One Big Box

I have gone on a couple dates since the divorce.  I know a couple readers will the asking “What were you thinking?”  Nonetheless, I have gone out a couple times.   Each time I have been out, I have found it very easy to be comfortable with the woman across from me.  Conversation flows easily, flirtation comes naturally and in one or two cases a hand reaching across the table is easily taken.  I have attributed this to my being an “old dog.”  I was married for twenty years, I am comfortable in my skin, and comfortable around a woman.

One particular relationship has progressed to the point of pleasant speculative conversations about the future.  It has also progressed to the point of needing some accountability or chaperonage in the area of physical intimacy.  I mentioned this to my counselor and he gave me an excellent illustration for what I am experiencing.  As a young man, I had many different boxes of relationship materials.  I had a friendship box, a flirtation box, a box of physical intimacy, a love box, and a few others, all of which I would pull things out of when pursuing a woman.  In marriage, all those boxes got dumped into one big box.  Now, as a single man once more, when I am interested in a woman, I only have one box to open, and it has everything in it.  This makes it really hard to have good boundaries.  It makes it especially hard when the things at the top of the box are not the things that should be unpacked first.

Does this discount a relationship?  Since it is so easy, is it worth less?  Does the fact that I can be fairly comfortable with any woman make it less valuable when I am comfortable with a particular woman?  I don’t think so.  I have spent a lot of time digging through that big box, trying to find the important things.  It is kind of like digging through a refrigerator box from the top, it is messy and some things that should not be unpacked end up out of the box, but I think I know what is important.

Questions From a Friend

A friend(M), or at least someone I think will become a friend with time, sent me the following questions.

How is porn addiction changing the way people value each other?
Is it possible to have true intimacy in this age of technology?
Are my crows feet getting bigger?

I do not know her well enough to speak to her individual situation, but can at least answer from a man’s point of view.

1. An addiction to porn devalues everyone involved.  The women in the images being viewed is seen as an object instead of another being created in the image of God.  This discounts the value inherent in her creation.  An addiction to porn also devalues the “real” women in a mans life.  They will tend to become objects as well.  There is another step to lower value that occurs when the “object” does not respond as expected.  This might be sexual or it might be in terms of submission, either way an “object” that does not act according to the owners expectations is not very valuable.   Another person devalued by the porn addiction is the man doing the viewing.  I speak from a Christian perspective when I say that the regular viewing of pornography with a lack of repentance and denial of conviction slowly erodes a man’s sense of worth.  He might withdraw because of his worthlessness, or he might compensate by trying to be exceptionally worthy in some other area, or both.  In order to avoid discovery of his worthlessness, along with the withdrawal, he may try to control his circumstances to the exclusion of others.  I may be stepping out on a limb here, but it occurs to me that the affect on a man’s self worth(value) may have a greater impact on society and the church than the affect on the woman’s.  I can sense another post in that sentence.
2. I may have written before about the ways I feel e-communication affects intimacy.  I believe text and chat provide an immediacy that promotes a false sense of intimacy.  It is like eating a diet consisting only of appetizers.  You may never get to the main course of the relationship.  Or you may get enough to think you have had a full meal, but not really gotten to the meat of the matter.  A relationship built on text and chat may come crashing down when the reality of a face to face meeting intrudes.   I think one almost has to pull back from the e-com and purposefully seek deeper communication, whether that is face to face, phone, or a longer written format.  Any of these allows for more intimate knowledge through tone, expression and syntax.
3. Without an objective measure over time, it is extremely hard to determine size differential on crow’s feet.  An annual picture controlled for lighting and other variables might allow us to see growth over time(if any) and could even allow one to predict a future growth rate and future date when crows feet would effectively dominate ones facial features.  Until that day, being the smart guy that I am, I will simply say, “Crow’s feet?  I hadn’t noticed.”

Throwing Darts into the Whirlwind

I need to write.   Things swirl around me sometimes making it hard to concentrate.  Writing gives me a chance to throw a dart into the swirling mass and pin down some part of it.

I miss my wife.  As I say it, I realize it is not like she stopped being my wife all of a sudden.  Many of the little intimacies that come to mind where withdrawn more than a year ago.  This last year has just been the lingering death of a marriage that she withdrew from over the course of two or three years.  She would probably say it had been longer than that, but I think active, purposeful turning away has been no more than two or three.   So as I think about the things I miss, I realize it is twenty years worth of memories and shared lives.  Over seven thousand days of being one.

