Interfaith Marriage: Stepping Beyond Just The Two of Us

Once more the uncertainty of my husband's spiritual journey is coming front and centre for me. It's that time of year when community groups and Bible studies and activities that we haven't had since he came out to me this summer resume. I want to support him. For him to know he has the freedom to choose what is right for where he is at and require him to hide his de-conversion.

Selfishly I hate that this is going to be one more thing that I do alone now. In reading some of the experiences of other spouses whose partners have de-converted, they often express that it gave them the freedom to explore their own faith in ways they hadn't previously. I love that for them. I'm the opposite. I was already exploring. I was the one who started, who gave him permission. While my journey has led me closer to my own spirituality, his has led him further away. I feel lonely in my faith. I'm still searching for what community could look like for me in my own walk and doing it alone is both liberating and terrifying.

As we walk out into this more public season of sharing what has changed over the summer, I'm afraid of the responses that we'll get. I'm afraid people will tell me that they are praying for him. Which, hey I'm all for prayer, but if that's the only support you are willing to give him or I, the only response that you have, then please keep it to yourself. Too often it feels like a dismissal of him as a person and my very real struggle. Ask how you can pray for us, listen to our feelings, or do non-religious things with us as couples.

I worry about the pressure, all the what if people say this or that. And yeah I'll deal with it, but I wish I could give people a primer on what not to say. Most Christians I know don't like to talk about what happens when someone's faith beliefs change. There's a lot of fear there. I get it. I grew up being terrified of hell with this angry Deity who killed people for making the wrong choices. There's much of this that I don't have answers for myself, so please don't feed my fear. Don't prey on it or pressure me to make him come back to church or God or faith. Don't ask me to explain his choices. Go talk to him. But when you do, please see him as a person, not a lost sheep that must be herded back into the fold. Or a child who's throwing a fit and needs to be tolerated, or punished depending on your parenting style.

In the same way, please don't be shocked when you hear that my prayer request is not for his salvation or his return to faith. I am not responsible to spend the next 20 years praying him back into the "family of God". I'm responsible to live my faith for myself. I need support and I need people willing to connect with my faith journey, because that's no longer built into my marriage. Sure we can talk about it, but he and I are reading from two completely different books these days, so common ground when it comes to faith is not something we have. I've said it before  and I'm going to keep saying it. This is lonely for me. It breaks my heart to show up by myself in faith circles where he used to attend with me. I have my own journey through this - and for right now, it doesn't involve re-converting him.

What it does involve is learning to be authentic with myself and with others. It means messy posts like this one and tears over coffee. It means ranting in my therapist's office. I have a tonne of questions. Don't we have enough challenges to overcome in this marriage without also navigating this? I don't expect people to have answers. I'm not even sure that I need answers as much as I need people who are willing to sit with me in the middle of the questions.

Up until now this has been easier. I've had time and space to begin to adjust to not sharing faith beliefs with my husband, to being on separate pages, to no longer assuming that we are approaching spirituality from the same relative starting point. Now it's time to wade out a little deeper, to share this journey with my community. I'm nervous. I'm counting down the weeks until we start up again. I figure knowing what I don't want is a stepping stone to being able to articulate what I do want.

Notes Along the Journey: Interfaith Marriage

His lack of faith doesn't change that this is the man I trounce at cribbage. The one who vacuums our floors because the vacuum cleaner hates me. This is the man who texts to let me know he's running late because he remembers my irrational fears that he'll leave me or die unexpectedly.

This is still the man who held me through nights of endless flashbacks. The one who bound the wounds I inflicted on myself. He was the voice of reason in the middle of my insanity and despair.

He has struggled to face his past, to pursue his own recovery this past year and a half to give our marriage a fighting change. He's been the one to go toe to toe with me, holding his own, holding us when I was ready to walk away.  The one who has fought to take down his walls and share his heart, even as every protective instinct screamed for him to run and hide.

His rejection of the Divine doesn't change these pieces of who he is.

AND

None of these things change how I feel. Betrayed. Angry. Confused. Grief-stricken. It doesn't change my need to scream that this is not how the story is supposed to go. There isn't room for one more plot twist. It feels like the cruellest of ironies. As I have begun to find my footing in my faith again, to find glimpses of hope in how I could be part of community, he has slipped further away.

The loneliness threatens to drag me under. There are a few brave women I have found who are talking about this. I'm grateful for their words, their stories.

It's hard not to wonder where did I fail, to not demand an answer as to why God is passionate and intentional about pursuing my heart yet seems to not give a shit about my husband's.  That sounds like the God of my childhood, not the Divine being that I've grown to know and love. In all of this though, I feel held. I have a deep knowing that this story isn't over. I don't know the ending, but I know that honesty is necessary for growth.

