For Better For Worse
Relationships. Ah, yes — sources of our greatest joys and our deepest pain.
One of the most memorable sessions at the Salt Lake symposium this month was Ronda Callister’s panel on couples’ experiences with faith and doubt. What happens when one partner in an LDS temple marriage starts asking difficult religious-spiritual questions? Some spouses find such questions irrelevant (”Why does this matter?!”) and others see threats to cherished eternal promises (”But. . . our FU-ture!”) — Now, I have to be careful — that may seem like I’m making fun of the responses. But these are serious concerns where partners are trying their best to share truthfully and kindly with each other — as well as to be equals in the spiritual arena.
Some couples find themselves closer after addressing a religious-spiritual divide (homage here to Stephen Carter’s recent post “Lament of the Bridge”), and others find themselves alienated from one another — even if they stay together.
I used to exhaust Bill with my reading. Some fifteen years ago, if I were reading something really (spiritually or religiously) interesting, I’d be saying to myself, “What part of this do I dare share with Bill?” If there was a passage that I thought maybe he’d like, I’d get nervous with anticipation, wanting to read it to him and have him say, “Oh yeah! Way interesting! So THIS is what you’ve been talking about.” That went on for years, my regaling him with passages here and there — in hopes that he would appreciate my spiritually meandering concerns. One morning, Bill simply asked me if I would put away all “my” books. Just like that. I was stunned. In all fairness, he was working 12 hours a day starting his own business and was now the most junior member of the stake high council, he had seven little kids waiting for him when he came home for dinner and a lonely stay-at-home wife who wanted to talk about strange things. Wasn’t there enough to worry about already?
To Bill’s credit, not long afterwards he realized that ideas were more nourishing to me than bread. And he demonstrated that his love was deeper than his exhaustion. He began doing more than simply entertaining my questions, he gave me the greatest gift a husband can give — he began believing in the reasons I was asking questions in the first place. Not that he always agreed, he just believed in me. If you’ve experienced this, you know the difference. Bill and I call that period of time when belief in each other surged to a new, deeper level our “change of heart.” (OK, our first change of heart.)
So here’s my question. Have you experienced being out-of-balance in a relationship because of religious concerns, doubts, or spiritual questions? What casualties have you suffered and was the price worth it, or was it too great — in retrospect? If you’ve reached a truce or resolution with a partner, what are the guideposts to avoiding all-out chaos?
August 29th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Lisa,
I’ve heard so many comments about that panel session at this last symposium - I am definitely looking forward to getting my cds. It’s also available at this page, session # SL06273.
As to your questions, I personally can’t offer much, but I’m looking forward to other responses. I will say that I’m impressed with your husband, demonstrating his love for and belief in you.
In my case, my wife and I have been on separate but parallel paths. While my spiritual journey has been driven through the reading and questioning, hers has been much more intuitive and based on relationships. I can relate to your desire to have your husband suddenly get excited about your books, but I am content (and thankful) knowing that my wife and I have been able to avoid the conflicts and concerns that so many others experience as they move along their paths.
August 29th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
I missed that session too, though I plan to listen to it with my wife. The panel sounded like such a success I wonder if Sunstone shouldn’t consider turning it into an annual event, like “Why We Stay”?
I can definitely relate to this comment: …if I were reading something really (spiritually or religiously) interesting, I’d be saying to myself, “What part of this do I dare share with Bill?” If there was a passage that I thought maybe he’d like, I’d get nervous with anticipation, wanting to read it to him and have him say, “Oh yeah! Way interesting! So THIS is what you’ve been talking about.”
I’ve made the mistake of trying to force feed my new-found theories down my wife’s throat. I’ve also made the mistake of not telling her enough, so that she’ll sometimes look at me in bewilderment after I’ve made what I thought to be a fairly innocuous comment and say, “Where did that idea come from?” Overall though, I have to say my wife’s been very accepting and supportive of me.
