Month: September 2016

Forgiveness: 70 x 7

~ Laura Lowder ~ 3 Comments

You probably remember the story: Jesus is teaching his disciples, and good ol’ Peter, Peter the Impetuous, pipes up, “So, Lord, You’re saying we have to forgive seven times?”  Seven represents completion, perfection — Peter is saying he’s got this; Jesus is putting a definition on forgiveness, and it’s perfect.

But Jesus shakes His head, “No, Peter.  Seventy times seven.”  Oh, Peter, it’s so much more complicated than a mere “perfect” forgiveness — it requires so much more of ourselves.

First, let’s get this straightened out:  Forgiveness is NOT saying, “You did wrong, but I’ve decided it doesn’t matter.”  Forgiveness is NOT about eliminating consequences.  We are not being asked to be deliberate victims to wrong-doing, here.  We aren’t expected to be stupid in the name of forgiveness.

We are allowed to protect ourselves.  We are allowed to establish limits and boundaries and to hold them inviolable.

So — what is forgiveness?  I’ve heard several takes.  One is that forgiveness is that you choose not to let the other person live rent-free in your head, controlling your life.  But I find it most useful, for myself, to think of forgiveness is letting go of my right to get even, my right to be vindicated, even.

Sometimes we even have to let go of the very same incident, conversation, violation over and over and over again.  “I forgive” brings a moment’s quiet to the mind and spirit, but the memories resurface and boil to the top and our peace is once more disturbed, we are once again consumed with “What I would like to say/do to that revolving s.o.b.!” —- and we have to forgive, to let go of our right to be avenged or vindicated, to relinquish our right for “justice,” forgive the very same wrong again and again and again —

You have a right to draw your line in the sand, whether it’s sexual abuse, battery, emotional abuse.  “You may not cross this line!” and to take steps to safeguard that line.  I think being angry gives us power to decide what those lines are going to be, and the courage to defend them.  But to maintain our own peace of mind, which is the point of having the boundaries in the first place, we have to let go of bitterness, hostility, the desire to get even, to retaliate, to put the other in his place —

Again and again and again, all for a single offense.  Seventy times seven times.  A lifetime of learning to forgive.

Forgiveness, the essential component

~ Laura Lowder ~ Leave a comment

We go through a lot, we wives of homosexuals. The manipulations, the spiritual and psychological abuses… I think I’ve mentioned before that every one of the ex-wives I’ve ever spoken to or communicated with live with depression of some degree or other. Then there are the family battles, the drive to try to protect our children, or – I wonder whether this is prudent or a big mistake – even our husbands in the early days when we’re just discovering their homosexuality and geared toward “protecting” them and maybe even their families from knowing the truth…

And we carry this enormous load of sorrow and suffering and how do we survive?

The answer is simple: we forgive.

When we consider how he lied to us, we forgive.
When we consider how he mocked and ridiculed us, we forgive.
When we stand under a barage of insults, we forgive.
When we agonize in the neglect, we forgive…
When the manipulations get ugly and things we never dreamed of happen… we forgive.

Now, I want to make something VERY VERY CLEAR. Forgiveness is not shrugging our shoulders and pretending something awful didn’t happen. That’s not forgiveness – that’s unhealthy self-sacrifice. No! We can draw our line in the stand and take whatever reasonable steps are necessary to protect ourselves and our children – and in fact I am increasingly convinced we must, not only for our own sakes or for our children’s but also for his sake – so that we don’t become complicit in his self-destruction.

What we cannot do, however, is clear: we cannot, we must not, harbor bitterness, entertain thoughts of recriminations.Not toward him, not toward his mother, not toward the kids who decide he’s telling the truth and his being gay had nothing to do with the divorce…

No, Forgiveness means that we let God dispense the justice.

“Don’t Deny the Rage” — Part Three

~ Laura Lowder ~ Leave a comment

Anger can be a powerful barometer to alert us something is Not Right in our lives, in our relationships.

It can be a powerful impetus for needed change. Anger at being abused, for instance, can motivate us to make changes to stop the abuse or to get away from it.

We have to be careful, though.  Anger, badly or recklessly heeded, can lead to some irresponsible or self-destructive choices.

Anger can be turned inward.  This is self-destructive. It’s been said for years that depression is “anger turned inward.”  It’s my personal opinion (and I’m not a psychologist) that that’s too simplistic an assessment, but there’s enough truth there for it to become an easy platitude. We punish ourselves for others’ wrongs, fault ourselves for not being able to “help” or “fix,” things that aren’t ours to begin with, and we become depressed.

