365 Nights Page 15
Brad and I started dating soon after that chat with Christy and when I realized there was another girl that could be in the picture. She worked with us, too, and she played golf . . . a guy’s dream girl! She was paralyzingly timid, so my extroversion played out well for me. Brad and I were at the Pub and I hinted that if he ever were inclined to ask me out, I would be inclined to say yes. He did and I did—he told me had been waiting patiently for the right moment.
As I wave my fan back and forth to cool my heated brow just thinking about those heated dating days, I wonder, does a woman’s sexual history have an impact on her sex life once she’s married?
I have a friend who has only ever “been” with one guy her whole life, and that is her husband. They have a pretty decent sex life with typical highs and lows. However, I secretly speculate whether she has a sense of regret that she didn’t experiment more when she was younger. And then on the other extreme, there are women who would have sex at the drop of a hat when they were dating. Now married, they couldn’t be less interested in sex. Why don’t they want to have sex with the one person who vowed to love them forever? Perhaps for them, and for other highly sexed daters, it was all part of the chase and dating ritual—once you land a husband, you no longer need that tool. Sex was part of the mating ritual, not part of the marriage ritual. It’s amazing how sex before marriage can complicate and lend drama to everyday life, good and bad. Contrast that with sex inside marriage, and if it’s going well, it can simplify life, and give you a clear vision of what’s going on in your relationship. That’s not to say that sex outside marriage is horrible—it can be sexy, and romantic and fun, but it can also cause people to feel lonely and ashamed, and adrift.
As the mother of a young girl, I often worry about how you can convey the complexities of these problems. I know it’s incredibly naïve to think we can shield our daughters from embarking on a sexual career too early, but I wish we could. It’s not that I’m opposed to sex. Heck, I’ve been having a ton of it lately and I’ve become a real fan—again. And it’s not that I’m unaware of the whole hormone thing and how intensely distracting it can be and how the abstinence pledges are really laughable. But for me, it’s become screamingly clear that married sex is fundamentally different—and better.
Many a theologian supports the idea that sex and spirituality go hand in hand when you’re married, and strangely enough, my Women’s Bible Study Group helped my married sex life. I joined this group of neighborhood women several years ago for weekly study sessions. I marveled at the tenacity, smarts, and faith of this group and learned far more than I ever hoped about my faith, my marriage, my relationships, and my life. We’ve never discussed sex per se, and I’m sure some of the members might blush at the idea that this group of women was the impetus for my embarking on this journey of intimacy. We discuss many of the things that experts tell us are important to marriage—intention, priority, spirituality, forgiveness, and kindness.
My three years with this group of women forced me to dig deeply into what God wants for my life. It was humbling and difficult. But one thing I realized was that part of having a strong marriage meant it was firing on all cylinders, and that meant having intimate, deliberate, and meaningful relations with Brad—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It made me realize that my marriage fuels most everything—our family, our social life, and the overall health and success of our home. I love the idea that for those who practice Judaism, the home is the most sacred place of all—not the temple, not a holy site, but the home. And if you treat the home, and your relationship with the people in it, with the same respect that you would a church or a temple, it would be incredibly difficult to ignore or to overlook them.
So with the thought in mind that the home can and should be a sacred place, it is also a place where the mundane life of marriage happens, too. Sundays are my favorite days to hang out with Brad—spiritually a day of rest. We read the papers together, swap sections, and read articles aloud to each other. We go to lunch after church and then veg out. Most always we have my brother and his family over for Sunday dinner, and we’re running around outside playing kick ball or hunkering down in front of a movie. Sundays are generally good days—as a family and a couple.
But all days are not idyllic, and many pass where life is a blur of annoying errands and tasks to do. Simple things can get overlooked, and you’d be amazed at how easy it is to go through your day without really noticing the person with whom you’re scheduled to spend the rest of your life. Granted, some people intentionally ignore their spouse but others, like me, simply fall out of touch with them quite by accident.
“Did you get a haircut today?” I asked.
“No, last week,” he replied.
“Oh. Well, it looks nice.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Days are spent as a tag team—meeting the sitter, picking up and dropping off kids, running into the store, picking up dry cleaning. The logistics of today’s family are ridiculous—between activities, school, sports, church/synagogue, the house, and so on, it’s easy to live a life of coming and going.
I may be overstating the obvious, but daily intimacy with Brad requires me to notice him. It regularly prompts me to look him in the eyes and connect in ways—both physical and emotional—that are easily overlooked in the day-to-day machinations of life. Now I have to address him up close and personal, instead of hollering down the hall for him not to forget today is recycling day. Now I physically touch my husband in a different way instead of handing him a dressed child and telling him not to forget the backpack and lunch. And when we’re intimate, we are in the moment, and I’m not discussing day-to-day life, because I’ve learned that multitasking doesn’t work in the bedroom. Instead, we’re chatting and connecting—you know, couple stuff, the stuff that makes me smile and giggle and feel good about my decision to throw caution to the wind and do it every day. We hug more, we smooch more, we connect more. Because without all the hugging, smooching, cuddling, and yes, sex, it’s easy to become a brother and sister act, or a couple of good friends getting together as a family. Brad said to me one day, “You can’t have an intimate emotional connection without an intimate physical connection. If you don’t connect physically—even if it’s just a hug or a kiss—in some way every day, you’re just good friends who are raising kids together. And I could probably do that with a lot of people.”
