Blindsided

 I find that it's the love affairs that blindside you that affect you most.—Grandmère Mimi

I was not prepared for the love of my life.

Was not prepared for the electricity of connection, the depth of feeling, the blaze of passion---or for the grinding anguish, the sense of utter futility, and the wish for death that would occur when I met him.

I was blindsided.

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I was married, with two young children. My marriage was unhappy—not in any kind of dramatic way, but in the joyless way that so many marriages seem to be. A mismatch of personalities and needs—me, the extrovert with a high need for attention and touch…him, the introvert with a high need for solitude and a distrust of any kind of passion or intimacy.

When I was eight months pregnant with our daughter, I can remember saying to my husband, “I don’t want this marriage to feel like a prison sentence.”

He just looked at me and blinked.

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There were many conversations like that over the years. Pleas for affection, for intimacy, for love. I even had a name for our discussions: “Doxy’s Semi-Annual Plea for Love.”

Nothing changed.

I asked him to go to counseling, and he agreed. But he walked out after two sessions, saying “I don’t like feeling worse when I come out than I did when I went in.” I suspect this was because our counselor had gently suggested that he might, in some way, be contributing to the unhappiness of our relationship…but I could be wrong about that.

So, after years of pleading for his love, I gave up and stopped asking. It was too humiliating to beg, and then be denied. Easier just to bury myself in the kids and their activities, and my work.

I told myself that I could live with things the way they were. Despite his inability or unwillingness to give me the love I craved, I perceived my husband to be a good man—faithful, a good provider, and an excellent father who seemed to have no trouble giving our children the affection he couldn’t bring himself to give me. He didn’t beat me or waste his paycheck on alcohol or drugs.

True, he treated me more like a household manager—and not a very competent one at that—than a cherished partner, but we had a cordial relationship, and there were moments of happiness and grace.

There are women all over the world who would give everything to have what I had—a stable, nonviolent, monogamous partner with a good income and a desire to be a part of his children’s lives.

But, in the end, it wasn’t enough.

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In so many ways, we in the West are spoiled. Our material standards of living are high enough that we have the luxury to demand a rich emotional standard of living as well. We want love and passion in our lives, as well as stability and commitment.

The institution of marriage in the Western world has suffered as a result. “Till death do us part” began to give way when women stopped dying in childbirth, and marriage was no longer a 10-20 year commitment (with her dead and him remarried, often several times), but a 60-year one.

It also began to give way when women went to work—when we could earn enough money to take care of ourselves and our children, without depending on a man to bring home the bacon.

And “Till death do us part” began to give way when women discovered they had choices. Real choices. The choice to walk away from abusive or neglectful relationships. The choice to live in peace, rather than fear or misery.

The choice to embrace love and joy, rather than merely duty and resignation.

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That was my life for so many years. Duty and resignation, mixed with hopelessness. Waking up every morning and knowing it would be the same as every other day. Knowing that the only people in my life who would touch me in a pleasurable way—emotionally or physically—were my children. The future nothing more than a grey and endless road unfurled through the emotional desert of my life.

I thought the loneliness and the hopelessness was my cross to bear. I am a person of faith, and I knew all about the call of Jesus Christ. “Take up your cross and follow me.” I knew how to do this—or I thought I did.

Because, at some level, I recognized that doing so was the only way I could honor my commitment to my spouse, I discarded my ability to feel—buried my heart in a rocky grave, picked up the cross of my marriage, and started walking.

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I worked for myself, out of an office in our basement, and my clients were largely gay men. I limited my personal relationships—both in real life and online—to women. No temptations there.

I schooled my eyes and my heart to be faithful, and I was very, very successful for many years. I fooled everyone, I think—except for my best friend, who was the only person to whom I dared confess just how isolated and lonely I felt.

Most of all, I fooled myself into believing that my limited life would suffice.

And then, on July 25, 2004, I walked into the Episcopal Church in our new neighborhood. Although I didn’t realize it until much later, everything I ever believed—about myself, about love, about faithfulness and commitment…about God—was about to change forever.

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For a lot of reasons having to do with my experience of church as a child, I had a policy of attending only churches with female rectors. I’m sure that it’s a spiritual failing on my part, but being able to see a woman on the altar every Sunday is what brought me back into church after my 10-year sojourn into the agnostic wilderness and kept me there.

We sometimes have to work with what we’ve got.

