Taking a break from marriage

I saw a headline in the news today that had me mentally scratching my head in wonder and sort of...well, wondering, how in the world anyone could do what the headline said. And so, with much reservation I pulled the article up and proceeded to actually read it. At least that was my intention but the content of the article left me skimming it and then wishing I hadn't.

The whole thing was about sexual sin. It was about a woman that had been married for 18 years that began to be disillusioned, she said she knew she was about to have an affair and wanted to be fair to her husband. To her, being fair meant telling him she intended to have an affair. At least that's the impression I got. The end result was that she and her husband decided to stay married but would essentially only be married on the weekends, that's my take on things, not how the article worded it. The woman lived in an apartment during the weekdays doing anything she wanted and living as if she weren't married then went back to her husband on the weekends and became a wife again. The result of such a lifestyle was nothing short of predictable...it didn't work out...they wound up divorced but the between time was a year of nothing short of sexual sin.

I can't help wondering though...how can anyone think they can take a break from being married? Can you take a break from being you? Really, truly, leave you behind and be someone else? Sure, you can pretend for a while to be something you're not but can you ever really separate yourself from ...yourself?

Can you take a break from being a mother? Even if your children aren't with you, once you become a mother, you're always a mother. I lost three babies to miscarriage in six months and every last one of those babies made an impression on me. They effected me. They changed who I was. Even without the baby that had such an effect on me...I could never separate myself from being their mother. I never held a living baby in my hands with any of them. I never saw their sweet smiles, kissed satiny cheeks, or felt tiny hands wrapped around my finger. But tiny lives that were gone way too soon to suit me left huge imprints in my heart and forever affected who I am.

Can you take a break from being a daughter? When I was in my teens I heard about a girl that was switched at birth. They made a movie of her life. That girl, if I remember correctly, was about ten when it came out that she didn't belong to the parents she loved. The courts and her biological parents forced her to live with, in what sort of arrangement I don't remember, her biological parents. When that girl became a teenager she divorced her biological parents, the people that in her mind had essentially stolen her from the parents she loved, and lived with the family she had grown up in. I could have some of the details here a bit mixed up but the thing is...even though that girl divorced those parents, their blood still ran through her veins. A blood test would show that she was there daughter. And even though the parents that had raised her for so long had no blood tie to her, the love she held for them made her their daughter even when the law said she wasn't. The law could not remove the daughter from either set of parents. Once the girl divorced the biological parents, I assume legally they were no longer considered her parents, yet a blood test would say they were. And the law removed the girl from the parents that had raised her but the same law could not remove the feelings and the relationships that made that girl the daughter of people she had no blood tie, or legal claim, to.

The reality is that we are a part of the relationships that make up our lives. I used to have a friend that I called the sister of my heart. She and I were that close. For five years we had a remarkable friendship. Then it just sort of fell apart and I can no longer call this woman a friend. And yet...the friendship remains. There is a place in my heart where this woman resides. I no longer have her friendship but I cannot erase it from my memories, or her from my heart.

My grandpa passed away several years ago. He is gone. No longer a part of my life. No longer there for me to call on the phone and hear his voice. No longer there to call me by the nickname only he ever used for me. No longer there to give me a hug. No longer there to sit and talk with me. He is gone. And yet...I'm still his granddaughter. I will always be his granddaughter. There are still places where people know me because they know me as his granddaughter. He is still a part of me because he was such a big part of my life.

I can't take any of those roles in my life away. My grandpa has been gone for years now but I am still his granddaughter. I am a daughter. I am a mother.

I am a wife.

If those other relationships are so much a part of me that I cannot separate myself from them...how much more so the relationship that makes me wife? Scripture says that man and woman are one in marriage, that they are no longer two people but one person. There is no other relationship on earth that holds that description. One flesh.

One together.

If my husband is away, be it to the store, at work, or anywhere else, for any reason, he is still my husband. I am still his wife. I have heard many times that a woman needs an identity outside of that of wife. That she needs to be someone other than her husbands wife. But I don't believe that for a minute. I cannot be someone outside of being my husband's wife. Just the other day, as I checked the mail, I thought of how women used to be Mrs. whatever their husbands name was. That is no longer the case. I can't remember the last time I heard a married woman referred to by her husband's name. Now a woman is Mrs. whatever her own name is. Her identity is no longer within that of her husband. I must say I wouldn't mind at all being called Mrs and my husbands name. It is, after all, who I am.

There is no being me without being my husband's wife. I cannot remove myself from any role I have in life. I am not me without being my children's mother. I cannot be me without being my mother's daughter, my sister's sister, my niece's aunt... And I sure can't be me without being my husband's wife.