I’ve seen anger lead to irresponsible and dangerous choices.  People who can’t cope turning to alcohol or drugs, for instance. Or flashes of rage and temper that cause us to hurt other people, in turn. Or a seething resentment that builds into a dishonest idea that we have a right to — get even, to get a bit of our own back, to have our needs met however dishonestly or dishonorably we have to do it.  I’ve known men and women who justified adulterous affairs by saying their spouse was “asking for it.” “I have a right to be happy” isn’t necessarily true — certainly no one has a right to be “happy” at the expense of others’ trust or if it means violating sacred principles.

I think more often anger is just a low simmering flame that reveals itself in our restlessness, an inability to find peace, an edginess in our relationships with others, punctuated by occasional yelling bouts and the like. Maybe we can’t stop replaying a conversation we had (or wish we’d had) and what we said or wish we’d said or would like to say. .     Maybe it shows up in an unaccustomed use of profanity, or door-slamming, or some other behavior that isn’t so self-destructive as alcohol abuse or the “I’ll show him!” affair — but still gives us that nagging warning that we aren’t doing so well with everything as we’d like to believe we are.

This is where we have to take ourselves in hand and be adult.  Some of these things, we can handle ourselves, and should. But there comes a time when you might just need some professional help to move beyond the rage to a place where you can start to be productive again, and to find some peace.  There’s no shame in getting help, although it can be hard to get started, especially with a stranger.  It’s worth getting through the discomfort in order to find some peace.

And life is far too short, and opportunities for joy far too infrequent, to have your life sabotaged by unresolved rage.

“Don’t Deny the Rage” — Part Two

~ Laura Lowder ~ Leave a comment

A tricky business, is anger. Many of us find it frightening. We hold so much in, trying to keep peace, to get along, to win the love and respect of our gay spouse — we hold in and suppress and even deny the very healthy and needed benefits of anger —

Benefits? Yeah.  I’ve come to think of emotions as something of a barometer.  Anger is one of the emotions that should register with us that something is wrong, somewhere.  Either someone has violated something very important or threatened to do.  Something is out of balance, needs to be identified and dealt with.

But when we’ve been — or felt — compelled to suppress anger (like Scarlett O’Hara, who always put off dealing with unpleasant situations: “I’ll think about it tomorrow.”), then we deny ourselves the opportunity to diagnose a problem and to figure out how to deal with it.

There’s not a lot of allowance for anger in marriage with a gay man. We have to be the “sweet” one, we have to keep peace, sacrifice even ourselves in order to get along.

This is part of the abusive nature of the relationship, of course:  Shut up or you’re a bitch. You don’t have a right to be angry. Your needs are inconsequential. You are inconsequential. You are stupid. You are unreasonable. You are demanding. It’s all your fault.  Everything would be just fine if you’d quit nagging, quit actually expecting anything of me.

Wait a minute.  It’s my fault because I expect you to behave like a husband instead of an employer? a dorm-mate with whom I am barely acquainted? It’s my fault because I have expectations? You mean, you want me to sit down and shut up and leave you alone? You can’t, or aren’t willing, to stretch yourself to be a husband, a companion, a lover — and it’s my fault because I actually believe the spousal relationship means something? It’s my fault because I won’t let you get away with ignoring something when, truth be told, you just don’t want to be bothered?*  

This is where anger kicks in and gives us power:  No.  And, what’s more, HELL NO.  I will not take the blame.  My expectations are not unrealistic — your laziness and apathy are unrealistic.  What’s more, you’re a selfish, cruel s.o.b. to expect me to live without companionship or even basic affection. You’re an abusive s.o.b. for thinking all I’m good for is to be a front for you, so you don’t have to accept responsibility for yourself.

I’m not willing to live this way. No.  Hell, No. (and I’m really not being profane, saying “Hell, no,” because it is a taste of Hell we experience in that situation).

 

*DH actually told our joint therapist, a couple years before we separated, “I know a good marriage takes a lot of work, but, frankly? I don’t want to be bothered.”  He said it in front of me, and I sat there and I took it.  Numb.  Too messed up to fight back. Too cowed, too messed up to even have alarm bells ringing that something was gravely wrong for him to say that.  Memories like that still pop up from time to time.  I have flashes of anger, in remembering — now I’m angry; then I was dead, inside.

“Don’t Deny the Rage” – Part One

~ Laura Lowder ~ Leave a comment

When DH and I separated, I received the same advice from several kind and wise people with whom I worked at the time:  “Don’t deny the rage.”

I had no idea what they were talking about.  I was living on the epicenter of an emotional earthquake, I was wary and scared and anxious and tense and many, many unpleasant things, but angry wasn’t one of them.  In fact, anger was such an alien concept to me at that point, I didn’t even know what they were talking about. I’d been angry for years, but it had manifested as impatience, short temper, etc., quick firebursts that just as quickly, vented, died back down. I didn’t know what rage was.