I had checked out the parish online before we moved to the new city. They billed themselves as being “fully loyal to The Episcopal Church,” which I took to mean that they would be at least nominally welcoming to gays and lesbians (the other, nonnegotiable, requirement of mine).

The rector looked good on paper—she was a leading light in the state’s anti-death penalty movement, and the church had a commitment to ministering to the deaf. It looked like a good place for me to be.

But the first Sunday I walked in the place, who should get up to give the sermon but this tall, very attractive…man. Turned out the rector was on a trip to do HIV/AIDS work in Africa for the month, and the new deacon was running the place while she was away.

“Damn!” I thought to myself, “just my luck.”

But the moment he opened his mouth, I was forced to admit—grudgingly—that he was an excellent preacher. And then he talked about how he had been a Southern Baptist minister for 25 years before deciding to swim the Thames and become an Anglican priest. He wasn’t even ordained yet—three decades of experience in the ministry and he was having to go through the same bureaucratic rigmarole that a wet-behind-the-ears novice had to endure.

I had to admire that. It bespoke a level of humility and commitment I wasn’t used to seeing in a male religious leader. He turned out to be a liberal too. And, like me, he was a poetry fan—he quoted Emily Dickinson in his sermons!

My interest was piqued, in spite of myself.

After the service, I introduced myself to him, and said “We have very similar backgrounds. We should get together and swap stories sometime.” Wanting, I’m sure, to seem welcoming to the newcomer, he enthusiastically agreed.

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When I finally walked into his office on October 4, 2004, I didn’t occur to me that I was doing anything dangerous. He was 55 years old—14 years older than I—and a candidate for the priesthood. A holy person. Possibly even a father figure. But certainly not someone it would have occurred to me to fantasize about. After all, as I’ve noted, I had an almost instinctual negative reaction to male religious leaders---I was certainly not someone with a priest fetish.

So I wasn’t prepared for what was about to happen.

Even though I had felt the attraction to him from that first Sunday, I could not have predicted that, in the short period of time we spent talking, something momentous would occur—that some gear in my heart that had long been stuck would move effortlessly into motion, and a door I thought had been locked forever would begin to swing slowly—inexorably—open.

On that day, we talked about growing up as Southern fundamentalists, our move to the Episcopal church, our families, and a host of other things I can’t remember. Nothing special—just the things that two people talk about when they are getting to know one another.

I remember that we laughed a lot.

And I remember that I went home afterwards, called my best friend and said “I’m in trouble.”

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It is a terrible thing to fall in love with a priest.

If you are foolish enough to admit it to anyone, you will be told that you are only attracted to the collar. That you are falling in love with the role, not the man. That a relationship between a priest and a parishioner is inherently exploitative and bad—not to mention against the rules of the diocese. There are barriers everywhere to clergy-lay relationships.

When you are married to someone else, the barriers are—rightly—insurmountable.

If I had been analyzing my attraction to him—had recognized it for what it was—I would never have put myself in the line of fire by going to his office that day. But I didn’t. Because he was older and a priest, I wasn’t on my guard—and it all happened so fast that by the time I realized that I was in over my head, I was utterly powerless to put a stop to it.

I was blindsided.

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My attraction to him was so intense that it frightened me—and it was based on so many things that were only tangentially related to his vocation. I felt that we shared a deep longing for relationship with God—but we also had a shared love of poetry and music, a very similar sense of humor, and a passion for justice.

It was probably no small thing that he was also the happiest person I had ever known. He radiated joy. To one so starved for that feeling, discovering him felt like finding an oasis in the middle of the desert.

But there was something more, even, than these understandable points of connection. Something elemental and deep as the ocean. Something primordial and unimaginably powerful. Something that knit itself into my heart and soul, interweaving the purest joy I’ve ever known with the most abject misery I’ve ever experienced. Something for which I could find no explanation or logical reason.

There was something about him that called me. That’s the only way I can explain it.

I yearned for him. I couldn’t even tell you what I was yearning for. Of course I was physically attracted to him, but it wasn’t just that. If I had the words to describe it, I would use them—but, even all this time later, I simply don’t. The best I can offer is to say that I felt alive when I was with him. Felt, period.

Against my will—against all my schooling of my heart and my emotions—he made me feel again.

And that feeling was agonizing, because I recognized it. I recognized in my feelings for him the feelings I had felt for the great love of my life—P., my first husband, who had come out of the closet in the third year of our marriage.

I recognized the feeling of “soul mate” and “true love” because I had felt them before—or thought I had—with P. We had been friends since high school, and when we started dating toward the end of college, our relationship had this sense of inevitability about it almost from the moment it started. I believed, to the core of my being, that we were soul mates.

