Revolutionary Rhetoric and the Corruption of Convention

I had that same conversation again last night. My husband and I had friends over last night for dinner, we sat over a bountiful table with an extrordinary bottle of Merlot, the four of us satisfied and a little high. The couple with us, I should say, are not married. They have been dating seriously for about eight months and the "announcement" is expected at any time now. Morgan and I however, have been married now for twenty years and most of the couples in our aquaintance have been married even longer. So it was that the conversation turned to the dissection and analysis of a happy marriage.

"What is it like?" he says, "I mean, living with the same person for twenty years?"

Sigh... I took a big drink and jummped right in and you know, the water was freezing.

"Well," I said. "It's really a coin, it has two distinct sides to it at any given time. I mean, at times I am so in love with him I can't stand it. He's my perfect match, my best friend. I can't imagine life without him with me, I don't WANT to imagine life without him with me. Then, there are times that I just as passionately hate him. I want him out of my sight, I want to hurt him and make him suffer. There really is no faerie tale, life is in fact, just life. You put one foot in front of the other. We, of course wouldn't be here at the end of this time if it wasn't what we had wanted. Sometimes we went on for the children, getting over a speed bump so to speak, but when we came out on the other side we were more in love with eachother at the end than we were in the beginning. It has been without a doubt the most satisfying, glorious, intamate, nurturing, passionate experience of my life. It has also been the hardest, most gruelling, tiresome, annoying, chained up, locked in a cage feeling I've ever had."

Looking thoughtful he says, "Yeah. But you don't want to be single. Trust me, I've been single most of my life and it's incredibly lonely."

And here's where it gets sordid. Conventionaly sordid.
I don't want to be single either. I have seen my friends, male and female alike suffer in lots of ways and means because they no longer wanted to wake up and face their future alone. Repeating what I have said before, I love my husband. I don't want to ever be without him. There are times though, when I do, very much, want to have a boyfriend and "date". I realise that many of my christian conservative friends reading this will collectively sigh and maybe cross themselves. I will no doubt recieve numerous emails pertaing to the evils of adultery and fornication. The truth is, and I KNOW that many others feel it to, that for many of us marriage can be at times a life in a glass box. You can see vivid colors and exciting people out there and you yourself are inhibited from participating. The box can be safe and warm and comfortable, and we can love our box dearly. But you cannot deny that it hasn't crossed your mind even once that you would enjoy a deeper intamate relationship with another person who was not your spouse. There are times when I don't even want sex, necessarily, just intamacy with someone else. I want to broaden my life, I want to stretch my heart. A very good friend reminds me often that who we are as people is really the sum total of our experience with others. I think about that a lot when I meet new people. How will they make me different? How will they make me better, or worse? If life is a tapestry I want mine to have too many colors to count. Genuine intamacy is priceless.