It took a year, nearly an entire calendar year before it hit me, and even then it required a catalyst outside my own experience in the form of a terrible drunk driving incident that killed the wife and three children of one of my dear friends.  For my friend I became angry, and that righteous anger popped the cork and — I couldn’t get the cork back in.

It revealed itself in several ways:  Bursts of excessive energy accompanied by the strong desire to inflict deep pain on those who had wronged me. Black humor, self-deprecating humor. Sarcasm. Profanity. An inordinate desire for revenge — I adopted a motto that reflected my resentment at DH’s efforts to sabotage my independence and success: Success Is the Best Revenge; sometimes, later, I would modify it: Happiness Is the Best Revenge.

It boiled, it exploded, it simmered. It waited still and quiet beneath the surface then it would erupt at unexpected times and under, often, unreasonable provocations.

When it didn’t go away on its own, I became frightened, by its intensity and by its duration; this was not my usual outburst but a months-long, years-long storm.

We women are told not to get angry.  We are told from childhood to hold in our tempers. A grown woman who lets her anger flare is dismissed as a bitch. We are told to be nice and to do whatever it takes in order to get along with even the most difficult and unreasonable people in our lives.  This is fine to a point, but it misses the greater point that sometimes a line has to be drawn in the sand and defended with might and main:

You may not hit me.  You may not tell me I am stupid and worthless.  You may not dismiss me as insignificant. You might think it, but it is an evil, nasty, unfair and abusive attitude, and you may not inflict it upon me. You may not abuse me.

Anger is the only reasonable response to abuse.  I read somewhere that anger is a secondary emotion to fear or hurt.  That’s true to a point — we have been hurt and so we are angry. We are afraid of abandonment or of insignificance, and so we are angry.  That makes sense.  But anger is also simply the only reasonable response to situations of violence, or moral outrage.  This is, I suspect, a uniquely Christian idea (“Be angry and do not sin” — Eph. 4:26) but an important one.

Maybe what made my anger so difficult do deal with was that it was a combination, a culmination of All The Above. It was secondary to hurt – “why am I never good enough?” — and to fear — “What is going to happen now? How can I manage on my own?” but it was also a gut reaction to the fact that I was being abused.

My own letter to Lauren Pearson

~ Laura Lowder ~ Leave a comment

Dear Lauren,
I have been very slow to write to you, following the avalanche of news items about your husband coming out as gay and leaving your family. There is so much – too much! – I have wanted to tell you, and too much anger for your sake to inflict so much on you.  I hope you saw Janna Darnelle’s letter in Public Discourse; I thought it was a fine letter, but there are things I thought ought to be said, that Janna never said. Now perhaps enough dust has settled that you might be able to think more clearly and my own passion on the matter might not add to your difficulty, so I will say them.

My husband did not tell me, when he left, that he was gay. When I figured it out, meeting his new “best friend,” he scoffed and denied and generally behaved very badly.  I suppose Trey has treated you more honorably in being honest – of a sort.  He gets some props for that.

But that does not make what he has done okay.  It doesn’t absolve him from his personal responsibility or his obligations to you, your children — and to God.

My imagination travels to your home, and how lonely and bleak things must have been for you, during the years of your marriage.  People assume that homosexuality is about sex, when it’s about everything — every dimension of human relationship.  I am lonely in my solitude, but I have never been so desperately lonely, so desolate in spirit, as I was during my marriage, when I wasn’t good enough even to be a companion and friend. All DH wanted from me was the “beard,” someone to hide behind; beyond that, he regarded me as pretty much useless.  I expect your life was pretty bleak, too; I’ve never heard an ex-wife say her gay husband was an affectionate, companionable man.

Friends gave me some very good advice, which I pass on to you. It perplexed and confused me at first, but it was good counsel:  do not deny the rage.  At the time, I didn’t know what they were talking about; I was many things during those horrible days — frightened, worried, confused, depressed — but I couldn’t register anger.  It was only a year later, when a dear friend suffered an unimaginable, obscene tragedy, that I experienced rage for him and his family, and, once the cork had popped, rage boiled out of me, years’ worth of rage.  It boiled and festered, and it frightened me.  But in retrospect, that rage gave me strength, and it is one of the things that kept me from a complete breakdown (to which I was frighteningly close). So do not deny the rage. 

