Outgrowing

It was somewhere in Oxford that it happened. 

It was overcast and windy, giving me a perfect excuse to wear riding boots and a heavy scarf as I walked through scattered leaves. I'd spent the morning taking in the Great Hall at Christchurch, sitting in the library where they filmed Harry Potter, and exploring gardens and university buildings that had been the stomping grounds of Lewis Carrol and JRR Tolkein. 

Now I sat on a weathered pew sipping tea in what had once been an Abby, but was now a whitewashed bakery overlooking a courtyard. I read my book intermittently, pausing to take in the scenery or listen in as the older woman at the next table over described her house hunting adventures of the previous afternoon. 

And then he walked by. 

Someone-- just the briefest flash of a profile. A sure walk; a smart silhouette. Nothing I'd be able to recall later or describe in any detail. I didn't even see his face-- but my stomach leapt and my heart picked up its pace. 

I looked away quickly, flushed and ashamed. I'd noticed someone. For the first time in more than fifteen years, I'd let someone who wasn't my husband catch my eye. 

I felt sick. 

I knew I was hurt. I knew I was detached. I knew I was contemplating divorce. But was I, on some level, allowing myself to feel single? The thought both appalled and frightened me. If J and I did get divorced, I did not want there to be even a hint of "someone better" on the horizon of my mind. I would never be able to trust or respect my own decisions if that were the case. 

Mentally, I berated myself for my lapse. But in the very next breath, I was horrified to realize that I had had to be on the very precipice of divorce before I'd even allowed myself to notice a man. J had been cataloging, lusting, fantasizing over, and comparing me to countless women from the very day we were married. 

What did that say about how attached-- or detached-- he was from me? If it made me sick just to get butterflies over glimpsing a man, how much would he have to cut off feelings of love, loyalty and morality just to allow himself to do the things that he did? 

Once again, I was left feeling bereft and confused. The question was not whether my husband loved me-- I knew he didn't-- but whether I truly could live in a loveless marriage. 

For a decade, I believed it was possible. I believed that the key to marriage was to cease expecting any fulfillment from it; to find joy despite J's callousness; to love him for the sake of loving. I believed in potential. I believed in looking for the good. I believed that life was supposed to be hard, and that a marriage was just a tool for learning and growth. I believed that love was an ability that could be taught. 

But sitting at that pew, warming my hands around my cup of chai, I wondered if it really was possible that a marriage required the efforts of both parties; that I could put forth my best effort and still fail; that staying might actually be more masochism than it was worth. 

In the deepest recesses of my mind, I told Heavenly Father, I know I can do hard things. 

I'm just ready to do a different hard thing. 

I don't know what more I can gain here. 

I think I've outgrown my marriage. 

And then I waited, terrified at what He might answer. 

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