My last posted article was on September 15. Three months ago.

The posts before that had already been sparse. After a couple years of consistent weekly writing, things had trickled off. There were reasons—many of which I can’t even remember now. I plan to get back to it. I miss it. But I also made a conscious decision to stop for a while.

In fact, today I’m breaking the rule I set for myself:

No blogging.

I may end up breaking it more often, but there is a reason I, a blogger, created the rule.

Recently someone asked me an important question:

If you died today and could somehow look back at your life, what would be the one thing you didn’t do that you’d regret?

I didn’t need more than ten seconds.

“I’d regret never publishing my book. It’s the one thing I want to do.”

That’s not a small confession. It hits me hard. I’m not sick or anything like that, but I’ll be 50 soon, and it’s safe to say I’m in the second half of my life. I feel the clock ticking.

There was another time when I felt something similar—when I realized something mattered more to me than anything else and I was running out of time:

Saving my marriage.

When I faced losing my wife, nothing mattered more.

Not.
One.
Thing.

So I acted accordingly. I put everything else aside. I made every other goal secondary to creating a strong marriage. I became willing to challenge my own beliefs about who I was and what marriage meant. Nothing mattered more than becoming the kind of person my wife wanted to be married to.

Almost two decades later, we’re still married. We’re happier than ever.

I did it. (Well, we did it. But you know what I mean.)

After admitting how important it is for me to write this book, I wondered if I could approach the project with that same level of commitment.

No other goal matters.

Of course, that isn’t entirely true. Being a good husband and father matters deeply. But publishing this book will help me do those things better. Writing is central to how I process and communicate ideas. It’s how I understand myself. It’s why I consider myself a writer.

But there’s a problem—one best stated by William Zinsser in his seminal work, On Writing Well:

People who don’t write often find that strange. Many of us who do write feel it in our bones.

And yet, millions of writers throughout history have overcome that tendency. That’s why we have books. So why haven’t I?

Well… sometimes writers avoid the hard work of writing by writing other things.

Blog posts, for instance.

To be fair to myself, creating this Substack was part of the book-writing process. When it comes time to publish, it will matter that I have some sort of audience—people willing to support the launch or interested enough to buy the book. There was a method to the blogging madness, even if the content drifted at times.

But still, plenty of people blog and publish books. It’s not impossible.

It just hasn’t worked for me. Blogging became a distraction from my main goal.

Distractions have always been an issue for me, long before smartphones and social media. Executive-function challenges have followed me my entire life.

In recent months—probably the same months when my posts petered out—I’ve been learning more about ADHD. I won’t go deep into my diagnosis here, though it’s tempting. (And yes, that’s very on-brand for ADHD.)

What I will say is this: I’m starting to understand that my lack of executive functioning isn’t just a matter of “I’m not good at it.” Sometimes I am. Other times I’m not. When it comes to achieving personal goals, I usually struggle.

But I’m working on it.

Right now, I simply don’t have the capacity to work on my book and blog consistently. I hope to get there one day, but today isn’t that day.

So I stopped blogging.

Mostly. I’ll allow myself to break the rule occasionally—like I did today.

So what does this mean for my Substack?

Right now, I’m not blogging regularly. And I genuinely miss it. I miss talking to you all and hearing from you. You’re my people, and I need you in my life.

I’ve set some timeline goals for myself. I’m not comfortable sharing them, because I have a history of not meeting them, but they’re there. My hope is that as I make progress on the book, I’ll eventually have more space to return to regular posts.

I’ll be back—hopefully on a consistent schedule.

But for now, my writing time goes to the book.

If you’re a paid subscriber, I’ve paused billing indefinitely. I’ll restart it only when I’m producing consistently again. And as a thank-you for your support, I plan to share some polished sections of the book from time to time. The writing has taken me places I didn’t expect, and I want to let you in on that.

See you soon.

…Maybe.

A few months ago, I started a series called “10 Ways to Save Your Marriage.” I got bogged down when some of the “ways” started overlapping, and the list wasn’t exactly 10. Frustrated, I never finished it—especially since I never got to the teaser.

The one about the orgasm.

More specifically: Give Her an Orgasm Every Day.

I was being cheeky. While I like to think my skills have improved over the years, the idea that my wife would benefit from legendary Casanova-level attention every single day—or even want it—is a stretch, even in my fantasies.

But I didn’t pull that line out of thin air

.

As our marriage has grown, I’ve learned that certain small actions make my wife genuinely happy. So I started doing them more, even when they weren’t things I cared about. I knew she was doing the same for me.

Sound familiar, guys? (Wink, wink…nudge, nudge.)

Here’s how it played out for us:

I get up at 4:30 every morning, long before her alarm rings at six. I leave for work around 6:45, usually when she’s in the shower. By the time I come home and change out of work clothes, the bed is made. She always finds the time. She’s told me it matters to her—having the bed made makes her day go better.

So sometimes, while she was in the shower, I’d make it for her. She’d always thank me.

Then one day, she took it a step further. She texted me:

“Sometimes the bed being made is better than an orgasm.”

Because I like orgasms. They rank pretty high on my list of favorite things.

Her text was a light-switch moment. Suddenly I understood just how much the bed being made meant to her. It was a little embarrassing that she had to connect it to my lizard brain for me to really get it, but it worked.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’m 49. I’ve been chasing orgasms since my early teens. That’s nearly four decades. Back when we were first married, I wanted one every single day. I asked for sex a lot. Pressured her. Sometimes guilted her. (Okay—definitely guilted her. Ugh.)

Meanwhile, how many times did I make the bed for her without being asked?

That thought stung.

So I made a change. I committed to making the bed every morning.

If a made bed is, to her, sometimes the equivalent of an orgasm to me, then I’m giving her one every morning.

It usually takes less than two minutes, which sounds oddly familiar. So, even if I’m running late, I stop myself. Because if she had been feeling frisky before I left for work, would I risk being late? Of course. So the bed gets made.

The only time it doesn’t is when she’s still in it. Then I’ll lean down, kiss her cheek, and ask if she wants an orgasm or if she's just too tired. It’s become a private joke. Most mornings, she gets up.

About a month ago, I heard her complain about dishes in the sink. It stressed her out to come home and see them piled up. I thought about how much she appreciated me making the bed, so I started taking care of the dishes more often too, just to give her a different kind of release.

These things have become habitual. And while we weren’t struggling before, I can feel these small changes drawing us closer.

Maybe I’ll start making dinner more often too. Something non–Kraft Mac-n-Cheese related. We’ll see.

I know these routine maneuvers hit her where it counts.

I can see it in her face.

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I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. Mainly, my own. Likely this is due to the fact that I bought a death machine.

It wasn’t something I expected to do. It wasn’t a response to a midlife crisis. Nothing like that.

My 18 year old daughter walked into my room where my wife and I winding down for the day. Excited, she held out her phone for me to see a picture of a death machine she really liked.

“What do you think about this one!” She asked with an excited tone, but one that couldn’t hide the fact that she was feeling out the room.

“That’s a good looking one, but we told you we’re not buying you a death machine.” I replied, matter-of-factly.

“I’ll buy it. I have a job. I can make the payments.”

“There’s still the matter of insurance.”

“I’ll pay for that too.”

Lacking further response, I looked at my wife, who shrugged and shook her head telling me she didn’t have anything to say. Normally this would be the point where she jumped into a lawyer-like soliloquy about how there was no chance we’d allow her to buy a death machine.

“Well, if you’re getting one, I’m going to get one with you. I’ll talk to mom about it more.”

“OK,” she replied with a smile, doing her best to remain calm, “and we can take the safety class together!”

I just nodded. Jordan left the room and I looked at my wife.

“Seriously? Are we really letting her get a motorcycle?” I was surprised at the turn of events.

“She’s 18. She has a job and can pay for it. She’s responsible. Her grades are perfect. I’ve run out of reasons to say no other than it’s dangerous. But she knows that. She’s promised to get all the safety gear and wear it religiously.” Joy explained.

It was clear Jordan had been working on her for some time. In our household, once mom is broken dad is an easy pass. I suppose the opposite is true in different circumstances. Like so many kids through the years, ours have learned how to wear down their parents like we learned how to ours.

“Besides,” she continued, “I thought it was something you could do together. I mean, I feel better about it that way, I guess.”

And that’s how we came to a decision for me to buy a motorcycle…along with my 18-year-old daughter.

There are a lot of things I didn’t know about buying a motorcycle. For instance, buying a bike isn’t hard once you’ve decided what you want to get. If you’re not buying a top of the line Harley Davidson or something, a brand new motorcycle is a lot cheaper than a car. There’s no haggling on the price for a bike so if you can afford the sticker (I financed) then it’s a pretty cut and dry process. Insuring it is much cheaper too, which makes sense.

We made our purchases in early April of this year. We took our class together, passed our tests and we’re now motorcycle riders. You might note I didn’t say I was an enthusiast. I enjoy it, but…

I was unaware how hot and cold riding can be, and it seems that there’s about a five degree temperature window where you’re completely comfortable. For me, around 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit (21.1-23.9 Celsius) seems to be the sweet spot. I was expecting the cold issue. You don’t see many riders during the winter. But on the other end of the spectrum, I had no idea how uncomfortable the heat can be.

For starters, my helmet is full-faced and black. There are ventilation holes, but I only notice a difference when it’s cold and I can feel the freezing air come through those holes when I’ve forgotten to close the little tabs. I suppose they are doing some work to ventilate my melon when it’s hot, but not in a way I notice. It never feels like a refreshing breeze or anything like that.

It’s a sensation I’ve never experienced before. As I accelerate speed, I can indeed feel the coolness of the breeze, but I also still feel the sensation of the UV rays baking my skin. Sitting at red lights in the summer sun is brutal and it’s the only time I’ve ever wondered how long it takes my skin to burn. It’s a concern. The sensation of the heat on the back of my neck conjures images of blistering skin.

But, that stuff is no big deal compared to an unexpected annoyance.

It’s the people.

Probably somewhere around 99.4% (an unscientific number I suspect is low…) of the people I talk to about my motorcycle feel the need to remind me how dangerous it can be. Everyone has a nice little story about someone in their life who was killed or otherwise seriously injured in a motorcycle accident. They follow it up with they must feel is there way of letting me off the hook for getting one. “You know, it’s not that I worry about you being irresponsible or anything. Its the other drivers.”

This is, to their credit, a statement about the reality of the situation.

You know those, “Save a life. Check twice. Motorcycles are everywhere!” bumper stickers? It’s true. There are a lot of motorcycles and while there are some people who don’t use them safely, it’s usually unfocussed, distracted, or otherwise complacent drivers of cars that are the problem. Y’all just don’t see us. You’re looking for other cars, pedestrians or bicyclists. We’re none of the above, so we don’t register in your consciousness.

Random strangers feel the need to admonish me for straddling 900 horses1. Let me share a completely true story-

A couple of weeks ago I was on the motorcycle waiting for the light to turn green. I was just north of Baltimore. While waiting I looked over at a park bench next to the sidewalk. There was an old man sitting on it, and I noticed he was looking at me. I waved.

He did not wave back. He did not say, “hi.” Instead, this random stranger shouted at me.

“Be careful!”

I just nodded.

(The above clip is of me showing my daughter how a clutch works. It was taken on the evening of my 49th birthday. It was almost my last. Two days of a riding class was a great help.)

My daughter has her own stories of motorcycle shaming. She walked into a Panera Bread with her helmet and sat down next to a woman who looked directly at her and said something to the effect of, “Don’t tell me you have a motorcycle!”

“Um…yeah. I do.” She replied awkwardly.

“If my daughter ever got a motorcycle I’d never speak to her again! You’re parents must be worried.”

“…my dad bought one with me.”

“Oh…” The lady gave her a look like she’d just told her Donald Trump had written a heartfelt apology letter to Hillary Clinton and meant it. Jordan then had to listen to a story about how one of her family members was killed when someone didn’t see them… you know, because it’s the other drivers.

And in a response I never would have thought to give, thanked her for remembering to look out for motorcycles in memory of her loved one. And in the way only my daughter can, she meant it with all sincerity.

On the other hand, she doesn’t know how to respond to the person who takes her motorcycle payment over the phone when they tell her they’d never let their daughter have a motorcycle. This has happened 4 of the 5 times she’s made a payment.

Listen, we know it’s dangerous. My head is on a swivel, and every time I leave my driveway I’m reminded that every car out there is out to kill me. Especially the drivers looking at their cell phone.

You really notice people staring at their phones when you start riding a motorcycle. These people are everywhere, and it’s egregious.

Again, we hear you about the fact that motorcycles are dangerous to ride. We know. I also know people who have died or been seriously injured.

We.

Know.

That said, I want to take full responsibility for the danger. It’s on me. Well, us. Jordan and I made the decision to buy our death machines.

So, I just have one thing to ask of you. In the event that something happens to me—like if I’m in an accident and I’m killed—always remember:

And if you remember this, and if you’re at my funeral, don’t say something like, “God took him home.”

I don’t think this is something you really believe anyways, because if you did, you wouldn’t keep reminding me how dangerous a motorcycle is. Or, is it that you think people on motorcycles are forcing God’s hand in some way?

This article has been pretty gloomy, I know. There’s been a bit of snark thrown in there too. But honestly, I’m happy to have my bike.

Did you know that riders make a point to notice each other? If you’re ever in your car behind someone on a motorcycle, watch them. If another bike approaches from the other direction, there’s a good chance they’ll give each other the peace sign.

Peace.

I never noticed it before. It’s something my daughter taught me. A slight move with the left hand, quick, and pointed towards the ground. It’s our way of saying “hi” to each other. A special form of camaraderie.

Hey, there, fellow rider! I see you. Be safe, my friend.

It helps to have that little peace sign from time to time. We remember it as we navigate all the twists in the roads, the gentle sway of curves and turns that are are so much fun on a motorcycle. It probably has something to do with the physics of it all, but there’s just something satisfying in the rhythm of the ride. There’s a wave that rides through you as bike leans and then straightens upright.

Seems a little like life, no?

There’s a real freedom to it as well, and I can think of few things I’ve enjoyed more than an evening ride with my daughter as the sun turns the sky all different colors. We’ve bonded a bit as the result of this motorcycle experience, and I’m glad for it.

The bond is the peace.

A peace I love, even though I think about death a lot more now.

I don’t know that I ever met Dr. James Dobson in person. Given the position my family enjoyed in the Church of the Nazarene, it wouldn’t have been unusual. By the time I received my last spanking my grandfather was a four-time college president in the denomination. Dobson was Nazarene educated at Pasadena Nazarene College. He was younger than my grandfather and while it would be a stretch to consider him a friend, as institutional or church community networks go it wouldn’t be inappropriate to have considered the two of them friendly professional colleagues.

At least for a time.

As the story goes, Dobson had written a book and sent my grandfather an early manuscript inquiring as to whether he’d consider writing the forward. He read the manuscript, sent it back to Dobson with a note declining the offer. While there were areas of the work where he could find agreement, there were also areas where he could not. And the areas where he could not were significant enough that he would not have his name attached to the work.

Not long after, grandpa heard Dobson on the radio disparaging what he described as the direction some of our Christian colleges were heading. Given the timing, he had the sense that Dobson’s words were, at least in part, a response to his decision.

I was angered by Dobson’s words, even third-party and decades later when the story was relayed to me.

I’d never been prouder of my grandfather.

Still, Dobson’s influence was steady in my life, at least as a young child. His books—including Dare to Discipline—were on our shelves at home. They were recommended at church, probably by my parents. They were shaping the way our family and church community understood discipline…or what Dobson called discipline. For us, it mostly meant punishment. That said, spankings weren’t out of the ordinary in our home.

One spanking in particular stands out in my mind. It’s the last one. It was the one that led to a shift in my parents. A moment when everything changed, and probably a level-up moment in my relationship with them.

It was a Sunday around 12:30 in the afternoon, mom called me into dad’s office at the church where he was pastoring. The church service had let out not long before. Usually it was not good when we kids were summoned into dad’s office. It was a place of business, so to speak. But they were there together, and spankings didn’t usually happen with both of them present.

“Come here, Jeff.” Dad said to me from behind his desk. I walked up to him, unsure of what was coming.

“I wanted to talk about the spanking I gave you last week, remember?”

I nodded. Of course I remembered. I had been wearing brand new white pants my mother bought for me. Mom had implored me not to get grass stains on them. Then, after church while running around outside with my friends, I had done just that.

As the three of us were gathered in Dad’s office a week later, my father placed his hands on my shoulders and pulled me square with him to be sure I was paying attention, which of course I was. He looked directly into my eyes.

“Did you know that when I spanked you it left you with a bruise?” He asked. I did not know this. I shook my head to indicate as much.

Dad looked at mom, and I followed his gaze. She seemed to exhale, and the countenance in my father’s face softened as well.

All these years later, the only detail I remember about that spanking was that dad had used the belt. On this occasion the buckle of the belt had left a bruise. I didn’t know it. It was a small bruise on the side of my lower left thigh, in a spot where just the right movement would have exposed it when I was wearing those short, 1980’s shorts. I didn’t even know it was there. But either my mother or father had seen it, and when they did it left a mark on them too.

“Well, I’m sorry.” He said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

I only stood there, not knowing what to think. It was as if the tables were turning somehow. There’s not a kid alive who ever bought the “…spanking you hurts me more than you” line. A feeling of vindication peeked around the corner of my consciousness.

Dad explained that he and Mom had seen the bruise and were worried someone at school might notice and report them for abuse. That possibility made them stop and ask whether spanking was worth the risk. A small purplish-brown spot on the child they loved was what it took to see things from a different perspective.

