THE MARRIAGE MIX

When I have not posted on this blog or my more personal blog for a few weeks, I will often get a phone call from my friend Kelly.  And it goes a little something like this:  “You have been quiet lately.”  This is normally followed by a sing-songy, drawn-out “Whaaaat’s going oooonnnnnn???”  I love friends who notice when we drop from the radar.  And think to check in.  I am so grateful for that.

The long and short of it is that I am living the very topic that I strive to write about.  And for the past 6 weeks or so, that topic has been hard to write about.  I have been so busy living the highs and lows of it that I have not known how to step back and see it in a way that allows me to form words to describe it.

As a result of having my head underwater, shoved right down into the middle of my murky, mysterious marriage, it has been almost two months since I have posted on this blog.  That makes me sad for a few reasons.  One being that the feedback I have gotten from those of you who read this blog regularly seem to get something from reading the stories that I share here.  I am so thrilled that out of my messiness, others have found something helpful.  Something hopeful.  That is the reason I write this blog.  I write it so others may read and think, “Oh, look, there is someone going through what I am going through.  Maybe it is not the end of the world.”  And, let’s be honest, sometimes it is comforting to realize that there is someone out there just a little more crazy than you are.  It allows us to breath a sweet sigh of relief.  I am completely willing to be that person for my readers.  If finding me crazy helps you feel a little more sane, well, go for it!  We could all stand the illusion of being a little more sane.  So, trusting and believing that is matters to other people that I write this blog, I am sad that I have left it to the wayside this spring.

I am also sad because I seem to have given in to the power of self-sabotage.  O Magazine recently published a very insightful article on this topic, written by a popular life coach.  It gave me a window into that part of myself that desires, more than just about anything, to become a writer.  Well, most of all, I would like to be the best mostly-non-crazy wife and partner to Herb that I am capable of being.  But if you scroll just a little further down the list, you will find the word WRITER.  But following the rules of self-sabotage to a tee, out of fear that even if I give it my all that I will fail, I have just made myself fail on the front end.  Not making writing dates with myself.  Advertising on other blogs and then not writing in this one for most of that same month.  It is sad to see anybody have a dream for their lives and then just pilfer it away out of fear and an assumption that they can’t do it.  When you are doing it to yourself, well, that is enough to drive you out of your mind.

There are no pretty bows to tie this up with.  Just the hope that if I sit down and write, that it matters.  Just the notion that living a life that did not see the completion of an important dream is a sad journey I am unwilling to take.  So, I take each day as it comes.  Trying to make small, important choices.  Yes, I will breath and take a walk instead of rolling out of bed and checking email first thing.   No, I can’t join your book group because I need to focus on being a mostly-non-crazy wife and an author.  And trust me, that is going to take a lot of my time!  Plus, let’s be honest . . . I probably wouldn’t read the book anyway and then just show up and eat your snacks!

Congratulations Lydia de Jong!!!  You have won The Mystery of Marriage - thanks for playing along.
Email me with your address at cara @ herbandcara . com and I will pop this beauty in the mail to you!

“Fields of gold by Eva Cassidy. The beauty of that is just unbelievable to me and gets me through almost everything:-)”

Jenn Peppers is a life/career coach and coauthor of Finding the Flow.  She is enthusiastic about helping people find the true ease of themselves, cycling with her husband, and enjoying great meals with friends.
vergecoaching.com

Twenty years ago I was too young to understand what I was longing for.  Perhaps I still am.  Just out of high school, shattered by many bad relationships, and preferring numbness to feelings, I was unaware of my thirst.  I don’t remember much about the evening other than I didn’t expect to feel like I did.  Like I’d been awkwardly inserted into the middle of some other girl’s dream… perhaps the girl I had been just a year or two earlier.

Still I’ve never forgotten what he said before he left, “I’ve waited five years to kiss you and I’ll wait the rest of my life if I have to for anything more.”  I didn’t respond to him.  I just stood there and let him go.

