Marital bliss

I like it when people I've blogged about come to pay me a visit. I dunno, it just makes me feel important. Maybe Elder Oaks will come comment someday. :-) More likely an impersonator, now that I've said that!

In the mean time, Ron Schow stopped by recently to clarify his position on so-called mixed orientation marriages. The data for success is unfavorable, and given the recent planned divorces mentioned in the gay Mormon blogs I read, this has never been more emphatically on my mind.

Gushing about how great our marriage is and how happy I am has become a favorite past time on this blog of late, and I'm still standing by that. It's alarming to me how happy I am sometimes. Seems sort of indecent. Seems like I ought not allow myself such bliss while still struggling with so many issues in my life. I wonder whether it appears that I'm not struggling at all anymore--that things are sufficiently resolved (or repressed, depending on your inclination to cynicism) to put me riding off into the sunset. This makes me chuckle a bit, but I've been told I seem to handle everything with "relative ease" before, so perhaps people may get that impression.

The fact is, a couple years ago I wanted out of my marriage too. Not in a formal sort of way that involved conversations and rational thought and solutions (things I tend to advocate), but in a desperate, under-the-surface, frantic sort of way. This was before I had kids. I wanted to be freed from my marital situation in a way that wouldn't involve any pain for anyone involved--no blame, no long conversations, no tears, no betrayals. I wanted out scot-free. I wanted, during my most miserable moments, for my wife to die.

Yes, that is shocking and horrible beyond words.

But it was there, and I've since talked to my wife about it, and I'm telling you now because I tend to say stuff that no decent person ever would. So, I can understand when Laura says in her blog that she couldn't get married and be miserable for the rest of her life, because I was miserable for a while and there was no end in sight. I can understand the reluctance to consider marriage at all and the hopelessness that comes from feeling there are no happy alternatives.

But, somehow I'm still here and I'm now happy, and every once in a while when my wife takes longer than I expect at the store I have a horrible flash in my mind in which I wonder if there may have been an accident. And then I check the messages, look out the door, and fidget a bit until she arrives, safe and sound. If she takes particularly long and doesn't have her cell phone on, I may even start to ruminate on the worst possible scenarios, and they literally bring me to tears. Being a father and a husband makes me cry a lot, it turns out. I cry for happiness mostly, but once in a while it's out of fear of losing any of mine. I can't imagine life ever ever having the meaning and peace that it does without them all in it.

I can't explain how I got from point A (wanting my wife magically out of my life) to point B (horrified that anything bad might ever happen to her), but it surely has to do with Christ and positive change.

Petrified

I suppose my fixation with change has some root in fear--my fear that I will become wholly unchangeable and unresponsive to new challenges in life. I'm petrified of being petrified.

This fear is not completely unfounded. I'm a young man, but in some ways I feel very old. How long have I been wanting to be more healthy in my daily routine? For years I've set and re-set the goal to exercise more regularly, eat more healthily. But my eating and exercising (or lack thereof) habits die hard. For how many years have I determined every few weeks that I need to read my scriptures more regularly and study the gospel more carefully? My conviction is usually born during the sacrament and lost before I pull into the driveway three hours later.

Ben Franklin spent every week of his life focusing on some new virtue to master, from what I understand. And I'm a big fan of Ben's (notwithstanding the scandals). How could he possibly have been so good at really implementing changes in himself on a regular basis? Why am I so much like a rock?

O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe. (2Nephi 1:13)

Labor day

There was a ward picnic this morning and we all had a pretty good time. As I was playing with my son on the playground, I got a little bit frustrated because he is so petrified of the slide. Many months ago he had no fear whatsoever and people always commented on a what a crazy kid he was for it. But, for whatever reason in a toddler's maturation, he now is terrified of coming anywhere near a slide. And as I try to talk him into it (knowing he will love it if he can just relax), he looks at me as if I'm the enemy. He knows I want him to go down the slide and he knows that's not his own goal. What he doesn't realize and I can't convey to him is that I only want him to go because I know he will enjoy it. I don't give a flying flip whether or not he goes for any other reason. But that reason alone is enough to make him distrust me whenever we're near each other by the slide.