“I want you to know I love you. Your mom loves you too.” Dad looked at mom who was standing nearby, then back at me. “We’re not going to spank you anymore.”

“OK.” Was all I could say. I didn’t know what to think. It was good news. No more spankings! The we love you part was old news.

I knew my parents loved me. There was no question about it. Dad pulled me in for a hug, which I was glad to give. Mom came over and joined in. Then they let me leave, free to run off and play with my friends, hopefully not staining the knees of my pants.

My parents grew, and I like to think I did a little bit that day.

But still, years later when I had my own children…I still spanked them!

I mean, I’d been spanked, and I turned out ok, right?

The shadow of Dobson was present, even in my home.

This was the thinking: that when you’ve tried other things to no avail, sometimes kids need to be spanked to understand the severity of what they did. At least, that’s how we approached it. You’ll be relieved to know this practice didn’t last long.

I don’t remember spanking my son, the older of my two children, though I know I did. I asked him the other day and he confirmed it. He remembers that I did but not why. And, after a moment of thought he rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry about it, dad; I’m fine. It’s not like it was a regular occurrence.”

My daughter was the recipient of the last spanking in our household. She was going through a phase when she was stealing things. As parents, my wife and I were at our wit’s end. The girl had everything she needed, and most of what she wanted. There wasn’t any reason for her to steal anything.

I hated spanking her. We didn’t do it much, and it always fell to me, the father. That was how it worked. Dad–me–the guy who lacked discipline in so many areas of his own life, would dole out punishment when his children failed to show they had any more self-control than he did. And, as I type these words, the projection in my own actions glares obvious.

That’s what went through my mind as I hugged her post-punishment. I couldn’t let her go. She was crying. I knew her mother would be crying outside in the hallway. I wanted to cry too, but my role didn’t allow it.

I held the young girl, my flesh, for a few more moments before laying her down on her bed brushing her tear-soaked hair out of her face. I kissed her soft, warm, wet cheek, told her I loved her. This was important, Dobson would say–that we assured our children of our love after disciplining them.

You keep using that word…I do not think it means what you think it means.

Well, kiss or no kiss, I hated myself for what I’d just done.

Walking into the hallway, there was my wife with a look of concern on her face.

“We can’t do this anymore. It’s lazy parenting.” I said to her, my eyes were moist by that time too. She nodded in agreement.

“What are we going to do? She can’t keep stealing things.” She asked.

“I don’t know. But not this.”

“Good.” She said as she came in for a hug. “I hate it.”

We never spanked again.

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I’m glad to have been raised by men of nuance. That’s how I’d describe them. In Dobson’s patriarchal system, men had every incentive to go along. The promise of authority, influence, and prestige is an easy sell for our egos. My grandfather could have claimed some of that by lending his name to Dobson’s work. Instead, he refused. He chose integrity over advancement or recognition. That choice stands out to me, because the system would have rewarded him for doing the opposite.

When my parents decided not to spank us anymore, they weren’t turning down prestige. What they turned down was the easier path of discipline as a punishment. They chose instead to do the meaningful work of instilling discipline without violence.

I can’t overstate how grateful I am for that choice. The small bruise I carried (and it was small—I only saw it later in the mirror) was enough for them to reconsider their belief system, at least when it came to punishing their children for undesirable behavior.

When I became a parent, I reached the same point. The act of striking my own child was no longer something I could defend. I’m grateful I listened to my inner voice the day it spoke up, because heaven knows the damage I might have done had I relied on pain to teach lessons. Especially when there are other, better ways.

It’s one thing to change our perspective on an issue, it’s another to accept our new understanding when it may challenge our previous biblical worldview, or more, require us to say the Bible is wrong about something. This isn’t just heresy, it’s an act that speaks to the existential reality of who we are. To admit the Bible might be wrong about something isn’t just a theological adjustment, it’s a threat to the authority upon which we’ve based our existence. We’ve built our identity and the structures of our world on such things, and it can seem like we risk everything when it changes.

As a simple example, Spare the rod, spoil the child is a line we evangelicals liked to quote in reference to spanking. We think it’s Biblical. It’s not. It’s from a 17th century satirical poem by Samuel Butler. But it’s easy to see where we get confused. We liken it to Proverbs 13:24, “Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them” (New International Version).1

It doesn’t take much of a leap to say, “See…spanking is biblical. We’re doing the right thing.”

The book of Proverbs is ancient wisdom. The great thing about ancient wisdom is that it can be timeless. It’s proven. That’s why we understand it as wisdom.

But sometimes–and I’d argue this is the case with the Proverbs 13:24–the wisdom statement unravels upon our discovery of new facts.

Not only that, but it isn’t fair to those of us who have come to appreciate less violent ways of helping our children live healthy lives. Sometimes this is teaching the benefits of discipline (not to be confused with punishment), and sometimes it’s just learning to understand that the functions of the brain of one child will differ from the function of the brain of another…or of the parent.

As Dobson was building his biblical platform and labelling children as…

• Defiant

• Rebellious of Spirit

• Hard to discipline or a discipline problem

• Tough-minded

• Little Napoleon

• Willful

…neuroscience was discovering:

• Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD); Trauma response; Anxiety disorder

• Executive function deficits (difficulty following multi-step directions); Depression (irritability or withdrawal mistaken for rebellion)

• Learning differences leading to frustration/avoidance (dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia); Auditory Processing Disorder (not hearing or processing instructions properly).

• Sensory Processing Disorder (meltdowns due to sensory overload); Sleep disorders (fatigue leading to irritability and poor self-regulation

• ADHD (impulsivity, difficulty sustaining attention, trouble with transitions); Autism (rigidity in routine, sensory overwhelm)

• Anxiety-driven need for control in unpredictable environments; Autism spectrum traits where predictability feels like survival, not power-seeking

Dobson, a psychologist, never allowed for scientific advancement to amend his worldview. (I wonder if he even kept up to date on developments in the field.) Instead, everything he recommended was rooted in his reading of biblical values, even when those values were detrimental to the way God’s creation was actually playing out in real time.

In recent days I’ve been doing a deep dive into ADHD. I was struck by how many of the challenges I had as a child (God bless my poor mother) now appear to be text-book issues related to ADD. You’ll note in my case, I’ve left out the “H.” This is because hyperactivity wasn’t a thing for me. I’d sooner fall asleep staring into space than have trouble sitting still. I wasn’t strong-willed, I just couldn’t get things done.2

No amount of spanking, grounding, taking away television or Nintendo did anything to instill discipline within me. What’s more, I don’t recall ever–not one occasion–choosing not to behave in a certain way because I risked being spanked.

Dobson’s use of the word discipline is problematic in and of itself. From where my butt was sitting it felt like he was teaching parents how to punish–you know, with love–rather than learning how best to help a child function in their world.

It was always, ‘Do this or else,’ rather than, ‘Here’s why this way will serve you better.’ The first requires little effort from the parent. The second takes more work, but it’s the kind of work that actually helps a child grow, and it’s far more likely to produce a lasting result.

We as Christians (and indeed, other faith traditions as well) must take seriously the complexities of humanity. Sometimes this will mean we leave some biblical principles behind in the spirit of healthy growth, which I’d suggest is a biblical practice itself. This was a challenge for the early church.

I don’t know what particular element of Dobson’s writing my grandfather was uncomfortable with, but I think it likely took some courage, or perhaps even discipline of his own to reject what would have been comfortable in an effort to maintain intellectual integrity.

I don’t know how much my parents struggled with spanking before a little bruise prompted them to reconsider their parenting techniques. But I know they chose love when they realized it was conflicting with pain.

And me and my family? Well, my daughter did steal again. One more time.

So we packed up all her favorite things and put them in the attic for a week. We “stole” them so she didn’t have them anymore. I don’t know if it was the right way or not, but we wanted her to understand how her behavior was affecting others, so we modelled her behavior for her. It seemed to have the desired effect.

What we did with our daughter wasn’t punishment, it was teaching. That’s what Dobson never seemed to grasp. Discipline isn’t about pain—it’s the patient work of helping a child grow. My grandfather knew it when he refused Dobson’s platform, my parents knew it when they laid aside the belt, and I knew it when I finally did the same. Each of us, in our own way, chose to risk a new understanding. That’s the work my evangelical community still struggles with—accepting that real love sometimes requires leaving behind what once felt biblical.

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Your algorithm is broken working as designed, and while the fix is simple to understand, it's difficult to practice consistently. It involves self-awareness, honesty, and intentionality.

Consider the following to be generally true:

Your social media algorithm, when it comes down to it, is a reflection of your online behavior, and thus, a reflection of you.

There are, obviously, caveats.

• Not everything in your feed is your fault.

• Curiosity does not equal endorsement.

• People change.

That said, let’s discuss how you might take action to tweak your algorithm so it doesn’t leave you feeling such consternation.

Begin by taking a mental inventory of what you're seeing on your feed. This shouldn't take long. I spent about 5 minutes taking a bit of a algorithmic self-inventory and these are the things I found to be monopolizing my feed.

Topic One: Deconstructing or deconstructed evangelicals.

Why I’m Seeing It

I’ve written a lot of posts that show how I’ve diverged from the world of Evangelical Christianity. I completely understand a desire to distance oneself from theological leanings we once held true.

The Problem

I think I might have reached a saturation point. Where one thing dies, something else should grow, and cynicism is a toxic fertilizer. I mean really, if I see the word exvangelical one more time, I’m going to experience an aneurism of my own.

Topic Two: Divorced women writers who have found a way to thrive.

Why I’m Seeing It

Anyone who’s read my work in recent months knows that I’ve developed somewhat of a writing niche when it comes to marriage. One reader described my niche as, “Don’t be an asshole husband.” I didn’t know I had a niche, but it seems to fit this particular chapter of my writing life.

In learning how to speak to men who’d like to be better husbands, I’ve read a lot of work by divorced women. Most of the time their writing is not particularly appreciative of their ex-spouse, understandably so.

As a result of my reading research, the algorithm sends me more of the same– articles or notes by wives who are, one way or another, writing about their discontent in their marriage, how they found their way out, and how others might too.

The Problem

I have a bit more hope for husbands that the lived experience of the authors the algorithm has been feeding me, and I find myself getting defensive.

Topic Three: People writing about their fantastic sex life and how mine can be too.

I fit into a group of people who were raised in the purity culture of the evangelical church and have discovered, later in life, that sex is different than it was presented to us growing up. We’re shedding the shame about liking sex or watching others have sex. Shedding shame is a good thing.

But…Recently, the algorithm sent me an article about a woman whose favorite lover is a rock. I didn’t actually read it, but the image kind of screams ‘new age personal wellness tool.’ The kind of personal tool that might send the pearl clutchers straight to their fainting couches, back of their palm to their forehead.

I’m quite happy for her having a favorite lover, but I don’t want to read about it.

Why I’m Seeing It

Turns out, I’d subscribed to this author’s Substack.

The Problem

I just don’t want to read about it anymore. Not in my inbox or my media feed.

Topic Four: Anything relating to the poster’s subscriber counts.

The passive-aggressive but nice people who are posting notes that should be coffee-break conversations with others. You know, face to face. “I started my Substack two weeks ago…I’m up to 5 subscribers which isn’t much but I’m proud of the effort!”

Why I’m Seeing It

I’m a writer like these people, with an ego just like them. I’ve lingered on these notes and liked no small number of them. I’ve even posted a note or two like these myself.

The Problem

Part of me relates to these posts because I am a writer. I do want connection and affirmation. But another part of me resents how performative or self-congratulatory they feel and I don’t want to play that game.

Topic Five: Writing about how to be successful on Substack

If you are here to coddle the algorithm…there are about 15 gazillion writers on Substack who want to tell you how to do it.

Pardon the unsolicited rant, but I can’t help myself.

These are the people writing about writing, and they drive me nuts. The thing is, they are similar to actual nuts, which I don’t really have much of an appetite for, ever, yet I can’t stop eating once I’ve munched on the first shelled walnut.

I think 90% of these people are drinking their own snake oil. I’ve looked kind of deep into some of them. I’ve Googled their names and looked for them on youtube, Medium and various other places on the internet. The ONLY thing I can ever see that they’ve ever done is write about writing online and telling other people how to do it. “I started my writing business 2 years ago and here’s how you can too...”

Your writing business? What have you written about besides writing?

They don’t even try to hide it. A Substack “coach” recently explained that their first newsletter niche tanked, so they abandoned it. Their next project? A Substack on how to be successful on Substack. Naturally, that one exploded in popularity.

It’s somewhat infuriating1.

Why I’m Seeing It

Because with a desire to grow my Substack, I’ve fallen for the click-bait articles. I’ve lingered on them, read them, and even commented on some.

The Problem

I’m feeding a system I’d rather see die, and then eating its leftovers.

Steps to Personally Curating Your Feed

Once you’ve taken inventory of your feed, be intentional about how you interact with it moving forward. Remember: algorithms operate with one thing in mind: to make you react. If something keeps appearing in your feed, it's because you've somehow signaled engagement. Here’s what engagement looks like to the algorithm:

Clicking the Heart or “liking” a post - Even a quick, thoughtless tap registers as positive feedback.

Commenting - Any response, positive or negative, signals high interest.

Sharing or reposting - Shows the algorithm you want others to see this content.

Clicking through to read - Time spent on a post matters more than you think, even if you don’t like, comment, or share it with others.

Following links - Clicking external links signals engagement.

Lingering on posts - Believe it or not, simply pausing to read tells the algorithm you're interested.

Fortunately, if you keep these things in mind, curating a social media feed that is pleasing to you isn’t much more difficult than it was to curate the one that isn’t.

Step 1: Unsubscribe from Substack accounts you no longer have interest in.

People–including you–change. It’s completely normal, and it’s ok to leave past interests in the past. This is happening to me as a writer, which is even a bit more difficult to navigate. But I’m finding as I re-curate my inbox, I’m also freeing up creative space in this brain of mine.

Look at the inventory you took of your feed. It’ll help you understand who you are, at least in your online world. Take note and adjust your interactions accordingly.

Step 2: Limit your engagement with notes and posts.

The less you engage with a particular topic–be it a note or post–the less likely the algorithm is to send it to your feed. “Like” things you actually like, the things that you’ve taken a bit of time to think about. Don’t click the Like button in a thoughtless manner. At least think about it as much as the algorithm is noticing your behavior.

Step 3: Talk to the algorithm.

This one takes a bit more work, but we’re talking mere seconds. If you click the three dots next to a post on your feed (I’ve put a red box around them in the image below) you will be offered several ways to tell the algorithm you’re not interested in what you’re seeing.

After clicking those three little dots, you’ll see the following drop-down menu. Consider it an algorithm communications toolbox!

Unfollow: This option allows you to unfollow somebody you’ve previously followed. You’ll stop seeing their Notes or posts in your feed, but they won’t be notified.

Mute: Mute hides a person’s Notes from your feed without unfollowing them. It’s a quiet way to take a break from their content without severing the connection.

Block: Blocking removes someone’s ability to follow you, comment on your Notes or posts, or interact with you on Substack. Their content will also be hidden from your feed.

Report: This option flags a user or specific content for review by Substack’s moderation team—typically for spam, harassment, or violating platform guidelines.

Remember, the algorithm curates what you see automatically based on activity it’s seen from you in the past. Any time I engage with a post or note, the algorithm takes it as a sign I might like to see more from that person, even though I haven’t followed or subscribed to them. This might be one answer to Pamela’s question (in the picture above).

If the algorithm will always be a reflection of your online behavior, then the question is whether you want that reflection to be intentional or accidental. The inventory you took reveals where you've been letting the algorithm steer you instead of steering it.

Taking control requires the same three elements I mentioned at the start: self-awareness to recognize what you're actually seeing, honesty about how you got there, and intentionality in every interaction moving forward.

The change happens faster than you'd expect. Within days, your feed will start reflecting your actual interests rather than your reactive patterns. Your algorithm will work as you design it to work.

Make it work for you.

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(This article is a bit different than what I’ve done in the past. If you read the article, you’ll see some videos that are applicable. Unfortunately, if you’re listening to the voiceover [press “play” at the very top] you won’t be able to see them! BUT…Have no fear! If you’re listening, you’ll hear some recordings I made that are also applicable, and not available for readers.

You choose…or do both!)

The day most certainly did not start like any other.

At least not from my 21st century point of view. Now, perhaps if I was living in the 14th century, a member of the noble class, then what I was experiencing at 7:59 AM would have been as routine as anything I could know.

The bells in the tower of Chiasa di San Biagio, the church in Montecatini Val diCecina, began to ring their bells according to the clockwork within. The sound was solid and loud. The tone? Well, each strike of the hammer produced a ring that was somewhat tinny and dissonant as if the wear of centuries of ringing have caused the bells to fall out of tune, the original clarity tarnished not unlike the theology of Christianity itself, depending on who you ask.

Still, there was a distinct romanticism to the medieval alarm clock. There was no snooze-button feature, no way to delay the beginning of awake time. When the eight-o'clock gonging was complete, the tower continued its call to those in earshot with its own rendition of Ave Maria de Lourdes. To the already awake locals it is a call to mass. To me, it was a plea to arise and enjoy the world around me.

Loud though they were, I was glad for the bells. While I wouldn’t be attending mass, I did find a different kind of salvation that day.

Italy is six hours ahead in the day from where I live on the east coast of the United States, and this fact was always in the back of my consciousness—the constant understanding that I was in a different time zone. It almost seemed like a different reality.

This was our second trip to Italy, the first being two years prior. On the first visit, a Mediterranean Cruise, we’d taken a shore excursion into the ancient city of Volterra and fell in love with the stillness of the Tuscan region. We’d promised ourselves that if we ever came back, Tuscany would be our destination. Two summers later we fulfilled our promise to ourselves.