Even though I had a list of reasons to doubt his words, I believed he meant what he said.  Not that he would wait.  But rather that I was worth the wait.  Really?  In a matter of a few seconds my perspective about my value as a woman started shifting.  I began to understand that my real value was the only thing I ever shared with this friend: my heart.

Fast-forward twenty years. Thanks to Facebook, I noticed a chance to reconnect and decided to avoid him. This is my best attempt at explaining why I decided to steer clear of someone who had been such a close friend and what recalling this memory has stirred in me.

When you receive a compliment as sentimental as “I’ll wait the rest of my life…” and it has the type of impact it had, it’s a risk to give up that memory.  A risk I didn’t want to take.  I was avoiding my friend because I wanted to protect this memory.  Somehow his compliment seemed like a cornerstone of my foundation.  What if reconnecting with him caused it to crumble?   I suppose it was possible that I would find out that he meant what he said and it was still true.  Yet it was also possible that my memory was totally off and wrought by misunderstandings.  Being that I am very happily married, I had no interest in the former.  Yet the latter somehow seemed much worse.  Was my foundation really that fragile?

I am starting to understand more deeply how I—how we all—thirst for an “I’ll wait the rest of my life” type of love.  To have a type of connection with someone that’s unconditional and cannot be broken.  In contrast, our relationships are often plagued by a sense that “if you knew the real me, you wouldn’t ___.”  Fill in the blank.  Wait.  Come after me.  Love me.  Stay.  Care if I cheated.  Be sad if I left… or even died.

In my marriage, the attractive façade I’ve carefully created has been chipped away. My husband has wandered far beyond it and knows that when he steps inside it’s not that pretty.  Some corridors are dark.  Others are neglected, cold, and damp.  Even though we’re fortunate to have a very special love, the opportunity to be known by him is something I both desire deeply and grieve regularly.  I vacillate between the two.  Come closer.  Stay the hell away.  More often than I’d like to admit I ask him to linger in the courtyard and admire.

I avoided my friend because by doing so I am more able to ignore that he doesn’t know the real me.  I like being able to hold on to the memory and distort the facts.  Like that we never spoke again after that night.  Never mind that it’s pretty likely we were both drunk, he was sort of in another relationship at the time, and I didn’t feel anything as he left or in the twenty years that followed.  To me, these facts are irrelevant.  All that matters is he said it.  That there is someone in this world that for a few seconds on one night thought I am worth a lifetime of waiting.  My heart somehow outsmarted my head with this memory… I tossed the truth and clung to an ideal.  Why?  I was grasping for something—anything—to fulfill my longing.

I stumbled across this statement recently (Broken Not Crushed Blog):

Can you imagine being told, “I love you completely. Exactly as you are. You don’t have to merit it. I will always love you. I will never leave you. I will never turn you away when you call.”  That is what my heart cries out for.  And yet I so often try to numb it or fill that longing with something, anything, except the One who truly satisfies.

Every so often I need to be reminded that nothing and no one can fulfill my deepest longing for unconditional love.  Only God.

I tend to—no, we all tend to—deny, ignore, or lack understanding our thirst for Him and drink of the world and each other instead.  Whatever we can get.  Food, art, sex, nature, TV, alcohol, shopping, intimacy, drugs, work, music, travel, Facebook, and so on.  And perhaps we feel satisfied.  Temporarily.  But then we want more.  Or we think, this is good, but if I only had that one thing that’s still missing.  Then I’d be satisfied.  If I had a spouse, baby, more friends, meaningful work, then life would be great.  Until we get that one thing and realize we’re still thirsty.  And the cycle continues.  It’s like guzzling wine at the end of a marathon to quench our thirst.  It may taste good, but only leaves us more dehydrated.

The hardest moments for me are when I realize I’ve been looking to my husband to do what only God can do.  Or my community, friends, colleagues… anyone who seems to think I’m pretty terrific.  (Or at least thought so twenty years ago.)  The more I’ve put this expectation on others, the more likely it is that I’ve felt deeply disappointed, misunderstood, lonely, confused, or unloved.  Not to mention afraid to let anyone really get to know me.

