Chapter 4: Constant Change
When I returned home from my visit to Angel’s, Nate was curious about any revelations I’d had while away. Sadly, I didn’t have many to share. I was only able to explain that while I didn’t understand how I could feel so strongly about two men at the same time, I didn’t want to give up on what we had built together. I genuinely appreciated that I was who I was because we’d walked alongside one another, so supportive and loving, for nearly half of our lives. I wanted to keep forging forward with the man I felt was my soul’s mate… in one form or another.
Then I voiced a request. A strange one, I admit.
I asked Nate if he would consider “dating” me for a while. I thought it would be helpful for us to strip away the unspoken expectations that’d gradually seeped into our marriage, as well as the delusion that each of us was a given. I hoped we could make the effort to get to know one another again. We both admitted that we’d gotten so used to mindlessly fulfilling the roles we each excelled at that we’d stopped appreciating the unique, multi-faceted people we were outside of those roles. Neither of us cast blame; we understood how it happened. We’d been so focused on growing our careers that we’d gotten complacent in our relationship. We’d morphed into mere resources for one another and lost our individual selves along the way. I hoped reverting back to dating status might help us breathe life into not only our relationship, but our distinct persons, as well. I also thought our experiment might give us space to determine whether we truly desired a romantic relationship or if we were better suited as friends.
Miraculously, that all made sense to Nate.
That open discussion led us to outline the terms of our new relationship for both of our sakes. We agreed that we were free to see other people if we so chose, but prospective sexual partners weren’t welcome in our shared home until we discussed it first. I also asked Nate to put a pause on reflexively saying he loved me each morning before work and before bed at night because I wanted to take the time necessary to discover what our love meant at that stage in my life.
I took it upon myself to make some changes to my routine, as well. I started by shifting my schedule so that I went to bed hours after Nate was already asleep. With the room comfortably dark and quiet, it felt more like I was crawling into an empty bed—the bed of a single woman who was free to live her life as she saw fit. Instead of someone who was lovingly fighting the urge to revolve her life around her partner’s needs and preferences. It was a small step, but it felt like an important one.
Changes to my daily routine followed suit. After I’d finished work on my thesis and my book had launched, I immersed myself in marketing, as well as getting back to supporting the environmental causes I’d always felt passionate about. It was ridiculously easy to get lost in my new endeavors. Especially for the few weeks when my car was in the shop having mechanical work done. Not having a convenient way to leave the house during the day enabled me to pour myself into building a website for my book. I spent countless hours researching domains, hosts, designs, layouts, graphic elements, and even fonts. Then I moved onto creating material for each webpage and social media account. I developed a stress-induced eye twitch from burying myself in all things technical for weeks on end, but that was still easier to cope with than the inner turmoil that’d been the fuel for my incessant work.
It was around that same time when Nate and I were slated to jet off to my sister’s wedding. I championed Nate’s right to back out, but he preferred to join me. We knew my showing up alone would raise a lot of questions and it was too early in our experimental relationship to label its’ status. Going together and openly divulging our quasi-separation seemed both premature and in poor taste. So instead, we opted to play the role of happy spouses basking in the love and hope of our young marriage. It felt deceitful, but we really couldn’t imagine a preferable option.
The whole weekend felt like a test, where every observation inherently held an answer to a question on my heart. Was the optimism in the newlyweds’ eyes calling me to remember when Nate and I’d felt that way? Was the fact that we were merely pretending that everything was normal an indication of the fate of our relationship? Was the considerable reign of my grandparents’ marriage something to aspire to? Or was it codependency masquerading as unconditional love? I had no idea, nor did I realize attending their wedding was going to create even more confusion for me.
At the end of our weekend of improv with family, Nate and I were dealt an unpleasant surprise. When Nate was driving us home from the airport late at night, a deer ran out of the woods and into the road. He swerved to miss it, which propelled us straight into the woods at nearly seventy miles per hour. There was a thick wall of trees that we’d drove straight towards, but had miraculously avoided every single one. The car had come to a stop in a small patch of thick grass and assorted wilderness, while sandwiched between two trees. We both walked away without a scratch on us, but my car didn’t fare as well. It was totaled in the blink of an eye.
It took weeks for the shock of that experience to wear off. Not to mention countless chiropractic and massage sessions to work through the physical tension we were each carrying.
Just as we were regaining our footing from that, we were faced with another life-changing ordeal.
Nate and I had four beloved pets. It was a package deal—when Nate chose to share his life with me, he gained four additional family members on the spot. We blended seamlessly, though. Nate loved each of them as much as I did, and they reciprocated in kind. Our close bond with them made the unexpected passing of our sweet rescue dog, Toffee, all the more heartbreaking. She became alarmingly frail in a very short period of time, but science was unable to determine why. All exams and labs had been inconclusive, which led her doctors to surmise that it was simply age that had caused her rapid decline and sudden passing.
Devastated, Nate and I turned to any faith we had hiding deep within ourselves to help us make peace with all that had transpired. But our limited experience with religion and spirituality made that a challenging feat. We didn’t have any pillars of faith to lean on for comfort and our hearts were so filled with pain that our minds kept trying to reason their way to peace. That was unsuccessful. As was trying to understand why something referred to as “Divine” would claim our loved one so abruptly.
Our desire for answers eventually led us to the notion of Heaven. The childlike concept of everlasting rainbows and joyful afterlife offered Nate and I solace when nothing else did. The hope of being reunited with our family member someday in such a beautiful place was the closest we came to feeling at peace, so that’s what our desperate hearts chose to latch onto.