Despite the pain that comes from unmet expectations, communication is the only alternative. You can’t just “put it away” without something dying inside of the person and/or the relationship. Resentment will grow in its place. Spiritual nourishment, as you said, is like bread. In the end, I see more similarities than differences between various belief systems. The communication, respect, love, show of loyaly, trust, gratitude, etc. that comes from recognition of this fact can actually strengthen the bonds of a marriage or family to a degree unknown when everyone believed alike, as Lisa and Bill would probably attest.
John Dehlin’s “Mormon Stories” podcasts #10 and #11 (called “Finding Our Way Back Home”) featuring “Roasted Tomatoes” and “Serenity Valley” is an inspiring example of a couple loving each other despite differences of belief: http://mormonstories.org/?page_id=102
August 29th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
I had an interesting experience with all this.
A woman I lived with told me I was gong to hell.
Fortunately she wasn’t my wife.
See, my family was sharing the rent on a big honking house with another family. So we lived together. It was going OK except that, according to the wife of the other family, I was seriously losing my way. I had been involved with the Sugar Beet for about a year, and I was just discovering that it was therapeutic to write (and publish) about Mormonism (I was in an MFA program at the time). And of course, little of my writing sounded like the Ensign. This new step in my path was so intoxicating that I probably talked about it much more loosely than she liked. And besides that, she was certain that the Sugar Beet was of the devil.
Well, she decided to help me out spiritually by organizing a family scripture study each morning (I didn’t realize this, I just thought it was something she wanted to do. But it was ENTIRELY for my benefit.). She must have set it for a time before the Holy Ghost wakes up because things only got worse. You see, I have this habit of skipping all the “And it came to pass” es when I read aloud from the BofM.
This was the ember that fell blissfully into the dynamite factory.
It was interesting to see how quickly communication broke down between us. (Even funnier to see how willing she was to let a debauched apostate tend her children every day.) See, the hard thing was, she was a TBM (with a medicinal Dr. Pepper addiction), one that had come back after going on an inactive spree, which would make you think that she’d have empathy for me. But she didn’t.
I probably wasn’t too helpful either. My path was so important to me - the Sugar Beet was a veritable lifeline - that I couldn’t deviate from it enough to peer through the trees to see where she was coming from.
Eventually the gods of irony ordained that we crash our cars into each other on a blind curve of our driveway.
So, we separated and she only had to deal with her own spouse from then on (I probably made her really appreciate the guy.).
Meanwhile, my own wife was just trying to understand me. I didn’t think I deserved this. As far as I knew, I was breaking a covenant. She had said, “I’ll marry this nice faithful fellow and be a good wife to him.” She didn’t realize that she would have to drop the “faithful” part 6 years into our marriage, though I certainly tried to retain the “nice” aspect of my personality.
According to all the talks I had heard, and all the gossip around Church, my wife had every right to demand that get back on the strait and narrow and keep the family eternal. I couldn’t figure out why she still seemed to like me.
Michael Callister tells about a severe miscommunication between himself and Ronda in the symposium session. He was questioning idea that temple marriage was the only eternal marriage. But the way he articulated it to Ronda, she thought he was implying that he didn’t want their marriage to be eternal. Very similar things have happened between my wife and myself from time to time.
The problem was, I was trying to form my thoughts, and she was willing to listen. So she got my first drafts, when things weren’t clear, and believe me, I needed to do a lot of global and content revision, all while she was listening, wondering just what it was I was trying to get at. So we went through a lot of that.
I’m still not sure why she stuck with me. I’m probably not worth it. But I’m sure glad she did.
Now for the twist. I found out only a few weeks ago that my type of spiritual discourse had come to dominate what she felt we could talk about. For Noelle, Church language is resonant. She interprets it in a way that is nourishing to her (while I’m constantly trying to reinvent a spiritual language because Mormon language has so many negative connotations for me). So for a while now, she’s had to be alone in her own spiritual thoughts.