I wish that becoming more aware of all of the futile ways I try to quench my thirst resolved more for me.  After all, everything else is so tempting and available.  What do we do with our thirst when we realize the only way to really fulfill it is through something as intangible as God?  I am on a quest to answer this question.  Although I know the answer is elusive, letting go of some of the false substitutes seemed like a good place to start.  I’ve stopped avoiding my old friend and started asking God, “How is this story about you?”  I have pondered and reflected and prayed—and hope that someday I get it.

Good morning!!!

It dawned on me that it has been awhile since I have given a book away!  

SO, why don’t you leave a comment and tell me about a great movie, book, or song that you have been enjoying lately and your name will be thrown in the pot to win this awesome, poetic book on marriage - one of my faves!
I will draw a winner on Friday.
(And for those who have been hanging around this joint for awhile, yes, it is THAT book AGAIN!  Don’t worry, I am almost out of my spare copies and I promise to order a few different books for future give aways!)

Enjoy the day!
Cara

from the flickr photostream of wookieslayer

I was sitting on my cousin’s couch, alone, in the dark.  I didn’t want to, but I picked up my phone.  Instinct.  And dialed his number.  Habit.  I had just snapped at my cousin before she and my sister left to ran an errand and I was feeling bad about it.  I hate it when that little guy on the inside, whose job it is to hold the net and catch all of my nasty before it escapes my mouth, puts his net down and goes to the movies.  The phone rang.  I knew I should not be calling.  I wanted to do this on my own.  The feeling bad.  The knowing I should not have snapped.  And the knowing that I was still okay and loved and worthy even though I snapped.  He picked up the phone.  I didn’t hang up.  That would have been ridiculous.  But instead of saying, “I totally snapped at Betsy and she didn’t deserve it and I am a horrible person, please make me feel better about myself!!!” (which is really what I meant), I simply said, “Hi.  Being away from you for a long weekend is making me realize something:  I really depend on you to process my emotions.  I can hardly go through anything without wanting to call you to talk about.”

“Yeah”, he said, “you do have a high need to process your emotions with me.  And . . . you have a lot of emotions.”

We talked for a while.  About how much I need him to help me sort out what I am thinking and how I am feeling.  About how it is hard for me to process things on the inside.  By myself.  About how I am out of sorts until he comes along and reassures me.  Then he mentioned that he was sitting in his car in the Target parking lot.  In the rain.  “OH, I am so sorry babe.  I will let you go.”  With the fierce instincts of a mother lion, without even thinking, he replied, “NO!  Its okay!  This realization has been a long time coming!  I am happy to talk about it for as long as you would like!”

In marriage we enter this strange dance in which we try to become one entity with our spouse, all the while maintaining our own sense of identity.  Always the external processor, I talk everything out with Herb.  And he has always obliged.  But lately, I have been noticing that the weight of it feels a little heavy to him.  What I am realizing is that he does not mind listening.  But when he senses that I won’t be able to sort things out on my own - that I won’t be okay without him - he becomes weary.  And he should.  I never meant to be this girl.  This girl who comes undone, like that egg from the wall, and needs my prince to come put my pieces back together.

Forget the egg that can’t stay on the wall.  No, I long to be like that bouncy yellow ball from my playground days; tethered to a sturdy metal post.  And the metal post?  It is not going anywhere.  It is extremely secure in several inches of cement.  I envy that ball as it inevitably gets bounced around.  It does not feel great, I suspect, to be hit and twirled and thrown.  But even the biggest and strongest boys in my elementary school could not pound it hard enough to make it go flying across the playground.  It always stayed securely in place when the big blows came.  And they always come, don’t they?  In life and in Tether Ball?  They always come.

