Love, sex and anger

Content Warning: My husband doesn’t ask much of me, but he is rather insistent I write this daily blog. He has been absurdly supportive of my writing habit since day one. I do not wholly understand this as I have not always been supportive of his acting habit. Our marriage is sometimes one-sided. If you are uncomfortable with that, I suggest you stop reading.

This morning I was reading The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. In the chapter “Bonneville Salt Flats” the author writes about when he and his wife’s gazes meet and entwine as they look at a third thing.

This “meet and entwine” concept is something Green learned about from Donald Hall who wrote about his late wife.

“We did not spend our days gazing into each other’s eyes. We did that gazing when we made love or when one of us was in trouble, but most of the time our gazes met and entwined as they looked at a third thing.”

-Donald Hall

First of all…made love? Keep that to yourself.

Moving on: Hall wrote about the “third thing” first, then Green. My turn.

If I’m understanding Green and Hall correctly, a third thing can be a piece of art, a book, a concert, a play, a child, a mountain or whatever. It’s something that you look at with wonder, then notice your partner looking at it with wonder and then you gaze at each other with wonder. It’s called ROMANCE.

All this gazing and wondering pisses me off. Shared moments. Sidelong glances. Eye contact. Knock it off, people! Or at least stop writing about it.

What if we pushed each other a little more to be independent? What if we didn’t need to discuss and critique and “get each other?”

I want to bring back looking at your partner and thinking any (or all) of the following:

*WTF?

*Why?

*WHY?!?!

*WTF?!?!?

Now these are the moments that make a marriage. My marriage anyway. These are the moments that shake faith, erode trust and create the grit necessary to pack in decades of monogamy. These are the moments that hold secrecy, shame and fear. That’s my kind of adventure!

The alternative:

Jesse and I go for a nice walk. Jesse looks at Symbol. Then I look at Symbol. Then we look at each other with a love and appreciation of Symbol, Rockford and each other.

No! No, no, no, no, no.

We fight. We yell. We undermine. We hate. We judge. All within one simple, sunny day! And you know what? It’s fine. It’s a part of marriage. Ours, at least.

Thanks for reading. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go make love to Jesse. -Connie

P.S. This blog is an example of what you shouldn’t write about: your marriage, your sex life and your anger. It could scare people!