“Maybe a little on the late side? I’m going to have coffee or beer with Rachel today, about 4 p.m.”
That’s all he said, and a rage flashed through me. I know this is my work, so I swallowed it as best I could.
What IS it that makes this exchange so utterly predictable? Why does this keep coming up for me, and what gifts does it bring for me, ultimately for my freedom? (His part in this is his own...)
I think one part of it is that Brian dreads telling me so he holds off until the last possible moment, which then feels like a “gotcha” to me. I also want her to be gone. Gone. Nothing injurious to her, of course. Not that kind of gone. But out of our lives. He will never allow that to happen, so this will continue to arise. I hate being surprised like this, and it clearly touches a tenderness in me when it comes before something he and I are negotiating a time for.
For the last several years, she has brought little to me but heart-ache, betrayal, and disregard of my impotence oft-spoken of in “church things.” She was privy to a lot of that storying in me amidst women’s circling we’ve done, and she doesn’t give a fuck about it for me. Only what she needs. Only her own unwillingness to grow the fuck up. The anger here is the easy part.
What I know of the tenderness in me, under the anger/rage? What I grieve?
I grieve that I will never be able to bring Brian the unadulterated commitment to his church that she lived for years, under his tutelage, continues to live in as much leeway as he'll grant her. I am committed to Godde’s Church, and my expression of that rarely feeds him, supports his institutional-self, strokes his ego.
I grieve the loss of the young woman I used to be, who could live into that space with him and who did all that for him but no longer can without a sense of self-silencing, self-abandonment. I feel alone in my own work when he chooses to spend time with her, especially if it’s right before time with me. He supports me in my work, but he doesn’t feel it nor share in it, in the end. His sacred devotion to an institution that has persistently betrayed women is both blessing for me, and curse. Rachel represents so much of what I have had to give up to be faithful to my own calling(s) which he will never share for himself.
I grieve that Brian will never know the joys of fatherhood, though I do not grieve that choice for us. I wish it had been different some days, true, mostly in how it “plays him.” It saddens me that this unresolved grief in him often gets projected onto me, gets “played” in him by her, “the daughter he never had.” She has access to a part of him that he cannot share with me, old-terrain between us that goes nowhere, a grief that he has little skill in how to grieve for himself. She remains a wedge for us here, as long as he finds no other way to grieve that in himself.
I grieve the difficulties Brian and I had to experience to know the contentedness we know now. The unhealthy connections for Brian with Rachel were seeded then, so they are always at the root. Will never be eradicated, in other words, only managed. Her neediness touches the neediness, fear, and betrayal I felt then, which he never could admit or nourish, understand, touch. She mirrors his limitations to me, for me, for us.
She is a relationship of obligation for me, one in which I have little to no say in saying yes or saying no. This touches my own tenderness around control and simple surrender. If I set a boundary healthy for me, he won’t or can’t keep it. It’s not his boundary or need. So I regularly say “okay” to things I don’t really want to do. To appease him? My version of trying to honor the differentiation here between us? I know the specter of him having coffee/beer with her while we do not engage her as a couple feels like a really bad idea. He becomes vulnerable in his congregational work (evidence example #1, Ashley's departure accusation) and then I have to pick up those pieces later anyway. Better to stave all that off in prevention?
His woundedness around “having no friends” means he holds onto her with a desperation of having a friend. So he can provide her what she needs in his competence, which isn’t friendship of course, but it is a pattern he is beginning to struggle with…
I love him. I want him to find the places and persons that can nourish his own growth, his sense of fun, his own spirit. It is always better when his focus is not solely with me, for me. For him, that will always be with church people, where he has the perceived upper hand he hopes will protect his gentle heart.
She’ll be our perpetual “secret” I guess. His need for her. My tolerance of it. Social times with her together that I make possible. Because I do love him and trust him to sort it all out for himself.
Clearly, Rachel and I share that, however conscious or unconscious it all is for them, us.
Peace be with all of us, each in our own need.
Today, I let him go into his own work, what he needs that Spirit directs. It is a blessing to be finite, to not be in charge, to simply let go…
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