My wife had found an Air B-n-B in a 14^th century tower, Torre dei Belforti. It was built in the first part of the 14th century–that’s the 1300’s, folks–by the Belforti family of Volterra. Within a couple decades, the nearby church bell tower was also erected1.

With architecture that’s foreign to me and often times older than anything we have in America, time travel is somewhat easier to do in Italy than back home.

Take Florence, for instance. The buildings look older, mostly because they are. The roads aren’t necessarily paved, but laid out with cobblestones, or large slabs of basalt somewhere over the edge of gray, closer to black. They feel different to walk on than what I’m used to. Overall, the feel of the locale is different, so it doesn’t take much to transport myself to a different time. I close my eyes and listen to the conversations in Italian. I feel the warmth of the baking sun and am reminded that the sun which shone upon the Florentines of centuries past is the same warming me today.

The warmth felt like warmth, and the air they breathed was like air I breathe. The River Arno was there just like it is today, and the sounds of water lapping the shores would have been there then too. I hear the click-clock of horse drawn carriages and pretend they’re not transporting tourists, but ancient locals as they would have been centuries before. I’m not in the carriage myself, but can imagine hopping out of the way, all the while avoiding mounds of horse manure. There was hustle and bustle then just like there is hustle and bustle today.

I like to time travel this way. The reality is, in the grand scheme of eternity, those we call ancients share the same blip on the timeline of the universe that we do.

Time travel was especially fun in the tower.

Laying there with my eyes closed at 7:59 AM as the bells rang might be the most efficient experience of time travel in which I’ve ever engaged. There I was, 28 meters up an ancient castle-like stone structure–that’s 91.8635 American feet–on the 5th floor. The room is square, and I don’t really have to explain what it looks like. What you’re imagining is how it is.

I try to imagine how a 14th century person would experience it. Surely they’d awake and find the furniture in the room to be familiar in function to what we use now. You know, some chairs and a bed.

There are three windows, each on a separate side of the room, opened so the night breeze has full access to our living quarters. The breeze is stiff at that height, and it serves as the only source of air conditioning during the summer. We found it to be as effective as we needed.

As I lay there listening to the bells chime, I was reminded that the sun streaming through the window was shining upon the same spot it did 700 years to the day prior. It’s the same sun basking through the easternmost window as it has every morning since the first stone was set in place.

I can’t be sure, but I think my experience that morning wasn’t too dissimilar from what it might have been had I been waking up in the same room in 1350.

Time traveled.

It was a fun thing to think about. The floor where my bare feet were walking supported how many people through the years? I gave it little thought, but enough to produce a half-grin as I thought about it.

I went to a different window and looked out. Several meters below the base of The Belforti Tower, situated off to the northern edge of the property is a garden full of olive trees.

An actual olive garden. That’s where my wife and I would be spending a few hours in the morning, quietly, until our adult children pulled themselves out of bed and joined us.

Down a path into the garden is a pool. It’s manmade—gunite, if you’re curious—but understated in its design. No deeper than 4 feet at its maximum depth at the center, it’s a small pool of gradual slopes and natural-feeling steps to sit upon, should one feel inclined to recline. I made my way to the pool the morning after our first sleep in the tower and made the most lovely, albeit accidental, discovery.

There was no WiFi in the olive garden, and it served as a cold turkey purge from internet scrolling for me. On this day I’d learn there are more natural ways to get a dopamine rush. I thought it would be by reading an eBook.

Settled in a sling chair next to the pool I began reading. The wildlife, however, had other ideas and I was soon interrupted by a dive-bombing horsefly. I tried to ignore it, but it was persistent. And, as it turned out…

…it was talking.

“Look!” It buzzed at me a mere two inches from my ear.

I swiped at it, and it would go away for about 30 seconds.

“Look!” It tried the other ear. Passing my ebook from my left hand to right, I swatted again.

I watched for the bug bombardier, waiting for it to land on a part of my body that wouldn’t hurt much when I slapped myself with a horse-fly death-blow. Alas, it never landed.

I went back to the book…

“LOOK!” It said, this time buzzing both ears in one circumnavigation of my cranium.

Placing my phone eBook down I again waited for the fly to land.

And I waited some more. It continued to circle my cranial runway, somehow knowing to pull back to a distance beyond my hands for the purposes of self-preservation. I’ve always been amazed at this kind of horse-fly wisdom. Skilled defensive flyers, are they.

I laid my head back in the sling chair I was sitting in. I’d wait. I could be patient. I had nothing but time to offer. I closed my eyes.

I heard the buzz, sometimes close, other times far. But it never landed.

Never.

As I lay there with my eyes closed, I began to hear a different kind of buzz. One that was steady and lower pitched.

The buzz of a bee.

And that’s when I gave in to the demands of the horsefly. I looked.

I opened my eyes, trying to find the source of the steady buzz. There it was, about 8 feet away, hopping from one blossom of white clover to the next.

I don’t know if I’ve ever taken the time to watch a honey bee at work. But I did on this day. As I did, I realized I’d forgotten some of the work honey bees do. Mainly, the part about how they collect nectar.

Somewhere over the years my understanding of honey bees work is that they collect pollen, which of course they do. But for some reason, the nectar collection had slipped into the recesses of my memory where things are stored until we’re reminded.

As I watched him hop from clover blossom to clover blossom, I saw him sticking his little nectar straw into each nectar-holding part of the flower with pinpoint precision. That’s when I remembered the nectar thing.

Then I remembered I knew what clover nectar tastes like.

Because when I was quite young, my big sister taught me how to suck the nectar out of red clover. We’d spend hours doing it, stealing the little microdose of sweetness from nature.

I was at an age when I still thought my bigger sister knew everything there was worth knowing. “If you can’t taste any nectar,” She explained, “then you know the bees already got it!”

I wonder how many adults even know we can suck nectar from clover flowers. You have to pluck the little flower parts carefully. They’re like tubes with the tiniest amount of sweet liquid at the bottom.

And I mean the tiniest amount!

But it’s so good, and worth it. It drives you to look for more. It’s a competition between me and the bees. Usually the bees won. But when they didn’t, well, it gave real meaning to sweet victory.

So, you look and look, a race between you and the professional nectar sucker. And before you know it, mom’s calling you for lunch. You and your big sister have spent hours trying to see how much nectar you can find.

As I watched the bee and reminisced, I took note of what I saw. I just watched the bee at work. Fascinated, I captured a video. I didn’t want to forget. There was a simplicity to what he was doing. The bee didn’t seem to notice me at all.

As I watched, I considered how little the honey bee has changed, if at all, over the centuries since the tower was built. Surely the horseflies were around in the 14th century too–there were certainly more horses–and those people back then swatted them away. I wondered if they’d sat in an olive garden and watched the bees work.

I closed my eyes and listened. I pretended I was listening to it 700 years ago. Same sounds. Same kinds of insects.

I considered how many times I’d been scared of bees. The stinger, that is. I wondered if people who lived in the tower in the 14th century were scared of bees.

But here in the olive garden there was no threat of being stung. The bee was there to work, the other bees…to drink.

Fact is, the bee I was watching wasn’t the only one there. I’d passed dozens of them, maybe more than 100 on my way to my seat. I looked up, down at the far end of the pool and there they still were.

They were right at the edge of the pool, where the gentle laps of the water wetted the gunnite edge. They’d fly in, sip on the water in the crevices for a few seconds, and then fly off to wherever they were going. Never once did one of those bees come anywhere close to me or threaten me as I walked by.

It was as if there was an unspoken understanding with the bees. People would enter the pool from one end, and the bees would drink at the other.

It occurred to me that if one of them stung me, he would die. Stinging was a life-saving measure, one meant to protect the hive. It was the least self-serving act it could do.

I thought about this for a bit. I considered how humans act; the things we do to sting. We tend to sting each other a lot. Honestly, I couldn’t help but consider we shared this trait with our ancestors too.

It was the only sad moment I had that day. I wished we humans might be more like the bees. Do our work and then rest at the edge of refreshment. Maybe we have a little nectar-sucking competition with clover-sucking toddlers.

I smiled again.

Then I noticed another fellow. A lizard of some sort scurried out of the decorative rocks. Later I’d watch as a mourning dove dunked its head in the water for a drink before being spooked and coo-flying away the way mourning doves do.

The entire scene engulfed my emotions. I didn’t want it to end. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I captured some pictures. I recorded 10 minutes of what I heard. I took some video…

Later in the day, Luca, our host, came and talked with us at the edge of the pool. He’s an extrovert like me, and all of us were glad to have someone to teach us about where we were. I told him how much I was enjoying the garden.

“Ah! This place is like magic!” He said with a smile.

He was right.

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If you have friends or family members who enjoy traveling, (even through time!) send them this article. Word of mouth is still the best way to help spread good writing.

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With a flawless execution of the plantar fasciitis shuffle, I found my way into the shower, noting the morning grumpiness was more profound than usual. It wasn’t just grumpiness...

Anger?

No, no. That wasn’t it. Not quite. It was more…annoyed. The almost angry kind of annoyed.

This called for a mental check to determine the source of my dour mood. It didn’t take long to figure it out. The last thing I’d seen before my head hit the pillow was my favorite professional basketball team, the Boston Celtics, blow a 20-point lead to a team everyone believed was inferior to them, the New York Knicks. So, I was in a bad mood as my eyes closed for sleep. Six hours of shut-eye did nothing to quell my irritation from the night before.

They shouldn’t have lost.

Given the way the first half had gone, and the fact that during the regular season the Celtics toyed with the Knicks like a puppy does an old sock, it was fair to assume they would win.

What’s more, the Celtics were the 2024 defending World Champions.

The Knicks are, well, the Knicks. They’ve been mostly futile for the past half a century. Mostly…

Likely by now you know the Celtics would end up losing the series in 6 games. They did so by blowing a second 20-point lead in Game 2, a 14-point lead in Game 4 (a game in which we saw their superstar snap his Achilles tendon), and getting dismantled in a series-ending Game 6.

I think they lost by 375 points.

Maybe it was closer to 40 points, but you understand what I’m saying.

The puppy ended up choking on the sock.

Anyway, back to Game 1…

As I stood in the shower that morning, hot water running down my back in a way that would make a 1980s conservationist cringe, the only thing that was more frustrating to me than the loss was the fact that the loss affected me so much.

I’ve got this weird, haughty pedestal I stand on when it comes to how I cheer on my favorite teams. Where other fans might say things like, “We won!”, in reference to their teams success, I don’t. I don’t play for the team. The wins or losses are not mine to claim.

With this in mind, the Game 1 loss stung more than logic would suggest it might. Why was I so dismayed?

Perhaps I was projecting because I was nursing my own wound that was still fresh. Just three weeks earlier, I had withdrawn from the Boston Marathon at mile 20. I’d given up on a lifelong goal, abandoning the effort when the going got tough. And now, here were the Celtics following a script that seemed—at least on a subconscious level—to mirror my own.

I needed a win, and I was counting on my favorite basketball team to deliver it for me. When they failed, and doing so in a particular, familiar way, it was a subtle reminder of my own personal tendencies—starting strong before falling apart when faced with adversity.

As I considered this version of the Celtics1, I began to see I might have been projecting my own recent failure onto them.

It is completely unacceptable for my favorite professional teams to fail.

That’s my role in the world.

If you’re thinking I’m being unfair to both the Celtics and to myself, I’d agree. But oddly, the Game 1 loss spiraled me into serious reflection about my own failures. The way the rest of the series went down only reaffirmed my projection of my own experiences onto the team.

My gripe about this Celtics team is their propensity to perform well at the start of a game and then squander the early success and lose in the end. Granted, they win far more games than they lose, but when they do lose, it seems as if they lose it in the back half of the game. They begin to fail as the game clock winds down.

The Knicks team that beat them this year seems to be the opposite of the Celtics in every way. They don’t have as much raw talent on the team. They’re likely to start slow. But in the second half of games they find something within them to outplay their competition. And it starts with their star player, Jalen Brunson, who seems to improve when the pressure is on. Perhaps Jalen Brunson is blossoming into the Knicks’ version of Red Sox legend David Ortiz? Time will tell.

The obvious retort to my argument hangs in the air.

“But, Jeff! The Celtics won the NBA Championship last year! How can you question their ways? Besides, are you really comparing your failure to just finish a marathon to their failure to repeat as NBA champions?”

I understand your point. I’m not comparing my goals to theirs. I’m just considering some perceived similarities (by me) at each individual level.

The Boston Marathon had been a lifelong goal of mine. I’d completed three marathons before. I trained for The Boston Marathon in a similar manner to those three. Everything looked great on race day. The weather was perfect. Five miles into the race the marathon app told me I was running at a pace that would best my times of the previous three marathons.

I soaked in the beautiful day. I slapped high-fives with spectators. I considered kissing one of the Wellesley College students, only deciding against it when, A) I realized those students were younger than my son, only slightly older than my daughter, and B) my wife might not find it cute, marathon tradition or not.

I snapped a picture with a friend handing out water at a hydration station. Later, my family was there to cheer me on.

Then, somewhere around mile 18, I began to experience some unfamiliar chest discomfort. A bit of pain and tightness right where my ribs all come together. Right near the place I knew my heart to be pounding at 140 beats a minute.

I felt like I was going to puke. My feet were killing me.

My family had gathered to cheer me on at the mile 20 marker, just beside a medical tent.

I went over to them, and a few minutes later I bailed2.

What I didn’t know was that I’d already conquered all but three-tenths of a mile of the hardest parts of the marathon. I was almost done. If I’d continued just a little bit more, everything would have been downhill.

Literally.

I looked it up a couple days later. The arrow in this picture here is the point of the race where I quit.

Everybody in my life has been quite supportive of my decision to withdraw. Nobody has blamed or questioned me. My own little fan base was supportive of my effort, even though I fell short of the goal.

“You were smart to listen to your body.”

“I can’t run a mile, let alone 20!”

“20 miles is a lot! You should be proud of that accomplishment!”

Perhaps.

But again, I’d finished marathons before. But not this one.

Not my life-long goal, the grand-daddy of all marathons.

Boston.

The Celtics had been champions before. But they wanted to be a dynasty. They’d raised their bar for success.

The more I dwelled on it, watching the Celtics struggle late in games, the clearer it became that I too had my own propensity for late-game issues. I often “withdraw” from situations when they get hard. When things don’t go as easy as I might have liked, I’ve decided it was time for something new. I couldn’t have things blow up in my face.

I’m not sure I would have been so frustrated if not for the fact that it seemed that the Celtics’ plan this year was flawed. It’s one thing to get beat by a better team. That’s not what happened. They planned to win this year in the same manner they did last time, and it blew up in their face.

Their plan for winning basketball games is simple. It goes like this:

That didn’t work. When their 3-point shooting went cold, and when one of their star defenders couldn’t play up to his potential due to a mystery illness, they didn’t have a solution to their problem. When Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles tendon…well…

Series over.

I’ll grant you I’m projecting. It’s what we do with illustrations. I’m not here to argue about the Celtics game plan. I’m probably wrong. It’s just what it looks like from my mostly uneducated basketball seat.

My self-examination on the heels of the two failures had me considering more than just athletic pursuits.

For the purpose of brevity, I won’t get into specific here. It will suffice to say the plan for my marathon run was poor. From the training to the run itself, and the execution of both.

The preparation was paltry, and the plan, flawed.

When adversity arrived, a familiar voice was not far behind. It wasn’t a voice of doubt. It wasn’t someone trying to berate me for trying something so challenging.

No. Instead it was a voice of preservation; a voice of concern for my well being.

You know, Jeff, it’s ok to stop. You don’t have to finish this. You don’t have to prove anything to anybody.

The voice was my sirens' song. Upon reflection, I'm considering it always has been.

In the moment it was easy. Sitting on a folding chair near the medical tent at mile 20, I remember thinking to myself, I cannot imagine going back out there. The little voice told me it wasn’t necessary. So I didn’t.

Revisiting the race in the following days revealed some hard information which shed more light on my decision to withdraw.

Consider:

• One of the feel-good stories of the 2025 marathon was about a guy who literally crawled over the finish line. When interviewed after the race he talked about how he threw up 8 times throughout the race. I’d been afraid to puke just before I withdrew.

• According to the official race statistics:

  • 100% of the visually impaired runners completed the marathon. (I’d passed one of these runners somewhere around mile 10.)

  • 100% of the mobility impaired participants completed the marathon.

  • 90.8% of the people over 80 years old completed the marathon.

I’m sure all of the above runners were uncomfortable by mile 20 too. Comparing my race results to theirs feels more appropriate, and my conclusions are stark.

Today, almost a month post-race, I’m beginning to understand the experiences as an important opportunity for self-assessment.

There’s another marathon next year.

There are other things I’d like to complete in my life too.

Perhaps it’s time for a new plan.

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(This is Article #4 in the series, Things a Husband Can Do to Save His Marriage. But wives, you’re welcomed here too. Also, this is a reflective list. It’s simply what worked for me. I hope you find some of the insights helpful.)

(If you’re interested in knowing where I’ve been for the past several weeks, check this long footnote.1)

It was probably my 4th viewing of ESPN’s SportsCenter that day. Maybe more, they all start to run together, you know? But you never know when they might have some new, breaking sports news I didn’t want to miss.

Anyways, I liked having it on in the background as my eyelids grew heavy. Just a little nap…

I was dozing off into little-nap-world when I heard the familiar, soft thud of a car door from outside.

She’s home.

Is it safe to say the arrival of a wife at home is the most effective wake-up call there is? It was for me, and I didn’t even know what was in store on that warm summer day in 2008.

