Larry Yarrington--
I was a young man who, for the first time, was beginning to view life through the lens of someone who had social skills. I was pretty
geeky in High School or at least I saw myself that way. I had completed my PhD and a stint as a professor at a major university when I had an opportunity to move into higher social circles. Other than making a lot of money and having a certain amount of power that position brings, the biggest plus for me was being able to attract girls/women that I only dreamed of attracting when I was younger.
At this same time, I bought into the cultural idea that I was supposed to be happy all the time and the woman to whom I was married could not come close to keeping me happy since happy was mostly about sex and having no one who opposed me on anything. I knew this would not work in the external world but felt it ought to work in the home. The natural next step was to get rid of this hindrance called a wife so I got a divorce. Then I resolved to only involve myself in a relationship until it became boring and then move on to the next. All the while, understand, I thought I was merely searching for the right one. When the right one came along I would know it. Until then, life was a series of one night stands or at most a few dates; just long enough for them to become irritating and then the dog would go hunting again. It was, I thought, wonderful to throw off the religious restraints of my youth, and fully embrace the new freedom to seek my inalienable right to happiness. I accepted the challenge fully and successfully for about six years until the inevitable happened.
It crept up on me, slowly at first, then with increasing rapidity; a feeling of emptiness. Perhaps, even boredom with the dating and chasing game. At first, I felt angry that life had pulled a trick on me; the old bait and switch. I had beautiful women standing in the wings awaiting my call. I had money and prestige. I had a position in a company well above any I ever thought I would achieve. Literally, every dream I could imagine had come true. So, why was I so empty and unhappy? It was at this time that I met my wife of 26 years, Susan, and, at the same time, got reconnected to a church that began to teach me about real relationship, not just more religious stuff that I had fully rejected in my teen years. I begin to hear that relationship could be deeply satisfying. In fact, my pastor, when hearing I was thinking about marriage again, said, “Before you consider intimacy with a woman in marriage, be sure you know how to develop a deeply personal and intimate relationship with men”. At first that sounded a little weird to me but as he took a few other men and me through a course of intimate sharing and bonding as a band of brothers, we all began to understand how deeply satisfying such relationships could be. That was the beginning of a journey that has led to the most gratifying and meaningful relationship any man could have in this life, and that is with my life partner and wife. But, and it is a big but, learning to bond with a band of brothers is light years away from developing a life partnership with a woman. I still did not know how to see a woman as much more than a sex object. Oh, I understood women’s competence in the work place and could even appreciate my wife as a professional. But living with a woman was another matter entirely. As Blake and others have pointed out over the last few weeks, it is not easy to get to the point I now enjoy with Susan and our marriage. It was a process of shedding baggage of over 40 years.
Well, you might ask, what possible baggage can you pick up when you seem to be fulfilling your life’s dream? The first is that life becomes one grand performance. I couldn’t conceive that anyone could love me if I didn’t keep up the performance. That’s a heavy bag. Secondly, I didn’t have a relational skill set that prepared me to live satisfactorily with one woman. I had trained myself for the hunt, not the maintenance of a marriage. This bag only feels heavy until you pick up some relational skills. Then, the bag becomes light and deeply satisfying. Thirdly, I had never developed a solid sense of maleness or femaleness. Put this together with pride and anger as potent weapons, and you have disaster in the making. I threw up my hands in dismay many times because I just did not have the tools to make the marriage work. I really wanted to quit so many times.
Blake’s friendship along with other men in my life like Chuck and Randy and John, gave me the courage and toughness to keep on going when I often wanted to stop short of the goal. Men’s fraternity and Celebrate Recovery are also wonderful places to begin to heal. Processes are designed to be never ending as we continue to grow every day a little more into the image of Christ and in our ability to love our wives as Jesus loved the church and gave up his life for her.