How then could any wife just take a year off from being married? Or, which turned out to be the case in the woman's story I read about, take five days off from being a wife, live in those five days as if my husband didn't exist, or like I wasn't married to him, making choices and doing things that I knew would hurt him, then go home to him on the weekends and live as if I was his wife for two days before returning to a life without him.

Simply put...I am my husband's wife. Where I am, he is. Where he is, I am. That holds true no matter what we are doing, where we go, or how long we might be apart. He is a part of me and I am a part of him. There is no separating one from the other just as their is no separating me from my skin.

But this woman tried to do that very thing. And in the end she destroyed her marriage. I have no idea if she sees it that way although she did say she would not recommend any married woman do what she did if they want to stay married. I wonder...how she ever thought it would work?

I know she has to live a worldly sort of life, most likely embracing many ideas that our modern world tries to teach as acceptable, to do what she did. The idea, supposedly, behind her year off from marriage was to have as many or as few affairs as she wanted with no emotional connections. That just boggles my mind. I can't imagine anyone, let alone a wife, or husband, doing that, although I know that there are many that do that very thing regardless of whether or not they are married.

I wonder what she gained from those...encounters...that she couldn't gain with her husband? She gave up closeness, completeness, fulfillment...happiness...for temporary gratification. She had been married for eighteen years. Didn't that count for anything? I know that I have no idea what her marriage was like. For all I know it was the sorriest, awful-est, marriage in history. But it was her marriage. And she had to have had some sort of relationship with her husband. Even a bad relationship, it seems to me, would top an emotionless encounter, jumping from one person to the next for the simple reason of seeing what there was out there, on the other side of marriage.

And even if she could do all that...how in the world did she manage to remove herself from the role of wife to become a temporary diversion to someone that was looking for nothing more in a relationship than what she was offering...another man's wife?

What did her husband go through so that she could take a break from marriage?

I still can't grasp this concept. I know we live in a fallen world in a time when morals all but don't exist. I know the American divorce rate is somewhere around one out of every two marriages. I know that most married couples are unregenerate men and women that seek their own happiness and gratification even in the midst of marriage.

I have known many couples that were married, most of them had the husband and the wife going in separate directions most of the time and crossing paths at the end of the day and on the weekends. I've known married couples that slept in separate bedrooms, married couples that cheated on each other, husbands that beat their wives, wives that worked in strip bars, couples that lived in separate states because they didn't want to give up their jobs to live together. Every married couple has their own way of making their marriage work, even if working means their marriage really doesn't work, but...taking a break from marriage?

Why would anyone even think that was possible. If I lived apart from my husband, no matter the reason, I would still be his wife. I could no more remove my place in life as his wife than I could remove my need to breathe. It is what I am.

I am my husband's wife.

And yet it appears that there are people in this world that think they can try on the role of wife like one might try on a pair of shoes or a new dress. They might buy it, might wear it every day while it's their favorite, but when it gets old, or they get tired of it, they can set it aside and take a break from it.

And yet, Scripture says that the role of wife, or husband, is one unlike any other. It is given a distinct description. Comes with rules. It holds a near sacred place between men and women, one that Scripture says should be broken by no man...that would include the man, or woman, in the marriage. But some people think they can sit it aside at their will, try out the single life, play married life when it suits them, and it all be fine and good.

I wonder what this woman, a wife of 18 years, thought would be left of her marriage when her year 'off' was over. Did she expect to have the same relationship she had had before living a life of sexual sin, although I'm sure that description probably never crossed her mind? Did she expect her marriage would be better? Did she expect to be happy with her husband, and what he had to offer her, after picking and choosing between every available man out there? Did she think her year off from marriage was really going to remove her role as wife? Did she think it would make her a better wife? Did she think it would make her husband a better husband?

I don't know the answers to any of those questions but the article did say this woman wrote a book about her experiences. It's possible that the answers to those questions are in that book. I can say it is a book I will not be reading and those are answers I really don't need to know.

All I need to know is that wife isn't a role one that can be put on and taken off at whim. At least...it shouldn't be. And I imagine that even taking a break from being a wife, without sexual sin involved, would take it's toll on a woman, her husband, and their marriage. And what this woman did went far beyond that.

Marriage wasn't something I put on lightly. It wasn't a role I entered into with any thought of ever taking a break from. It wasn't a role I ever thought to take a break from, because just like I cannot take a break from being me, I cannot take a break from being my husband's wife. Even if I were to never see my husband again I would forever be his wife. That is simply something that cannot be removed.

I am my husband's wife.