For the first year of our marriage, I assumed that this was just a fresh, exciting challenge. I assumed that my job was to find new ways to approach her. Here is an actual conversation with my sister during my first year of marriage in response to the problem of Abby’s continuing to insist that she was the boss of herself:
ME: Okay, I hear you, but what if I actually know my idea is better for her than her idea is for her? Should I just pretend to think her idea is good? Should I just smile and let her try her idea so we can get to mine when hers doesn’t work so well? How long will I have to carry on with this time-wasting charade?
SISTER: My God. Okay. If that’s how you have to think of it, Glennon, then yes, try that. Try to fake it till you make it.
So that is what I did. I just smiled and faked it. I let her lead, but only because it was my undercover leadership strategy. I decided that we would try things her way for a while, until we both saw the light together. For a solid year, we were spontaneous when I preferred a plan. We were trusting of people when I was skeptical. We took big risks even when I had already calculated that the odds were against us. We let the kids try things I was sure they’d fail at and then resent us for forever.
We lived, for a while, as if life were less precarious than it is, as if people were better than they are, as if our kids were tougher than I believed them to be, and as if “things generally work themselves out.” It was reckless and ridiculous and irresponsible. Things do not work themselves out. I work things out. I WORK THEM OUT, and if I don’t there is no working out at all. There is just chaos.
I took lots of deep breaths and started a daily yoga practice to deal with my anxiety, and I waited for things to fall apart so I could save us.
I kept waiting.
Damned if “things” didn’t generally just keep working out. Damned if I didn’t start feeling happier. Damned if our children didn’t become braver, kinder, more relaxed. Damned if our life didn’t get more beautiful. It was annoying as hell, honestly.
I really think that it is possible that Abby has good ideas.
I am beginning to unlearn what I used to believe about control and love. Now I think that maybe control is not love. I think that control might actually be the opposite of love, because control leaves no room for trust—and maybe love without trust is not love at all. I am beginning to play with the idea that love is trusting that other people Feel, Know, and Imagine, too. Maybe love is respecting what your people feel, trusting that they know, and believing that they have their own unseen order for their lives pressing through their own skin.
Maybe my role with the people I love is not imagining the truest, most beautiful life for them and then pushing them toward it. Maybe I’m just supposed to ask what they feel and know and imagine. And then, no matter how different their unseen order is from mine, ask what I can do to support their vision.
Trusting people is terrifying. Maybe if love is not a little scary and out of our control, then it is not love at all.
It is wild to let others be wild.
One night after dinner, Abby, Craig, my sister, her husband John, and I sat around the kitchen table for hours. Music played in the background, the kids chased Honey around the family room, and all of us sipped tea or wine and laughed until it hurt.
I pulled Honey into my lap, turned toward Craig, and said, “I want to tell you something.”
Everyone at the table fell quiet.
“Do you remember that day, eighteen years ago, when we sat side by side on my front porch—me nauseous from morning sickness and you nauseous from shock—trying to decide what to do?
“Do you remember how you broke the silence?
“You said, ‘I’ve been thinking. What if we don’t get married? What if we just live separately and raise the baby side by side?’
“You knew.
“A week before I found out I was pregnant, my friend Christy asked me how it was going with you. I said, ‘We have to break up. We can’t connect. Not physically, not emotionally. It’s just not there.’
“I knew.
“But I had this idea—a vision of what a family should look like, what you should want, who you should become. My imagination became a dangerous thing when we let it eclipse our Knowing.
“We were so young and afraid back then. We hadn’t yet learned that Knowing never goes away. It just stays there inside, solid and unmoving. It just waits as long as it takes for the snow to settle.
“I am sorry that I ignored our Knowing. We didn’t fit together. We tried, because it was the right thing to do, because we thought we should. Because I thought we should. But right is not real, and should is a cage. What’s wild is what is.
“Our Knowing was right all along. What is lasted. Because here we are: trying your idea. Being two people who were not made for each other but who are a hell of a team at raising kids side by side.
“I hope that whatever you do next is born from you and not imposed on you. I hope the rest of your life is your idea. For what it’s worth, I hope you trust yourself. You know what you know. You have good ideas, Craig.”
My wife and ex-husband play on the same adult league soccer team on Wednesday nights. After dinner, we pack up the car with chairs and snacks, and the kids and I sit on the sidelines and watch their dad and their bonus mom work together to score goals.
A few weeks ago, the kids and I were sitting on the sidelines and an older couple sat down next to us. The woman pointed toward my girls and asked, “Are those your daughters?”
“They are,” I said.
“Is their dad out there playing?”
“Yes, he is. That’s him.” I pointed to Craig.
“Where do you all live?”
“We live right here in Naples, but separately. He and I are divorced now.”
“Wow, it’s wonderful that you still come watch him play!”
“Yes, we love watching him play. Also, the girls’ mom is playing. We come to watch her, too.”
The woman looked confused. She said, “Oh! I thought you were their mom.”
I said, “I am! That’s their other mom.”