It broke my heart when I found this out. So I’ve been trying to make more room for her in our conversation. I’m trying to say, “All right. So Church language doesn’t appeal to me. However, I know that when Noelle talks in Church language, she isn’t judging me or challenging my worldview (hopefully to my credit, I had never tried to challenge hers, the only thing I think I’ve done right this whole time is that I’ve never believed that I was right); she’s just talking in the way that works for her. So I should be able to let go of my own dislike for that kind of approach and accompany her on her journey, just as she accompanied me on mine. I should be able to interpret her language so I can talk with her.”
Isn’t that awful that I was so thick? It still kills me.
August 29th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Jana and I have really struggled with being out of sync in our religious values/goals through parts of our marriage. Part of the problem is that we established our marriage with certain expectations, without realizing that our religious perspective could change over time. When I began having serious doubts about the Church, it threw our marriage into a crisis.
We resolved the problem by renegotiating our marriage. We decided that we would value one another and our relationship regardless of our religious outlook. We respect each others’ separate spiritual journeys–though sometimes they coincide (we’re currently attending a Quaker meeting). I think I can say that we have reached a point of relative harmony.
Maybe Jana will chime in and complete the picture, so you can hear from both sides of this couple.
August 29th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Interesting subject, and very relevant for me right now. I missed the panel discussion, but I’ll put in another plug for John Delhin’s podcasts #10 and #11 with Roasted Tomatoes and Serenity Valley. Very insightful.
My wife and I are both on a sort of a spiritual journey, but we approach it in very different ways. However, I think working through our doubts with one another has definitely improved our relationship in a number of ways.
I’ve recently been visiting a number of local churches and thus have not been attending my local ward. While my wife shares many of my doubts, she has decided to be more faithful in attendance than I have. I must have finally become an agenda item in last Sunday’s Ward Council because the Bishop called my wife in to talk with him this last Sunday, another member of the bishopric dropped by the house to talk with me, and the EQ president called me to set up an appointment. The Bishop assured my wife that he could go and talk with her if there were things amiss in our marriage. She assured him that there wasn’t. Then the RS president stopped her in the hall and said “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear about your husband.” Again, my wife assured the RS president that she completely supported me, had her own concerns, and that nothing was wrong in our marriage. Funny, how people assume that we are having some marital strife because I haven’t been to church in a while. They all mean very well, but the assumption seems to be that loyalty to Church trumps respect for and loyalty to spouse.
August 30th, 2006 at 9:33 am
This was the session I was most disappointed about missing at the symposium. I’ll definately listen to it, but it would have been great to have been there.
Wendy and I fell in love in the MTC (yuk, I know), got engaged about 10 days after I got back and were married 5 months later.
Talk about false advertising to her…..I’ve felt really guilty for all my wavering in and out…trying so hard to find my way.
but while I’m certain that this isn’t what she expected when she married a fresh RM beaming with egotism and surity……..she’s been wonderful.
I think its an ongoing struggle thats mutually beneficial; I think it strengthens both of us as individuals and together as a couple.
And really, none of us stays who we were in our young 20’s anyway.
August 30th, 2006 at 9:34 am
“Funny, how people assume that we are having some marital strife because I haven’t been to church in a while”
Amen, amen, and amen.
September 1st, 2006 at 11:50 am
Marriage is tough enough without issues of faith and tradition. My spouse recently relayed a comment from her Relief Society where someone said that our daughters should be looking for potential Bishops and Stake Presidents as their potential spouses. My guess is that behind the scenes these same people would be discouraging their kids from fraternizing with mine. After all, their father is the resident heretic in the ward. Interestingly, I don’t hear such things in the Elder’s Quorum. In fact I’m really quite proud of the way some of the guys have evolved over the years. The one thing I find that cuts through all the BS is service. I have an acquaintance who is openly gay and he shared with me that he has found that providing service through family history projects has broken down several barriers with his extended family. As I’ve participated in the small amounts of service thoughout my ward, I’ve found that a lot of the nonsense toward me seems to have dissipated. The reality is that we as doubters have to carve out our own place in our LDS communities. But what I don’t know how to do anymore is carve a spiritual place for myself with my spouse. For a long time we haven’t been and are not now on the same path with regards to our religious life. There are few, if any, mentors for such things.