Looking back on it now, I see that we were soul mates—and still are in some ways. We are still close friends, and we joke about ending up together in the nursing home, racing our wheelchairs down the hallway.

But when P. came out, my faith in love—in my own ability to discern it—was shattered. Then I could only see betrayal and feel agonizing pain and rage. As our marriage crumbled and died, I bitterly renounced my belief in the idea of soul mates.

When I married again, I looked for a companion who would be faithful to me and a good father. I wanted to be cherished, but I did not look for passion or true love or a soul mate, because my belief in those things had proven to be nothing but a mirage, leading me into heartbreak and misery.

As it threatened to do again, when I began to hear its siren call that beautiful autumn afternoon. Only this time, there was so much more at stake. I had young children, and I felt responsible for ensuring that they grew up in a loving, stable home with two parents—no matter how isolated I felt from their father.

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At that point, the object of my affections was anticipating his ordination to the priesthood, which took place later that month. He was recovering from a miserable 30-year marriage and a long stint as a minister in a denomination where he was increasingly isolated by his liberal theology and his nonjudgmental nature. His vocation was a lifelong one, but he was new to the priesthood…and his calling was written all over him. He was finally happy—blissfully so—and deserved every moment of his hard-won joy. I was painfully aware that nothing could torpedo his new life faster than an entanglement with a married parishioner.

But I could not ignore the growing sense that he and I were connected in some indescribable way. Every time we were in the same room, you could almost hear the hum of electricity between us. No matter how hard I tried, I could not keep my eyes off of him—and I often looked up to find those gray eyes smiling straight at me.

I can remember the day my best friend came to visit and joined me at church. She said to me afterward, “I would be amazed if no one has picked up on the attraction between you!”

She also observed: “Part of what I feel just reflecting on all of this is sadness—because you two seem made for each other. It's just so rare to find someone with whom you connect on so many different levels.”

That didn’t help matters at all.

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Over time, bitter questions gnawed incessantly at me—had I, who had completely given up on the concepts of “soul mates” and “true love,” discovered them again? Had I built my life on the foundation of a huge mistake…the mistake of having given up on real love as a fiction found only in dime-store novels?

And was I the butt of some kind of cosmic joke—losing the first great love of my life, only to fall in love with the one other man I could never, ever have?

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He knew nothing about my feelings for him, of course. He clearly found me attractive, and he loved to tease. But his admiration for me was always expressed in appropriate ways, and our interactions were always completely within the bounds of propriety. Despite my friend’s observation about his attraction to me, he was an honorable man who wouldn’t have dreamed of violating any boundaries.

And, despite my questionable judgment in falling for him to begin with, I wasn’t stupid. I knew that any hint of improper behavior on my part could conceivably put him in grave danger—regardless of the fact that the only thing he had done to encourage my feelings for him was to be himself.

So I tried to kill my feelings for him. The first year, I attended services and Sunday School (which he led), but I avoided all the fun, extracurricular stuff. I thought that my “crush” (for that is what I labeled it at first) would die out if I just kept my involvement to a minimum.

I suppose what I should have done was to leave and go to a different parish—but I could not bring myself to do that. I could not give up what seemed, at first, to be the harmless pleasure of making him laugh, or the funny e-mails we traded about parish responsibilities, or the flash of electricity I got when he put the wafer in my hands every Sunday.

I also feared the inevitable questions—from people in the parish and from my spouse (who was not a regular churchgoer). Why would I leave a parish I clearly loved? What excuse could I possibly give that would make sense to people?

So I stayed, thinking the feelings would die soon enough. But as the year wore away, I had to admit to myself that my strategy wasn’t working. The yearning only grew more intense.

I remember with absolute clarity the date and the moment I knew that my “crush” was more than that—that I was in love with him. I cried on my way home from church for the futility of so much feeling.

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The second year, I decided to try a different tack. I went to *everything* at church. He had a sweetly goofy streak, and was prone to making the occasional cringe-worthy statement. I figured that if I just spent enough time around him, he would say something that would annoy or embarrass me and put the kibosh on my feelings for him.

Bad move. The more I was around him, the more I wanted to be around him.

At home, things were beginning to spiral out of control. For years, I had been fighting dysthymia, which is a fancy name for mild depression. I had been in therapy off-and-on since I was in grad school, but it had never occurred to me that I was clinically depressed and needed to be evaluated. I was able to get out of bed, take care of my children, work—how could I be depressed?