Now she has decided she is not my wife.  We have a legal paper that says we are not married.  But is that really all there is?  I know there are many different opinions about this.  I have chosen a way that I think honors the Lord most in my current situation.  I do not think that God so easily releases us from the vows we make before him.  I may not feel released to pursue another marriage until my legal ex chooses to re-marry.  I have to admit the fact she is already in a relationship gives me some reason to think it will not be long before she gets married.  I know there are some who would say I am released as soon as she has been with another man.  Again, I am not so sure.  Is that all the marriage vows are about is the physical relationship?  Short of marriage, how many relationships outside of ours am I required to forgive?  These are hard things.

Getting out Christmas

We keep Christmas in the attic space above our garage.   Over the years we have accumulated enough Christmas that it takes seven large rubbermaid totes to hold it all.  They fit nicely on a platform in the attic and can be passed through the access hatch with relative ease.  Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving I bring the ladder in and pass down the totes to my wife or older children.   If it is not raining, this is followed shortly by the stringing of Christmas lights along the gutter and windows of the house.  This afternoon as I tried to remember how we did it last year I nodded to my neighbor who was out hanging a couple new strands of icicle lights.  I also noticed the new guy down the street stringing lights along his front fence.  Just another day in paradise?

Just an hour or so earlier, my neighbors boy had yelled “I hate you!” at his dad who calmly responded with “I love you” as he left for the store.  His son is young enough that it made me laugh as I recalled the times one or another of my children had said something similar.

I am in the last throws of divorce negotiations and trying to figure out how to keep it from completely ruining Christmas for the children.

The new guy?  Who knows?  I bet he has his problems.  And yet we all do this same thing in preparation for the holiday.  Declaring that in spite of it all, Christmas will come to our house.  I look forward desperately to the birth of my Savior.  I look forward to this annual declaration that God has not left us alone on this earth, but has sent his son to live and die for us.

As I read that last sentence, I know that a number of people will wish to remind me that God is with us always.   I know this.  I am reminded of it all the time.  I strive to make it a reality in my life.  I long for comfortable, drinking coffee together in your pajamas, intimacy with the Lord.  Christmas is just a stunning reminder that we can actually have that kind of intimacy.  That is one of the reasons he came.

Dangerous Intimacy

Intimacy is dangerous.  In the history of mankind, there has been only one brief moment when intimacy was not dangerous.  During their time in the Garden, Adam and Eve experienced an open intimacy with God and with each other that was free of deception.  That changed when temptation and sin entered the picture.  Our relationships where changed forever by the desire to hide our inmost self from those around us, and especially from those closest to us.  Down deep we remember the Garden, we remember walking with the Lord, and being naked before our spouse without any sense of vulnerability.  Marriage is one way that we try to return to that intimacy.  It is also one of the most dangerous.  What could be more wrought with hazard than getting intimate with another.

Few people enter into marriage with a sense of foreboding.  We are taught to look forward to the joyous occasion.  Long engagements and multiple premarital counseling sessions help eliminate the doubts and questions that face a couple committed to spending their lives together.  This rosy outlook may carry a couple through days, weeks, or with help of some healthy denial, a year or two, but sooner or later they will be forced to acknowledge that their spouse may not be perfect.  The day that happens is the day your journey really begins.  The day you have to you have to “decide” to love your spouse.

As your fiancé walks down the aisle to become your wife, your thoughts are a jumble.  You feel relief that you made it this far, gratitude to the man escorting your bride to the front of the church, fear that you will flub you vows, love for the woman who faces you in white, and anticipation of the wedding night.  The organist, pianist and vocalist set the mood; you enjoy the moment with no sense of foreboding.  What you cannot hear are the distant native drums, the low tones of Jaws cruising the shore, the ominous density of Darth Vader’s theme.  You say, “I do!”  The drums cease, the cymbals crash, and for a time, there is silence.

“No one can infuriate you like your spouse.”  Those are words you won’t hear in the average marriage counseling session.  Oh, at some point during a discussion about not letting the sun go down on your anger you will think, “Yea, I can do that.”  Together you will agree to talk things out, to settle things no matter how long it takes.  It is only after you have taken your vows that you realize that one of you married the most stubborn person on earth, and the other married the stupidest, and you can’t even agree on that.  There is a reason the police look first at the husband or wife when a murder has been committed.  They’ve been married, they know intimacy is dangerous.  If you know each other well, then you know exactly the words and deeds that will truly push your spouse’s buttons.