When I was in high school, my best friend and I used to talk about what kind of life we wanted. We’d use hand gestures to show it: she wanted a predictable, steady life, like if you put out your hand to make a long, flat plateau. I wanted a life with all kinds of adventure, like if you moved your hand up and down like a roller coaster. Hmmm. Be careful what you ask for.
I can still picture him driving up to my 10’x12’ hot plate of a classy room in his perfect, shiny, black BMW with tinted windows. Oh my gosh, were we of different economic strata at that moment!
A few days beforehand, I had been photographing a street art event for the organization that put it on when I noticed him walking his bike in his spandex get-up past the drawings on the ground. His legs were unlike any I had ever seen. He was an uber-athlete of some sort and I could appreciate his thin, artful musculature. I wanted my legs to look like his! I had always been drawn to athleticism, and the physical results of his were stunning. My personal results, on the other hand, conveyed that I had spent more time lately behind a still camera than moving handlebars.
I decided then and there that I needed to get back into biking. I had been a bike tour guide leading 118-mile-per-day trips several years before, so an hour later I approached him while he was leaning up against a big fountain.
“Hello. Do you happen to know of an intermediate bike club I could join?”
This was not a pick-up line. In fact, the surest way you can tell that I’m interested in a guy is if I walk quietly in the opposite direction of him. I was honestly curious about figuring out how to bike my way back into peak fitness.
“No, but I would ride with you,” he said innocently and cheerfully, without a smidgen of schmooze.
Oh gosh.
“Uh … look at you, look at me. That just wouldn’t work. You’d be riding circles around me and I’d be purple and sweating like crazy. I’d feel so uncomfortable with that.”
“Really, I’d ride with you. I don’t ride competitively anymore. I wouldn’t mind.”
“No, really. That just wouldn’t work.”
“It’s okay. I wouldn’t mind.” He was so calmly persistent in letting me know it wasn’t a big deal.
After about three more rounds of dialoguing this unlikely scenario, I finally gave in. He didn’t act at all like it was a pick-up kind of thing; he just seemed like a nice person. I had absolutely no intention of having any kind of date. I had just started being solo me again. I liked that he was friendly with nothing ulterior about it.
“Uh … okay. Here’s my card. You don’t have to call me, though. If you get home and realize how silly it would be, I wouldn’t blame you for not calling.”
I got home that afternoon to a blinking light on my answering machine. Would I like to ride up the mountain with him on Wednesday? Oh golly.
Halfway up the mountain, as he was circling me and my sweaty purpleness, I almost couldn’t believe I had accepted his cycling invitation. When we got to the top (thank you, muscle memory!), the aerial view we had of the city overlooking the ocean was breathtaking. From behind me, I heard him say, “You know, there’s a movie playing tonight—”
Oh no, this was a date of some sort?!
“… and tonight’s the last night it’s playing. I’ve heard it’s good. Do you want to go?”
Dangit.
“Uh, sure.” So much for not getting into something for a long while. I stepped into his beautiful black car and off we went to the movie.
I had always said I’d have a black car, perhaps a BMW, so I had to admire his taste. A few hours and some unexpected-and-uncomfort- able-movie-sex-scenes-while-on-a-first-date later, we weren’t ready to call it a night just yet. We sat down at the corner window table of a local restaurant and ordered a burger and fries to share. I decided that I didn’t want to waste anymore time in relationships, and that I’d lay all of my questionable past history out on the table for him to know right off the bat: I’ve been in two relationships for a total of 10 years; I have a sizable mound of debt thanks to going after my photojournalistic dreams after college; and I don’t want to be in a relationship unless it’s heading for life commitment.
That stunned him a bit. Not exactly first-date talk. Ten years in relationships was sketchy enough. But he taught accounting, so the money part was especially alarming to him. I knew it had the quick potential of being a relationship ender; that’s why I had to bring it up before we got any further. I was bent on not wasting anymore time in my life. A little, barely-conscious part of me wanted to make sure my dad would still be alive to walk me down the aisle, and I didn’t want that to happen any later than my 30th year (and his 75th), if possible. I also had to be mindful of having enough fertile years for family-making. Beyond the shock in his expression, he seemed to respect my blunt, up-front honesty.