Suddenly alert and with a renewed understanding of life’s priorities, I jumped from the couch and into the nearby kitchen, started the water and threw a dish-towel over my shoulder. I started washing the dishes in a nonchalant manner like I’d been doing it all along.

Industrious me.

As I rinse/washed the dishes and placed them in the dishwasher, my wife, Joy, came in through the front door.

“Hey!” I shouted to her.

“Hey.” Came her muted response.

I walked out of the kitchen and into the front entryway, making a show of drying my hands on a dish towel. You know, because I’d been doing the dishes…

Joy had been on a business trip. Her trips had become frequent enough to where they were somewhat routine. She’d return, I’d ask how it went, and she’d share something about it. Just what she shared depended upon just how stressful it had been.

But this time was different.

“Hey!” I said. “How was the trip?”

She shrugged gently, passive but not entirely dismissive of the question. There was no eye contact. A small, quiet, “Fine.” was all she said. Her reply was short. Also, pregnant and foreboding, a vocal response that was a placeholder for the truth.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, naive to what was coming.

She walked past me, rolling her bag along until she reached the bottom of the stairs. She began to lug it up, one step at at time.

Clunk. She paused on the step to look at me for the briefest of moments, silent. Her quick look asked a question I didn’t know how to hear. My lack of action though, confirmed what she already knew.

She took another step, and tugged the suitcase up with her. Clunk. Was there any type of burden I’d carry for her?

Clunk.

“Hey…” Clueless, I reached up and lightly grabbed her forearm just tight enough to suggest she turn and face me, but light enough so she could refuse. “What’s wrong?”

Joy continued up the stairs, but paused on the middle landing. She sat and looked at the floor. I let the silence do its work for a bit before trying a different question.

“Are you OK?”

More silence. Perhaps a hint of a tear in her eye? I couldn’t be sure. Without a shift in her gaze, hands folded between her knees, she uttered three words that broke the silence, the tension, the stalemate, and my naive system of belief that things were going to be ok.

“I kissed him.”

I didn’t react. I didn’t get mad. I didn’t yell. I didn’t drop to my knees and cry. I was confused, experiencing a potent mixture of fear and inadequacy. I just stood there for a moment, not sure what to do. I was pretty sure I’d heard her correctly. I offered my own placeholder response as I gathered my thoughts.

“...What?”

“I kissed him.” She still wasn’t looking at me.

“Oh.” I gave a slight nod and understood why she wasn’t looking at me. It was shame, and perhaps resignation, that this is where we’d arrived.

I looked away from her, also experiencing shame. No anger. Not even sadness, if that makes any sense. Just shame, and a growing feeling of fear in the pit of my stomach. Fear that my naivete would blossom into my own resignation.

As I processed things, I wondered if–hoped–it only went as far as kissing. I mean, I imagine if there was more, the words would have been hard for her to say.

“You kissed him?” I asked with clarifying intent. She nodded. “Where?” I asked, trying to gauge the significance of the kiss, wanting to believe it was a short peck in a public area, like an accidental moment of excitement. Or maybe it was more intentional than that, but in a park, somewhere public that would place limits on what could happen outside of a kiss.

“In my hotel room.” She paused.

Her answer placed a paintbrush in my mind’s eye. In an instant I was building the scene: A man who wasn’t me, dressed in business attire with his neck-tie loosened, the first button of his collar undone after a successful day as a well-paid businessman. His shirt sleeves rolled up two times at each forearm. My wife holding the door for him to come inside before closing it behind him, leaving my imagination in the hallway.

“We were on my bed.” She added this bit of information without prompting.

The visual image grew, this time inside the room.

The same man is now reclining on a bed, collar unbuttoned still, sleeves rolled up, but the tie is missing. My wife is reclining next to him on the bed. She was lightly touching his face, his hand was on her shoulder.

It occurred to me they’d already crossed several lines. The trip to the room, the invitation in from the hallway, the door closing. Somehow ending up on the bed. I mean, what was to keep it from progressing further than a kiss?

I tilted my head and raised my eyebrows. “Did you…”

“No.” She interrupted, and looked at me for the first time. “I didn’t sleep with him. We didn’t have sex.”

I believed her. There wasn’t a moment where I thought she was lying to me. In the midst of all the emotions or thoughts I was experiencing, “surprise” wasn’t among them. Throughout the difficult times we’d been experiencing, she’d told me she was having feelings for other men.

I was relieved. But also confused, because I didn’t know if I should experience relief to know my wife only kissed another man. No matter, because it was short lived. As I considered what happened I came to an understanding that somehow, the fact that she only kissed him meant it wasn’t about physical desire. This wasn’t just a kiss. She had been seeking something more. She was seeking intimacy, and she was seeking it with someone other than me. It was far more than just a kiss. It was more than an impulsive moment between two people, the kind of impulsive moment I’d hoped it had been. No, this was more than an impulse.

My mind swirled and tried to process the situation. Part of my confusion was in that I thought we were doing better as a couple. Things had been strained, no doubt. But we were working on it. We'd just returned from a weekend cruise we took together less than a week before - our attempt to find calmer waters, I suppose. We had a nice time. We'd made love. More than once. It was a really nice cruise! I thought to myself, searching for some sort of reassurance. As if a few peaceful days at sea could repair a hull that had been taking on water for some time.

I started to ask about it. “But, the cruise. I thought we…” I trailed off..

“It was too late, Jeff. I did have a good time with you. But it was a cruise, an escape from reality. When we got home, everything was still here.” As she spoke, she shook her head, eyes widened as if to ask, What did you think? That we wouldn’t enjoy a cruise?

“I’m sorry. I really am.” She said.

I could only nod.

“I told you I was having feelings for other people. It just… I guess the feelings grew. He made me feel like I was important. He works hard. He takes good care of his family. He probably carries his wife’s luggage up the stairs when she returns from a trip.”

The zinger hit its target. But I deflected. Her point produced a sense of defensiveness that enabled me to find my anger.

“He has a family?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yes. A wife and kids. But he’s miserable too.”

I put up my hand. I didn’t want to hear about this other guy’s problems. Looking directly into her eyes, I asked again. I had to be sure.

My heart was palpitating. I could actually feel it beat, pumping excess amounts of blood to wherever a heart pumps blood during a fight or flight reaction, but when neither of those two actions are possible. My overactive imagination had me searching for hope. “You really didn’t sleep with him?”

“No. He wouldn’t. He said he couldn’t. He told me he wasn’t convinced I was committed, and that he couldn’t be a part of doing something I’d regret.”

I processed what I heard. …he said he wouldn’t. So, the idea was in the air, and maybe…not his idea.

I tried to think of the last time she’d asked me, or even hinted to me that she desired to be sexually intimate with me. It wasn’t that we weren’t having sex. We were. It was just that she wasn’t into it. It wasn’t intimacy. She didn’t want me. She wanted someone else.

As if she could read my thoughts, she said, “It’s not about sex anyways. You know that’s not me. I’m not even really physically attracted to him. I find you far more attractive than him.

Indeed, she had told me she was having feelings for other “people.” I’d understood, I thought. But I didn’t know how serious she was. Back when she first told me, she said she was “starting to have feelings…” I let myself believe that since she told me about what was happening, that those feelings wouldn’t grow. If she and I tweaked a part of our marriage here, changed something there, that her affection for me would return. There was comfort in my naivete. Clearly, I hadn’t made enough changes. Her feelings for other people had not only grown, but they’d also narrowed.

I thought about the other guy and was surprised to find myself conflicted about him. On the one hand, homeboy put his lips on my wife. I wanted to see if my fist could find his teeth behind them. My wife was compelled to want him. Where she was growing away from me, she was finding intimacy with this guy. I was jealous of her attention, and envious of his ability to provide her with something meaningful. On the other hand, there was something else just as important, I thought.

I considered why their interaction ended when it did.

Though the two of them were engaging in a relationship both of them knew was a betrayal of marital trust, he’d found a way to exhibit self-control. In fact, it was more than just self-control. I simultaneously hated a guy I didn’t know, and was also grateful he had self-control. In a situation where sex was a possibility, self-control in times of passion was something I’d struggled with in the past.

Maybe if I’d had self-control…

I looked at Joy again. She looked devastated.

I knew she was a good person. She was conscientious, a person of integrity. I knew she’d beat herself up about this enough that I didn’t need to add to her shame. She was a wreck. So was I.

After months, probably years of a marriage drifting off course, this is where we’d washed ashore, our boat run aground and dashed on the rocks. We were in unfamiliar and unpleasant territory. As we looked at the wreckage, and then at each other, there was only one way to understand it.

Our journey together was at its end.

Or, so we assumed. As it turned out, we’d find a way to stay together, discovering it was possible to change the trajectory of where our journey was taking us.

Neither of us remember anger during that time. We were just sad, and I finally found the resignation she had about our marriage.

I don’t know if there’s a spectrum of “acts of infidelity,” but a kiss would rank significantly lower than sex. I knew that then, and admit it now. Still, it was hard. I was hurt. For me, the difficulty wasn’t in what the action was, it was in what the action signified.

Likely I should have been more upset than I was, but I’d found grace for her in a place I might not have expected.

I remembered that I'd hurt her before. In the earliest parts of our relationship, long before we were married, I'd sexually assaulted her. That day, as I watched her struggle with shame over the kiss, I recognized something familiar - the gap between who we believe ourselves to be and what we're capable of doing. Just as I had never imagined I could assault someone as I had, Joy never imagined she could betray our marriage. Yet here we both were, having crossed lines we never thought we would.

As 18 and 19 year olds in the mid-90s, we hadn't been able to name what happened between us as assault. We'd brushed it aside. But a decade later, I understood. And while Joy and I hadn't yet discussed it directly, watching her grapple with her own transgression brought my past actions into sharper focus. I began to see how trauma echoes through years, unseen until it's acknowledged - both the trauma I'd caused her and the slow fracturing of trust that led to this moment.

Sexual assault is bad; it’s among the worst of things. I never would have imagined it was something I was capable of. It was outside my value system. Yet, it happened. I began to ask (and later examine) why it happened. I wanted to know what led to that point. I wasn’t trying to excuse it. But reasons can help explain an action, and inform on how to avoid bad or unwanted behavior in the future.

Having a secret, intimate, extra-marital relationship was outside Joy’s own value system. I knew this for sure. She was never defensive about what happened. She’d told me things were moving in that direction, and when it finally occurred. She apologized.

But I recognized an action like that wasn’t something Joy wanted to have happen. So, I began to examine what led her there. When I did, I saw that there were things she needed from me that I hadn’t provided for her. Just as I had to face my own actions years before, I now had to face how our marriage had arrived at this point.

Understanding my own capacity for causing harm taught me something crucial: that growth comes not from shame, but from grace. And grace, I was learning, begins with the willingness to look beyond the immediate hurt to see the deeper wounds that need healing.

Joy, my wife, was a person who’d been wounded by my actions. She was wounded first when we were teenagers, and also when I failed to be the kind of marriage partner she needed me to be. I recognized this, and I found the grace to respond to what Joy had done with care and concern, because my own failures in these areas were some of the things that prodded her in the direction she’d gone.

This wasn't the end of our journey. It was the beginning of a different one.

Some days later, I’d have a tearful, confessional conversation with Joy and beg her to go to counseling with me. We discussed a lot, including the assault. She’d been exhibiting grace for years, that much was clear.

In the coming weeks we’d find a counselor. The process of healing began.

To close, I want to recognize that what happened with Joy and me may pale in comparison to betrayal which has happened in your marriage. I don’t want to think about what might have happened if the intimacy Joy found in this other man had grown to the level of sexual intimacy. But, I believe grace can help heal those situations too, and I want to recommend another person’s story about finding ways through circumstances that progressed further than ours did.

Not long ago I read a book called, How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. The memoir authored by Harrison Scott Key provides an example of how grace, understanding, and vulnerability can guide us through traumatic betrayals of marital trust. He writes with a unique combination of humor and depth. If you’re looking to find more hope than I could provide with what I offer you in this piece, How to Stay Married garners my highest recommendation.

See you next time. If you'd like to learn more about our journey of healing and the specific steps we took to rebuild our marriage, consider subscribing.

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This is series of personal reflections about some things I did to help save my marriage. Here’s where we’re going:

Things A Husband Can Do to Save His Marriage

• Find a counselor suitable for your wife and you.

• Decide if you want to be married.

• Unlearn everything you thought you knew about marriage.

• Let grace abound.

• Decide if the person you are married to is the person you want to be married to.

• Put your spouse’s needs before yours, including granting a divorce if it means she will be healthier.

• Apologize for the things you know you did wrong.

• Listen to the grievances your spouse has and decide if they are things you can change.

• Reassess your goals in life.

• Be honest about your addictions.

• Learn to give her an orgasm.

• Give her an orgasm every day.

(This is Article #3 in the series, Things a Husband Can Do to Save His Marriage. But wives, you’re welcomed here too. Also, this is a reflective list. It’s simply what worked for me. I hope you find some of the insights helpful.)

If you are anything like me (and oh, by god, I hope you are in some ways), you've had those moments where you look back at your younger self and think:

What in the world was I thinking?!?

This is me when I consider marriage.

You know, if I’m being honest, I can’t really place a finger on what I thought marriage was when I decided–at the ripe old age of 20–to get engaged. I really can’t.

It's just a blurry hodge-podge of ingredients I didn't really know how to put together. A cup of love…

…a dash of commitment…

…one scoop of engagement ring…

…two scoops of wedding rings...

...add in a heaping tablespoon of premarital counseling (barely stirred)...

...fold in some shared bank accounts…

…three cups of a premarital commitment to sexual purity…

…twelve gallons of confessional prayers and reboots for all the failed attempts at sexual purity…

...sprinkle liberally with well-meaning advice from married couples...

...toss in a marriage license...

...garnish with a carefully-curated registry at Service Merchandise1...

...an hour or so baking in a ceremony and...

...voilà! Wedded bliss!

[Adjust ingredients to taste.]

This is what my evangelical culture was in the 1980s and 90s. A series of “how-tos” and “what-not-to-dos” in an effort to make God happy and go to heaven when I die.

For sure, marriage was an expectation for me. Not that I was pressured to get married, it was just…understood. The way clothes are understood as necessary when one goes out in public. So, of course I was going to get married. It’s what we evangelical Christian men did. The recipe wasn't just for marriage - it was part of a larger formula for life that went something like this:

1. Be a kid until you graduate from high school.

2. Go to college and pretend you’re not a kid anymore.

3. Prove you’re not a kid by finding a spouse and getting married while in college or shortly after graduation.

4. Get a job and start a Christian family.

Sure, I'm simplifying things here, but honestly? That's about as deep as my understanding of marriage went. I entered into wedded bliss with the kind of naivete necessary to make it possible.

The two of us entered the marriage with innocence and optimism. We didn’t have the perspective that would have helped us fully acknowledge the complexities of married life.

We were twenty-one years old on our wedding day. We had a recipe; a formula. About a decade later–with two kids, a mortgage, and one failed attempt at a puppy–things fell apart. (Not because of the puppy. Don’t blame the puppy.) My wife told me she didn't love me, and couldn't imagine getting to a place where she would again.

And so, the formulaic approach hadn’t worked for us.

The difficulty is, we humans want formulas. Consider the title of this piece:

How to Save Your Marriage…

It’s a common practice to use “How To…” in creating blog articles and titles because readers instantly know the article will guide them through a process or teach them something.

It’s the promise of a formula. If you read this article I’ll tell you how to…

I click on articles titled with How To all the time. It’s likely you often do an internet search that begins with, “How do I… .”

Perhaps you see the problem I’m facing as I write today. I’m about to answer the question, "How do I fix my marriage?” with, “There is no formula.”

Surprisingly, as my evangelical forebears should have noticed, we can see that there’s no formulaic answer to some of the most important questions we might ask.

On several different occasions, someone asks Jesus how to enter the Kingdom of God (or inherit eternal life). He gave a different answer to each person, which is a bit awkward for those of us who like consistency.

He told a rich, young ruler that what he needed to do was sell all his possessions and give to the poor. But he didn’t even mention possessions to an expert of the law, instead telling him to continue to love God and live by the golden rule. He told his disciples to be more humble, something they seemed to struggle with on multiple occasions.

Maybe the most famous response was to the religious leader, Nicodemus. This guy was an expert in his shared faith with Jesus. He knew it all when it came to Judaic law. Jesus’s answer to him was that he needed to be born again. For obvious reasons this was confusing to Nic. How (there’s that word again) does a person once again enter his mother’s womb to be born for a second time?

One imagines Jesus rolling his eyes and thinking to himself, “Dude. It’s called a metaphor.” You’ll note he didn’t provide a formula. There was no mention of “The ABCs of Christianity.2” Instead, he explains that Nicodemus needs to look at the world like a baby would, knowing nothing and ready to learn. To do this he would need to, in essence, forget everything he knew.

Or, forget everything you think you know and look at things from a different perspective.

This is where I was in my marriage. I was beginning to understand I needed to look at everything differently than I had before because what I’d understood before wasn’t working. And, as I began to do this with my marriage, I began to see some other parts of my life that were in need of new understanding as well.

Not only was my marriage failing, but so too was my career. The thing God had “called” me to do wasn’t coming to fruition. Perhaps I needed to reexamine this too.3

I might as well. The career I believed God had called me to at the time likely wouldn’t have been possible if I was divorced anyway.4 Something had to give. Something did, and I’ll tell you about it in a moment.

But first, I must insist you remember one thing. While there might be similarities between what I experienced as a dissolving marriage and what’s happening with you in yours, my marriage is not your marriage.