Despite my “oneness” with my sweet husband, there is a place, a time, a context in which I am still one.  Singular.  By myself.  And as that individual, I want to be tethered to nobody but myself.  When the hard knocks come, I want to be grounded within myself and in my faith.  It will hurt and it won’t make sense.  But it won’t shake me.  So I have been getting to know myself again.  I figure, getting to know myself will build trust in myself.  It will allow me to sink into myself, like several inches of cement.  Being tethered to myself will keep me focused and complete in the face of chaos, and damage, and painful conversations.  And when that next big blow comes?  It won’t send me sailing.  I will be tethered.  To myself.  And myself is a pretty good place.

Josh and Mandy Wright have been married for nearly 11 years.  They live in St. Louis, MO with their three children.

What keeps you committed to your spouse when things get tough (past or present)?

He Said:

Mandy and I have been together for the entirety of our adult lives.  It’s hard to even conceive of me independently of her.  Any circumstance in which I can imagine myself that doesn’t include the sharpening and refining and encouragement of a relationship with her seems incomplete.  The volume of life that we’ve lived together is like ballast that keeps us from capsizing.

She Said:

I know that even though being paid attention to and flirted with (by someone new) might make me feel alive for a moment, it wouldn’t bring me real, lasting life.  I trust that God wants to breathe real lasting life into me through this marriage.  I really believe that He wants me to experience intimacy and peace and protection and acceptance through Josh.

Is there an area of personal growth that you need to work on in order for your marriage to thrive?

He Said:

Yeah.  There are a bunch, actually.  I should be more selfless—more concerned with what I can do for Mandy than what she can do for me.  When we do have conflict, I wish that I could be less worried about “winning” and more interested in communicating honestly and effectively and loving Mandy well.

She Said:

Where do I even begin?  God is constantly showing me how I sabotage my desire for intimacy by the way that I treat my husband.  Because I am so comfortable with him, he often gets the worst side of me.  If I’m frustrated at a situation or circumstance I often take it out on Josh.  What I would like to do is stop and articulate the real issue to him so we can deal with it as a team. But,  for example, if I have had a really rough day with my kids, when Josh comes home from work, instead of revealing the fact that I felt like a total failure all day and I need his encouragement and guidance, I’ll choose to be rude and say things like, “You have no idea what its like!  You don’t understand me at all!”.   Instead of addressing my own feelings of inadequacy I bring up any ways that he has been unavailable to me, leaving him to feel confused and isolated as a result.  It is hard to be vulnerable, to talk about areas where I feel weak, but I have found that if I take that risk, my honesty is always rewarded by a supportive teammate.

Thank you Josh and Mandy for the thoughtful and honest answers that you gave to my questions!  I appreciate all of the wisdom you have collected over the past decade! Thanks for sharing it with me and the folks who read this blog!

I am convinced that when we start looking for love, we can’t help but find it. So on Sundays, I share a recent story about where I have seen love at work in my community or my marriage.  You are invited to share where you have seen love working.

A few weeks ago I came home from a weekend hidden away with my sister and our cousin Betsy for our first adult girl’s weekend since the summer week-long slumber parties we spent at our house with bikinis and Caboodles.  When I got home, I saw a small package on my desk.  It was wrapped in the comic section from that morning’s paper.  And on top, written in big bold Sharpie Marker letters, “Welcome home Cara!  I missed you!”

To some this might seem par for the course.   A card or a small gift after a weekend away has become the norm.  To others it might even seem vulgar - wrapping a gift in the funny papers!  But to me, it was sweet, unexpected perfection!

The gift was the DVD of the film Slumdog Millionaire.  It is not unusual for Herb to eye something at Target or Costco that he knows I might really use or enjoy and then just toss it in the cart.  He is constantly thinking about me and what I might need or want.  But rarely is it presented as a wrapped gift.  It warmed my heart that he felt like taking a few extra minutes to turn an “I was thinking of you” gesture into a gift.  The comic papers, while a little bit of a funny choice to some (pun intended) were endearing to me, as I knew that is exactly how he had spent part of that morning.  It was totally Herb being Herb to use the funny papers.  In the past I might have been upset that it was not romantic enough - he did not realize that a real love gift was wrapped in beautiful paper, preferably something brand new and nothing in our collection of wrapping papers.  But love has been working its magic around here, changing my heart and my mind.   And I was happy to see Herb being himself and not the image of The Perfect Husband that he was begrudgingly wearing so as to avoid a fight later on about how unromantic his wrapping paper choice had been.  He felt comfortable being him.  Perhaps more miraculously, I felt comfortable with him being him.

