It's Stochastic!

just keepin’ it real

I have developed an obsessive commitment to keeping it real. I think living in the “surreal bubble” of evangelicalism where everyone is “blessed” and “God is good…all the time” brought me to this point. Which is why I talk about how I sometimes don’t like my 4 year old lately and how I often don’t believe in God anymore.

So now, I feel compelled to be honest about my marriage. And in good ex-church leader form, I will have a take away at the end, and maybe it will even be an acronym ;)

Lately I’ve been pondering the changes that my husband and I have experienced in the dynamics of our marriage since leaving “the ministry”. Doing church was what brought us together and it’s what occupied most of our time in the first 6 or 7 years of marriage. We did it together. It was our thing. Not only did we do it together, when we weren’t doing it, we were talking about it, dreaming about it, debating over it.

It was also something where we felt it was us against the world, come what may, we were tackling it together.

We now don’t have that common thing and on top of it, David has returned to acting. If you’ve ever been in a relationship with a performer - esp. an actor, you know what this can be like. If you haven’t, you can’t really understand. I love that David is back in theater and I wouldn’t ask him to stop for the world, it’s good for him, he’s a better person when he’s acting…but that doesn’t make it easier. For any true actor, acting is a spiritual, emotional and even sexual (no, not THAT kind of sexual) experience…which often leaves little left for the family back at home.

David is currently in a play with a bunch of conservative Christians (not a xian play, just a xian theater company - it’s lame, ask me about my feelings on THAT some day lol) he has inside jokes with the type of girls who make purity pacts for Jesus, he has spent lots of time away from home with these people…this makes me feel a kind of resentment that is irrational but never-the-less very real.

Don’t get me wrong, ultimately this isn’t my husband’s problem and he tries hard to make up for the time he’s away. This is more about me dealing with my own grief over the loss of what we had and trying to figure out what we’re going to do NOW.

We used to have this shared passion and a shared spiritual expression and now that’s missing. I think all couples go through this at various points in their relationship…sometimes very soon after the walk down the aisle when they realize marriage isn’t what they imagined it would be.

All relationships go through changes and transitions. Leaving would just mean having to transition alone, running to another person would just mean having to go through the same thing with a new person (and as I like to joke, I’m too lazy to put all that work into another person). Some changes are incredibly, excruciatingly painful - like losing a child. Some…like ours, are much more banal. But anything in your live that changes the dynamics of how you connect and relate to one another is going to be noticeable.

I have learned a few things in this time:

1. allow yourself to grieve. When you have become used to something in your relationship and it is good for the both of you, when it goes away, it’s a loss and I think it’s important to grieve that loss - - even if it seems silly to mourn the loss of the time you got to play racquetball together.

2. don’t rush into replacing that “thing”… but do eventually. I don’t think it’s a good idea to just try to quickly find something else that brings you together but I also think that if you’re not proactive about it, you might find yourself 5 years later realizing you’re like 2 ships passing in the night.

3. and along a broader theme - try to enjoy life’s journeys instead of working so hard to reach a destination. Change is part of any journey - change can be mourned and missed but it doesn’t need to mean the end.

Life is complicated. And over and over I’m finding that if you don’t accept and own that fact, you’ll be tempted to run away when things get messy.