The money thing apparently didn’t make him bail immediately, and a few nights later after going to an ocean documentary together, he drove me home and we sat in his car talking for a long time. There was one major, lingering detail I hadn’t mentioned in the burger place.
“I need to tell you something,” I said. “Giving myself away physi- cally hasn’t gotten me any closer to having a permanent, committed relationship. I’ve decided I’m not going to give myself away anymore until I’m married. That’s what I wanted to do when I was younger, but I gave in. I don’t want to give in anymore. I want to be a ‘born-again virgin.’”
“I need to tell you something, then” he replied.
Uh oh, I thought.
“I’m a Christian and I don’t want to do that either.”
No way. A guy? Saying this? Never in my life had I heard such a thing come out of a guy’s mouth. I guess I had never dated a Christian before! (I wondered if I had even known one my whole life!) Actually, I had never dated, per se. I had been with someone since the age of 18. I didn’t have any idea what Christians were like to date. What I did know at that moment was that I had utter respect for him. I felt immediate ease and complete safety in his presence. I could just be me without any physical stuff happening yet.
Wouldn’t you know it, twenty minutes later at my doorstep, he laid a big, long kiss on me that I was not expecting. But I still knew I was safe with him. I knew he wasn’t going to push the envelope any further. How uniquely refreshing.
A day or so later, I was heading to his condominium to hang out with him for the first time in his space. I had loaded some photo albums and videos of my family in my black Gap bag, and I excitedly knocked on his door. He opened the door, greeted me cheerfully, and invited me in. I set my bag down against the wall and headed to his sliding-glass door, which had a beautiful view out toward the ocean in the distance. I looked back toward him in dramatic exclamation over his enviable location, and he was curiously down on his knees next to my bag on the floor, covering a virtually invisible mark on the wall with white touch-up paint. It was very odd, but his place was unusually white and pristine from top to bottom, so, uh, okay. After a few minutes of being in his space, light and bright and airy as it was, I began to perceive a remarkable lack of dust. I hadn’t recalled ever noticing someone’s amount of dust, unless it was overwhelming. This was the other extreme. I immediately became keenly aware of the feeling that when there isn’t a speck of dust, you get careful about your actions. Pair that with the fact that everything was perfectly organized. There wasn’t one item out of kilter.
After a while of showing him pictures of my life and my family— sentimentally kitschy, I know—I went in to use the bathroom and it was so pristine that it looked like a catalog display. No dust, no dried water droplets on the mirror, no water marks on the shower, no signs of use at all. I’m not a messy kind of girl, but this was strangely immaculate. Did he ever go in there? I felt rigidly self-aware; I didn’t want to leave any unwanted fingerprints anywhere. Should I wipe down the sink after washing my hands? Hmmm. A clean guy is a fantastic thing. But this was beyond clean. Oh well. Carry on for now.
We got together several more times and then one evening, I thought I’d surprise him by riding my bike to his condo unannounced. I was excited to see him and it took me about 30 minutes to get there. In my spontaneous zeal, I hadn’t paid much attention to the daylight factor. Not an issue, for the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of person that I am. By the time I pulled up to his building, it was dusk. I remember it like it was yesterday. I walked up the stairs, knocked on the door, and waited. I knocked again. I could hear the sports channel on his TV, and I knew he was there. Suddenly, he opened the door just a crack and peered through it. Not a bit of excitement passed from his expression to mine. Oh. Usually when people are dating, they’re naturally excited to see each other. It’s a given that feels even funny to have to write down. Spontaneously happening upon each other usually gets the butterflies fluttering overtime. It was obvious and strange that he was not feeling that. He coldly exchanged a few words with me, closed the two-inch crack, and locked the door behind him.
I stood there at his doorstep not knowing which episode of The Twilight Zone I had entered. It was almost dark. I had biked out 30 minutes to see him. With an excitement in me. Not only was he unexcited by my spontaneity, he even seemed a bit irritated by my sudden presence. No, “Would you like to come in?” Not a word about the dark. No, “Will you make it home okay?” Definitely no offer to drive me home, not that I needed or expected it. I rode back home in the dark, unsure of what had just transpired but definitely feeling no sense of care coming from him in the least bit.
