If you haven't already read part 1, please go back and read it. This will make a lot more sense once you do.
To understand the fundamentals of who I am in love, we have to explore deeper who I am as a person; how I make decisions; what drives my behaviors.
By nature, I am not famous for self control or discipline. Too often, I allow my creativity, love of adventure and/or my emotions to dictate my behavior. In marriage, I have to actively surpress this part of me.
Without Charles, this was me. I knew what was right, but was often impulsive, eratic and unpredictable.
FLASHBACK 2 GENERATIONS
"Rewind two generations. My mother’s father was an abnormally tall, broad shouldered army veteran. He was diabetic and unfaithful to his wife. Often abusive. Loud and blasphemous. Attractive. Very appealing to women around him. An electrician. Who’s clients often wanted more. He gave. Parts of himself. To many women.
My grandmother was a peaceful woman. A real Christian. Who actually lived out biblical instruction. Sweet. Mostly passive. Quiet. Sometimes sassy in self-defense. Strong. Mother of four. Four C-sections. Back to back to back. My grandmother. Tolerated too much. She loved too hard.
She loved her children fiercely. Giving up all she was for them, and him.
Being deeply spiritual, my grandmother believed she was cursed after seven barren years of marriage to my grandfather.
She was married before him to someone else in Alabama. Likely a simple Christian man who adored her. My grandfather had also married someone else. I imagine a simple docile school girl.
This was my families gravely dark secret until both of my grandparents passed away. No one ever talked about it. I had never heard this story.
I had only seen discord and fighting between them. Only insults and disrespect. I regularly wondered if they had ever loved each other at all. They slept in separate rooms. I had never seen them embrace one another. My grandparents marriage was nothing like my parents marriage. My parents were constantly embracing.
Even as a small child I remember wanting to leave my grandparents house because the arguing was so hateful.
I remember wanting to protect my grandmother from my grandfather and somehow still remain on my his good side. Being on his bad side seemed scary or even dangerous. I feared him and loved him with the same intensity.
I vowed to myself, that I would never allow anyone to treat me the way my grandfather treated her. She called me her name sake. My mom and aunt always said that I was like her in many ways. I didn't want to be the type of woman who stayed with a man who hurt me.
My grandparents had run away together from Mobile, Alabama to get married in Chicago during the 1940's. They had been childhood/highschool sweethearts, but somehow between my grandfather going to the military and returning they both ended up married to other people.
My grandmother. Ran. Away from her Christian husband. Her family. Her father, who was a southern baptist preacher and her mother who bore 7 children. A huge close family.
She abandoned a life of safety, warmth, and love to the coldness of Chicago and my grandfather. The handsome tall broad shouldered well-dressed man.
I can image how badly they must have wanted one another to do what they did the way they did it. What an adventure. Dangerous. Unconventional. Shameful. But freedom. They were not bound by what was expected of them, instead they flew. Far away.
There isn't anyone still living that knows the details what happened that night, but I can image that they each packed one bag, escaping secretly in the dark, in the passion of romance. Feeling drawn magnetically to one another.
I imagine my grandmother. An innocent church girl. A preachers kid. So desperately in love that her attitude was like: F*** the consequences. F*** what next year will look like. F*** what everyone will think. F*** what is safe and secure and known and easy. F*** what I’ve been taught. F*** what I know to be true, and real, and tangible and in front of me. This man is all I want. All that matters. All I need. My grandmother never used the word “F***.” But, she lived it." (Excerpt from upcoming book)
PRESENT DAY REFLECTIONS
This was the missing piece to help me to understand myself. There were two very distinct, but opposite sides of my personality.
There is the people pleasing giver; agreeable, charming, and did everything by the book; like the grandmother I knew.
And then, there is another side: fearless, reckless, impatient and impulsive; the side of my grandmother that I never saw, but heard about after she passed away.
In relationships, I begin as a sweet, fun, loveable people pleaser. Charming and cool. Laid back and mysterious.
Then my creative mind wanders straight to the potential of the man. I start to dwell on how our future together will look? What our children would look like? What kind of life would we lead?
He (let's use the words"he", "his" and "him" to fill in random names of guys I "dated" ) may have been just trying to get the drawls or be out here getting to know a variety of women "dating". Likely, just seeing where this thing goes.
I'd be picking out wedding gowns in my head and wondering which side of town we'd buy a house on. 10 steps ahead.
And when things went left, the unpredictable crazy would manifest.
This was my pattern.
So too early on, there would be conversations about the future. I'd be cooking four course meals, running bathwater, clipping his toe nails, and giving him massages.
And the sex. Was not just any sex. It was that passionate, intentional, "you will never forget this experience" kind of sex. Too soon. Unearned. Undeserved.
He knew this was too much. He knew it was too soon; unearned and in most cases undeserved.
In retrospect, I realize that my behavior probably raised a red flag. Probably even caused him to start preparing for his exit.
"Giving so much too soon made me vulnerable. Made me suspicious. Emotional. Eratic. Intense. Too much.
I became too much."
I can own that some of the devastation I experienced was because I had unrealistic expectations of him. I exaggerated in my mind my importance to him.
I do overthink everything.