September 4th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Tom:
I didn’t catch the For Better, For Worse, For Apostacy session in SLC, but I’ve since listened to the mp3. (I listened to it with my wife.) Was very moved by both your’s and Page’s story. Overall, it was one of the best Sunstone sessions I’ve heard.
A couple of questions/observations… I was surprised to hear that you were hurt or offended by Page’s decision to attend another Church. Having experienced pain/doubt/dissonance relative to faith for so many years yourself, I would have expected you to be sypathetic to her pain/doubt/dissonance, if not filled with joy/gratitude that she was now experiencing it herself; in other words, happy that you could now both relate to each other from the same faith stage level. Was your hurt/offense because you were now left to attend the LDS Church on your own (presumably with your kids), or because she had lost her faith in Mormonism and was looking for alternative answers? Maybe I missed something.
Second, I found your ability to carve out a place for yourself in the Elder’s Quorum admirable. Presumably though, you still have the same Agnostic issues. I understand your not wanting to exchange one Church With Issues for another Church With Issues. However, I’m curious how you and Page pass on your beliefs to your children? Do you temper what the kids learn in Church with lessons or advice from home, or do you leave it for them to figure out on their own? For example, I was saddened to hear of Page’s feelings for her non-temple-going father growing up. How do you keep your kids from repeating these kinds of dysfunctional feelings for their imperfect, heterodox-Mormon parents? It sometimes seems like bizarro world to me when we voluntarily bring our kids to a place where they are taught by other adults that their parents aren’t faithful/worthy/valient (not directly maybe, but indirectly for sure), despite all of the good things they do learn.
Finally, I’m surprised by your stated inability to “carve a spiritual place for myself with my spouse.” If, presumably, you are both working your way through Stage 4, isn’t this kind of communication relative to your belief/faith/fears/hopes/etc and your ability to understand each other a “spiritual place”? From my point of view (I’m Stage 4; wife is Stage 3), I’d think you’d be in a better place now than before. What am I missing?
I’m not questioning the validity of your responses, I just have many of the same questions/concerns myself. Hope those aren’t too many questions. Feel free not to answer any of them…
BTW, all caveats related to faith stage theory apply… that they are inexact, that we can be many levels at different times, that one level isn’t necessarily “better” than another level… However, I’m assuming in this comment that most people have a relative “center of gravity” at or around a certain stage at a given point in life…
September 5th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Matt
I felt hurt because after all this time of attending church to support her I was finally finding a place for myself within my tradition. (Something that was hard won and something which I thought she always wanted). Thus it was hard to see her willing to walk away so quickly. I felt like she wasn’t willing to wrestle with it like I had for so long. For me that was a betrayal. We were/are just going two different directions. And yes, In some ways it’s better.
Matt: I’m curious how you and Page pass on your beliefs to your children?
Tom: Great question. If you find a good answer let me know.
Matt: I’m surprised by your stated inability to “carve a spiritual place for myself with my spouse.” If, presumably, you are both working your way through Stage 4, isn’t this kind of communication relative to your belief/faith/fears/hopes/etc and your ability to understand each other a “spiritual place”?
Tom: You’re assuming I have good communication skills. (which I don’t) In many ways it is harder because there are few if any mentors, advisors, and were dealing with other stressors such as Page’s education, time constraints, in-laws expectations, child rearing, broken cars and appliances. These too often take precedence over spiritual matters. Thus there is one less stable thing in our lives. How can I read the scriptures with Page when I have kids to read to before bed or a leaking roof on my mind. Others seem to balance these things well. I don’t. But it’s better than last year. Maybe next year will be better still.
September 5th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Tom said:
“For a long time we haven’t been and are not now on the same path with regards to our religious life. There are few, if any, mentors for such things.”
