Something I've Been Thinking About

I was on Facebook some time in January and someone posted about something hard in their life.  I don't remember what it was.  Maybe their marriage wasn't going well, or their job sucked.  But I read that and I thought, "What if I said publicly how things have really been going in my marriage?"  And I let that thought sit for a while.  Because here's what I assume:  Everyone loves Rob and thinks he's been faultless through this whole Tamra leaving the Mormon church thing.  I doubt they'd believe my story.  And if they did, it'll all come back around to being my fault somehow anyway.  I'm always pegged as the bad guy.

And then I unfriended over 200 people on Facebook and felt a lot better about life (eventually).

As a pre-comment, I'd like to say that I'm used to being the bad guy.  The idea makes me laugh as I type this, but this is a sometimes source of frustration for me.  Rob comes off as a squeaky clean super hero and I'm the one who is to blame for whatever it is.  Rob's nicer and calmer and quieter and more righteous and more on task.  Whatever.  I mean, I understand why this happens.  But it's just not true.  So it's no surprise to me that this carries over to the Mormon church issue.  As it happens, I was the instigator in this particular turn of events, but Rob's inaction is no badge of honor.

So I'd like to set the record straight on this particular point.

When I started the process of leaving the Mormon church, I pretty quickly was hit over the head by the cosmos.  I was filled with love and patience and clarity of thought.  So while I was re-thinking the nature of the universe, God, myself, religion, morality, and existence, there were particular things I was NOT re-thinking.  Mainly: my marriage, children, and family, and my need to love them deeper than ever before.  I knew they needed time.  I was willing to give it.

I was patient.  Rob was terrified and wasn't sure what to do with me.  Should he divorce me and run away from our marriage?  He needed to protect our children, he was sure of that.  So he made it perfectly clear that if I talked to the children about my experience and beliefs, he would divorce me.

To those of you reading this right now who are thinking, "Well, that makes sense," let me make another thing clear:  It is terrifying to live like that.  It is abusive and wrong.  While I don't fault Rob for what he did, because it's more complicated than that, I REFUSE to accept this course of action as correct.  I lived through it.  It almost destroyed our family.  (Insert cuss words.)

However, I'm interested in keeping my marriage, so I honored his wishes as best as I could.  But I pushed back.  Inch by inch I would realize that I couldn't live like that, and I'd reclaim a small piece of my dignity.  I'd come to Rob with my realization and we'd discuss it.  And to his credit, even though it terrified him, he'd give me the inch I needed to breathe, and we'd continue.

I finally identified what I ultimately needed:  A morally neutral space to exist.  Rob wasn't above me in this theoretical space and I wasn't above him.  I wouldn't need to "watch what I say" because what I had to say was just as valuable as what everyone else has to say.  I didn't need Rob to understand me and I certainly didn't need him to agree.  I just needed a space that was safe for him AND for me.  I KNEW we could build that together.  It's not too much to hope for.

Except there are no road maps to this space, and getting there is hard.  So it came to be that by early summer of last year, I was convinced that Rob was just not interested in building this space with me.  Or if he was interested, he was incapable.  I was nearly totally convinced that this whole marriage thing wasn't going to work out.  I still was not allowed to speak to my children, Rob was still very condescending, and while he would give me more leeway, it would blow up in our faces over and over again in very hurtful ways.  The underlying respect that I knew we needed just wasn't there.

And then something completely unexpected happened:  Rob started listening.  I don't know why.  I was looking into every issue under the (Mormon) sun - because it's fascinating - and he started listening to what I was learning.  Most of the things I was reading / listening to weren't new to me, but they were new to him.  And they're not easy to ignore because, again, life is complicated.

In September I told Rob that I wanted to tell the kids what I was finally ready to admit to myself and everyone else:  I didn't believe any of it any more and I wasn't coming back to Mormonism.  AND HE SAID YES.  We talked to them together.