Much like Jesus responded differently to the people asking him important questions, what exactly needs to happen to fix your marriage might be a different answer than what I found worked for me in my marital relationship.

But I don’t think it’s unfair to say that if your marriage is floundering and you’re feeling desperate, being willing to forget everything you know about marriage is a great way to begin to learn some new ways of approaching something important to you.

Here’s what happened when I capitulated to looking at things from a different perspective.

I’m afraid the best metaphor I can muster to help illustrate what happened is a house of cards. The two central cards leaning upon each other in the center of the bottom level of my house of cards represent my marriage, and were the foundation for everything else in my life. If I removed the foundation, I believed everything else would crumble.

What I failed to recognize was that it was already crumbling, and for an obvious reason.

You might consider the two cards which made the foundation to represent my wife and me. Together we held up the rest of the structure. Problem was, our two cards weren’t balanced. My wife’s card was carrying more structural load than I was. I won’t belabor this point because I’ve discussed it before. When she told me she wanted to divorce, it was because she was done pretending the marriage was working. She’d lost hope that things were going to change for us.

She was, in fact, crumbling.

I didn’t want that to happen. So, I became willing to let everything but her crumble.

The question was whether my decision to take action was soon enough, or meaningful enough to make a difference.

Obviously, you know the answer to those questions. (We’re still together, decades later.) But at the time, we didn’t. In fact, Joy had begun to look for answers elsewhere.

With other people.

Another man.

I’ll get into this next time when we discuss the importance of grace and forgiveness for people who want to save their marriage.

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This is series of personal reflections about some things I did to help save my marriage. Here’s where we’re going:

1. Find a counselor suitable for you and your wife.

2. Decide if you want to be married.

3. Unlearn everything you thought you knew about marriage.

4. Let grace abound.

5. Decide if the person you are married to is the person you want to be married to.

6. Put your spouse’s needs before yours, including granting a divorce if it means she will be healthier.

7. Apologize for the things you know you did wrong.

8. Listen to the grievances your spouse has and decide if they are things you can change.

9. Reassess your goals in life.

10. Be honest about your addictions.

11. Learn to give her an orgasm.

12. Give her an orgasm every day.

1. Previously…on The Unfiltered Scribe…

(Before we get going… This is Article #2 in the series, Things a Husband Can Do to Save His Marriage. But wives, you’re welcomed here too. As you read, remember this is a reflective list. It’s simply what worked for me. I hope you find some of the insights helpful. Feel free to take what you find useful. Leave what you don’t.

Thanks for reading.)

When my wife and I entered into marital counseling, saving the marriage wasn’t exactly her goal.

Over the recent months of our marriage – perhaps even years – she’d come to see our relationship was draining her. Somehow she’d found it within her to take control of the situation and tell me it was over. Her capitulation to attend counseling with me was in hopes that the counselor would help move me along, and also help me begin a path to emotional and psychological health.

Emotionally, I was somewhat defeated and in a lot of ways I was a mess. I knew that I hadn’t treated her well early in our relationship. While I’d confessed this to her and she had forgiven me of the act, the guilt of what I did remained. It always will.

So, there was that.

Also weighing on me was the fact that my wife didn’t want to be with me anymore. Joy wanted out, and I saw myself as a failure. That hurt. I was feeling guilty, rejected and as though I had failed at the most important thing in my life.

There was one thing I couldn’t shake.

When I said my vows at our wedding on December 20th, 1997, I meant them. I don’t remember the exact words of our vows. But I remember what the words meant when I said them, whatever they were.

On that day I had stood in front of her parents, my parents, our friends and family, and God and told all of those people there that I was committing to being Joy’s husband for the entirety of our lives. We didn’t write our own vows; you’d be familiar with what I remember…for richer and poorer, in sickness and health, ‘til death we do part.

You know, the vows.

Before her father handed her off to me he took the microphone from the officiant and said some things to me about… well, I can’t remember what he said either. I was super nervous standing at the altar, crying a little. So, I’ll pardon my own poor memory.

But I remember being touched and not wanting to let him or anyone else down. When I said my vows, I meant them.

For all the things I didn’t do well in my life, I wanted to live up to my vow to my wife.

That, my friends, is why I decided to work at the marriage.

For me, it felt like a matter of integrity.

That’s why I decided nothing else in life mattered. The only dream I had was to stay married. I told her I would. So I set to it.

That’s all.

Besides, in our first counseling session she’d actually reiterated that she found me to be a good person, just a terrible husband. What if I could change that? What if I could work to be the husband she needed? Maybe being the husband she needed was what I’d vowed I’d be?

Maybe if I changed the marriage experience she was having, she’d change her mind as to whether it was the kind of marriage she wanted to experience.

I’m not sure this is particularly romantic. At the time romance was dead for us. Besides, it wasn’t about romance.

For me, it was a matter of integrity.

I said I would.

So, I was going to prove I meant it. No matter what it took.

I was 21 when we got married. She had turned just 21 days before. When we talk with others like us, we often express that we were “babies” when we got married.

It’s true. We were quite young. It was impossible to know each other well, because we didn’t know ourselves well. I don’t remember that anyone warned us we would encounter this as a challenge. I don’t know that we would have been mature enough to understand the warning if someone had provided it.

For sure, learning to understand the person you grow to be, then understand the person your spouse turns out to be will change things. The Hallmark perception of marriage is that 1 + 1 = 1. It’s even a biblical concept. You know, the whole, “the 2 shall become 1” thing.

But often, when it comes to marriage we can’t even make it fit the simple mathematics of 1 + 1 = 2. Because, as we grew to experience more of the world, we sometimes discover we’re not even the 1s we thought we were.

But I just couldn’t shake my vow. I remember the commitment of the day. The echos of the words, “I do solemnly promise to…”

It was a matter of integrity for me.

It might not be for you. It's ok.

I know. You were babies.

But it’s ok to let it be an integrity thing too.

It’s why I decided to stay married. It was what I clung to.

Subscribe now

This is series of personal reflections about some things I did to help save my marriage. Here’s where we’re going:

Things A Husband Can Do to Save His Marriage

• Find a counselor suitable for you and your wife.

• Decide if you want to be married.

• Unlearn everything you thought you knew about marriage.

• Let grace abound.

• Decide if the person you are married to is the person you want to be married to.

• Put your spouse’s needs before yours, including granting a divorce if it means she will be healthier.

• Apologize for the things you know you did wrong.

• Listen to the grievances your spouse has and decide if they are things you can change.

• Reassess your goals in life.

• Be honest about your addictions.

• Learn to give her an orgasm.

• Give her an orgasm every day.

Previously…on The Unfiltered Scribe…

This afternoon I was perusing Facebook when I saw a post that made me sad. A friend from my early teenage years passed away. The sadness was accompanied by a sense of nostalgia too. I’d understand if you find that odd. Death, particularly of someone who hadn’t yet reached 50 isn’t usually something that brings feelings of whimsy. But that's what our teenage memories often are - a mix of sweetness and awkwardness that can make us smile even in sad moments. I am grateful for the small, yet memorable part she played in my life. Perhaps those are the most precious memories to hold onto.

I hadn’t spoken to her in decades. Yet the sadness mixed with the fond memory prompted me to share one story about her. It’s really the only memory of note that I have with her.

This week I’m going to take a break from the series about what husbands might do to save their marriage. I’m also going to take next week off as I’ll be traveling for the holidays. We’ll get back to the series in January.

In addition to the weekly article for Substack, I’m currently working on a memoir. In fact, much of what I’ve written on this Substack will find its way into the book. What I share here is something I wrote a while back. I was doing a rundown of the girlfriends I had during my teenage years, doing my best to protect the innocent.

They were all innocent.

Missy too.

That was her name, Missy. Well, Melissa, but back in the day, we called her Missy.

She was the first girl I attempted to kiss. It didn’t go well.

I met her at summer camp, a church camp I spent a lot of time at as a teen. This is where we’ll pick up the story today.

I considered whether or not it was appropriate to tell this story, but if I were at her funeral, and I had the opportunity to share a meaningful memory, this is the story I’d tell. I’d share it in hopes it would help people smile.

I hope that’s what it does for you.

I was at the church camp a lot. Much more than just the week reserved for my age group. In some ways it became a summer home away from home, if you will. The camp had a limited budget and to supply the necessary camp staff, they’d take on kids like me to be on the kitchen or maintenance crew. We perform our jobs, and in exchange we’d have room our and board taken care of, loads of free time between meals, and the camp directors waived the fee for the week when I attended camp as a camper. I didn’t get paid, but I also didn’t have to pay. I absolutely loved it, and so did other kids.

As luck would have it, some of the other kids were girls.

It was during one of these camp pots-and-pans-washer weeks when I had my first near-miss of a kiss. My sister was also at the camp working as a lifeguard, and Missy was the younger sister of a guy she was flirting with. So, there was a certain extra allure to this young lady. We flirted with each other quite a bit and decided to give it a go as a couple. I’d wash the pots and pans and she’d work in the dish room. Between meals we’d hang out, play games, go swimming or whatever. Sometimes we’d have contests to see how many deer flies we could catch mid-flight around our heads. You know, camp stuff.

Then, one day after lunch I walked her to the cabin where she was staying, contemplating whether I should kiss her or not. When we arrived at the door to her cabin, we turned to look at each other. She looked up at me, I looked down at her. Two skinny kids with knobby knees adorned in dish-water stained t-shirts. We stared at each other, not sure what was supposed to happen next. I could sense she was thinking the same thing I was thinking.

Um, is this when I’m supposed to kiss her?

And, in that moment, I became unsure about just how much I wanted to be in this relationship. I wasn’t sure she was for me. Then again, I didn’t want to be rude either. I broke the silence.

“See you at dinner?” I asked, trying to play it cool.

“Yeah.” She kept looking up at me, blinking a bit, eyes shifting a little from side to side.

She didn’t say, “bye” and she’s not moving towards the cabin. Now what? I swatted at a deer fly.

“These stupid flies!” I said, trying to ease the tension.

“I know, right? I hate ‘em!” She smiled up at me in agreement, both about the flies and how awkwardly weird things were feeling. We laughed, trying to stifle the clumsiness of our mid-pubescent selves.

“Well, I’ll see you in a bit.” What happened next was quick, and was the beginning of the end of our weeklong relationship.

I was 75% sure she was expecting or wanted a kiss. I wasn’t sure, I just knew a kiss was hanging in the air. I moved my face towards hers, and as I did I decided maybe the most appropriate way to proceed would be for me to give her a kiss on the cheek. It seemed like a logical, toe-deep step into unfamiliar waters.

She and I, as it turns out, were not on the same page. As I leaned closer to give her a nice, sweet peck on the cheek, she went in for the kill.

The moment I made any movement towards her, she’d closed her eyes to reciprocate my action. Thus, she did not see me move away from her mouth to instead peck her on the cheek. My first hint that something was amiss was as her tongue touched the corner of my mouth. It then ran up the side of my cheek to just below my ear as I continued on, planting the complete opposite of a French kiss on her cheek which was covered with a not-so-thin layer of midsummer perspiration.

Missy, god bless her, had licked the side of my face, which was covered with not just midsummer perspiration, but straight-up “middle school boy who was just playing basketball and smacking deer flies on his face” summer sweat.

I’m sure it tasted wonderful.

The awkward moment which preceded the near-miss-kiss now felt trivial and pleasant when compared to the embarrassment we were now experiencing. Without another word, she entered her cabin. I walked on to mine, berating myself. Nice one, IDIOT.

Well done.

We didn’t last much longer after that moment - one we never spoke about - and I’ve never mentioned, until sharing the story here.

Missy, thanks for the memory. I’m sorry I was so awkward, but hey…kids, amIright? In the story of my life, you were a brief but memorable character.

(Before we get going… This is Article #1 in the series, Things a Husband Can Do to Save His Marriage. But wives, you’re welcomed here too. As you read, remember this is a reflective list. It’s simply what worked for me. I hope you find some of the insights helpful. Feel free to take what you find useful. Leave what you don’t.

Thanks for reading.)

Husbands, today I want to share with you why I believe finding the right counselor for my wife and me was an important first step to healing our relationship. I’ve worded some things carefully here, because sometimes the order matters. Particularly when it comes to putting your spouse first.

Please understand while I believe finding a counselor is an important first step, it might not be the first step. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, no universal formula to addressing challenges in marriage. Frankly, there were a lot of things that had to happen for us before we got to the place where we sought a counselor. In fact, you even might say our marriage hitting rock-bottom was the first step.

A step I tripped over.

But once we were there, finding the right counselor was an important early action.

As I set out to write this, nearly two decades of hindsight and hard work illuminated things I hadn’t noticed before. What began as a straightforward piece quickly grew several hundred words longer than I intended.

These new discoveries seem significant—personal growth always is. In fact, I suspect what I’ve uncovered is just as important as finding the right counselor. The growth happened in the process itself.

Let me share that journey with you today.

First, let’s set the scene, at least in relation to how my wife was feeling about the whole idea of counseling.

In short, she wasn’t interested.

She was exhausted from years of trying to help me understand what was bothering her. The things in our marriage that I needed to address. She knew me better than anyone, and if she couldn’t find a way to explain it that made sense to me, she doubted counseling would make a difference. I still remember her rolling her eyes and shaking her head when I first brought it up.

Then why did she agree to go?

Looking back, I think there were two reasons.

First, when I asked her to go with me I shared some personal things with her that she didn’t know about me, even after years of marriage.1 She still cared about me as a person and the father of her children, so I think she wanted to get me in front of a counselor one way or the other. Married to her or not, I had things I was going to need to work through.

Second, she wanted a counselor to help me understand just how done she was, and that it was time to move forward in life without her.

It was for these two reasons she agreed to go with me.

There was one thing, however, that she insisted upon. She would not see any counselor or therapist who might guilt her into staying with me. She didn’t need to explain this to me—I understood and completely agreed. We both felt this way because of the limitations and demands, whether real or perceived, that our faith had placed upon us.

Part of what I was hoping we’d discuss with our counselor was the relationship we had before we were married. Primarily, the premarital sex. In the evangelical Christian milieu2 in which we were raised, sex before marriage was the mother of all sins. We believed one of the reasons we decided to get married was to absolve us of some of the moral baggage. There was a lot to talk about.

Sexual Samsonite in tow, I knew by then that trying to dodge sin was a bad reason to get married. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake when it came to staying married. Doubling down on flawed reasoning didn’t make sense.

Still, I did hope to find a counselor who had first-hand knowledge of our Christian faith. It seemed logical that someone who understood the community that raised her and me and how the baggage may have influenced us throughout the years would be most suitable to help us understand our story and situation.

The last thing Joy wanted was to sit across from a counselor, spill her guts, and be told she had to stay married because a Bible verse said so—lest she upset sweet baby Jesus and His Dad. I realize that might sound irreverent, but it captures the frustration we felt. Her pain—and mine—needed more than shallow platitudes or simplistic answers. We didn’t need a God who just handed down rules; we needed one who could meet us in our brokenness and help us find a way forward.

So, I was adamant that we find a counselor that would guide us towards a place of health even if it turned out that health could only come as the result of a divorce. I wanted a counselor who understood divorce could be the healthy outcome.

I set out to find one.

This is where I must pause to address a couple important things that happened before I found the counselor. Today, with years of hindsight to consider everything, I think I’d already unknowingly taken two different actions towards making things work. (See, I told you the order of steps wasn’t so cut-and-dry!)

I believe two things were crucial:

1. I took initiative in something.

Me taking charge of finding a marriage counselor for us was no small miracle. In our marriage, I wasn’t in the habit of taking charge of anything. I’d let my wife take charge of every responsibility in the relationship, save home maintenance and yard work. This resulted in an inordinate amount of stress for her, a person who was already exerting a significant amount of intellectual activity at her professional workplace.3

Taking initiative in finding us a counselor was an action which showed I wanted to take more responsibility, even if I didn’t understand it that way at the time.

2. I prioritized my wife’s needs over the demands of my faith—whether those demands were real or ones I only imagined.

This wasn’t a small thing for me. My faith was everything. It had been for her too. And again, all these years later, I see this was a step of growth for me too. I’d given up faith tenants before, but for selfish reasons.

The first time it was about sex.

Remember? The premarital sex thing I mentioned earlier? At 19-years-old, I didn’t care what my faith community said about it anymore. I wasn’t concerned. I wanted to have sex, and I’d convinced myself she did too. I was far more concerned with what I wanted than what she wanted.4

This was part of why I wanted to find a counselor who would allow her to divorce me if that’s where we ended up.

It was a choice I owed her.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think my wife noticed this and thought, Oh, look! He’s putting me first! This would be over-simplistic and a misrepresentation of what happened.

For sure, as we entered our first counseling appointment, she was intent on ending it all.

Eventually, she’d choose not to.

I would, in fact, find a counselor who understood our needs. Much to my surprise, he was an evangelical pastor recommended to me by a person whose identity has faded into a part of my memory I can no longer access. But what this friend said was, “Have you considered Jimmy?”

I’d met Jimmy years before and he was the son of someone in our church family. I didn’t know him well, but he was someone I remembered as being caring and not particularly dogmatic. I let him know in no uncertain terms that we were already familiar with what the church’s opinion on divorce. We weren’t concerned about it and frankly, we didn’t want to have Bible verses tossed our way in an effort to coerce compliance.

He told us he was 100% committed to our goals. He promised that if he used the Bible with us it would strictly be to bless us or offer what he believed was wisdom. He explained that in his years of counseling people, he’d seen couple’s marriages flourish after counseling. He also explained there were many who ended their marriage because it was the better choice.

Reassured, we chose Jimmy as our counselor. He agreed to our stated goal.