Even still, this is not the part that felt like perfection.  It was those three words, “I missed you!”.  I turned to him.  “You missed me!  You have never said you missed me before when I returned from a trip!”  To some, especially to the men who read this, it is not surprising at all.  After all, I am the woman who just admitted that she is capable of getting bent out of shape over something like a gift wrapped in “unromantic paper”.   I would guess that this part is appalling to others; especially people who have never been married.  Those who are married, even if they have always been missed when they were away, can imagine what it might be like not to miss that person who has secret card key access to all of your hot buttons and soft, easily bruised places.  Instead, you might be able to imagine yourself, lovingly and dutifully driving them to the airport only to breath a deep sigh of relief when you see that not only did they just walk towards the departures sign, but they do not seem to be showing any sign of turning around and shoving themselves and all of their baggage back into your car!  It is not what any bride and groom set out for:  to not only be relieved but to be in desperate need of a break from each other, but for us it has been a part of our story.  A painful part, to be sure, but a part of our story nonetheless.

So, when I saw those words, “I missed you”, I was taken aback.  I knew they were not shared out of kindness or sensitivity.  He would not have written them down if he had not meant them.  He missed me.  I enjoyed reminding him of this for the next several hours.  And I fell asleep, tucked in by the knowledge that love had indeed been massaging our hearts, because he missed me and I was becoming the kind of woman he missed.

Where did you see love at play this week?

Conversations is written on (most) Fridays to examine someone else’s take on love and marriage – and then discuss what we think about it amongst ourselves!

When I first saw a photo of this sculpture by Edwina Sandys, it took my breath away.  And not in a “beauty and awe” sort of way.  More like a “someone just kicked me in the stomach and then stole my puppy” sort of way.  It looked so daunting and violent.  It looked like the artist was saying that marriage is a trick - that it looks like it will be beautiful and lovely but turns out to be harsh and dangerous.  I felt like it portrayed marriage as the ultimate hot bed of violence and violation!

Then I watched an interview with the artist.  I was expecting a woman from another part of the world, talking about being forced into an arranged marriage.  I expected to see someone dark and cynical and wounded.  But what I found was a woman in her 60’s – light and straightforward. She explained that she set out to demonstrate that marriage is both soft and cruel; happy and sad.  She said that this piece was meant to simply communicate that “marriage is not always a bed of roses.”

I don’t think that it is divided in this way - half beautiful and half painful – roses and spikes split neatly down the middle.  But I think many people think about the pain found in marriage this way.  It is almost as if some people believe that if you are very careful, you can figure out how to stay on the soft side of things and stay safe in your marriage.

I propose that marriage is indeed all roses.  Both beautiful and dangerous.  Fragrant.  And yet, when you get close, you might be pricked by a thorn.  Coming close to another means they will eventually hurt you because we are all beautiful, bumbling messes. There are days that the beauty may outweigh the pain; others when pain wins.  But who are we kidding if we believe that we ever go a day - a minute – without both pain and beauty being a part of things?  Who we are and what we do is informed by the ways we have wounded and been wounded; informed by the beauty we have both witnessed and created.  So even in moments of beauty, we experience the moment through the lens of someone who has also known pain.  And when we see pain, we know that beauty also exists and this informs the way we receive that pain.

You cannot have one part of marriage without the other.  You cannot have one part of a person without having the other.  The beauty and the pain is not something that we move in and out of.  We are in both of them at the same time, all of the time.