It took shedding many tears, a lot of love from our other furry loved ones, and the passing of time before Nate and I could focus on anything other than grief.
Thankfully, while I was healing my heart I was graced with another opportunity to immerse myself in work. The friend who’d recommended Blaine for editing offered me a part-time job maintaining her business website after seeing my handiwork online. It certainly wasn’t what I’d gone to school for fifteen years to do, but it had its benefits. I could work from home and earn some money to pay back the loan I’d taken for the car that was now sitting in a junkyard. It also offered me some time to consider my long-term career goals. The new gig couldn’t have come at a better time.
With my attention primarily on the pain I’d been feeling and the creative projects I’d taken on, our home had become sorely neglected in a matter of weeks. Laundry and dirty dishes were piled high, the fridge was empty, and the dust bunnies had gotten large enough to hide Easter baskets. It wasn’t just the housework I’d become detached from, though. Distance had naturally developed between Nate and me as we struggled to design a satisfying new normal for our nights and weekends. We’d been desperate to avoid the marital rut of sitting in the living room watching TV but found it challenging to come up with desirable alternatives. That led to our eating cereal for dinner at opposite ends of the house many nights, which was far more depressing than married life had ever been. It was a painful sign that we each needed to release more grief and sort through emotional baggage before we could reconnect.
When I eventually felt up to it, I dipped my toes back into the still waters of our relationship by preparing Nate’s favorite dishes for dinner and hosting game nights to encourage us to connect in new ways. Both were enjoyable steps in the right direction. Game nights not only inspired us to actively communicate with one another, but our conversations were often like that of a younger love- centered around our hopes and dreams for the future. It was sweet and fragile. Something I’d thought we’d lost as a couple.
From there, our relationship quickly grew to include some memorable nights out exploring new hotspots downtown. We enjoyed walking around whatever chic neighborhood we were in and scoping out potential restaurants or bars to add to our “must visit” list. Occasionally, we opted for takeout and homemade cocktails so Nate could enjoy a drink, too… which led to a house stocked with alcohol and two people who’d become more than occasional drinkers.
Our increasingly indulgent lifestyle went beyond food and drink once we fully settled into it. Nights as an “unmarried” couple progressed from passionate sex—often with multiple rounds— to steamy afternoon dates where we could hardly wait until we returned home to pounce on one another. The intensity of our physical attraction was in stark contrast to most of our married life, which made it blatantly obvious that dating had proved to be a worthwhile experiment.
Our love life wasn’t the only thing looking up. It seemed that as our hearts healed and opened back up to life, life opened up to us.
At the height of our playful dating phase, when I was enjoying my newly flourishing self, I was contacted by the founder of a body-acceptance website I’d enjoyed visiting. I’d openly participated in one of their discussions about struggling with self-acceptance, which placed me on Claire’s radar and prompted her to invite me to join her latest project: a photo book of real women and their unique journeys of self-love. I was thrilled about the prospect of contributing to such a worthwhile platform and knew I had to accept regardless of any insecurities that might creep up.
When Claire was on her country-wide photography tour a couple weeks later, we met at a local beach for our session. It was a truly rewarding experience to get to know more about the woman championing her own body acceptance movement and to be part of something so much bigger than myself. Working with such a beautiful soul helped me connect more with my own inner beauty, too. So being her model for the day turned out to be a confidence booster and spiritual experience all in one.
Nate’s confidence seemed to rise along with mine. He started carrying himself more like a proud peacock than I’d ever seen before and he was far more comfortable making advances that led us to the bedroom. Having his ego routinely fed by smiles and glances from the opposite sex, including me, likely greased his wheels of self-assurance. But, for all I know, his evolution could’ve stemmed from knowing that while I could run off with Blaine or another man, I chose to only date him. I know that turned me on about Nate.
Regardless of the reasons, our increased self-confidence led us to be more outgoing in our relationship and, ultimately, to have more fun. The night I happily took photos of Nate with his arms around two calendar girls at a bar was the night I truly appreciated how progressive our relationship had become. The playful banter and harmless flirting with others had filled a void in each of us that we hadn’t even realized was there to begin with. We never expected to recapture our misspent youths when we set out to work through our marital woes, but that’s what happened.
Knowing that we could each roam freely at any time caused my attraction to Nate to keep growing stronger. I suppose that’s what the prospect of losing a loved one does to a person. My feelings of increased hope and optimism about our life together became infectious. I found myself focusing less on what I thought I needed to strive towards in life and more on what was right in front of me. I was my healthiest in every way, had felt the sexiest I’d ever felt, was in the process of building my own enterprise, and was with a man who loved me enough to go through a crazy dating phase despite being legally married to me. It all made life feel pretty amazing.
We knew we were in a solid place when we found ourselves choosing one another’s company time and time again and no longer desired the attention of others. We were lightyears ahead of begrudgingly spending nights on the couch together because our wedding bands had dictated such. I never could’ve imagined that my meeting Blaine would be such a huge blessing in disguise. Neither could Nate.
We dated for about six months before I’d expressed that I’d like to recommit myself to him if he was willing. Due to our rekindled passion, I wasn’t too surprised that Nate was just as happy about that prospect as I was. We agreed to make every effort to keep our relationship new and exciting as we moved forward and to continue pursuing one another—no more taking each other for granted.