I guess I thought that “real” depression incapacitated you. I didn’t understand that my view of life as completely devoid of color—and my feeling of unending weariness at the thought of my future—were signs of depression.

But in the winter of 2005, I lost my ability to concentrate on my work. For an editor, this is disastrous. I missed the first deadline in my 10-year career as a freelancer. I was petrified at what this meant—so I finally went to see my internist, who put me on antidepressants.

I had great hopes that they would “fix” me—but they didn’t help. I plodded through the spring and summer—always aware of the black cloud of depression that threatened to engulf me.

My best friend and my husband both thought I was improving as a result of the drugs, but I suspect it was wishful thinking on their parts. I never felt any better. Never felt any lifting of the clouds filling my mind and my heart. Continued dragging my cross through the days and nights of my life.

And then, the Monday after Thanksgiving, something happened—a little thing that would be the pebble that started an avalanche. A little thing that would affect all the people I loved most in the world.

I went to give my husband a hug—and he literally pulled away from me.

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This wasn’t really unusual, I suppose. He had never been one to initiate affection or respond to my own attempts in any enthusiastic way.

And he was always leery of physical contact where anyone might see us. Never mind that it was 5:30 in the morning and everyone else in the house was asleep…

But there was some history here, as well—history captured in a photo taken at my wedding to P. He and I had been instructed by the photographer to face one another and get close together. He may have instructed us to kiss, though I don’t remember.

But in the photo, P. is pulling away from me.

For years, every time I looked at that photo, I got a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. Felt that hot flush of rejection, followed by a stabbing feeling of pain and loss.

So when my husband pulled away from me that fateful morning, all I could visualize was that photo. And when I did—with years of rejection on the one hand, and my deep longing for someone else on the other—I actually heard something break in my heart. I heard a sound like glass shattering, and, for a moment, I saw an image of my life in a million, sharp-edged, bleeding pieces on the floor.

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I called a therapist that same day.

When I walked into her office, my first words were “Divorce is not an option. I need you to help me learn to be happy with the life that I have.”

She tried. I will give her credit for that.

But by Christmas 2005, I was slowly spiraling into madness. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. I lost 20 lbs. without even trying—probably the only woman in America who lost weight over the holidays.

In a few months I dropped from a size 10 to a size 4, and the size 4s began to hang on me. My breasts turned into empty bags of skin.

My husband never said a word.

I started running (which probably didn’t help the weight loss). My beloved was a marathoner, and he had mentioned to me once that a combination of running and antidepressants were the things that had vaulted him out of a crippling depression. I figured it was worth a try.

Running hurt. But the pain I felt when I was running was good—a clean and holy pain that helped me cope, at least for a little while, with the crushing weight in my chest and the growing sense of desperation I felt.

And I prayed. I got up every morning at 4:45, so that I would have time to pray before I went running. I prayed anguished prayers in which I begged God to take away the feelings that threatened to overwhelm me.

But God seemed to have taken an extended vacation. My prayers felt as if they were coming back marked “Return to Sender.”

My therapist pushed me to talk to my husband—to tell him how I was feeling. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it—and I knew the reason why, even if I couldn’t admit it to her. I could barely admit it to myself. I didn’t believe that things could get better, because, deep down, I knew I didn’t want them to. I had reached the point where I didn’t care anymore.

The rejected hug—such a little thing when considered against 13 years of marriage and two beautiful children!—had been the last straw.

To make matters worse, I had never been very physically attracted to my husband. As the years wore on, and he denied me the affection I craved, what attraction there was disappeared. For many years before I fell in love with the priest, I had had to have several drinks before I could be intimate with him.

Now, our infrequent lovemaking sessions were torture. There was so little connection between us that he had no idea that I cried every time we had sex for the last 8 months of our marriage. In the dark, he couldn’t see my tears—and, as I said, I had schooled myself well.

I could sob without making a sound.

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Something broke in me the first week of April 2006. I could see no possible way out of a marriage which felt like a dead and rotting corpse on my back—and I knew by now that nothing was going to change…both because past was prologue and because I no longer had the desire or the energy to try any more.

My despair and grief over my hopeless love, coupled with my sense of being violated in the intimacy of my marriage, finally overwhelmed me.

I remember feeling utterly exhausted and hopeless.

And then, I developed this strange and terrible compulsion. There was a beautiful stretch of wooded road close to my house, which I had to drive multiple times a day. I began driving up and down it, looking for a tree big enough to crash my car into.