I had never encountered such a person, so I was more than a little confused by it all. My 29th birthday dawned and he called about meeting me downtown for a smoothie. It was an awkward get-together. I didn’t know what to make of him, so my silence was a bit loud. Somehow, we ended up getting together a few more times, and that odd night at his doorstep seemed to be a fairly isolated experience. We even went to a party together and when he was uninterested in dancing, I felt some jealousy from him when I danced a few (fast) songs with another guy. So something was there on his end. And even given my previous descriptions of past relational and financial choices that could be disturbing to him, he apparently wasn’t totally dismayed, even though he’d mentioned some apprehension from his parents.
He stopped by my place often since I lived close to where he taught. I made him hot plate pancakes on my floor, and we got to know each other more with every cycling route we took up into the hills. He had recorded himself playing the guitar and singing the Happy Birthday song to me, and I went to sleep each night listening to the gentle Christian songs he had written and recorded on a CD in his living room before meeting me.
He was different from any guy I had ever met. He was a little rigid, less casual and easy-going, and remarkably alone. He did his work diligently, was well respected by colleagues and students, and lived his days in very predictable patterns. Interestingly, those daily routines never seemed to include any friends. That was an oddity from the outset. I had never met someone who was friendless, but then again, he was surrounded by people all day as a teacher. After talking and interacting with so many people during office hours, going home understandably meant basking in some much-needed quiet and solace, I figured. But still, how does someone have no friends? I pondered that one a lot.
Socially, his sense of humor didn’t seem all there; he didn’t get my or other people’s allusions to the common-knowledge things of the generations surrounding mine or his, as if he had lived his whole life in a sort of bubble isolated from the rest of the world. Even though he had 16 years on me, he was the age of my siblings’ generation, and they were all very culturally “with it.”
No matter what, he always fit a triathlon into every day. He had been competitive for many years, and it was his absolute passion.
I loved that so much of his interest in it stemmed from a deep appreciation of nature and being out in it as much as possible. He never tired of sameness; he never took the beauty around him for granted. I’ve always been a nature lover, so I respected him for that. I’ve also always loved seeing the world on my own leg power, and all of a sudden here was a person who shared that trait. He was always up for walking downtown together, biking beautiful mountainous routes, or doing weekly races along the bluff. I’m not a one-night-stand kind of girl; if I’m going to spend my life with someone, finding a person who prioritizes being active as a way of life can be a rarity. The fact that he did was extremely important to me in evaluating our potential future together. He valued it with more daily commitment and consistency than I, so I knew it would always be a priority in couplehood. A huge plus, in my mind.
We started going to his parents’ house for dinner every Saturday night pretty early on. They lived about a 30-minute drive south, in the city where he grew up, and he often got together with them on Saturday nights. Considering what a lot of other guys were doing with their Saturday nights, I liked that a lot about him.
The first time I walked into their big, beautiful house, I remember thinking it looked like a gallery—off-white walls, off-white carpet, and not one thing out of place. Every watercolor painting on the walls had the same look; I didn’t see any memorabilia or anything that broke the watercolor mold. His parents were warm and welcoming, and his mom’s cooking was fabulous every time. Every part of dinner was homemade, and there were big desserts too. What a treat for someone who had grown accustomed to eating quick meals of corn tortillas with black beans and cheese.
His mom was pretty and youthful for her age. She was petite, perky, and fit, with the metabolism of an Energizer Bunny. She was also exceedingly sweet, always looked for the good in people, and laughed easily. She had an innocence that made me wonder if she had actually raised her boys in the ‘60s and ‘70s. She was very 1950s in attitude, in a good way, and she and his dad looked like approachable, aging movie stars. Because his family valued being together, it implied a lot of good things in my mind.
One day before he headed home after a date, he asked if I’d want to go to church with him on Sunday. “Yes!” was my resounding response. He looked surprised, as though he had fully expected me to say no. I had grown up Catholic and hated being forced to go to painfully boring church services every week of my life until the age of 18. But I had recently been wondering if there was something out there for me that wasn’t what I had grown up with. I had been noticing lately that my values didn’t align with those of the people around me in various social circles. Before meeting Mister Triathlete, I had come to the conclusion that I’d like to go church-hopping to see what I would find. I always liked to talk about God; I just didn’t know anyone who knew much about him.
