Monday, October 30, 2017

This is not Advice


[10/30/2017 - I found this piece today, a draft I never posted. I don't remember writing it, or why I never finished it. It was written three years ago in 2014.


As of today, Jeremiah have been divorced a little over a year. We spent the year before that separated. We lived together for 3 months between separation and divorce.


The decision to divorce was mine. Reading this now, I expected to feel something like regret or sadness. I don't, so I suppose posting this now is the logical next step.]


Jeremiah and I have been married three years as of Thursday, August 28. Two of my best friends (and house-mates) Ken and Jen will be getting married this Saturday, August 30. So, with all this wedded bliss in the air, I'm feeling inspired to share some wisdom.

LOL.

Three years of marriage certainly doesn't give me any great clout in the marriage advice arena. I'm not saying I'm doing it right, or well, or that you should do it too.

So far, marriage is just as frustrating and magical and insane as I imagined.

Seriously. It's crazy. And stupid. And hilarious. And amazing. And stupid. Absolutely weird and ridiculous.

So, what I present to you here is not a list of wisdom that will help you achieve a happy marriage. Achievement isn't really the goal here. Instead I give you…

Un-Wisdom
Shit I learned from couples and the media about love and marriage that freaked me out and made me think crazy stupid fictitious crap about love and marriage:

1) I watched The Notebook - In the early days of my relationship with Jeremiah, back when we lived in separate parts of the state and wrote letters and texted 24/7 to get to know each other, he asked me (I'm paraphrasing) "Why aren't you in a relationship?"

"I don't believe in love," I told him.



"What do you mean? How can you not believe in something as fundamental as love?"

"Have you ever seen The Notebook?" I asked, then proceeded to explain how fruitless I imagined it would be to live your life with someone you love only to die. Or worse, only to watch them die.

"I hate that movie." He replied, in all seriousness. "The Notebook is fiction, first of all. It's completely unrealistic. Girls want to look like Rachel McAdams and bang Ryan Gosling, so they watch it and convince themselves it's real life. That romance and love are interchangeable."

And then I re-watched The Notebook, and laughed at how childish and ridiculous a movie to create such life-impacting philosophies as "I don't believe in love" and "Death is greater than Love" around.

Which leads me into the next point on my list…

2) I believed the phrase "'Till death do us part" - Having no concept of what Jesus actually did on the cross, apart from take away my sins as I frequently chanted at AWANAS when I was a kid, I had no idea that he defeated death.

Defeated death?

Defeated death.

I'm still not entirely sure what that means, because people are still dying. Daily, and in horrific ways. But the revelation triggered an idea - if death is defeated, then it has no power over love. I went from thinking death makes love meaningless, to thinking life is meaningless without love.

To progress this point further than I'm capable, and to prove that my logic was un-sound whether Jesus is your homie or not, I present to you comedian and atheist Tim Minchin:




Watch the whole video if you want, he's a wonderful speaker with really powerful ideas. But for the purpose of this conversation, skip ahead to 10:30.

"I said at the beginning of this ramble… that life is meaningless. It was not a flippant assertion. I think it's absurd, the idea of seeking meaning in the set of circumstances that happens to exist after 13.8 billion years worth of unguided events. Leave it to humans to think the universe has a purpose for them. 

"However I am no nihilist. I'm not even a cynic. I'm actually rather romantic. And here's my idea of romance. You will soon be dead. Life will sometimes seem long and tough, and God it's tiring. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad. And then you'll be old. And then you'll be dead. There is only one sensible thing to do with this empty existence. And that's fill it."

So far, my experiences have been made most full when I've shared them with another person. In particular, with Jeremiah. It's like the difference between masturbation and sex with another, real live person. Both are orgasmic, stress relieving, and good for your health. One (most often) leaves you empty and alone.

3) "You're not the person I married" - I've heard spouses shout this or say it with heartache on their tongues to rationalize a split or divorce. At first, I thought it sound logic: I married a person, you're not that person, so why should I be married to you?

Then I realized that progression and change are part of the human experience. I am not the same person I was yesterday. I'm certainly not the same person I was a year ago. Three years ago? I'd graduated college, got married, turned 21, and got a puppy in a matter of months. All of which are life changing.

When I met my husband, I literally didn't believe in love. I'd never seen Jesus heal anyone, let alone at my hands. And I was very close to dropping out of college.

Relationships change people. And people change relationships.

Humans ebbe and flow, stretch and grow and break. And then do it all over again. Peace is not a constant, nor is happiness. We all experience bouts of depression, fear, anger, rage, sadness. Maybe we even get stuck in these bouts. But everything about us is both temporary and eternal. We are spirit beings with souls in bodies. We are eternity and mortality crammed into one box wrapped in a bow, splitting at the seams.

For those who identify as Christian, change is intrinsic to your religion. Repentance is to change your mind. To literally change the way you think and process information and emotion. It's a constant, life long process. If that doesn't make you a new person, you haven't done it.

So to tell someone they've changed as though it's an insult, or a sound reason to leave them, is shortsighted and a slew of other profanities that would tarnish the relevance of this post. I didn't marry Jeremiah for the person he was. I married him for the person he eternally is, changes and all.

4) Divorce is the worst thing ever, but it's happening to everyone - People change. That's great. That's not to say they can't change for the worst.

I am less convinced that divorce is the worst thing ever, though more convinced that most people have no idea what marriage is in the first place.

Marriage is a union of two people (and God, if you're in to that sort of thing). What that union is, how it's lived out, and what it looks like to everyone else, is completely up to those two people.

For myself, marriage is a commitment to constantly grow and progress. Not on my own, but alongside Jeremiah. I am as committed to Jeremiah's growth as my own (or at least that's the goal). If I didn't believe that Jeremiah was as committed to growing as to enabling me to grow, this arrangement couldn't work. Without equal participation, this arrangement becomes abusive and will quickly shrivel and die.

We learn and grow and progress most when we fail. We can fail and still remain married. Jeremiah and I fail all the time. Daily. And we have grown leaps and bounds in the past three years, let me tell you. Divorce is a choice, not a transmittable, incurable disease. I'm not anti-divorce. I genuinely believe it is the absolute best course of action for some relationships. Particularly for those marriages that have forgotten that they are, at their core, a relationship. However, I'm no longer afraid of it "happening" to me, because I'm convinced relationships are a series of choices not a series of shit happening by chance.

I'm also convinced that I'm a grown ass woman, whatever choices I make are my own and I stand by them. [ALERT: I'm about to give advice. You've been warned.] If you haven't convinced yourself of this, do so before you get married.

No comments:

Post a Comment