At first it was kind of an idle fancy. I’d wonder how big was big enough? How fast would I have to go? Should I take off my seatbelt? Could I make it look like an accident?

Then I began to get frustrated. There weren’t that many big trees on that stretch of road. Mostly young ones that didn’t look strong enough to handle the impact of my 1996 Mercury Grand Marquis.

The idea began to obsess me. I didn’t want to hurt my children—and even in my anguish I knew that suicide would be the most devastating thing I could do to them—but I was just so very, very tired. I just wanted to be Gone. I had been so grateful in the beginning for learning to feel again. But now I wanted it to stop—I wanted to rest from so much feeling.

And finally, as the cacophony in my head grew louder and more insistent, I heard The Voice.

I was driving down the road, trying once again to choose a tree that would do the job, and I nearly had an accident just from hearing it. The Voice was quite loud, and it was adamant. It was a woman’s voice, and it was like no other voice I’ve ever heard. Here is exactly what It said:

“STOP! You do not have to do this. You do not have to live this life! There are other options.”

That was all.

It was enough.

I decided, in the words of the prophet Ezekiel, to “turn and live."

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Two weeks later, on Maundy Thursday, I went to the rector of my church and told her as much of the story as I felt I could tell. I needed to know if I should stop taking communion as penance for what I was about to do. Diane said “Absolutely not!”

The she asked me point-blank “Is there someone else? Either physical or emotional?”

I was prepared for this question. I had thought long and hard about what the Truth in this situation was. The Truth was that my marriage had been an emotional and intimate wasteland for years. My inability to live in it any longer was understandable to most compassionate people without dragging an unwitting third party into the mess.

So I could not bring myself to confess about my feelings—in part because I was afraid he would be in trouble, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. He had no idea that I was in love with him, that I was struggling with suicidal thoughts, or that there was anything wrong with my marriage at all.

And, to be honest, I didn’t want to tell her, in part, because there was still some very small part of me that hoped beyond hope that I could have a relationship with him sometime in the future. I was afraid if I confessed, she would tell him and that would be the end of that. I am not proud of this, but it is the truth.

So when she asked me her question, what I said was “No—but there is the dream of someone else. The dream of something else—some other kind of life.”

It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was the truth, insofar as I felt I could tell it.

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That night, I went to the Maundy Thursday service and—for the first time ever—had my feet washed. I had long had a deeply negative reaction to the idea of it. I had no problem with the idea of washing the feet of others, but the idea of having someone wash mine was, quite simply, more than I could bear. I’m still not sure why, except that there was something so incredibly intimate about it. I had never been able to bring myself to do it before.

I had confessed my reservations about Maundy Thursday to this man I loved, and he had gently encouraged me to take the risk. So I let him wash my feet, because I loved and trusted him. And because I needed…something. I wasn’t sure what, but I was propelled to go up to the front of the church even though I was trembling and dragged my feet all the way. It was almost as if there was a hand in the small of my back, pushing me in the direction I needed to go.

And when he knelt in front of me and took my feet in his hands, I felt the Holy Spirit rush through them. Felt peace, and strength, and—yes—love flow effortlessly into my body through those long, gentle fingers.

I went back to my seat and wept. And this time—in this place where the lights were on and there was nowhere to hide—I took no pains to conceal the fact that I was weeping.

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Things moved fast after that.

I broke the news to my husband on the night of the Easter Vigil. At first, he responded in a way that I hadn’t expected. He admitted that he, too, was unhappy and he seemed to echo my desire for both of us to find a resurrection in a different, separate life.

That didn’t last long, however. Once we had “cleared the air,” he became convinced that was all that was necessary to mend our relationship. At that point, he started trying to shower me with the affection for which I had pleaded for years.

As you can probably imagine, that had the opposite effect of the one he intended.

I didn’t want kisses and hugs now, because I couldn’t bear for him to touch me. And I was furious that he would only give me what I had begged for when I had one foot out the door. It felt manipulative and false.

It didn’t help that he admitted he had deliberately withheld affection from me for all those years. Why, you ask? Because he was angry with me. I spent too much time on the computer. I wasn’t organized. I didn’t do things with the house or the children like he wanted them.

In essence, he was angry at me for…being me.

I was flabbergasted. I knew that the computer had been an issue. I had turned to online relationships with other mothers to find the companionship and mental stimulation that my day-to-day life did not provide. My husband had complained off and on about how much time I spent online---but, as an off-the scale extrovert who was buried in her basement and rarely saw other adult human beings, I felt as if my online friendships were a lifeline.

