“To have and to hold…from this day forward…forsaking all others…till death do us part”. These promises seem to clearly support the principle of monogamy, being with one person, exclusively, for the rest of your life. The logical extension of this promise is that you will be talking, working, sleeping, kissing and dating the same person until the day death separates you.
This should be true. At least in a puritanical sense, monogamy should be a basic tenet of marriage. I guess it should be. But I think it’s only true if your spouse doesn’t change. If he/she refuses to grow, refuses to change jobs, refuses to become educated or entertain new and original thoughts. If your spouse doesn’t change then – Surprise! – the only way to actually be with someone else is to embrace swinging as a pastime (which I’m not recommending).
The good news is that people change. My pastor used to say, If something is healthy then it will grow. I think this applies to every living thing. If your spouse is healthy then he/she will change. They will grow and change into a better version of who God created them to be. The key is to embrace the change, enjoy the evolution, and realize that they are moving closer and closer to the perfection that God intended. I’ve witnessed that in my 30 year romance. I call her Robin but, over the years, she has evolved into many people.
I met Fletch at a pre-college summer program. Tall, for a girl, and thin but never skinny. She was upfront and in your face without being obnoxious. I think the first thing I knew about her was that she was from Washington D.C. and, for that reason, I had no chance with her. The second thing I remember about her is that we would disagree a lot. This would have been a problem except she was from D.C. and I had no chance with her. So, I just enjoyed listening to her argue with me in between platonic hugs.
I met a super-saved Church Girl after she came back from a retreat sponsored by New Generation Campus Ministries. We were dating before she left but that was a leap of faith and I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be falling. I thought her return to campus would signal the end of it because the first thing we talked about was how it was wrong to become intimate in any way before marriage. I knew that was right. My Christian upbringing had taught me that. I also knew that Robin was worth the wait so I kept falling.
The first time I saw Robin, the Independent Woman, was after I got off the plane from Oklahoma. I had proposed to my college sweetheart then, after graduation, went to my family’s new home in Oklahoma. Now, getting off the plan in Virginia, I was greeted by a woman clothed in all the things she bought with money from her first post-college job. There was one purchase, contact lenses, that made me realize how much of Robin’s beauty had been hidden behind glasses. That one purchase, with her own money, allowed her face to emerge.
After being married for ten years, my desire to be a father made me fall in love with Robin, the Young Mother. This woman had done the dating thing and the “decade of sex” honeymoon thing. And, without giving up a thing, she chose to use her female superpowers to create another life. There is nothing as awe-inspiring as when the love of your life gives life. Especially in a surrealistic delivery without screaming or yelling or cursing. It was the first clue that she would be able to take on motherhood without losing her essence.
Two years after meeting the Young Mother, I met Robin, the Mother of Two. Once again, I fell in love during the delivery but this time it was after midnight. My wife was almost done with the steps we learned from the Lamaze videos when she woke me to call the doctor. The man with the medical training said we had 45 minutes to meet him at the hospital, my wife looked at me and calmly said, “he’s coming now”. I don’t know how the absence of emotion can make me so emotional about my wife. I just knew I had fallen in love with a mother of two.
A mother’s job never ends but, somewhere around the kids’ teen years, it slows down long enough for her to reinvent herself. That is when I met Robin again, Independent Woman version 2.0. This Robin had come full circle, free enough from her babies to remember her original hopes and young dreams. And, because she has invested so much in so many, we can all agree that it’s her turn. It’s Independence 2.0, the second coming of the independent working woman but with the experience and focus to shape her passions.
To date, I have been married only once and I want to keep it that way. My wife, however is much more than one woman to me. Over our lives I feel as if I have known her in many forms, loved her in many forms and experienced an exciting diversity that doesn’t seem to end. The Bible calls me a monogamist but the term doesn’t seem to fit because, during my marriage, I have been in love with six different women, and counting. This is why marriage isn’t boring. This is why monogamy is misunderstood and why it’s the fourth myth of marriage.