Then I realized an odd comparison when the ward starting playing football. My brother-in-law said before the game started that it was the ward's common practice to have a football game after breakfast on Labor Day. I told him it was my common practice to never play football under any circumstances. But what the hell am I so afraid of? Dropping the ball or looking like a fool? Big deal! I stood there next to the slide watching the football game and realized that I'm the same as my son. I have irrational fears and place limitations on myself because I don't trust.

Pearson, 1

"I was not being dishonest with you when we married. I loved you. You were wonderful and I really did love you. I thought that the problem would be taken care of. They told me it would be. I did everything they said to do. And I thought for a few months that everything was changed."

"But, Gerald," I interrupted, "we were--I was--happy."

"And I was too, in many, many ways. Blossom, this is not your fault. Maybe you think it is, but it has nothing to do with you, only with me. Yes, we were happy. I liked being with you. I even liked being with you physically. But to me it was like...like we were such good friends that we shared everything with each other, even sex. It was never quite like... like lovers. There is this other thing in me, Blossom, and it has never gone away and I know now that it never will. There is this thing in me that needs, that insists that my strongest feelings be for a man. It is a need that seems to be as deep in me as my need for food and breath. I tried to beat it to death, to strangle it, to smother it. And it has not died. Blossom, I know the anguish you've been through this last week. Can you understand that I have been in anguish too? And for more than a week."

"Gerald," I said, "it's wrong!"

"Wrong!" Gerald put his face into his hands and then looked up. "I have taken that word and used it like a whip on myself. I have flagellated myself with that word until I'm bloody. But it does not change things. I have fasted, I have prayed. How many thousands of prayers I have prayed! And it does not change things. If my homosexuality is wrong, then I am wrong, the fact of my being is wrong. Because that's what I am!"

Carol Lynn Pearson,
in Good-bye, I love you

I read Pearson's book about her gay husband dying of AIDS a few weeks ago. It was before I read the article about her daughter, Emily, having also married a gay man and thinking she could make it work. The book was strange to me. I kept reading it trying to assess Pearson's view of homosexuality. I tried to read it for the underlying message. It wasn't until I abandoned that approach and just appreciated that she was telling a story--a story with all the ups, downs, questions, and ambivalence left intact--that I really started enjoying it.

There were places she made me angry. There were many places she made me cry. I was in a public place and kept feeling self conscious. I recommend it to anyone interested in homosexuality and Mormonism.

As for the quote above, I have a few comments. I can agree that my wife and I are not lovers in a burning infatuation and lust sort of sense--something I miss greatly. But we are lovers in the most literal sense of the word. We "make" love of the true kind. We produce it from thin air by being what we are and what we want and what we can be for each other. Love is something I've been meaning to blog on but haven't gotten around to it (yes, I say this all the time!).

This passage brings out so many other issues--the hope for change, the futility of forcing the issue, the very real and unjustified self-hatred we experience, the confusion, the logical quandaries inherent in identity. Happiness without happiness. It makes me feel strangely close to Pearson.

Index of Pearson posts
Pearson, 1
Detestable
Buried Life
Alone
Sacrifice
Pearson, 2

Cooties

Whether homosexuality is a disease or not doesn't matter to me for the typical reasons. But it's interesting to think about, and I do have a few opinions.

There are good reasons not to call it a disease separate from all the political and activist posturing. Historically diseases carry stigma (they shouldn't, but they do). A couple hundred years ago diseases were thought to have not a single etiological cause, but to result from any of several sufficient causes that were associated with character or moral weaknesses. Even now physicians get lots of training on not making value judgments about patient behaviors. If they're 500 pounds because they have no self control, you don't treat them any differently. If they come in every 2 weeks with a new STD, you just give them antibiotics and some advice on how to avoid a future problem. But, this clinical detachment doesn't always work, and even for diseases with etiologies completely outside the person's control, people sometimes judge. To the extent that homosexuality has long been characterized as a disease as indicative of moral deficiency and weak character, it has rightly been removed from the DSM as a psychiatric illness.