And, in tandem with my faith commitments, it was those friendships that had convinced me I had no other choice than to stay in my marriage. I spent years interacting with well-informed people who said, over and over, that children from low-conflict, unhappy marriages did not benefit from divorce in any way. That parents in those marriages had a duty to suck it up and stay together for the sake of the kids.

The irony was overwhelming. He was angry about, and jealous of, the very thing that had kept me in the marriage for so long.

It was also ironic that the very things that had attracted him to me in the first place---my spontaneous nature, my allergy to structure---had become a source of contention.

But even though he was unhappy with me, he had never said, “Doxy, I won’t be affectionate until I’m no longer angry with you—and here’s what it’s going to take to get me there.” He had walked out of counseling. He had listened to my pleas for affection in stony silence. He had held a grudge, and given me no way to make amends.

His admission that he had knowingly refused to give me something I had literally begged for and cried over was the last nail in the coffin of our marriage. In my eyes, it was an admission of deliberate cruelty. His confession literally sucked the breath right out of me for a moment.

I will never forget the look on his face when he said it—it was the confessional look of a little boy who has been naughty, but who is now confident that Mama will forgive him and give him a cookie for telling the truth.

Did I mention that that I am not a cook? And that I don’t bake cookies?

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That confession freed me. It made me realize that I had been playing the role of Sisyphus for some Olympian god who would never be satisfied with my efforts. It gave me the courage to begin the process of leaving.

It took my husband a while to catch on, and when I didn’t respond to his belated attempts at connection, he got angry. When I tried to explain that the lack of intimacy in our marriage had killed it, he screamed at me “Well, you never said you would DIVORCE me if things didn’t change!!!!”

The man has several advanced degrees, is a Phi Beta Kappa, and won multiple scholarships to college and graduate school. He is one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. And he stood there and said to me that if I had only threatened him with divorce earlier, things might have been different…

Now it was my turn to look at him and blink.

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I came to suspect that the hurt and anger he felt toward me had less to do with me as a person and more to do with what I came to think of as “the picture on the desk.” He was not happy—he admitted as much—but he was content in his unhappiness. He could present his vivacious wife and his two beautiful children and his lovely McMansion to the world, and everyone would nod their heads and say “That Bob is such a nice guy! Doesn’t he have a nice family?!”

The picture of us on his desk told the world that he was a successful husband and father, in addition to being a success in his profession. By leaving, I was saying, for all the world to hear, that he wasn’t a great husband. That the picture the world had of him was a false one.

To make things worse, I was not leaving him because I was involved with another man.

(That I desperately wanted to be involved with another man was not really germane—or at least that’s what I told myself—given that the man in question knew nothing of either my feelings or the state of things on my home-front. Again, my thought was “Why should I drag an unwitting third party into this mess?”)

My having an affair would have been humiliating enough, but at least my husband could have blamed someone else, and branded me a whore in the bargain. At least that would have gotten him some sympathy.

But for me to leave for no apparent “reason” left room for conjectures of the wildest kind—and most of those conjectures were not about me. I know this because I heard some of them from friends and neighbors—and I put them to rest as best I could. But I suspect that he worried about what people thought—and whom they were blaming for our breakup.

It can’t have been comfortable to consider that maybe I wasn’t going to get all of the blame after all.

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To be honest, I am surprised by how little blame I did get. To my amazement, very few people seemed surprised. In fact, only those who didn’t know us all that well seemed shocked. All my years of worrying over how I would be perceived if I did the unthinkable and left had turned out to be wasted time. My family, my friends, my community of faith, and my work colleagues all rallied around me—giving me support through the hardest of the transitions and beyond.

I left most of the “stuff” and the house that had always felt like a prison to me, and I moved into an apartment that I loved. I started working more, since I was now going to be solely responsible for my own living. Life as a freelance writer offers no guarantee of financial stability, but I found that contracts seemed to come when I needed them most.

I did my best to maintain some stability for my children, who seemed to settle into the new arrangement of half a week with mom and half a week with dad with a rapidity that stunned me. There were a few tummy aches and nightmares, but “few” was the operative word.

My very shy daughter blossomed in her kindergarten class, making friends and going to her first sleepovers (something I didn’t do until I was in 3rd grade!). My son continued to excel at school and at his chosen sport, karate. They went through periodic bouts of sadness over the divorce, but, in general, they were happy, well-adjusted kids.