A healthy future. Together or apart.

As I said last week, there really isn’t anything about me that makes me qualified to give marital advice. There’s only this: At one point my marriage looked to be coming to an end. We fixed it, and today are gag-me-with-a-spoon twitterpated5 for each other.

In love.

But since you’ve read this far I do owe it to you to offer the advice of someone with more expertise.

is a Substacker I began reading a while back. I was sold on his commitment to helping men be better people. His credentials begin where mine end. He is, in fact, a professional counselor.

Recently Jeremy wrote an article you would find helpful if you’re looking for a therapist for any reason, not just marital counseling. It’s titled, How to find a therapist who (actually!) gets you!

As I was writing this article, I was reminded of his piece and returned to read it. I felt some relief as I did. Some of his words echoed mine.

He mentioned finding a therapist for himself after a friend recommend one. And how important it is to find one that understands you, and he gives some tips to get to that point.

Put some effort into the searching process. It’s important you find a counselor that helps you communicate.

In fact, this is probably the most important part of what Jimmy did for me and my wife, Joy. As I mentioned, Joy didn’t think counseling would work because she thought she’d communicated all her grievances to me.

But that’s the thing. What we needed was someone to help us hear each other. Jimmy challenged me when I wasn’t hearing what Joy was saying. And, Jimmy helped Joy see the areas of my life where I needed to be heard, including how she spoke to me sometimes made me feel devalued or disrespected. As I began to hear and work on the things Joy needed, she began to see me in a new light.

Interestingly, so did I.

As a reminder from last week, here’s where we’re heading on this journey.

• Find a counselor suitable for you and your wife.

• Decide if you want to be married.

• Unlearn everything you thought you knew about marriage.

• Let grace abound.

• Decide if the person you are married to is the person you want to be married to.

• Put your spouse’s needs before yours, including granting a divorce if it means she will be healthier.

• Apologize for the things you know you did wrong.

• Listen to the grievances your spouse has and decide if they are things you can change.

• Reassess your goals in life.

• Be honest about your addictions.

• Learn to give her an orgasm.

• Give her an orgasm every day.

Next time I’m going to get into another important step, Decide If You Even Want to be Married, which seems like it might be the first step. Maybe. Maybe not. Make sure you subscribe so you can see what I have to say about that.

Subscribe now

There are a few questions you can help me with. I’m curious; maybe you have some opinions on this stuff…

• If you’re a person who found healing in your relationship, what steps did you find most crucial when working on it?

• What’s your opinion on me setting aside religious fervor to work on my marriage?

• If you’re someone who has experience in looking for a counselor or therapist for any reason, what would you recommend? Your tip might help someone else.

• Finally, am I full of it? Seriously, did I just get lucky?

Leave a comment

Lastly, share this article if you think some other person might find it helpful.

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My wife and I were traveling the two and a half hour trip from her parent’s home back to ours when she reached over to where I was sitting in the driver’s seat and squeezed my right shoulder. My hands were occupied — my left with the steering wheel and my right with my habitual travel mug of coffee. After squeezing my shoulder she moved down and squeezed the front of my upper arm. I could tell she wasn’t really interested in squeezing my arm. I placed my coffee in the cup holder and placed my hand on her thigh. She took it, interlaced her fingers with mine and squeezed tightly.

“I just love you.” She said, shrugging.

I told her I loved her too. Pulling her hand towards my face so I could keep my eyes on the road, I kissed the back of it where the blue of her veins were just slightly visible beneath her skin.

“It’s weird, though…” She continued, “I also feel kind of bad for it. Like, we’re not supposed to be this happy.”

“I know what you mean.”

Yesterday she caught up to me and turned 48 years old. We’re old enough now to recognize that life goes through a series of stages. There’s overlap, so it’s not an exact timeline, but you’d recognize that going to college, getting married, having children, beginning a career might all happen at different stages in life. You’d likely be able to list some other stages as well.

Joy and I had been discussing some of our friends who are experiencing the pain of separation and divorce. The number of people going through this points to it being as natural as any of the other stages I mentioned. On more than one occasion I’ve asked someone about their spouse only to receive an awkward, “...um, we divorced.” I haven’t found an easy way to recover from the awkwardness. “I’m sorry” carries too many unintended messages. I usually try to affirm their right to be happy and healthy and express my hope that they are finding a better living experience on the other side.

Recently, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in probably over a decade. I was at their wedding and still use the piece of pottery I received for being a part of their wedding. In the 45 seconds or so that we had to interact, they introduced me to their new significant other. I had no inclination that their first marriage had ended.

A friendly “Nice to meet you!” was all I could muster. I meant it. But also…wait, um… what?

The fact is, we have many friends who aren’t happy in their marriage, and it breaks our hearts to see them in pain.

It also frustrates me, and sometimes makes me a little bit angry. Particularly with the husbands in the relationships.

I shouldn’t get angry. I don’t know the specifics of the minutiae of every marriage, not even those of the couples with whom we are friends. But still, as I hear of the troubles our friends are facing, they seem familiar to me.

Usually it’s the significant unequal division of labor. The main gripe isn’t physical or emotional abuse. It’s not the extra-marital affairs, even when they occur. It’s the amount of things our wives do to support the marriage. It’s the burden of carrying more grown-up responsibilities than we husbands want learn to do and take on ourselves.

Rather than learn to do things that are difficult for us, we fall victim to, a “She’s better at it anyway, so I’ll just let her do it” mentality.

I hear the echoes of this reality as wives talk about what they’re experiencing. They’re describing me back in the day.

It’s not just people I know either. I’ve noticed that many women who write nonfiction are often motivated by their experiences of overcoming a challenging marriage and finding a healthier life after divorce.

In my last post I brought up two popular memoirs I’d read by female authors and how as I read them I identified with their husbands. I’ve found that if memoirs have antagonists, it’s usually the husband.

It’s usually the people like me.

When I read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert I was terrified my wife might leave me after she read it. This was because Gilbert found health and happiness after leaving a guy who seemed just like me.

Well, at the time.

Here’s the thing, though. My wife didn’t leave me. We made our marriage work. And, if I may…

I’m proud of us.

Further, as my wife would tell you if you asked her, most of the work to fix our marriage was done by me.

Honestly, there wasn’t a lot for her to work on. She’d been working quite hard for our marriage since the beginning.

Our marriage succeeded because of the work I did to fix me, and I’m done feeling embarrassed about it.

Why is it that I felt less anxiety in writing about the worst thing I ever did (which was quite terrible) than I do writing about my wife being head-over-heels in love with me now?

How does this even happen? Is it a “misery loves company” kind of thing? I think this is part of it.

I don’t know if there was ever a time when people experiencing happy marriages was the norm. I mean, divorce was even a topic of conversation in the Bible. Jesus said Moses allowed for a man to divorce his wife because they were so “hard hearted.” He was clearly talking to husbands here. I wonder if hard-hearted is in reference to them being unwilling to do the self-work it took to make for a happy household. Maybe I’m projecting.

Maybe not.

It seems marital discord is older than Moses.

People, (and I’m mostly talking to people like me, the husbands) you likely can make your marriage work.

If you want it to work.

One quick note for people who have experienced divorce.

I want to express that divorce is OK. In a lot of circumstances, it’s probably better than OK. You’re likely in a healthier place than you were when married. I hope you both are. And your kids, if you have any.

One of the friends who I discovered was separated and in the process of divorce, a father of 4, put it this way:

After 10 years of marital counseling, we just decided it was better not to disappoint each other anymore.

It was one of the more profound statements about a person’s divorce that I’d heard. Do you see it? There’s a clear indication of mutual respect between him and his soon to be former wife. Sometimes divorce is the better thing for those involved.

But as my marriage sat at the precipice, I wasn’t sure divorce was the better end of our story. So, I did some things to turn it around and I’ve decided to share the journey with you.

What makes me qualified to share marriage advice? What makes me the official guru of husband self-improvement? What evidence is there that my marriage tips are the best for rebuilding relationships?

Nothing. Well, not the typical list of things that one might consider qualifications. I’m not a counselor of any sort. I’m not a minister, priest, imam or any type of religious authority.

I’m just a guy who wanted to make his marriage work and did. I think some of the things I was failing at might be some of the struggles you’re facing as a man and husband too. That’s all.

What you’ll read over the next few weeks is purely anecdotal, and the anecdote is the story of my wife and me. I might also sprinkle some non-scientific, possibly unfair and uninformed observations about people in the world around me from time to time.

If you come to things you find unhelpful, move past them. Hold to what helps. This is just me thinking out loud about things that worked.

Here’s a peak at what’s in store, sort of in order, but not necessarily. As I write, some of these things may meld into one, and I might add another here or there, but as I sit today, here’s where we’re going:

1. Find a counselor suitable for you and your wife.

2. Decide if you want to be married.

3. Unlearn everything you thought you knew about marriage.

4. Let grace abound.

5. Decide if the person you are married to is the person you want to be married to.

6. Put your spouse’s needs before yours, including granting a divorce if it means she will be healthier.

7. Apologize for the things you know you did wrong.

8. Listen to the grievances your spouse has and decide if they are things you can change.

9. Reassess your goals in life.

10. Be honest about your addictions.

11. Learn to give her an orgasm.

12. Give her an orgasm every day.

    ---

If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself that I’m a bit prescriptive in what I’m doing, that I’m projecting my own experience onto others, you’d be fair in that assessment. I am.

I am not you. My wife is not your wife. The differences between your marriage and mine will range from slight nuance to profound divergence. Some marriages, for various reasons, can’t or even shouldn’t be saved. But it’s my optimistic hunch that more can be.

Perhaps even yours.

If you want to do the work.

See you next time, with the first thing I did.

Do you have a friend or family member who is struggling in their marriage? Use this button to share this journey with them.

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For more reading about my failing marriage, check out this article.

Imagine a world where, when a person realized they had done something wrong to another person, they apologized for it because they were sorry.

No matter who it was they had wronged, or what it was they had done.

And imagine that the person who was harmed accepted the apology, because they believed the apology was genuine. They knew it was genuine because the offender did some things that proved their I’m sorry was sincere.

That’s the kind of world I want to live in.

That’s what happened for my wife and me. 

We’re so much better today than we were before.

I recently read, You Could Make this Place Beautiful, by . Joining a group of thousands of others I’m sure, I bought it because I thought it was written by the English actress, Maggie Smith. It was not. The author is American, lives in Ohio, and is a poet somewhere around my age. 

The book is wonderful and quickly jumped to the top of my list of books which inspire me to want to be a better writer. I’ve said I’m not a “poetry guy,” but the more I read quality writing, the more I value the skill it takes to use poetry in prose. 

In Beautiful, Smith writes about her divorce experience. She begins by telling us how she discovered her husband had an extra-marital, female confidant. It’s clear the relationship has with the other woman is emotionally intimate, and while there’s no mention of a physical relationship, physicality isn’t the point. I’d argue it rarely is. (Though, I won’t argue it here in this post.) The pain, anger, and resilience she experiences throughout the personal trial is palpable through her storytelling.

A good memoir is one in which the author is able to elicit sympathy from the reader. A great memoir elicits not only sympathy, but also its deeper, more meaningful sister: empathy.

The target audience is the empathetic one. The audience who’s most likely to think, I know exactly what the author felt. I’ve experienced that too. I wonder how it turned out for them. Did they find healing? I want to find healing…or at least experience some relief because of theirs.

Or maybe they just need a person with whom they can be angry. An author—someone we’ve never met and likely never will—is the first person to validate a shared experience.

I’m not alone.

Maybe, in the hardest relationships memoirs can in some way serve as a sort of balm to a gaslighting experience.

People who write about divorce have a large audience. Heck, my own blog post about my marriage falling apart was one of my most successful.

When wrote Eat, Pray, Love, her failing marriage was the hook. It wasn’t just the hook, it was the impetus for change in her life journey, and one the reader could identify with, mostly.

I say mostly, because when I read Eat, Pray, Love a number of years ago my thought as I began too read was:

I hope my wife doesn’t read this book.

That’s not a joke. I didn’t want my wife to read it. While I sympathized for Gilbert, I empathized with her husband. He was unsuccessful. He was living off his wife’s career even prior to writing one of the best known memoirs of the day. Her husband seemed miserable and unsatisfied with himself.

Gilbert was done with it. The marriage ended and then she went to Italy and a couple of other places and found herself. She found happiness and contentment, sans husband.

I really didn’t want my wife to read that book because I didn’t want her to see my shortcomings and leave.

It’s interesting to me that I read Eat, Pray, Love after our marriage had rebounded. We were doing better. But I still identified more with Gilbert’s husband than I did with Gilbert. And, as much as I really appreciate You Could Make This Place Beautiful, I found myself remembering the role I had played during difficult days in my own marriage.

I think marriage problems are like that. All unique and different, but also, similar to each other. That’s why women find their stories relatable. They hear echoes of their own marital challenges in the stories Smith, Gilbert and vast numbers of other women authors share with the world. As they read, they think, ME TOO! That’s what I’m experiencing in my marriage too!

As I read, I think, Yeah…My wife too. But also, I wonder why we’re still together and these other marriages ended.

There’s no universal answer to my question. In fact, sometimes marriages need to end. People do grow and find they are different people than when they were married, and sometimes the healthiest thing is for people to go their separate ways. For Gilbert, it wasn’t just her husband. She didn’t want to be married at all. For Smith, well, the irreconcilable differences were substantial.

But I didn’t see our relationship that way. I wasn’t convinced the differences were irreconcilable. I liked and appreciated my wife as a person. I considered that if I was single, and I came upon a person with the personality traits and qualities that she had, I’d be interested in dating that person. What’s more, I didn’t think she was being unreasonable. I considered that outside of being a terrible husband, she thought I was a good person too. I thought there was a strong chance she’d be interested in dating me if we’d met as two people later in life.

So, all I had to do was learn what she wanted in a husband, and I thought I could do that. Besides, I had a head start. I already was her husband.

It started with dealing with the worst thing I’d done. From an emotional perspective, everything else was much easier than that.

Sometimes I wonder about us men. Are we filling our lives with business and such – or “accomplishing” things – as a way to distract us from addressing the hard parts of our relationships that need attention? As if the things we are currently doing in our life somehow outweigh the things we did in the past. I think that’s what it was for me. I thought that if I had a successful career, it would make me a good man and better husband. But again, I was mostly failing at the career part. Oddly, I have a sense this made it easier to address the problems in the relationship. I didn’t have the distraction of a big career to hide behind.

I think that’s what it might be for a lot of other guys out there too. I guess I air my dirty laundry, so to speak, because I want other men to hear a story where the laundry came clean. Life got better.

I’m hopeful that it can for other guys too, if they’re willing to do the emotional work.

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(To hear Joy tell this story in her own voice, please use the voiceover available just above her picture.)

I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of memories of that night. In the hours afterwards, I worked hard to forget it. I wanted to forget it. 

I needed to forget it. Everything within me needed for that night not to have happened.

But it did, and here’s what I remember:

I remember him asking just to feel it; he just wanted to know what it felt like. I said I wasn’t sure; I didn’t think so. He asked again and I said, “I don’t know.” And I think I remember saying no, but I’m not sure.

I remember feeling no. And I remember NOT saying yes. But in a second it was like everything that I had been proud of, everything I believed made me different and special (being a virgin when fewer and fewer people around me were) was gone. 

I don’t remember the ride back to my dormitory. All I remember is going into the dorm when he dropped me off and starting to cry. Somehow I found myself with another female student who was a little older than me. She asked me what was wrong. I told her I thought I had just been raped. She told me she was sure I was wrong. She didn’t ask me to tell her what happened. Besides, I was crying so hard I don’t think I could have gotten the story out.

But she told me she knew who I was dating and that he was a good guy. She said I just needed to take a shower and go to bed; that I would feel better in the morning. She said doing anything else could ruin the lives of me and my boyfriend. I’m not sure the exact words of the interaction, but these are the sentiments that I left with. So, I took a shower and went to bed.

In the weeks afterwards I was a mess. The rope that tethered me to my foundation was gone. I felt dirty, like I was floating around with nothing to ground me. That one action threw my world into disarray.

Have you ever had a bad experience where you second-guessed every moment that came before it? Maybe you’ve been in a car accident, and you thought about how maybe if you’d just waited a little longer before leaving home, then you wouldn’t have been in the car accident. It’s maddening to think about. Nothing can change the fact that it happened. If only I’d…

Certainly, the response I received from the older student wasn’t much help. She did nothing to validate me. She validated him. 

It seems a little like gaslighting. Like, something happened to me and then she told me the thing that happened…didn’t happen. But gaslighting is a form of intentional abuse. That’s not what she was doing.

Honestly, she wasn’t much older than I was. I have no idea what her own life experiences had been. Maybe she thought I’d had sex then regretted it? I don’t know why she reacted the way she did. I think she was in disbelief and denial. Rape is a heavy word, even when it’s true. On a small, Christian college campus like the one I was attending, the idea that date rape could happen wasn’t really something anyone could think about. Certainly not perpetrated by a guy like Jeff. It wasn’t something she could consider being true. But it was, and it was him.

In the last post, Jeff described the conversation we had the next day. I don’t remember it, but I have no reason to think it didn’t happen the way he portrayed it. After that, we didn’t talk about it again, other than me referencing it the next time we had sex. “I want it to be my choice.” I had told him. 

But after that, we didn’t discuss it for years. Not until our marriage was on the brink of ending and he wanted to address what he did. Even then, it seemed like it was on his timeline, and a last-ditch effort to save a marriage that provided him comfort. By then, I’d seen that things wouldn’t likely change, and supporting him was no longer something I was going to do on a one-way street. I carried a lot of baggage for the both of us for a long time.