What also started happening about this time is that Rob was catching on to how badly he'd been treating me.  He had been telling me in a thousand different ways that I was worth less than I had been as an active Mormon.  When that started becoming obvious to him, I think he was shocked.  He finally looked at me and said, "Tamra, you're not broken."  I cried like a baby when he told me that.  I'd known I wasn't broken, but HE hadn't known.  That was the moment I'd been waiting for!  Suddenly it hit me how much I'd been enduring.  A year's worth of pain came to the surface.  I was grateful that Rob was coming around, but there was a lot of work to be done to mend our relationship.  He said he was ready to go, and after a week or so of me (literally) hyperventilating about how hard my marriage had been, I was ready to go, too.

(There have been times during this process of figuring out my marriage that I have experienced what I can only describe as PTSD moments.  When Rob realized the pain he'd been causing me, and I was free to stop just enduring pain, the reality of the depth of that pain hit me.  PTSD moments are terrible and terrifying.)

In October we decided as a family to stop attending church.
In November the policy came out and I formally resigned as a member.

Except now Rob was in a free fall.  When I started leaving the church it was rainbows and butterflies.  I mean, it was hard, but it was AWESOME for my inner self.  When Rob started having doubts and stopped attending, his identity was stripped away.  He was terrified and unsure about everything.  I hadn't anticipated that.  Having just gone through it myself, I thought it'd be a more positive experience for him.  It was for me!  Why would it be different for him?

Well, it was different, for whatever reason.  And while that was okay, it was hard to figure out.  Rob had been so unwilling to give me our morally neutral space, and now he was declaring me the moral superiority winner and asking me to lead.  I refused.  I don't WANT the moral high ground, and I certainly won't be his superior.

So Rob floundered.  And as he floundered he blamed me.  Nearly every day he told me that I'd ruined his life.  In those exact words.  "Tamra, you've ruined everything."  "You're ruining my life."  "Everything's ruined because of you."  (Again, for those of you who think this isn't a big deal, please just imagine hearing this from your spouse almost every day for 3 or 4 months. ...  Yep.)

And now we've circled back around to January.  I told Rob I couldn't do this any more.  I didn't want to be married to someone who actually thought I'd ruined his life.  And geez, does he just LOVE suffering?  If I've ruined his life, FIND A NEW WIFE!  Holy cow.  This can all come to an end.

This wasn't the first time we'd discussed divorce over the last year and a half.  I've offered divorce as a reasonable solution to me leaving the church since the beginning of this journey.  I know that lots of couples don't make it out alive.  And I know that church attendance / belief is not negotiable for some couples.  I'm okay with that.  I didn't want to get divorced, and I wasn't looking to destroy my marriage.  On top of that, I was VERY willing to work through this.  I just wouldn't settle for a bad relationship.  Being repeatedly told that you're ruining your spouse's life is a bad relationship.

There's no end to this story, of course.  When I came to him in January as a broken person - with the pain and sadness heavily upon me - and asked him if I'd really ruined his life, he said no.  He was telling the truth and we both knew it.  I cried.  Hard.  I said in a weak voice, "You can't say that ever again.  I can't hear it again."  And he said softly, "I know."  And he held me close.

We're still married.  Actually, for the first time in a year and a half, we're happily married.  Rob snapped out of his free fall depression.  He's figuring out his beliefs ("It might not ever be what you want, Tamra."  "I think you've missed the point, Rob.  I don't CARE what you believe.  I just care that you want me in your life.").  We have reclaimed our marriage and it's a beautiful, wonderful, amazing thing to love someone deeply and feel safe with them.  I don't think I'll ever not feel grateful for that.

And that's my story.  Over the last year and a half, people have generally been so concerned for Rob.  He's been a victim, a hero, whatever.  Very few of those people have even cared to ask how things have gone for me.  I guess since I was the aggressor, I got no sympathy.  Well, those days are over.  I refuse to be the bad guy.  I'm not scary.  I'm not mean.  I'm not wrong.  Well, I might be wrong, but so might you.  In reality, I'm just a person trying to live a good life, just like you.  And that's a lot easier to do now that I'm not being consistently mistreated by the person I love most in the world.

That's what I've been thinking about.