I got a call from a college friend whom I was hoping to reach out to – but didn’t call because I didn’t want to feel like I was insincerely pimping for perspectives for the sake of this column.
I took it as a sign to insert my intentions of serving readers with hope and inspiration from a happily married woman of God with respect to staying the course and being purposefully single. The conversation that took place was something altogether different – yet equally valuable to those of us single females.
First, I guess I should give as much of her background as this short column will permit. She was a “hot girl” on campus, but the summer before our senior year she recommitted her life to Christ. That fall – at a church service, of course – she met the man who would become her husband. They had no premarital sex, engaged in pre-marital counseling and would go on to get married and have two lovely daughters.
Fifteen years into it, she is the only person I can think of from my college days still married – well, at least to the same person. I wanted to share her secret. But she shared another secret: She wasn’t happy.
I was stunned.
How could this be?
According to her, she actually let her desperately seeking demeanor seep into her thinking as she was in the process of her courtship.
“I had doubts and annoyances, but I just ignored them,” she admitted. “I thought that if he loved God and he loved me that I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I thought once we grew together we would overcome any of the things leading to my apprehensions. I also thought, ‘If I don’t marry him, what if no one else comes along?’”
So she did. And by outward appearances they have the perfect relationship – no drama, two productive spouses and parents who are active members of ministry.
But on the inside, she is dying by his inability to stimulate her intellectually.
He’s not stupid, by any means – he’s just not big on conversation. And when she attempts to engage him in the healthy debates on everything from politics to the pulpit she loves so much, he literally shuts down.
“I come home and try to talk to him,” she said. “But I just end up on the computer. I don’t do anything disrespectful to my marriage, but I’m constantly on Facebook trying to make up for the missing communication.”
Her page is popping with questions that allow her to talk with – and others to talk among themselves – on a host of hot topics. And true to form her husband is always absent from the conversation.
Before they were married, she sensed that he wasn’t big on dialogue but says that she could tell that he was trying to meet her half-way. After they were married, he slacked off.
She says he’s kind, immersed in his ministry and is a loving and engaged father. But there is not necessarily much attention to detail when it comes to their relationship. It has been that way from essentially the start of her marriage.
The only time they truly communicate is when it comes to the children, yet she feels like – and has expressed to him – that the same rules for working together should apply to their relationship.
They’ve been parents for 11 years, and so far he hasn’t budged – mainly because he’s fine with things the way that they are. She doesn’t nag or attempt to rock the boat, but she’s deeply unfulfilled.
“I’m just taking it day by day,” she admitted.
After all of these years, she could care less about being alone.
Her biggest fear is shaking up her family and the mess that would be stirred up because her husband’s father is the pastor of her church.
“I knew what I wanted and what I needed to be fed in a relationship, and I moved forward anyway,” she said. “I ignored what I would have considered a red flag for the sake of having a ‘good husband.’ At the end of the day it was unfair, and now I’m suffering the consequences.”