Which reminds me…

A few years ago I heard a podcast with Amy Schumer. She was on Super Soul Sunday with Oprah. Amy described how her boyfriend, a guy she cared about, started to have sex with her without her consent while she was sleeping. It just kind of happened.

While the details and circumstances were different, so much about the story was familiar to me- How it wasn’t a guy who jumped out of the bushes and violently attacked me. How her experience was with a guy she cared about. The emotional trauma of realizing she’d just been raped. The unfair need to care for the emotions of her boyfriend when he realized what he’d done. The way people doubt women when they say they’ve been sexually assaulted. The fact that while she didn’t want him to be sitting in a jail cell, she would have appreciated an acknowledgment that what he did to her was wrong.

It was all familiar, and I was grateful Amy shared her story. Hearing her story and remembering mine made me wonder how many people have this kind of experience. She referred to it at “grape,” short for gray-area rape. I think she’d agree there wasn’t much gray about it. It was the relationship she had with the guy that made it feel less black and white.

I’ve been asked why I stayed with him after that night, or even after the other times when he escalated things physically before that. I’m not sure, and conjecture likely isn’t useful.

But I’d received some messages growing up that likely influenced my decision-making at that age.

In high school, boys hadn’t been particularly good to me. For instance, I was once stood up by the same guy, a soccer player, three times. As I left the restaurant where we were to meet for the supposed third date, alone and in tears, I found him in the parking lot with his soccer team. He’d made a bet with them that he could stand up the same girl three times. They were all handing him money as I left the parking lot.

The girls in high school weren’t much better. I was kind of a nerd, I suppose. This was back in the day when being a “nerd” wasn’t chic, and it made me a target of bullying and teasing. I was also slow to develop physically. My self-esteem was almost non-existent.

Even within my small group of friends, things weren’t healthy. We were all constantly creating drama for ourselves, picking on our shortcomings, ganging up on each other one by one. We’d be the target of ridicule from our friends one day, and then join up with the others in the group to target someone else the next. It was somewhat of a vicious cycle.

Church, the place where we’re supposed to receive unconditional love and care wasn’t much better. In fact it might have been worse because I didn’t expect to be treated well at school anyway. The girls in the youth group would talk about me within earshot, and for a while, youth group wasn’t a great experience. I felt alone. Later in high school this got a bit better and I found a friend in the pastor’s daughter, but the emotional damage had been done.

The messaging I got from the church about sex was deplorable too. Everything was about staying a virgin until you were married. I went to one youth conference where I heard horrible analogies about girls who had sex before they were married. “Once you lose your virginity it’s like being an Oreo without the cream filling, or gum that’s already been chewed.” At least, this was what they told the girls. I’m not sure what they told the guys.

So, why did I stay with him? I guess didn’t know there was another choice.

Besides, I liked the guy. You know, other than his inability to control his hormones. He never threatened me. He never yelled at me. We argued a lot, but that stuff would come and go. He was on the baseball team, and he never made a bet that he could stand me up three times. He sang in the choir with me. I liked his family.

Actually, we did break up with a few times. He didn’t try to make me stay. He didn’t even try to prevent me from dating some other guys. In the end, I came back to him.

It’s hard for people to understand why I stayed, given what happened. But it’s even harder for them to understand how happy we are together today. But something changed in him. I’m not sure what made the difference, and it wasn’t like he became perfect or anything, but things changed.

When we went to counseling, I was sure we were done. His crying confession to me that day looks like he was trying to manipulate me. I see that, I suppose. But what he didn’t discuss in that story was that by the time that conversation happened we’d pretty much arrived at an agreement to separate. But we had two children and were going to have to know how to co-parent. The date rape was something we needed to discuss. So I thought counseling was a good place to do it. Besides, I was hoping our counselor could help move him along.

Then, something I didn’t expect happened.

It was in our first meeting with the counselor, Jimmy. He asked me what I wanted to get out of the counseling experience. I told him that I thought Jeff was a nice guy. I thought he was a great father. He was funny, and people liked him. I even liked him, as a person. But I also told him he was a terrible husband. He wasn’t a good partner and I wasn’t going to carry him anymore. I didn’t love him anymore and couldn’t imagine a scenario where I thought I could again. Jimmy looked at Jeff and asked him what he thought about what I said.

“Jimmy… I want to do everything I possibly can to change that. I’ll do anything. I’ll give up anything I have to give up. I’ll change anything I have to change to be worthy of her love again.”

I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but it wasn’t that. I was skeptical, but that was the night when he began to change. He gave up the “dreams” he had for his life. He got a steady job with an income and started entry-level. He began to pick up his crap around the house. He started to do things that were important to me.

He took actions that showed he meant what he said. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, maybe like he repented of the stuff that didn’t work well in our marriage. Don’t get me wrong, there were times when he’d slip up. But he’d also acknowledge when he did and work harder. Eventually, the “nice guy who was a good father that people liked” became someone I learned to love again. I even began to see some ways I could change in our marriage.

I realize I’m a bit off-topic from “that night.” But I suppose there’s more to the story than just that night. I wish it hadn’t happened. But when he said he was sorry, and then worked to prove it, I guess I just began to be able to look beyond it.

(Caution: This article contains a description of a sexual assault. While I have made an effort to handle the subject with care, some might call parts of this story graphic. A direct approach to details was best for providing a truthful account of the story. If you feel uncomfortable with this subject matter, please consider whether you wish to continue reading or listening.

Here are some things you may find triggering:

• The story is written from the perspective of a 19-year-old male who is unaware or uncaring as to how his actions will affect his girlfriend.

• A description of repeated, unwanted sexual activity.

• A description of sexual intercourse without consent.

• A young man’s failure to take accountability for his action.)

This week there will not be any commentary leading up to the story. We’ll simply pick up where we left off last time.

When I returned to school in early January for a short, month-long class we referred to as J-term, I was elated to see Joy had decided to return. Even better, she was now rooming with my friend, Katrina, someone with whom I had been good friends for a few years. It didn’t take me long to share my feelings with Katrina. You know, to kind of throw a feeler out there to see if there was anything reciprocating from Joy. Turned out there was, even if it was more of a curiosity than the romantic longings I was experiencing.

We were in the same class and I found my way to the seat next to her morning after morning. We found ourselves spending more time together — meals, chapels, dates, college basketball games, phone calls in between. Soon we became an exclusive couple. We decided January 14th would be our official “going out” date so we could celebrate our one-month anniversary on Valentine’s Day. We were young, head-over-heels for each other, and did silly little things lovestruck couples do. 

As much as I liked being with Joy, I found a great amount of enjoyment just looking at her. My physical attraction to her was intense, and my imagination did its thing. Her eyes were the deepest blue and were set off by her flowing, blond hair. When she smiled her cheeks puffed up in such a way that made her eyes squint and sparkle. If I was close enough to her, I could sometimes hear her cheeks crackle as she smiled just like that night back in the fall. I started calling her crackle-cheeks. She pretended not to like it. 

Her body was exactly what I liked. She was slender and wore jeans that weren’t skin tight, but were tight enough that I enjoyed the view when I was walking behind her. She dressed classy-preppy with clothes that told the world she cared about how she looked. As much as I liked looking into her eyes, I also looked at her chest whenever I could sneak a glance.

From time to time we would play billiards in the campus game room. I was as bad at billiards as I was good at foosball. This was fortunate as it gave her the opportunity to take more shots and me the opportunity to try and see down her shirt as she did.

I couldn’t help myself. Her body captivated me, even clothed for the cold, New England winter months. I looked at it, liked it, and appreciated any opportunity I had to experience more of it.

There wasn’t anything “Hallmark Christmas” about our first kiss. It was on the steps of her girls-only dormitory after a basketball game against our school’s rival. And, while I do remember it, it would be an error to call it memorable.

I’m afraid I wasn’t good at kissing. After about our third kiss Joy stopped and said, “no, do it like this,” and provided some instruction on how to kiss…well, less sloppily. It was a humbling moment for me, as most on-the-fly learning experiences are. Hey, she was good at it, and had a little more experience than I did. I listened to her advice, and she quickly reported I was getting better. Joy liked kissing, and I was glad to oblige.

On a campus like the college where we were attending, displays of affection were usually public displays of affection. This was primarily due to the fact that the school did all it could to keep students from being alone together. Men and women were housed in separate dorms with firm visitation hours and strict rules about behavior during said visiting hours. For instance, doors to the dorm rooms must remain open when occupied. If you wanted to engage in displays of affection that weren’t public, then you had to leave campus to find a more private place.

Like, a local public park after dark, for instance.

At some point, as I became more comfortable in our relationship, I began to move things forward physically. We had driven to a park not too far away and were sitting in one of the pretend train cars that were part of the children’s play things. As usual we started making out, both of us enjoying the time together. As the activity went on, I heated up. I assumed she was as well. I assumed she’d be just as interested in increasing the amount of physical activity I was. So, I reached under her clothes, under her bra, and began to touch her in the places only my imagination had gone in the weeks since we’d begun dating. I didn’t ask for her permission. I didn’t think I needed to. I mean, I wanted to because I was really enjoying the physical interaction we were having at the moment. I was just touching her, right? No big deal. It wasn’t like we were having sex.

But then, the kissing stopped. So did her caressing, her eye contact, her vocalization, and any sense that she was happy to be with me. 

I looked at her. Her refusal to look back at me said it all.

“Hey… it’s ok!” I tried to convince her. “I’m sorry. I just thought you’d be good with this. I thought you’d like it. I’m sorry.”

I was sorry. I didn’t want to upset her. I didn’t mean to make her cry and felt like a complete jerk for making her cry. I reassured her that she didn’t do anything wrong, that it was just touching and it wasn’t really a big deal. I was sure she was afraid we’d sinned. That we’d gone past the line of appropriate behavior, so God was probably mad with us. I was sure that’s what the tears were about. I apologized, comforted, and reassured her everything was ok.

This became a pattern of behavior.

Kissing.

Assumptions of consent from her and escalation by me.

Tears from her.

Apologies followed by comfort and reassurance from me.

It’s like I got amnesia, forgetting how she got upset the last time.

Eventually, the tears stopped coming. And, eventually, she became a willing participant and enjoyed some of the activity as much as I did. But then I’d push for more. And the pattern would continue, but in more significant and substantial ways. Touching beneath clothes gave way to moving clothes out of the way or taking them off for easier access. This allowed for more intimate exploration by me, and each exploration led to more curiosity. Sitting next to each other gave way to laying on top of her. 

Then, it happened.

We weren’t all that far from the park where I first made her cry. We were in a car this time and I was laying on top of her. Our clothes were not totally removed, but they were no longer a barrier. 

“Can I just put it in?” I asked her.

“I don’t know, Jeff.”

“Please, I just want to know what it feels like.”

“I don’t know, Jeff.”

“I just want to know what it feels like.”

She was silent. I let the silence be the answer I wanted to hear.

So, I did it.

My action was shallow, both literally and figuratively, and over in less than 10 seconds. But the penetration left a deep and lasting wound on our souls, affecting our identities, our relationship, and our emotional well-being—wounds that would take years to fully comprehend.

But I didn’t understand that then. I was only thinking about sex.

I did not use a condom, but knew I couldn’t risk getting her pregnant and risk the whole world knowing we’d had sex. So, I pulled out and pinched off. With an impending mess on my hands, and now thinking more clearly, I climbed back into my own seat. 

Thinking clearly probably isn’t the best way to explain my state of mind. On the one hand, I was elated and relieved. I’d waited my entire life to have sex, which, at the age of 19 seemed like a century. But I’d also crossed a line I previously swore I wouldn’t before I was married.

But I didn’t think I cared. In fact, I would have thought I’d care more. I expected to feel more guilty than I did about having premarital sex.

Anyways, I couldn’t think about that in the moment. I opened the storage compartment below the center console in hopes there were fast food napkins stored in case of emergency. Finding the universal stash of napkins, I tried to contain my reproductive mess, mostly failing. Now fully clothed, I looked over at Joy.

She was quiet. Her clothes were replaced to their normal state. She was still reclining in the passenger seat, but looking out the door window, away from me. I’d seen that face many times before and began to feel the first hints of guilt. I could tell she wished it hadn’t happened. Pushing aside my observations I reached over to caress her, desperately hoping she’d turn back to look at me with a smile. Upon my hand reaching her cheek, she pulled away.

“Take me back.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Take me back, please. I just want to go to my room.”

“Alright.” I started the car, put it in drive, reassuring myself her outlook would change like it always did in a few days. 

We returned to campus and to our separate dormitories. I covered my pants with my jacket as I walked back in an effort to conceal the resulting evidence of sexual activity. Safely concealed in my room, I pushed aside any guilt and wondered if the physical experience of sex was as I had imagined it would be. I questioned whether having sex made me feel less of a Christian. I wasn’t sure what to think, but guilt as a Christian? I don’t think so.

The next day was a gorgeous spring day in New England. Joy called and asked to see me. I knew we’d revisit the previous evening. I met her just outside the Student Center where we sat down at a picnic table. One look at her forlorn face told me she was upset. 

 “We shouldn’t have done that, …I wish you hadn’t have done that, …I didn’t want you to do that, …that didn’t happen, …I didn’t have sex with you.” Outwardly, I agreed with everything she said. Logically, I didn’t really know what to make of it. I was pretty sure we had had sex. I mean, it didn’t last long, but it happened. 

I decided to let her believe it hadn’t happened. Something told me there was no reason to convince her otherwise. Seeing her upset bothered me, and the thought of losing her virginity was clearly distressing for her. I felt guilty, and sought for a way to absolve myself.

Quietly, I asked, “Why didn’t you say ‘no’?”

“I did.”

“No, you said, ‘I don’t know.’ Then you didn’t say anything.”

“That’s not what happened. I said, ‘no.’”

I didn’t reply. It wasn’t an argument I wanted to have. I regretted it all, and suddenly I wanted to put it behind me as much as she did. If she was willing to act as if it never happened, then so was I. I was confused but agreed with whatever she wanted to believe.

I hated myself for making her cry.

Again.

Thank you for reading.

Soon, I’ll share the perspective of my victim.

Correction…She’ll share her perspective. She gets a voice this time. She’ll also tell you what happened in the hours between when I dropped her off at her dormitory and when we met the following morning. Because she did tell someone. She looked for help.

That’s not what she received.

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(If you’re like me and like to multi-task while listening to stories, use the voiceover above the picture. Today’s post is somewhat lengthy.)

(Trigger warning: This article contains discussions of sexual assault which may be distressing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.)

Rape Culture has been a problematic term for me.

It’s not that I don’t believe it exists. I do. It’s not that I think we should discard the term. I do not.

It’s that until I researched the term, I misunderstood it. I’m someone who has studied college sexual assault, so I think it’s likely others who haven’t would misunderstand it as well.

In general, I don’t spend much time researching terms. Like others, I hear a term and piece together an understanding based on how I’ve used similar words before. In this case, I have a particular understanding of what rape is and what culture is. I understand rape to be a violent sexual assault (usually involving penetration of one person by the other)1 on another person. It’s cruel, wicked and evil.

I understand culture to be the accepted or defining norms of a group of people.

But it’s important we understand what rape culture is, so I looked into it a bit more.

Here’s how ChatGPT defines it:

"Rape culture" refers to a societal environment where rape and sexual violence are normalized, trivialized, or excused, often through attitudes, behaviors, and media portrayals that perpetuate harmful stereotypes about gender, sexuality, and power. In a rape culture, actions like victim-blaming, objectifying women, downplaying the severity of sexual assault, and perpetuating myths about rape (e.g., that victims were "asking for it" due to their clothing or behavior) are prevalent.

This definition is different than what I perceived rape culture to mean. For me, the term created somewhat of a visual image due to how I understand the individual words rape and culture. I envision a group of people, primarily men, who prowled the community with intent to rape people. A group of people who are intentional predators, seeking their next victim.

For certain, people and groups like that exist. Probably even more than I’d like to admit. But it couldn’t be further from the truth of the situation for many…dare I say a majority(?) of…situations when it comes to sexual assault and rape. At least not for me and my victim, Joy, and not for most of the people who have shared their stories with me.

I was not on the prowl looking for an unknowing victim. In fact, because of the value system in which I grew up, I was committed to abstaining from sex until I was married. So, rape wasn’t even on my radar.

I just wanted a girlfriend. That’s how and why our relationship started. I was looking for a nice girl to have a relationship with.

In the posts I’ve shared in the past few weeks the narrative has been kind of dark and foreboding. We’re going to dial it back this week. It wasn’t always that way. The story began innocent and sweet.

It’s what I want to share with you today.

In the late summer of 1994, I started college at a small, evangelical-Christian, liberal arts school on Boston’s South Shore. My grandfather and great-grandfather had been presidents of the school, so the place was sort of a family tradition. I was happy to be there and was pretty familiar with the scene including the social expectations for a Christian young man on campus. 

Back then there was this joke - a joke I assume is shared by other schools of similar religious affiliation - that women attend college to attain their “MRS” degree. While the attempt at humor fits right into an ancient patriarchal system, there was some truth to it. The females were the butt of the joke, but the punchline was just as true for male students. The day I set foot on campus as a student I knew my top priority next to that of my education was to find a suitable wife. I had a girlfriend back home -- a mere 25 or so miles from campus -- but let’s be honest, that wasn’t going to last very long. It did not, and I was on the prowl, so to speak.