As the months wore on, I gained some much-needed weight and lost my haunted, horror-show look. I learned to laugh again. The clouds that had filled my mind and my heart lifted, and my life—once a grey and endless road—morphed into a path of adventure, excitement, and hope. And the grey was transformed—mercifully, magically—into glorious Technicolor.

***************************

And what of the priest?

I need to be very clear about the fact that I did not leave my husband for him.

No matter how much I felt for him, I knew that the chance of my ever having a relationship with him was slim to none. He had never given me any indication that he knew about my feelings or that he was open to a relationship with me. To have based my decision to leave my husbandon nothing more than a wish or a pie-in-the-sky hope would have been madness.

By the time I heard The Voice and decided to leave, I was half-crazy—but I wasn’t insane. Not yet, anyway.

I left because it was a choice between leaving or dying—literally. The Voice had convinced me that divorce was not the worst sin I could commit. Ultimately, I left because I decided that my children needed a mother who was sane and alive.

True, I carried that secret hope of being able to be with the priest in my heart, but I knew better than to count it as a real possibility. There were so many roadblocks in the way, and I had sworn to myself that I would not put him, or his vocation, in danger.

There was certainly no possibility of a relationship with him while I was still married—and divorce takes a long time in North Carolina. Over and beyond the fact that he was a priest (no small thing, that!), in this state, you have to be physically separated for one year before you can even file for divorce—and North Carolina also has some pretty draconian laws about extramarital relations. If you are married, having a sexual relationship with anyone other than your spouse is a crime (even if you are separated).

I wasn’t having sex with him—which would have been hard to do since I had never even been alone with him! (All our interactions had been at church, with open office doors and plenty of other people around.) But I could certainly see my husband deciding that the priest was the source of all of our problems and deciding to destroy his career to salve his wounded pride and hurt me in the bargain.

I also knew there could be no hope of a relationship with the object of my affections as long as we were both in the same parish. Diocesan rules required the bishop’s permission for a priest to date a member of the congregation—and I was far from sanguine that the bishop would give that permission. I would be twice-divorced with young children—hardly the most “suitable” potential date for this priest in whom the bishop had taken a personal interest.

One solution that suggested itself to me was to leave my home parish. That would clear the way for me to date him—assuming he was interested. The thought of leaving my parish was painful—but if there was the slightest glimmer of hope of a relationship with him, I would have moved my membership to Moscow or Beijing without a second thought. The “pull” to him was that strong.

I was pretty sure, however, that I could simply move to one of the downtown churches (both of which had better music and prettier sanctuaries than mine—even if they weren’t so liberal). I was fortunate that I had friends in those parishes—I would be starting over (in more ways than one), but I wouldn’t be alone if I did.

I knew, however, that—if I were to realize my heart’s desire—it would probably cause a great scandal. There would be the inevitable speculation that he had somehow been involved in the break-up of my marriage. Knowing this, I could not predict whether he would be willing to take a chance on me. I could only pray.

So I loved, and longed, and waited—waited for the day that I would be free to do something as simple as invite him to meet me at Starbucks for a cup of coffee. Waited for the day when being seen in public with me would not be a death knell to his career.

Waited for the day when I could find out if he felt the same sense of connection to me that I did to him.

***************************

For the year after I left my marriage, I worked with him on several parish education projects. I created a newsletter for the church’s Faith & Science Dialogue program—an initiative he had helped to start and to which he was passionately committed.

He attended my Education for Ministry class on occasion, offering his knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and church history whenever I asked him to. And always, he teased me, made me laugh, praised my gifts with an extravagance I knew they didn’t merit. He made me feel valued and special.

Every time I was with him, my feelings grew stronger.

My “limbo year,” as I began to think of it, was almost up when he was offered a job as rector in the parish that served his alma mater in the western part of the state. He told me that he was being considered because he wanted to use me as a reference.

I thought my heart would break in two.

I shook my fist at God—I knew I had sinned by leaving my marriage, but the priest had proven to be a conduit of God’s love and grace for me. The joy he brought into my life—simply by existing—made me believe that God might decide to forgive my failings and allow me to rediscover love. Having him snatched away, just at the point where I might actually be able to openly explore the connection I sensed between us, seemed like yet another cruel cosmic joke.

But even then, I couldn’t bring myself to give up hope. By this time, I had been in love with the man for nearly three years. My inner voice whispered to me that the new job might present an opportunity—he would be 2.5 hours away…but he would be in a different community, where no one knew me.

