Chapter 17. Moaning

“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.