What's Love Got To Do With It?

After you have spent your best loving on someone who promised to do the same as your partner in in life, you might well be asking “What’s love got to do with it?”

But the answer isn’t, “Nothing.” 

In 1980 I married someone from a circle of friends grown from summer camp leadership and a common faith. I loved him. He said he loved me. What I didn’t know was that he was a deeply damaged human being, his psyche twisted as a childhood victim of covert incest from his mother. She owned him. He was her psychological slave. She used him emotionally as her surrogate spouse and sexualized their relationship, inviting him to undo her bra at night, wash her back in the tub, and kissing him on the lips. Puberty finished the job of ruining his life as he began “cheating” on her, desperately trying to seek out his freedom in secret sexually exciting activities that would develop and expand into his adult life, and probably continues to this very day. 

I knew nothing about this. Nothing. I knew his mother was religious in the worst possible way, and was jealous of me. This worked for him, redirecting her criticisms and demands to me, reducing the pressure on him. This is why he never fully broke away from her. The constant conflict between his mother and me also provided a good cover for his secret life.

The other good cover was his profession as an ordained minister. Over 30 years of our marriage he had lots of opportunity for unexplained absences, late arrivals, strange phone calls, and lots and lots of need for “confidentiality.” If I questioned him, he would become arrogant and refuse to answer me. In the meantime our children became used to him not being there for normal family time, not playing board games, etc. In fact, when he would play a board game he would bring a magazine with him, because we weren’t worth his full attention. If he missed his turn, his sons soon stopped bothering him about it. We just played the game as if he wasn’t there, which he wasn’t, anyway.

We offered him our full hearts. My family and friend offered him the same. He had our love. All of it we had to give. He had it.

So, “What’s love got to do with it?” When it isn’t about loving in return, it’s about using that love, freely and honestly given, to protect your secret life. Having a wife and two children who love you and are loyal to you means you can secretly use and abuse it. And when you wife asks you why you are so late, you can look down your nose at her and remind her of your holy work and her duty to respect your needs. That’s what love’s got to do with it.

Then when you seek help, and even confide in other clergy, you will be told that you are over-reacting, that it takes two to create problems in a marriage, that you shouldn’t be such a strong woman, that he needs your full attention, blahblahblah.  And that’s what love’s got to do with it, too.

In my faith tradition, today is the Sunday we light the third candle on the Advent wreath. And we usually talk about love. Sometimes we talk about Mary’s love for God and for the child she carried and her courage to persevere with or without Joseph. In the end, he got over himself and turned out to be helpful. But it helps me to know she took the risk of a greater love. She made the story work.  

The great love we had for our life partners, the great love our children had for their father—these loves were all taken and used to deceive us, to cloak their deception and duplicitous lives, and to allow the secret lives to be protected by the believability our true love and loyalty created for him. That’s what love had to do with it.

Take your love back and give it to yourself and your children. Use it for a higher purpose than he does.

I know what my love is worth now. It’s worth so much more than endless hard work and enduring the abuse of his mother and her son. I’m lucky. I don’t have life sentences from STD’s. And I got out. That was enough for me. It was literally like getting out of jail. Living without his terrible ill humour, abandonment and arrogance, and his mother’s endless self-righteous criticism no matter how much love I poured into their lives, was like I was reborn into another world. Then, the unexpected gift of a late breaking relationship with a real man also revealed what my love is worth, as well as what it actually felt like to be loved in return.

But for over three decades I did everything I could. I offered my best love. And what he did with that love, and our sons’ love is shameful. Yes, I’m using the “shame” word. He should be ashamed, but he never will be. He would have kept doing it until his last breath.

That’s what love’s got to do with it. Your love is how he keeps it all going.

No matter what your faith tradition is or isn’t, I invite you to light a candle today to honour the worth, strength, and value of your love. If you already took your love back and gave it to yourself and your children, honour that as well. And if it’s time to do that, start planning for it.