I'm left in the same place I was before this bombshell - learning to love my husband in ways that are healthy and sustainable for both of us.

Before, In-between, and After

For years I've complained about not having a time before abuse. There's no reclaiming me, because the only me I've ever known was fragmented. Lately though I've been thinking that I don't have an after - at least not yet. I have a before - one filled with trauma, dysfunction, pain, addiction. I have my now - this place of in-between where I'm healthier and still not done working through all the things that linger in my present from my before. I don't have an after yet - an after I grew up, after my marriage healed, after working through trauma. 

I'm in this in-between. I don't have the end of the story yet. I don't know if I get to have a happily ever after. My husband has been wrestling with what he believes or maybe more accurately what he doesn't believe. The writing has been on the wall for a long time, but this week he finally verbalized what I've known to be true for several years - he's done with Christianity. I want to be careful to not tell a story here that isn't mine to tell. This is his journey and this place that he's in, I believe that it is a good place, a healing place, even though it is painful for both of us. 

Once again I feel like I am being asked to open my hands and let go, to stop trying to control my world. This illusion of control has allowed me a false sense of security. The truth is that whatever he believes or doesn't believe, he's mine. I'm proud of him. Proud of him for being honest with himself and with me. Proud of him for being willing to let go of something he's been taught his entire life because it's no longer true for him. 

I'm heartbroken for me. I'm lost, bewildered, wondering how is this too part of my story. The two things I wanted in a husband are the two things that my husband has abandoned. (The other thing was someone who shared my love and passion for music - specifically a guitar player). And in the middle of my hurt and yes my anger (though who I'm angry with, I really don't know), I have this fierce love for him, something that I haven't felt before. I'm holding onto him not in a clingy co-dependent desperate way, but in this healthy passionate protective way. In a he is mine and to mess with him is to mess with me kind of way. 

I love him more now than I did when he was doing the things that I thought I wanted him to do and be. I'm discovering that I love who he is - even when it doesn't look like what I hoped it would look like. I don't know what my after with him is going to look like, but I think that I'm beginning to actually enjoy the discovery of the in-between. 

Sobbing on the Kitchen Floor

It's one of those seasons again.
The ones where I'm his yo-yo,
never certain which way his fingers will flick me.

Will I go hurling towards the floor yet again?
Will this be the hit that shatters my heart,
or will it only be a dent, a scratching of paint?
Or will he stop half way down, and jerk me in a circle,
weaving me in intricate patterns and knots?

He filters what is told to others,
making me the bad guy,
the unreasonable wife,
the too-fragile one,
the ball-buster.

My words become his justification
to continue to toy with my heart -
 my words,
yanked out of context,
 thrown back in my face,
slightly twisted,
 just a little bent.

He's learning to pull me close,
to hold me in his hand without having to hurl me back to the floor.
It's a learning though,
and my heart, MY heart bears
the consequences and scars of his progress.
I didn't think there was room on my heart for more scars.
Somehow he found the few unmarked places
and stabbed me clean through.

Marriage and Grief Work

I have two other posts started, sitting in my drafts from today. I can't seem to complete either of them right now. I'm processing a lot from the past in between fights with my husband. I don't know if it's just where we're both at in our individual journeys right now or if there's something else going on. There are big themes behind the fights, themes of broken trust, lies of omission, and withholding self. It's exhausting.

It's layers of healing.  Frankly I don't know how to talk about what's happening in my marriage, what has happened in my marriage. Intimacy anorexia isn't a common term.  It's still pretty new as a label for a grouping of issues.  I don't particularly want to do the whole information post on it. I know it would be helpful to have one more voice out there in the world talking about it, but I already do that in person enough.  I don't want to become the poster child for what it looks like to live with a spouse who intentionally withholds intimacy in all it's forms.

It's better than it's ever been and there is still so much healing work to be done. The fights are nothing like they were our first year of marriage. They aren't even like they were a year ago.  The conflict is healthy most of the time. It's still painful.  It's painful to still be rebuilding trust - and when that takes a step or two backwards in the span of three days, it's a little much for my heart to bear.

When that shit hits the fan at the same time as some of my own identity work - it's messy.  My brain hurts and I need to scream.  There's this picture in my brain of me standing in the middle of no where, screaming until I crumble, sobbing like my heart has been broken until I throw up and pass out. That's how it feels right now.  It will feel better and hey at least I'm not medicating how I feel.  This is raw and ugly but my feelings are mine. I'm honouring them for what they are, what they have to teach me and releasing them in healthier ways than I have ever done before.