Other times the hurt I experienced was because of my kindness, passion and love being taken advantage of; used, manipulated, twisted. He would lie to keep the benefits. Some pretended to have feelings that they never had simply to continue to receive the "wife" treatment. Some were in other relationships. A couple of them were married. They would get away with the lies until I finally recognized the patterns of behavior, strung together the clues, and stopped pouring out long enough to see the red flags. Most often, I caught on too late.
Before therapy, I saw myself as the victim. Here I was, this gentle, sweet, giving woman who had been dragged through the mud. My soft heart had been stomped on. I had been treated like trash by men who weren't even worthy of my presence.
I allowed this. Why had I allowed this?
At some point in my numbness, I stopped caring about myself; my morals, and my own safety. On several occassions I found myself in situations where my well being was compromised.
The next morning, life still went on. Something was broken inside me.
I knew the woman who I wanted to be; who I had planned to be, but I had no clue how to stop being the woman I currently was to become her.
Therapy helped me take accountability; to see my role in what I had experienced in previous situationships. This was important.
As long as I was the victim, I had no control.
Men were the problem. All of them. Men hurt me. So at this point,
Men were alright for a good time; some occasional companionship; maybe to fix a car, take out trash, or move some furniture, but not for love. Never again for love.
That was where I was. In the midst of it all God was doing something. I had given my "love" life to God. Finally, I decided that I was done with "dating." I was learning about my own strength and God's strength at the same time.
Reluctantly, I joined the prayer ministry at church. I went to the classes, studied the bible, wrote essays about who God is, and what He intended prayer to look like. I was coming to a place of finding myself again and discovering God's love.
I couldn't wrap my mind around God still loving me.
Not after all I had done. If He is omniscient (all knowing) and omnipotent (all present), then He was there. He knew that I made decisions to be less than He intended. He saw what I allowed men who secretly hated women to do to me. He saw how my own self hatred pushed me into situations that resulted in me being treated like trash. He saw me in the dark basements. He was in the room when I betrayed my own trust, when I sold myself for a dinner or a ride home at night; what I did at rock bottom. In desperation.
How? How could He have seen me at my lowest, and still love me? I had trained myself to believe that to receive love, you had to earn it. Nothing was given; only earned or taken. What could I do to earn back God's love? What sacrifice would be big enough?
That was a costs that was too high to pay. I had stopped trying.
I didn't even really understand what love was anymore. The definition that I once knew, had become skewed and mangled, I couldn't picture what it even looked like any more.
The deeper I dug into the prayer ministry teachings, the more I started to get the revelation of God's love. It didn't have to be earned.
There wasn't a place where I could go where God's love couldn't reach me. I didn't have to be anything other than what I was. I didn't have to clean myself up. I didn't have to get myself together first. I didn't need to change my habits. I didn't have to stop fornicating or getting drunk right away. God loved me right there. Right where I was.
The closer I got to God, the more I lost the desire to do things that would disappoint Him. The more I learned about his mercy and love the less I needed acceptance and companionship from various men.
The more I understood that God sees me as pure through the blood of His Son, Jesus, the less I needed to be affirmed by these men. I no longer took pride in being the best sex he ever had, the best cook, or even the best woman.
Slowly God was healing the broken places. Then at the end of the prayer ministry semester, there was a deliverance meeting.
I won't go into graphic details of that deliverance here because that experience deserves it's own blog post. Know this: Deliverance is real. At the end of it, I was cleaned out. There was no bitterness, brokeness or woundedness left. Blank. I was a clean slate.
Then O dropped the bomb about his numptuals. I lost my footing...temporarily.
Then I met Charles. I laid everything on the table. Everything that I was and wasn't. Everything that I had done. The worst things. Everything I was ashamed of. I was completely transparent and vulnerable.
I wouldn't blame Charles if he ghosted me after I told him the things I had done. I was damaged goods. Precious to God, but this was Earth.
Though I knew the mercy of God, I knew that Charles wasn't God. Men are different. They have egos. They want a wife that's pure...not the one that had been practiced on. Too many men had practiced on me.
Charles felt too good to be true. There had to be a catch. There had to be some skeletons. There must be a secretly abusive side. A wife and some kids somewhere.
Men don't come like this. Never this interested and attentive. Never this kind and understanding. Never this patient and considerate. Never both saved and down to earth. Never honest and loyal. Never this educated and sexy. Never this perfect for me.
This couldn't be real. I had been through too much. I had too much street savvy to fall for this. I kept looking for contratrictions. Holes in his story. Clues. Where were the clues that I would need to string together?
I knew that if I told him everything he would leave. I wanted him to leave before I fell too deep. Before I lost myself in him. I couldn't give him the opportunity to hurt me. I wasn't ready for any more heart break. I had given that part of my life up...for good.
Charles stayed.
The more I told him, the more he empathized. The more he listened without judgement, the more vulnerable I became. The more vulnerable I became, the deeper I fell for him.
What kind of man was this? To know all of my flaws; mistakes; hangups; and my past and still make a conscious choice to love me anyway. Not tolerate me long enough to use me. Not holding in his judgement to rush into sex. Passing every test. Jumping through every hoop. Surviving every interrogation.
How could he, a human...and a man at that, love me the way God does? How could he be a physical manifestation of the healing that God had just so recently done? Could this really be my husband? Could God still give me the happily ever after that I hadn't earned? Does grace this strong really exists?
To be continued...