How did you respond to this sculpture?

from the flickr photostream of flo

Most days I check myself out in the mirror from the waist up.  If I really want to see what my shirt and pants look like together, I jump in front of the mirror that hangs over my bed so I can get a quick peek of my hips and thighs.

We have one full length mirror. On the inside of the closet door.  In the office.  I don’t go in there much.

Last weekend, Herb and I met up in Seattle with some dear friends who live in Detroit.   We stayed in a great little condo with what I prefer to call a “water-ish” view.  We were steps from the Space Needle and the Public Market.  The condo was decorated well and we access to a pool and hot tub.

We had a huge, full length mirror.  In the hall way.  Right outside our bedroom door.

After passing by the mirror a dozen or so times, I stood in front of it on the second day, scrutinizing my reflection.  Then I did the unthinkable:  “Herb?  Could you come here?  Take a peek at my reflection.  And then look at me.  There is something wrong with this mirror, right?  My reflection is really different than what you see when you look at me, right?”

Very sweetly, he pulled the bandaid off as fast as he could, “Um, no, I don’t see a big difference.”

He hugged me.  “I have gotten big.”, I said.

“We both have.”
I love him.

Later, in a tender moment, he looked at me and said, “I like you.  And your body.  Even if it is a little out of shape right now.”   Saying “I like you” is, I think, one of the best things I can hear from my husband in a day.  It means that he not just loves me, but he really enjoys who I am.  As I relished the compliment, I also cringed inside.  “Seriously?!?!”, I thought, “He could have left that last part off.  Has he ever met a woman before???”

This is where the terror of marriage comes in - being completely seen by another person.  Stripped of all protection and anonymity.  This is where the other person can swoop in and break us down, from top to bottom.  This is why we tend to protect ourselves - even, no, especially from our spouse.  So that they can’t see us.  Because if they see us, they might tell us the truth.  And the truth might destroy us.

Herb told me the truth.  But he didn’t destroy me.  Not in front of the mirror, and not in that sweet moment later on.  He saw what I couldn’t see and he told me the truth about myself.  I realized, we should all be so lucky.  In Herb, I have a mirror.  When he looks at me, he sees me.  All of me.  And not just from the waist up.  He has more than a quick glance at my thighs.  The truth is, we all have a pretty distorted view of ourselves.  If not distorted, limited.  In our spouse, we have the chance to see a more accurate picture.

He saw me.  He saw me all at the same time.  He saw my wide hips and my protruding belly but he also saw my smile and heard my sweet words and felt my strong arms around his shoulders.  Unlike me, who tends to judge all of me based on part of me, he saw all of me and then told me the truth about myself, “I like you.  All of you.  The way you are.  Right now.”

Josh and Mandy Wright have been married for nearly 11 years.  They live in St. Louis, MO with their three kiddos!

What triggers (past or present) your day-dreams about leaving your marriage?

He Said:

I don’t know that I’ve ever really thought too much about leaving my marriage—my daydreams are about what things would have been like had I never gotten married, or if I had gotten married or had kids later in life.  We were married and had kids at a very young age, and that has presented a unique set of challenges for Mandy and I to contend with.  When I dream about a change in my marital circumstances, the dream typically involves some path that avoided those challenges.

She Said:

I can’t say I really think about leaving my marriage.  Not because things have been sooo easy but because I know that God gave me Josh to bless me.  I really believe that, and my desire to receive those future blessings that He has for me and my family get me through the rough times.

When you think about leaving your marriage (past or present), what is it you want that you think you could find/have as a single person?

He Said:

Less financial stress, fewer impediments to the pursuit of my career and educational goals, more time to run and play guitar.  I think every man wants to be free, wants to find his fortune, wants to make a name for himself.  Any time you feel some insecurity or dissatisfaction relating to one of these ideals, it’s the most natural thing in the world to rationalize the discomfort by blaming your wife.

She Said:

Sometimes I think that it would be exhilarating to be doted over and longed for by someone; just like I was by my husband before he captured my heart.