give grace for that in the middle of the chaos.
I had asked Gregg long before
October about the kissing, and he coolly denied it. Compassion aside, one of
the really tough pieces to work through was the breach of trust, the outright
lying. How could the man I’d lived with for so many years lie to my face over
and over again? How could I trust him
again?
As vivid autumn colors of 1997
turn into the stark cold of winter, I learn still more.
I am desperately trying
to maintain some equilibrium of identity and hold on to hope: it feels like a
tight-rope. To complicate matters, I can’t totally be the perfect one (rats!), since there is that bad card in the deck - of contact with Pete - that Gregg can pull
out.
Nonetheless, like a Chinese water
trap, hearing disturbing revelations bit by bit of more intense contact between
Gregg and another woman is torturous.
Nov 3, 1997. Gregg ran into Allure yesterday at the
Blue Monday... I think Allure is vulnerable again in a greater way, ‘cause I
have the old 'sick' feeling about them being together...
I am still raw- I feel
like I've got these gaping wounds and am bleeding all over the place, but God
is tending to the hurts, slowly but surely.
Nov 4, 1997. Gregg and I went for a walk tonight and
talked...
It turns out that Gregg and Allure have been talking on the phone
regularly, probably 3 times a week, short talks… It also turns out that he
pretty much knew that I've been talking to Pete most every week day, sometimes
more than once.
We talked through what the draw is for both of us. I mentioned that for me, Pete is a consistent source of affirmation but that sometimes I feel
like we're using each other, that sexual innuendos go on, that I've been
questioning why I continue in relationship with him. Plus much, much more.
Bottom line is:
I feel like I need to have even less contact with Pete than what I’ve had just
lately, for the sake of working hard on relationship with Gregg.
Gregg says this talking with Allure on the phone
regularly started 6-8 months ago, about the time Paul and I started talking,
and I have a feeling that Allure subconsciously justifies talking with Gregg ‘cause
I'm talking with Pete. I could be wrong. So, I feel I need to cool it for a
time, at least try. It's hard. I do care about Pete. I just care about Gregg
more. I will fight for Gregg and a really good relationship with him.
I struggle with how to fight for good relationship with Gregg.
o Does
he need space?
o If
so, what does that look like?
o Does
that mean I need to not offer ideas of what might help our relationship?
o How
do I work harder at tuning in to his needs?
I feel I’ve not done as well as Allure in recognizing
Gregg’s gifts in leadership (his style being so different than mine), and in recognizing his talent in artistic design. I write him a note attempting to say some of
these things, expressing my regret and some expectations.
November 6, 1997. In a note to Gregg: “There's a
certain exclusivity and commitment that I think I will ask for from you and
require of myself to give - that I don't think I need any longer to be
apologetic about. So, even though I have all sorts of my own insecurities to
deal with, I am going to call you my own honey, and have a certain expectation
that you will be faithful, that you will love me unconditionally, that you will
accept my person with all its flaws.
I am expecting of myself to do the same
for you. We're in this together, and doggone it, we're gonna make it if it
kills us! (I hope you're smiling...that
was meant to get a crack of a smile <grin>)
Note to self: Gregg talked in his sleep
last night...he positioned me for sex, and said “oh Allure, baby, put it in, I
want to f*** you, will you f*** me.” So
now, of the two times he’s talked in his sleep clearly, that I’ve heard,
they’ve been of sex with Allure. This morning he did say that he thought he
said “baby” only - meaning me, and that he didn’t secretly crave sex with Allure,
and that he does love me.
God, help me deal with it.
November 11, 1997. God, I keep finding out things
about the past, that the contact with Allure was mostly constant over the past
two years; that August, over two years ago, is probably when things started to heat up. Gregg said last night that he stayed home sick one day,
while I was in Storm Lake with the 3 kids, because he started to feel that
uneasiness that goes with starting something illicit or questionable.
I am distraught. I feel horribly ambivalent about wanting to
believe what he says, but also afraid to because lies have been told. Confused about loving him so while having such intense feelings of hurt and anger over being
deceived.
I write, “I'm trying to chill out and God is helping, just a
lot of pain along the way, and I don't particularly love pain.”
Understatement.
o If we can courageously face
our pain more directly, and let it drive us to God, the fountain of living waters, rather than trying to find relief in the
substitutes (Broken cisterns - Jer 2:13), then God can nurture and hold us,
clean and restore us, and begin healing the pain. (“Therefore the Lord longs to
be gracious to you, and therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you.”
Isaiah 30:18)