Regular intimacy with my husband meant that not every sentence coming out of my mouth started with “could you do [fill in the blank here].” It was a subtle shift, but an important one. And it made me wonder—had I been an accidental poser all these years? Pretending to be in a wonderful and committed marriage that wasn’t really all that wonderful as I wasn’t committed to regular intimacy with my spouse? I was vowing to fix that now. Which was funny, because unlike my mother, I’m not that handy around the house.
My mother, on the other hand, can fix most anything. Her uncanny way with most things mechanical and all things common sense earned her the nickname "MacGyver.” If ever stranded on a deserted island with a fishhook, some rubber bands, and a plunger, you want her there. In fact, once when my parents were in town visiting, I came home from work and collapsed on the couch. “I’m exhausted,” I sighed. “What did you two do today?” “Well,” my mom replied, “I caulked your shower, fixed your toaster oven, sanded and painted that spot on your front door, and did four loads of laundry. I have a little punch list of things I didn’t get to, but I want to review them with you so you can knock them out.” I hoped and prayed that I’d inherited just a teeny bit of her MacGyver gene and could find a solution to a problem that at one time I didn’t know existed—achieving meaningful intimacy with my spouse.
Brad cannot fix anything around the house. Nothing. He can change lightbulbs, batteries, and trash bags, but that’s about it. He can’t fix things, tinker with things, or figure out how things work. But with a nudge and a shove and a to-do list, he can get a few things done. He’s actually p
retty self-motivated when it comes to the kids, and picking up stuff because clutter bugs him far more than it does me. While I am very appreciative that he does it all—don’t get me wrong—his puttering around the house is not an automatic turn-on for me as it is for some. For instance, my girlfriend says that she tells her husband that it makes her knees weak when she sees him being all manly with his toolbox fixing things around the house. Upon hearing this, her man is now motoring around the yard in overtime mowing the lawn, repairing leaky faucets, or lifting something heavy and unwieldy. And his little reward at the end of a hard day’s housework? A deliciously frisky frolic.
Some friends tell me they get turned on when they see their spouse being a good dad—bonding with the kids, reading them a bedtime story, giving them a bath. They get gaga when their men are being a contributing party to the family unit. But this doesn’t do it for me. Brad is an exceedingly attentive dad and kind of gets on my case when I don’t want to shoot baskets outside or play touch football. But mooning over him playing pickup basketball with the kids? For me, it’s part of his D-A-D job description, you know.
What really turns me on these days, and brings back those days of sweaty palms, is when we are in our grown-up lives as married folks, seeing Brad engaged with other adults. I like seeing that other people are attracted to him—and not in a lusty kind of way but rather that they find him appealing and interesting. This could happen at a dinner party and I see other folks intently listening to him wax on about politics. Or when he tells me about his big presentation to senior management and how much they loved it. Or when he’s at a block party throwing his head back and belly laughing at a neighbor’s joke.
Those are the times when I am really awestruck by Brad, and it takes the attraction of others to remember why he’s so great. Because sometimes I forget—yes, it’s awful, but I do forget—that I did, indeed, marry a vibrant, intelligent, handsome, and kind man, and people respond to him as such. What’s wonderful and horrible is when you know someone so well that you fail to remember what made him so fabulous to begin with. So often, the gift of familiarity is both a comfort, and a curse.
If Brad knew this, he might not complain as much about our overscheduled social life. I love to see him in the company of others, as the company of me isn’t always that fascinating and remarkable—not because I’m not fascinating or unremarkable (because really, I am)—it’s just that we know each other so well . . . Better, when you have a pulsating social life, you can find out things about your spouse that you might not have known otherwise. For example, it wasn’t until a lively game night with friends that I found out Brad had played Jesus in the high school production of Godspell. I nearly fell over laughing. I mean, Jesus in Godspell—that’s not a bit part, might I remind everyone. That was amazing to me. After all, there was a time when I wondered if he believed in Jesus at all.
Later I asked him, “Can you sing?”
“I could then,” he replied.
“Do you sing now? Could you serenade me this very minute? On the way home?” I asked, feeling all thirteen-year-old girl to his Donny Osmond.
“Of course not, I don’t really sing much anymore. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“Don’t sing much? I’ve been standing next to you in church for years and I’ve never really heard you sing beyond a murmur. Do you sing in the shower and I’ve been missing out? Are you a bass or tenor?”
I was bursting with questions—my husband, the singer! Who knew? And yes, I was looking forward to some great theater that night, if you know what I mean. And it took not house-cleaning, not parenting, but game night to get me there.