The next thing I knew, I was at a non-denominational church service and loving it. It had been 10 years since I had been to church, but this was nothing like the monotonous, repetitive Catholic Mass I’d been forced to endure all my life. Whenever I asked my mom in high school why our church was so dull and joyless, she always said that little towns got the least-gifted priests. And our town was tiny. (No offense is meant; it’s just true.) This, on the other hand, was an experience! I got goosebumps, I felt joy, and I wanted more!
I had always wondered if there were people anywhere that sat around and talked about the bible. I concluded that it must have been a silly thought I concocted … until that day, when I heard in church that there were umpteen bible study groups actively meeting weekly to talk about God. Before I knew it, I was accompanying him to his group! I loved it. Here we were, eight or ten people, sitting around discussing deep bible stuff. So cool! I had a lot of questions, and I also did my best to figure out if there was any spiritual goofiness that would make me want to duck out. But they and their beliefs all seemed legit.
The next morning, my phone rang.
“Hello, Lila? I’m the woman you met last night at the home group. You had a lot of questions about God and the bible, and I woke up this morning feeling like God was telling me to call you. Would you like to meet every Saturday morning at my house so we can go through the bible together and I can try to help you answer all the questions you have?”
Wow. I had never been asked such a question.
“Sure!” More of what I had always wanted! Literally a dream come true.
But this was a big life topic. I didn’t want it mixed up in any way with any person I happened to be dating. This was a study I needed to pursue independently of any love interest in my life. I decided that while I figured out what I believed, our relationship needed to be suspended, if possible. He was amenable to my need to press pause on us for this purpose.
For the next several months, this woman and I met every Saturday, usually for three or four hours at a time. We went through a little workbook that guided me to all of the scriptural answers to questions I had always wondered about God. We talked about everything in life through the lens of the bible, and I felt deeply fulfilled. In the process of meeting with this now-friend, I had come into my own Christianity as well.
In the meantime, so as not to have to explain to the rest of the world why we weren’t spending time together, he and I decided to continue going through the motions of going to his parents’ house for dinner every Saturday night. It was awkward for us, as we would meet up only right before going over, but they never suspected that we weren’t actually seeing each other during that time.
Fairly soon after I had taken Christianity on as my own, I was free to start thinking about us again. I began asking him on the way home from those dinners what he wanted to do about us. He didn’t speak with any kind of certainty, and that harkened back to the experience I had in my first relationship of seven-plus years. Was this another version of commitment fear? How could he not know what he wanted to do? We had known each other long enough, at least in my mind, for us to know whether we should continue toward sealing the deal, or part company and move on. Two weeks into it, I had called my mom to tell her that I knew all I needed to know about him to know what he was all about, and that I wanted my someday-children to have his traits. Yes, he was different from any guy I had ever known. And yes, he had definite peculiarities. But it seemed like every guy I had ever known from my generation was on the non-committal end of the spectrum in various aspects. He, on the other hand, was solid in so many respectable ways—honest, trustworthy, responsible, reliable, intelligent, active, committed to the things of his life, constant and predictable in comforting ways, and very good-looking. It was clear that he ticked all the boxes on my wish list and then some. A few other traits that were of particular interest to me were the fact that he didn’t cuss and he didn’t drink. Almost every guy I had ever known, except for my dad, cussed regularly. And almost every guy I had ever known drank socially. I’ve always disliked cussing, and I’ve always hated substance use. From a young age, I’ve felt that both are indicative of someone who tries to follow the crowd. Whether my assumption was correct, I had never known a guy that didn’t care for those things.
Over the next several weeks, my frustration over his indecision grew. I just couldn’t understand why he didn’t seem to know whether he wanted me for life or not.
Finally one night after yet another lovely dinner with his parents, we sat in his car and I burst into tears. My tensions over this issue of marriage and why it was so hard for the people I loved to commit came to a head. In the midst of my sobbing over yet another relationship rendered pointless, he said, “I wasn’t going to tell you this. Do you know what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks?”
“What?”
“Looking for a ring.”
I’ll never forget that. The emptiness inside me instantly filled with joy.