Have you read _Cleaving: The Story of a Marriage_?. Its by Dennis Covington (author of Salvation on Sand Mountain) and his wife Vicki Covington. Some of it is about infidelity, but spiritual matters come up too. Besides the infidelity could be seen as a metaphor (saying it’s a metaphor is an easy way out of any situation).
September 15th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Lisa, I have new respect for your path. I had not realized how long you struggled for connection to your spouse that would work. You are blessed to have such a great guy, and your kids are the evidence of both of your parenting. They are wonderful, capable human beings.
I have been fortunate. My husband has spent his whole life studying the world’s religions, before becoming LDS. Then his study became even more important. What was already in my mind by way of questions was not only listened to, but encouraged to study and ask for enlightenment. That has been the constant; the answers from above that finally revealed that my life was a path, continuing, and not just the destination of mormonism. This revelation also revealed a sinister part of myself: the fear-based living that clings (wretchedly, unhappily,) to having Authority tell me how to live.
Like a child, I feared. And the church voices kept at me, reinforcing that fear. Don’t let go, you will drowned in the world and it’s wickedness. I know I am not wicked, nor am I any more wretched. The spirit will speak peace in some darned funny places. I move forward with my hand firmly within God’s hand, and so does my husband. We don’t agree on everything, but most things we do. We are not looking for another church. I loved being LDS, and I believe it to be the last coherent religion before the true setting out to live one’s OWN religion. To hear the spirit in your ear all the time, to be advised by him directly, no middleman. We both find it the most thrilling challenge: to be spiritual, instead of religious.
I live a few doors from our chapel. My kids can go to events, meetings, and have friends. They choose to go to seminary, and our dinner table is alive with discussion and not indoctrination, as I was raised. They are eyes wide open to everything in their lives that might be misinterpreted. We talk- a lot. So do my husband and I. It takes courage. Life, real, Joseph-Smith type life, takes courage, and an unwaivering commitment to hearing the voice of the Lord in the smallest detail.
I think I’m writing to reinforce what I already know: that God loves me, unequivocally, and no one can tell me otherwise. Occasionally it does sadden me that my ward members choose to ignore me in public, and snub me at church when I do go, because the community of the church would be nice to have. But like being mormon in the first place, I am well-prepared for the misunderstanding of the world.
They are afraid, and that is the bottom-line. Fear and faith cannot exist in the same place. Fear of God is the last thing we let go of before we become “like him”. Then our faith becomes so much bigger that the building down the street, and our love larger than any threat that we will not measure up. How could we not?
Thanks, Lisa, for being there for me & mine on the road.
September 16th, 2006 at 12:56 am
Tom, just coming back to this thread and I’m entirely cought up in your posts. Thanks for being so honest and open. I sorely regretted not being able to attend the session and still need to get the tape. I’ll hopefully order it this weekend.
I don’t think I had appreciated what a continuing wrestle you were having…or how shocking Page’s change must have been. From the outside, you know, as someone who barely knows either of you, it was just a sort of “gee, that’s funny” thing when Page and I talked about it a few months ago at school. It never really sunk in for me until reading this. If this happened to me, I’d probably die. We’re right now really in the thick of the stage where i keep going and playing the game despite my inclination as a support to Wendy and a desire to pass some kind of stability or foundation to our kids. As much as I complain against it, Wendy’s tenacious faith is really a strong foundation for me (and makes me feel justified in being the devil’s advocate). I can’t imagine how I’d react if that changed.
I will say, though, that from what I do know of both of you, you are really amazing people. Although I’m sure this is a difficult transition, I have a lot of faith in your ability to pull it off together.
September 30th, 2006 at 11:39 am
Today’s Deseret News has an article about the original Sunstone session:
http://www.desnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,650194859,00.html
September 30th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Wow, that article kind of missed the whole point of that session, didn’t it?
The focus of the article was mostly on the strain, rather than on how the spouses gained a deeper perspective on life and on each other. In fact, the way the author ended the article was with people coming back to church, as if their journey was superfluous.
September 30th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
Yeah…….interesting.