What if I Just Believed Him?

Many of us have a hate-hate relationship with cognitive dissonance. We lived with it altogether too long. The words we heard and the feelings that we felt didn’t jive. The words we heard and the actions that followed didn’t jive. The signs didn’t follow the prophecy.

In my marriage, what he said and what he did rarely matched up. I thought my perception of our life together was effed up. But, in reality, the life itself was pretty much effed up.

I wanted to believe he loved me. He told me he loved me. But, he left early, came home late, didn’t answer my phone calls or texts, and didn’t make effort to spend time with me, or us, his family. He was a very complex person, I thought. I thought I just didn’t understand him. And I didn’t.

What I didn’t understand was this: There was no space in his life for me, or a family, for that matter. He was the central figure of his story, and there was no room on the periphery for distractions (like us). His bandwidth was completely used up.

At church, men lifted women up as if they were these icons of perfection (or should be), protected them from “real” life, found ways to “allow” us to stay home and raise “the next, precious generation” of children, and confused the hell out of me and so many other women of my generation.

Our role as women was so limited. We got to lead, sure. We got to lead under the supervision of a man. And that man could do anything he wanted with our decisions at any time, not even informing us of changes. I remember years and years of being the leader of the children’s ministry. I would suggest this or that person to help with this or that class. And, over the pulpit the next Sunday, I would be surprised to find out an entirely different person had been assigned the position, completely unbeknownst to me. This was just the tip of the iceberg.

I write about that more in this article:

Still Living with the Ghost of Benevolent Patriarchy
…after all of these years
christy-77163.medium.com

We were to be perfect, joyful mothers of children. We didn’t have a place to talk about the loneliness of motherhood, the devastation of being married to a completely absent man, or the grief we felt around NOT being the perfect woman we were “supposed” to be. Failure abounded. There was no end to it.

And yet, we were told how loved we were. We were told how important we were in the “eternal scheme of things”. We were told that our sacrifice and obedience would bring joy.

But what if it didn’t? What if all of the work put into a marriage also didn’t bring joy? What if those relationships (with the church and with the husband) were ever-more gaping holes where my soul was being drained dry?

That’s what they were. And I learned NOT to listen to most men. I began only listening to men who were vulnerable, kind, loving, and didn’t hold me up as some icon of perfection. They had to accept me…the real me. Their authenticity had to ring true, completely.

Really, until my divorce (where I had to depend on incredibly undependable men), I stopped listening to so many of them, the voices that represented them in my head, and stopped doing what they were telling me to do. I was over it. The divorce forced me back into relationship with those voices.

Now, however, I find myself in a quandary. I want OUT again. But I also want to have a companion…a man in my life.

Do I want to start listening again? How do I do it and feel safe at the same time? Is that even possible?

There are a lot of questions that have no answers. It feels a little like life is a game of Russian Roulette.

So, the experiment commences.

What if I believed him? What if I believed the words he says? The man I am with doesn’t always say the perfect thing, nor does he always say anything at all. He is a quiet sort. When he does speak, I try to listen. I try to hear the intention behind the words. I try to see what is being played out in his mind, his eyes, and his heart as he talks.

This is really hard work. I have trusted myself in the past when I should not have. I have trusted other people when I should not have. What makes this different?

One thing is a lot different, to be sure. I am more aware. I am more conscious and less naïve. I have a different way of wrestling with hard things. I can ask myself different questions now.

And…I can see how he responds. And today he did it right. Today, he apologized and I knew he meant it. There was no performance. There was deep sincerity in his voice and the posture and movement of his body. It was not just the right words. It was all of it.

He knows what I need. And he is getting closer to who I need to help me meet those needs.

I want to believe him. I want to keep hoping for the beauty I was promised my whole childhood, minus the patriarchal BS. I want to be loved as deeply as I love. This is why I take the risk. This is why I play the game.

To find another person as authentic, open, loving, and vulnerable as myself may not be my lot. But, let’s start with honesty. He’s that, at the very least.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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