Our theme for the month of March is “I was wrong about.”
When I first met Andrew, I was enamored largely because he was different (even if only different against the backdrop of Calvin’s student body). Marrying young, I like to think I had my eyes wide open. We never did pre-marital counseling, but I thought about what marriage was and tried to do some reading as well. Working within the heteronormative Christian paradigm of marriage—the only one I’d ever known—meant I could draw certain conclusions or arrive at certain beliefs. By saying “yes” to Andrew, I was already saying “no” to everything else and the myriad of might-have-beens. That was the only choice. And I thought I was okay with that. Strength of will, the effusive rush of love, so on and so forth.
I learned from birth to death, a couple must grow together and never, ever grow separately or differently—that the separation is what causes the Final Separation. But individual autonomy gets swallowed up and that’s all there is. Anything else is considered anathema. Any sad, bad, mad, or glad feelings must be incorporated within some sense of Godly equilibrium. There’s no room for doubt or wondering, only a stark, even bleak, dichotomy between succeeding and failing.
These are all things I internalised and learned from the bits and pieces of the conservative Christian environment I grew up in. I always joke with people that I was never really plugged in enough to find myself in the firing line of all the classic Christian dogma taught to children. But I think I got scathed a lot more than I thought (not that those learned things are inherently scathing). And those things meant that it was—still is, in too many ways—the only way I could ever conceptualise anything, these Christian particulars. It meant I was judgy, of myself and others, for not ascribing adequately to these standards.
My mother thinks, Anna’s gone much too Bohemian and cosmopolitan with straying from the path, and maybe in twenty years I’d even agree with her. But for the first time, I’m learning to engage my faculties in constructive, non-judgemental ways with paradigms of marriage and loving relationships that aren’t the conservative Christian norm. Things that I learned to classify as universally other have turned out to actually be discrete things that are still worthwhile and meaningful to others making in the image of God.
Sure, from a theological standpoint, plenty of folks can soliloquise about how all these others are absolutely guaranteed of going to hell. But I like to think I’ve matured and grown enough to arrive at the realisation that those others are not so other after all; they are just like you and me. There are other ethical and moral frames, sharing the same roots, that happen to not be the one I have. If I really believe people are valuable to God and are just as deserving of grace and love (oxymoronic, I know), then I want to tell them I’m sorry I couldn’t see past the log in my own eye when it comes to paradigms of love and meaning.
But Anna, you’ve gone off and I don’t know how this relates to your provocative post title or your earlier paragraphs?
For a long time, I have lain awake at night, repeatedly bashing myself for feeling whatever undesirable feelings, because I thought there was no room, no outlet. I don’t know how to relate to him in any other way; those paradigm assumptions were intrinsic from the moment we met. But the self-imposition, the omnipresent pressures of largely existing still in a Christian world… I’ve been riddled with shame and guilt and loneliness for a long time because of it (still am). Because if my marriage didn’t perfectly align with the assumed Christian paradigm, or at least not within an acceptable margin of error, then I was thoroughly condemned, I was nothing. I thought this paradigm is what Andrew understood, assumed, wanted, expected as well. I think it broke my soul, and I thought that was all I’d ever have: landlocked by people and time and place, with nowhere to go that could help put me back together.
I’m so glad I was wrong about my spouse.