One evening a few weeks later, my Saturday friend, who had become more like a relative now, offered to let me use her washer and dryer. While my clothes were washing, he met me at her house so we could go for a night walk. She lived near the street-art place where we had first met, and we walked in the light of the bright moon on that leap-year night to the fountain where I first asked him about biking. A moment later, he went down on one knee. In that quiet, moonlit night, he asked me to marry him. I got down on my knees and hugged him at his level. It was a very definite yes.
I now had a companion for life. It was a wonderful feeling to finally be on this new path. My heart was giddy. Whenever I was by myself at my place, I didn’t feel alone. I would have him to eventually come home to.
You’re probably thinking, wait a minute, shouldn’t you have felt about him the way you felt about the guy you originally thought you’d marry? Shouldn’t you have felt head over heels for him with chemistry overflowing out of every bit of the relationship?
The best way to answer that is that either choice felt like a risk. Do I wait for the fairytale to happen again? Or do I make a choice to be with someone I respect, enjoy, and feel attracted to, whose good traits are more developed than those in so many guys of my own generation? What I did know for sure, cavegirl-like I know, was that I wanted my children to have the solid positive traits I saw in him. It was a very left-brained decision on my part. And I think on his part too.
Some friends of mine felt conflicted about what they saw tran- spiring between us. But I wondered when or if I might ever feel again the way I felt about the first guy. How many years would it take to find love like that again? What if it was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love? If I somehow were to find someone I loved again like that, would it result in lifetime commitment or could I actually be dashed again? The first one didn’t pan out, and it was the most fulfilling love I could imagine. It felt completely mutual all those years. If the love of my life was willing to let me, the supposed love of his life, go, then what kind of love could I put my faith in?
On the other hand, this new person in my life was reliable, predict- able, consistent, driven, responsible, and straight-laced. Aside from his “house issues,” he had all the right stuff on my list. So what if he didn’t catch on to social nuances and talked through entire movies? What if I moved on due to fear of his idiosyncrasies, then deeply regretted it and couldn’t restore things with him? He was also very attractive, in my mind. I need that physical element. That, he had.
Life is a risk and you have to make certain choices that aren’t easily undone. In deciding to move forward with him, I moved from making right-brain choices based on feelings to making left-brained choices based on facts. That’s nothing you’d find in the American movies and music that washed my brain growing up. It was a foreign basis for spouse-choosing for me, my family, my friends, my culture, and my culture’s media.
We decided to set the date for exactly a year after we had met, which meant that the hardest thing was waiting those months and not doing anything together except kissing. But that’s what we both wanted, so we kept each other strong. I was so happy to have the chance to do things over. I loved that I knew without a doubt that he wouldn’t weaken and give in during those months leading up to getting married. I didn’t give in a smidgen either.
While I wondered if a few of my friends quietly boycotted our wedding because they didn’t agree with the match, our wedding day felt wonderful to me. My parents and siblings flew in and rented a house nearby for several days. I borrowed a beautiful dress from a friend, fit for a real-life princess, and several people I had photographed in the past repaid the favor in various ways: fancy car-chauffeuring; guitar-playing; etc. We kept our expenses very low. I was barely paying my own bills with the patchwork of photography jobs that occupied all my daylight hours, and my parents weren’t able to contribute, so every expense went on him. Growing up, I was never the type of girl to fantasize about my wedding, and living frugally was always the norm for me, so planning things as nicely yet as affordably as possible was a challenge I relished. After my siblings helped immensely that morning with setting everything up, my parents walked me down the grassy park and gave me away to my new life companion that afternoon. We said our forever-binding vows and our families and friends also vowed out loud that they would encourage and strengthen us in hard times.
Our wedding night was the way I had wanted my wedding night to be. We had gotten to know each other emotionally and intellec- tually. Now was our time to get to know each other physically. It was wonderful to do things in that order, and I felt so fulfilled. The next day, we set off to the airport for an island vacation, thanks to our honeymoon registry. I didn’t bring our passports due to misin- formation I had read on a website, so with significant frustration he pointed my way, we booked one more night locally, made amends the newlywed way, and flew to Bermuda the next day.
I turned 30 eleven days later.
Neglect’s Toll on a Wife: Perfection’s Grip on My Husband’s Attention © 2023-2024 Lila Meadowbrook