Back in the La-La Days of Dating, I used to believe there were two kinds of people, people who could marry anyone and be fairly happy, and people like me who were complicated, thorny, and dark, and could marry only one or two people on the planet who “understood” me, and appreciated me for all my tortured complexity. Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Isn’t that rich? Boy, did I have a case of taking myself too seriously or what?
Well, now I believe that there is not one perfect person out there for any given person. Brad is offended by this notion, as we’re married and he would like to think that he married the only person for him. But since he was engaged to another before we married, he clearly thought there were two people who would be perfect for him. So he’s living proof of my theory.
Me? I am kind of liberated by the notion. You’ve seen all those old French movies of depressed people aimlessly scouring the streets of Paris looking for the one person in the world who would complete them. Please. The drama! The sadness! The ridiculousness! I now take comfort in the idea that there are lots of people I could have happily married. Because I realize that “love,” “true love,” “falling in love,” and “being in love” are only part of the equation. Am I happy I married Brad? Absolutely. Is he a great fit for me and all my neuroses? Yep. Do I love him? You have no idea how much. Am I in love with him day in and day out of every day? Well . . . it depends. Because here’s the deal in Big Boy and Big Girl World: You grow up, you get a job, you pay your bills (on time, mostly). You meet someone who shares common interests and who is attractive to you (and hopefully you are to him). You get along and make sure that you have the same level and kind of dysfunction and want the same things (kids, a houseboat, farm animals). And then you might get married—which means you spend the rest of your lives together. And if you get married, then you have to decide if you want to stay married, because it doesn’t just happen. You’re choosing a course of action—which is to be and to stay married. And it’s easier said than done.
I had a friend who told me that she knew she had married the wrong guy, well, right after she married him. She dated/ lived with/was engaged to this man for ten years—that’s right, ten years—before she finally married him. This epiphany came in Year Eleven and only after she had closed the deal. What had changed? What could possibly have been different in Year Eleven that wasn’t evident in Years One through Ten? Who knows?
And of course, we all have stories—about our friends or about ourselves—about trying to desperately change a spouse, thinking a relationship would get better, fixing a broken person, or being in love enough to make a romance last. And it still doesn’t work. I understand that, too.
So is there such a thing as that Valentine’s Day, swoony “true love”—being able to find and love the one person who is absolutely right and perfect for you to the exclusion of all others, who are absolutely wrong and imperfect for you? I don’t know. I think people who think they found true love really found a great life partner and built a life that was mutually satisfying and full of wonderful and fond memories. They committed and they compromised and the life they built became their story and in the end it felt like true love, perhaps. We’re revisionists—it’s human nature for the memory to amend history a bit. And in the process, we create love stories, I think. I am thankful to have met Brad, to love him, and to have married him. There is no one else to whom I would want to be married. But is this a love story of historic proportions? Well, time has a role in that. As do I.
So as we celebrate the most romantic holiday of the year in the midst of the most important year of our marriage (yet), I realize that I am writing a love story with Brad daily. That our story actually started on June 20, 1998. That our life today, tomorrow, and next week is contributing to the story. I can’t wait until the kids are older, my work schedule is different, or I lose weight to restart my love story with Brad. Love stories don’t happen to you. You create them, you write them, you discover them. And I am responsible for creating one with Brad.
MARCH
Spring Forward, Falling Back
“Honey, are you ready?” Brad called from the den, where he was somehow, through the miraculous powers of his concentration and our DVR system, watching three sporting events at once.
“Almost,” I called back. I had enjoyed my beddy-bye glass of milk, rinsed off in the shower, washed my face,
brushed and flossed my teeth, plucked my brows a bit (I’m always very busy plucking something), pulled my hair back, applied several coats of very expensive skin stuff, looked in my triple magnifying mirror to see if the expensive skin stuff appeared to be working (not really), tracked down my favorite peppermint lip balm, changed into my pajamas, picked out a book to read, set the alarm, rubbed in some hand lotion, made one final check of my e-mail, turned down the covers, and hopped in.
“Okay, hon, I’m ready. Let’s get down to business.”
Brad could score a concerto in the time it sometimes takes me to get ready for bed . . . and ready for him. Since we’re scheduling sex these days, I’ve simply incorporated him into my daily nighttime ritual (or morning ritual, when necessary). And I feel confident that my habitual ritual is driving him nuts. And rightly so, as there was a time when he didn’t know all that went on behind the closed doors of personal grooming . . . habits that seem to grow like a Chia Pet as I age. Marriage is many things, but sometimes it’s just the naked truth about the real person you’ve walked down the aisle with.
When Brad and I were dating, he claimed to have a burning desire to learn ballroom dancing. Hey, just like me! And then, poof, after the honeymoon, ballroom dancing was dead to him. Hmmm . . . Eventually Brad learned that my lovely highlights and shiny hair come from a specially calibrated mixture of secret ingredients known only to my hair stylist. And when those courtship foot massages ended, Brad admitted he is grossed out by my feet (I swear there was a time when he told me they were “cute”). And then I finally confessed that I don’t care who wins the national football championship . . . horror of horrors.