Marriage Mondays
July 24th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
The Disappointment
I think the thing that gets you in the end is the disappointment.
Wants are often presentably disguised demands. What a husband wants, really what he demands of a wife? No way she “cleans and jerks” that kind of weight. She doesn’t know it at first, but eventually a day comes along when she realizes she’s standing on stage, holding her breath, violently quaking under the weight of your demands. Looking across at you, your unwilling hand hovering over the “approval buzzer”, she wonders “How the hell did this become an evaluation anyway?”
Listen, what you want, what you think you’re entitled to in a wife, no woman can lift. The whole she’s the ONE – the savior (I refer to this in the post, If you want to live, let go). The “You complete me …” mythology, that’s already a load. Heap on it fantasies spun by everyone from knuckleheads like Nicholas Sparks who pander “love” stories of forever young, beautiful people doing other worldly things for love, for amor to fools like Hugh Hefner who demean something as beautiful as sex down to a vice – using for pleasure. Then the weight is just impossible. Man, fantasy is heavy. But that’s not all; it’s plenty, but there’s more. The worst yet is comparison. And it’d be bad enough if the comparisons drawn were remotely fair; they’re not. In this day of unprecedented access to info, the line of women to which you compare her is endless: Photos, film, internet, Facebook, … everywhere. Population density. Google Earth. Real life has no chance against snapshots, vignettes, and hypotheticals. You end up with the law of probability saying, “Good chance you missed The One. There’s got to be somebody better.” Now, she’s done.
The disappointments I’ve experienced in my 14+ years of marriage have very little to do with my wife. She’s nobody’s disappointment. I came to this thing with a lifetime of inability to look squarely at what marriage was. Inability? Unwillingness? Probably both. Now, along with those, I deal with a good measure of reluctance. And not just marriage, but with what love is. Really, what life is.
Ah, to be able to look squarely. Then I’d remove the weights; I’d escort her off the stage. Then I’d live in the truth: “‘Disappointment?’ No. She’s the One.”
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