“Straight Spouse” “experts” will tell you that you should be happy for Trey’s declaration, for his decision to be “true to himself.”  They say you must accept, support, and approve gay marriage in order to demonstrate support and love for your husband.  I say that is a wicked lie; it is a self-immolation; it is a violation against yourself and your identity as Woman as well as Wife.  We are free and independent and valued human souls, created in God’s image and bearing in our bodies and our feminine natures something of His own Character. We possess an intrinsic value in ourselves. Moreover, we are an inimitable and irreplaceable part of marriage. To support gay “marriage” is to betray ourselves and even the very vitality and glory of Marriage. Giving credibility, deference to a gay spouse’s choices is a violation of your worth and your dignity.  You are not an interchangeable part. Your role as woman and wife is not one that can be substituted by a gay lover, not even in the “dominant-passive split” of gay relationships.  I urge you to honor yourself — your own intrinsic value as Woman, as Wife.  Do not sell yourself, do not betray yourself, for an agenda that is built upon holding Woman in disdain.

There are several things I must urge you to keep in clear view: Homosexuality is currently a very popular, lauded lifestyle choice, but it is physically, emotionally, and spiritually dangerous. I urge you to resist sentimentalism, in this period of your separation.  You will surely be under a great deal of pressure to be “supportive,” but I want to tell you again: “support” is a lie. You cannot support a man in self-destructive behavior and be true to yourself or your promise to love, “for better or for worse.”  This is the worst, and you must keep a clear head about you in order to survive, and survive well.  

The gay lifestyle is dangerous. Gay men have a range of infections and physical disorders that the straight community never hears of, or imagines. The abuses they put their bodies under are brutal. There is nothing sweet or loving or “supportable” in any of it.  And AIDS is on the increase again, in the gay community. So are other STDs, many of which are becoming drug-resistant. For a painfully honest look into what the gay lifestyle is really like, you might want to investigate the work of a man named Joseph Sciambra.  The truth is unpleasant and painful to see, but in the Name of Love, I believe you need to look, anyway.  

Gay men resent opposition.  Brace yourself.  You may be sorely tempted to go along to get along.  I must tell you:  it is not worth it. At least, it wasn’t worth it for me. I thought being kind and sweet and accommodating would win his trust and something akin to love. You will be told you must, you will be sorely tempted to go along with Trey’s decision in order to get along with him.

Something very ugly is happening, here.  What you have gone through is, in strictly impersonal psychological terms, abuse.  You have been used to protect and make “safe” a person who engaged you in this situation under false pretenses.  The consequences to you of this use have been deemed unimportant — because it is predicated upon the presumption that you, yourself, are unimportant.  Again, this is abuse.  And the insistence that you must now deny your anger and your righteous sense of having been betrayed in order to “support” and even cheer your husband in his decision is a continuation and a perpetuation of that abuse.  What is worse, you are being required — by the gay community and the “Straight spouse” group — to not only endorse the abuse, but to participate in inflicting yourself  with that abuse by “supporting” Trey in his choices.

I beg you to be clear-thinking and to stand firm against that destructive idea.  In fact, a friend said this to me, and I share it with you:  you can’t get someone to heaven by encouraging their lies.

It can even come masquerading as “help.”You may hear or feel a little voice telling you that you must go along in order to wield influence with him. This temptation will masquerade itself as a false heroism:  that you and you alone have the power to save him from himself.  This is a false heroism because, as a man, he must own responsibility for his own choices, he must stand on his own two feet. You might say, “I believe in your better self,” but you are fooling yourself when you think that you, and the power of your love for him, can help him to achieve that better self.  

If he were capable of that love, he would never have left his family for the gay community.

No matter what the revisionists say, Homosexuality is neither normal nor is it an acceptable choice for a Christian.  Sexual depravity is part and parcel of pagan culture, explicitly and unquestionably forbidden by God.  Deconstructionists and revisionist are playing a nasty and deceitful game to deny this, but history and sociology support the traditional Biblical view of heterosexual monogamy and chastity as normative, and the solely acceptable choice for the Christian disciple.

There are no easy answers for the challenges you face.  Janna urged you to fight for your children.  I second this. You will have to face the fact that perhaps Trey would never willfully hurt your children, but you cannot assume that his chosen companions will be conscientious.  Some of them will prey upon your sons, they will scorn and ridicule your daughters.  The wounds inflicted on my daughters by their father are enormous; I thank God! that we did not have sons who might have been preyed upon by his friends. We had a neighbor who did not protect his son from his friends, and the result has been more than tragic.  Fight for your children.

None of this is easy, and I do not have Janna’s sweet and gentle spirit. I am angry for your sake and for your children’s. This may seem excessive to you, even this far out from the initial shock. But I am with you in this bizarre sorority, and in our shared suffering.