I prayed and waited.

***************************

And the days came when it was safe. Safe to tell him how I felt about him. Safe to be seen in public with him. Safe to love him out loud.

I had not dreamed the connection. Had not imagined the soul-deep bond between us. He felt it too, though he had been much slower to acknowledge it to himself…for obvious (and entirely appropriate) reasons.

He loved me back. Loved me with an openness and an intensity that I had dreamed about, but had never believed I would actually experience. Loved me for me—warts and all.

And in that unexpected, electric, passionate love, I found my best self. Found wholeness and happiness. Found grace and mercy.

Found God.

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Remember what I said about how terrible it is to fall in love with a priest? How people assume that you are drawn only to the collar? My therapist was sure this was what had happened to me. She used to tell me that I had idealized him, and that it would be very different if I ever had to be around him day after day.

I know in most cases she would have been correct. But in this one instance, she could not have been more mistaken.

I know all his bad habits now. I know that he leaves the toilet seat up a lot (though not always), and that, despite the fact his desk at church is always immaculate, he is an absolute slob in many ways. You could probably grout a bathroom with the gooey toothpaste he leaves all over the sink. We won’t even discuss the state of his kitchen, or the fact that he leaves his compost bucket on the kitchen counter…

But knowing his idiosyncrasies has not changed my love for him at all. Because being with him has also shown me that all the things that made me so powerfully attracted to him from the beginning were not fantasies or idealizations. Although what I am about to say about him may imply that I think otherwise, I know he is not perfect—and one of his more attractive characteristics is that he will be the first to tell you so!

But what is he? Brilliant, but humble. Unfailingly kind, thoughtful, and selfless. A man of honor and integrity who takes responsibility for his decisions and his mistakes. A leader who leads by being a servant. A strong man who isn’t afraid to weep when he is moved or to ask forgiveness when he is in the wrong.

An honest man, who willingly shares his weaknesses so that others might feel empowered to face their own. A funny man who pokes fun at himself, rather than others. A loving man who knows the importance of connection, and who understands that you have to make yourself vulnerable to pain and loss in order to know joy and love in their full measure.

He is funny, dear, and beautiful—inside and out—and he has shown me what it means to live a Christ-like life.

God knew exactly what She was doing when She called him to the priesthood.

I know who he really is now, and I love him even more than I did when the idea of being with him was an impossible fantasy. I am constantly amazed by the depth of my feelings for him—how I reach a point where I think I cannot possibly love him any more than I already do…and find that I was wrong.

Maybe that is a benefit of discovering love in middle age. We look for the good in each other because we both know our time together is limited—a consequence of distance, family obligations, careers, and the simple fact that we are older and there is a significant gap in our ages. We have each known long years of pain and sorrow in our relationships—so we know we have to seize each moment of this one and wring every last ounce of happiness out of it.

The geographic distance between us is difficult at times, but we have learned to make the most of our time together. The attention he pays to me and to our relationship, both when we are apart and when we are together, provides a counterweight to the difficulty of separation.

And it is difficult, because when I am away from him, it feels as if I left my heart behind in his keeping.

But I never doubt that he loves me, because he lives and breathes that love in ways both big and small. Brings me my tea every morning I am with him. Prays with me—the only man I’ve ever been with who did. Keeps me supplied with the lilies I love. Reads and writes me poetry and makes me laugh. Makes me feel beautiful, funny, and smart. Incarnates the Holy Spirit for me, in every word, glance, and act.

And when we are sleeping, he never, ever, lets go of me. In the depths of the night, he whispers to me that he loves me…tells me how much I mean to him before he swims back into sleep. He is not afraid to touch me, or hug me, or kiss me. He never pulls away from me.

I finally know what it feels like to be cherished. To embrace love and joy, rather than resignation. To give my whole heart, without holding anything back, and have it be accepted as if it were the most precious gift in the world. To get back everything I give—and more.

I still yearn for him. After all this time, I still crave his company. Still want only to be in the same place with him, breathing the air he breathes. Still feel my heart jump into my throat every time he walks into the room, or turns those grey eyes in my direction and grins at me. Still want him in ways I’ve never wanted anyone else.

I love him. I have loved him from the moment I first laid eyes on him. I will love him until I draw my last breath. There is, ultimately, no rhyme or reason to my love for him. It just is—deep as the ocean, powerful as gravity.

I was blindsided. Deo gratias.