However, I think there are still good reasons to call homosexuality a disease too. Sure, I'm willing to concede that there's no necessary psychopathology, but what about just plain old physiologic pathology? It's rare to find professionals who connect the reproductive system with reproduction, for some reason, but you can't reproduce with a gay reproductive drive without some conscious intervention. I'd say that qualifies it for most definitions of disease I've seen. And mitigating a disease doesn't change it's status as a disease, it just changes its status to "controlled" or "cured". For those (like me) who would prefer to be sexually attracted to women for purposes of procreation, having righteously dissociated homosexuality from disease status or pathology of any kind effectively eliminates my access to relevant medical or psychiatric care, a crime all on its own.

Professional medical organizations spend a lot of time lobbying for or against CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) designation of something as a disease because it always translates into reimbursement for medical services provided. For example, if obesity is a disease, you get reimbursed for someone coming in to your doctor's office and working out a treatment plan. If it's not a disease, you either don't get paid or you have to put down an associated diagnosis that is a disease (like diabetes, or high blood pressure, or sleep apnea). In the case of homosexuality, if I want professional help (rather than having a do-it-yourself and safety-be-damned attitude) I have to pony up the cash myself because everyone's so afraid I'll be stigmatized by being labeled as "diseased". For crying freaking out loud, label me and let me pay my $20 copay!!!

But, oh yeah. It's not about what's best for me. It's about pushing for civil rights. I'll just be a martyr then. Since I have no choice.

Thinking things

For the last couple years I've had a recurring nightmare. It isn't always the same, but the theme is consistent: I find myself in a high-stakes situation in which I am unprepared. It's often academic. For example, I'm waiting to start a final and I realize (somehow suddenly) that I never bothered to read the textbook. Or I never once showed up for class, forgetting that I had even enrolled. I scramble through my backpack trying to find the text to flip through for a few moments as the proctor says to put away your materials. Panic ensues. Terror.

Life foists that same uneasy feeling on me once in a while. But, being awake, I experience it differently. I feel defensive. I rationalize. I justify. Thankfully, I don't feel nearly as out of control. My mind starts going into overdrive to lay some cognitive path that will protect and defend my... I dunno... happiness?

Yes, I'm still on the happiness kick. Essentially, I'm trying to convey that our brains drive our behaviors, and our personal needs drive our brains in some significant ways without our ever necessarily even realizing it. There's some brand of happiness that our mind vigilantly attempts to get and defend. And when our world view is threatened... when things go wrong, our mind has as its primary task making things better. Unhappiness of this variety gets things going. It makes me move. It protects me as a creature. Can it be viewed as merely another means to a biological end? What about a psychological end? I think it certainly could explain why people (myself included, of course) have such a hard time having a civil conversation about sensitive topics. Happiness is at stake. Sacred personal psychological comfort.

I suppose this explains why I had dread in the pit of my stomach when I attended the scientific presentation about reparative therapy given by Jack Drescher. I suppose it also explains why Dr. Drescher during the lecture was willing to categorically condemn anyone involved with reparative therapy (offering or receiving) as guided by poor motives. Our respective world views seemed to be at stake during that lecture. Consequently, I would have been reluctant to change my opinions had he said something compelling but particularly at odds with my hopes (which he didn't, scientifically), and he offered no concessions of good faith to conservatives or religious folks I believe because to do so would have opened the door to middle ground (unacceptable in terms of his political goals). Anyway, I digress. The point is, people need happiness and they're willing to do mental gymnastics to get it. And it's all quite unnecessary. Truth doesn't give a damn about your mental gymnastics, or your happiness. Things just are what they are. And being aware of that and okay with it seems to be a step toward a more robust and genuine happiness.

Unfortunately, everyone thinks they're already rooted in truth. Their happiness is already genuine. And when the shadows are cast across the quaking soil... panic. Defend the happiness.