I remember the first time I laid eyes on her. I was walking into the Student Center to check my usually empty mailbox before going up to dinner in the second-floor dining hall. As I entered, I looked over to where the giant Student Government Association calendar hung. Pressed up against the same wall was a folding table and sitting on top of the table were two girls I found attractive- one a brunette, the other a blond. I can’t say why I gravitated to the blond. Perhaps it was because there was something familiar about the brunette and the complete mystery of the blond I’d never seen before piqued my interest. I played it cool (or perhaps didn’t have the nerve yet) and said nothing at the time. But I most certainly noticed her, and I’d do my best to catch a glimpse of her whenever possible. Fortunately, on a campus as small as ours, I had the opportunity on a regular basis.

One of the parental expectations for me was that I’d join the college’s A Capella Choir. At the time it was one of the more popular groups on campus and after a stress-free audition (I could sing on key and my grandfather had hired the director) I made the choir and was happy to participate. Both of the girls I had seen sitting on the table were in the choir too. I would glance at the blond every chance I got, though I still didn’t say anything.

A few weeks into our first semester, the day of our first performance arrived. Wouldn’t you know it, I found myself sitting right next to her in the middle of the street in Cambridge Square where we were singing for some community festival. I can’t remember what I said, or even what she said, but we began to be friendly with each other that day. I learned she was from Maryland, her name was Joy, and the brunette, Erin, was her roommate. 

Our relationship never reached a point anyone would call serious during the fall. We were both trying to feel out our college experience and learn more about who we were as individuals away from our families. We went on a few dates which were, for the most part, unremarkable for either of us, save two. The first was to see Forrest Gump. It was my 7^th time seeing the movie. The significance of this fact has nothing to do with Joy, rather, I find it significant that I paid to see the same movie 7 times. The second, date was more significant. Which is odd, because I didn’t even know it was a date. I’ll explain…

I didn’t have a car when I began college and if I wanted use of a one it meant I needed to somehow get home and borrow my parents’. My home was about 45 minutes from campus just over the Massachusetts border into New Hampshire. There came an occasion when I needed a car. To get to it, I talked a new college friend of mine into giving me a ride home. The plan was to drive up later in the evening - probably around 10PM or so - and drive back to campus immediately. The bed-time clock seems to work differently for college students and driving to New Hampshire at 10 PM was nothing to be concerned about. Joy, on the other hand, wouldn’t hear anything of it. She said she would worry about me and insisted she go along for the ride. I protested a bit, as I was sure I’d be fine and even though leaving at 10 PM wasn’t anything crazy, I probably wouldn’t return until 12:30 or so and I didn’t want to cut into her evening. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer. So, I agreed.

As was my habit, I spent the three hours or so before I was to meet Joy playing foosball in a student gaming lounge known as the fishbowl, a room named as such due to the two largest walls being almost completely composed of windows through which passers-by could look and see all the activity within. I was in that room a lot. Always playing foosball. I got pretty good at it, and took a bit of pride in my ability level. This skill came at the expense of my grades, but to this day, I carry a bit of confidence on the foosball table.

After wasting the evening away, the time came for me to meet Joy, my friend with the truck, his girlfriend who would ride along too, and head north to my parents’ house. I left the fishbowl and headed to my dormitory to throw on some jeans. I’d been wearing shorts but the cool of the evening hinted I’d be more comfortable with my legs covered. As I bolted out of the building, I found Joy waiting for me outside my residence hall.

I understood it to be a ride to New Hampshire and back. Judging by how fantastic Joy looked, she understood it to be a date. 

Her beauty stopped me in my tracks. Joy’s hair was pulled back from her face and held in place by a barrette centered perfectly in her blond hair, which she had curled in an understated way resulting in a delicate yet elegant wave of gold flowing down her back.

Her eyes were the brightest blue. The light of the nearby streetlight bounced off them and hit me in the heart. Her ears were adorned with small, gold, hoop earrings, and her face was wearing just enough makeup to accentuate her eyelashes and pink lips.

She was wearing white, slender-fit jeans and a white turtleneck shirt underneath a blue fishnet crochet sweater which hung halfway down her thighs. On her feet she wore dress sandals. Her perfect toes were showcasing the cutest little gold toe-ring you’ve ever seen. Her hands were clasped together in front of her waist giving her a shy, unassuming look. Everything about the way she was standing there exclaimed to me, “I made myself look my best for you!” Her shy expression betrayed her a bit, refusing to allow her to show the confidence she was hoping to display.

When I collected myself, I told her how great I thought she looked. This made her smile, and as she did the moisture in her mouth caused her cheeks to crackle a bit. Embarrassed, she smiled even bigger, with louder results. I teased her a bit, then tried to ease the embarrassment by pointing out how absolutely horrible I looked. I hadn’t made any effort to impress her, and I was self-conscious about it. I apologized, and ran to my room to freshen up a bit. When I came back, we squeezed into the jump seats in my friend’s pickup truck and left.

Other than the interaction as I’ve described it here, I don’t remember many details from the evening. We arrived at my parents’ house late at night and she briefly met my father. Now driving my parents’ car with Joy in the passenger seat, I remember small talk about how I should use my turn signal more. For the most part, it was a nondescript evening with the major exception of how breathtaking I found her to be. That was the first time I remember having butterflies in my stomach over Joy. As I type these words today, I can still recall how she looked and how I felt just being around her. She carried more beauty, class, and dignity than that 18-year-old boy had any right to expect.

Over the next few weeks, we went on a few more dates including the aforementioned viewing of Forrest Gump. Otherwise, I don’t remember much more than her being torn between dating me and someone else. I suppose exclusivity must have been important or something. At any rate, in October she stopped dating me for this other guy who I have to admit seemed to be a good dude. I hadn’t even kissed her at that point. She told me she needed to explore her feelings for the competition a bit more and I was out. We went our separate ways- at least for the time being. As the semester progressed, I dated around a little. I didn’t get serious with anyone but did make some nice friendships. I remained single and later in the fall semester found myself on another date with Joy. 

The college we attended was nestled in a neighborhood known as Wollaston or, Wolly, and within walking distance over on Beale Street was the old Wolly Theater. Wolly Theater had a classic old-time theater look. There was a triangular marquis out front and a small ticket booth just inside the front door. Inside would sit a diminutive and ancient woman with a sweet disposition. She owned the place with her husband. The days of any musical or dramatic production taking place in the venue had long since passed and on Monday nights the establishment showed 2nd-run movies for one dollar. 

Upon buying a ticket patrons entered the dilapidated building to find the concessions stand on the right being manned by the tall, skinny, wrinkly husband. He wore his bifocal glasses in such a way that you were never really sure if he was looking at you or the person near you. He was as cantankerous as his wife was sweet and was always dressed in brown slacks with a sharp pleat and a short sleeve, button-up shirt you might have considered his uniform if you didn’t also see him walking around town in the getup.

In his back pocket was a red plastic flashlight. It was the kind my parents bought for me to take to church camp in the 80’s. The kind that took two size D batteries and never had a beam of light quite strong enough to light the way. Somehow the man with the brown pants managed to keep the light even dimmer than normal. Before the movie began he’d man the concessions stand. After the patrons had all purchased their snacks, he’d head upstairs to start the movie. At this point he became the usher. You got the sense this guy didn’t believe in spending much money and didn’t expect anyone else to either. At .50 cents each, the candy, soda, and popcorn prices matched the value of the ticket prices. 

Decades of candy and soda spills had created a permanent sticky film across the entire floor from the concession stand to the theater, down the aisles, and into the seating areas. Upon looking towards the ceiling at the chandelier you could see hints of past glory days. The intricate, architectural artwork was at one time white, but had been stained tan and brown from years of water leaks from the roof above. The chipped and peeling artisanship flowed up the walls and columns spilling onto the edge of the ceiling where the water damage progressed to the point of pieces of the ceiling falling onto the seats below. The sections of seating where patrons were most likely to be maimed or killed by falling plaster were sectioned off and closed. Ownership had given up on making the chandelier appear in any way fancy, and the bulbs appeared to be your general 60-watt bulbs dimmed to prevent the guest from being able to see the full extent of the run-down theater. When the movie lit up the screen, viewers could see the remnants of what appeared to be a soda thrown at the screen sometime during the previous decades. The elegance of Wolly Theater was long gone. And at the low price of $1 per ticket, you got what you paid for.

If college students were lucky enough to have a couple more dollars, they’d cross Beale Street and go to Newcomb Farms for a $1, late-night breakfast. If you did it right, a person could take their date out for a movie and “dinner” for about $5 after tip.

That’s exactly what Joy and I did one December night just before Christmas break. The movie was Stargate starring Kurt Russell and James Spader. I’d seen it before, liked it, and it was a dollar, so I thought it might be an opportunity for another date with Joy before the end of the semester. As we walked home from our movie and late-night breakfast, my heart was struck by the feeling that I was beginning to really like this girl. She was smart, thoughtful, classy, beautiful, and I enjoyed being with her.

But as we walked along, she told me she’d had a falling out with her roommate, had moved out, and would probably not be returning after the winter break. 

Sometimes rooming with your best friend isn’t the best idea. Erin and Joy were pretty much inseparable during the beginning part of the fall semester. Erin got a boyfriend quickly and the guy Joy started dating instead of me was his close friend. All these years later the details are fuzzy, but suffice to say the two of them refer to their falling out as “the divorce.” They had planned for college together, purchased living necessities together, purchased movies together, found boyfriends together, but after things went south, they couldn’t even live together. So, they split everything up evenly and changed roommates. Joy stopped dating the other guy. I thought perhaps there might be an opportunity to rekindle my efforts with her.

But then, she told me she was pretty sure she was going to transfer to The University of South Carolina where she had been offered a full scholarship. My heart sank, which surprised me. While we had fun while dating and I thought she was gorgeous, I had not yet developed strong feelings of attachment for her. At least not until Stargate and our dollar breakfasts. I don’t know what it was, but something clicked in me and I was smitten. Even so, I didn’t say anything. She was leaving, and that was that.

I spent Christmas break in 1994 at my grandparents’ house in Mount Vernon, Ohio. I don’t remember much about the trip other than it was long and I couldn’t get Joy out of my mind. I was sad she was leaving and wondered if I’d squandered an opportunity. I just couldn’t shake the thought of her. She was the last thought I had before I fell asleep at night, and her blue eyes were on my mind when I woke up in the morning.

My head was full of questions, and my heart, a new kind of longing.

Next week, I’ll get to the question you’re probably asking. What actually happened?

Here it is:

Make sure you’re subscribed so you can hear more about what happened when I confessed.

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If this is the first time you’ve come upon this story and you’re interested in hearing more, here’s what I’ve posted in the past;

• When Your Marriage Begins to Fall Apart

• Dearest Gentle Reader… Is There A Sex Offender in Our Midst?

• Confessing Sexual Assault: Confronting My Darkest Truth

• Taylor Swift’s Relationship To My Daughter

(This post is a brief diversion from what I intended for this week. I’m on vacation in London with my family so, I wasn’t sure I’d get one up this week. It’s taking every ounce of restraint I can muster to not give you all a run-down of the trip in the way I did last year when we travelled to Athens and Rome. But there is a tie-in to the assault that happened between me and my girlfriend turned wife when we were teenagers. So, a few words about why we decided to take our vacation holiday in London this year.)

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It’s 9:54 PM on August 17th and I’m sitting in a London Starbucks. Beside me is a fresh, large coffee americano1 next to my open Macbook. I was fortunate enough to grab a seat at a large table next to the double-door which is propped fully open. There are somewhere between one to two dozen people sitting here with me. Most of us appear to be doing what I’m doing…killing time. Taylor Swift is playing through the Starbucks speakers.

High in the skyline just across the street from me is a large arch partially hidden by an apartment building. The arch is the architectural highpoint of Wembley Stadium, where Taylor Swift is also playing.

But over there it’s happening live. In person.

Standing field-level within Wembley and singing at the top of their lungs are my 21-year-old son, my 48-year-old wife, and most importantly, my 17-year-old daughter and a good friend. We’ve travelled the however many miles it is from Baltimore to Chicago to London so they can see this concert. Oddly, it was easier to get tickets to see Swift in London than it was in North America. And, if you throw in a week’s vacation in London as an excuse, it was in its own way a bit more cost-effective.

I’m sitting in the coffee shop waiting for them because cost-effective doesn’t mean cheap. When my wife asked if I wanted to go to the concert, it seemed the better financial decision to sit this one out. Four tickets were significantly less money than five.

Not attending the concert’s is a decision I regret. I am a big believer in taking opportunity to see the greats among us when we can. Love her or hate her, Taylor Swift is a great of our time. From a popularity perspective, she’s what Michael Jackson was to the 1980s. The Beatles in the 1950s and 60s, Edgar Allen Poe in his time, Beethoven in his, Mozart…

You get my point.

I wish I’d gone.

But I’m glad my daughter and her friend are here to see Swift. Swift is someone worth looking up to. I want her to be like Taylor Swift. It’s not about the fame or success on the world stage.

It’s about self-confidence, self-esteem and who gets to determine her story.

From what I can tell, Swift knows her value as a human. I don’t mean as a star. I mean as a human woman. A person.

Like me.

Like you.

Like anyone else.

In 2013 while in Denver for a performance, Swift posed for a picture with a male radio personality, David Mueller, and his girlfriend. The photo shoot was nothing out of the ordinary for the star. However, as they posed for the picture, Swift felt the hand of a person grab her bum underneath her skirt. In the moment she maintained professional composure and posed for the picture. Soon after, she reported the unwanted contact. Mueller subsequently lost his job, denied the accusation and sued Swift for damages in the amount of $3 Million. Swift counter-sued for a symbolic $1. You can view the picture for yourself here.

Swift was questioned heavily during her testimony at court. She was buffeted with question after question. Her answers were consistent and pointed to the same response.

Over and over again, the complainant’s lawyer asked her a series of questions meant to shift responsibility for the incident from the person who grabbed her bum to Swift herself. She’d have none of it. (You can find her most pointed responses here.) Eventually she summed things up:

“I’m not going to let you or your client make me feel in any way that this is my fault. Here we are years later [the case was heard in 2017], and I’m being blamed for the unfortunate events of his life that are the product of his decisions—not mine.”

When confronted with a line of accusatory questioning regarding unwanted physical contact from someone else, she remained the embodiment of calm confidence and self-respect. It’s the kind of confidence I wish for my daughter to have.

It’s the kind of confidence my wife didn’t have when she was dating me. I was laying red flags out everywhere. She didn’t recognize them. And if she had, I’m not sure she’d have had the confidence to respond in her own favor.

I don’t know if we’d be together today if she had. She might have left me. That would mean that she, my son, daughter and her friend wouldn’t be standing at the Taylor Swift concert tonight. But it’s one of those things that wouldn’t matter anyway. Our reality today simply wouldn’t exist and a different one would. One where a young college student would have told her line-crossing boyfriend to pound sand.

Many years later, she developed confidence and did tell me to pound sand. My response was different than she expected, I think. I decided to change. There’s a chance that might have happened when we were dating too. We’ll never know.2

I want my daughter to know that when a person crosses the line, a line she can draw wherever she likes, she can tell him to get lost if she wants to. She has a value that is beyond what even she knows.

As I typed that last sentence, fireworks exploded over Wembley Stadium indicating to me that the show is coming to a close.

So is this post.

Taylor Swift is a superstar of the first order. She’s someone my daughter looks up to. I’m here for it.

In London and at home.

(Trigger warning: This article contains discussions of sexual assault which may be distressing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.)

(Oh…one more note. It’s worth listening to the voiceover today. My victim gets a voice, literally. There may be some tears in this one. And yes, I screwed up the title. Things happen.)

More than ever, context is important. While you won’t be confused by reading or listening to today’s entry, you’ll want to understand how we got here. Use the links below to get up to speed. You’ll be glad you did.

• The story begins: When Your Marriage Begins to Fall Apart

• The longest trigger warning ever: Dearest Gentle Reader…

  ---

My wife and I had been married for approximately nine and a half years when we found our marriage at its lowest point. She was ready to separate. 

Separate. 

She kept using that word. I was hopeful it left room for getting back together, but I wasn’t completely clueless. She was using “separate” instead of “divorce,” a word that carries more weight and finality. There was no doubt, she saw divorce as a more appealing option to staying married to me for the rest of her life.

It wasn’t that she hated me, I just wasn’t the kind of partner she needed in a husband. She’d been carrying much more responsibility than I had, and after years of hoping I’d figure out how to be a better partner, she had given up hope. In a fashion I found confusing, Joy had a like/hate relationship with me. While she hated my lack of effort, she liked me as a person. The love, however, was gone. I understand that now. I couldn’t understand it then.

I, on the other hand, still loved her. I wanted her to be happy in life. I knew her dissatisfaction with me had been an ongoing issue, and I continued to fail to do what needed to be done. So, as much as I didn’t want to get divorced, I was willing to let her go if that’s what she needed. We were both at our wit’s end, but from different perspectives. It looked like things were over.

But still, I wasn’t sure. And I wanted to be sure we’d discussed all our…stuff…before we ended the marriage.

All of it.

I asked her if we could go to marriage counseling. She said no. She couldn’t see how any amount of talking through things would make any difference. She believed we already had talked, and talked, and talked about things. Her grievances were clear and written on the wall. As far as she was concerned, we had talked it all out.

I knew we hadn’t.

Mostly she was right, of course. We’d argued and talked about things ad nauseam. However, deep in my gut there was a knot that told me we failed to address some important things. Primarily, the circumstances surrounding our relationship when we entered marriage. One circumstance in particular.

We’d been sexually active before our marriage. For a significant portion of society this would have been a non-issue, but not for us. We’d grown up in the purity culture that was evangelical Christianity. Having sex before marriage was among the worst things you could do.

I thought it might be something we should talk about, whether we stayed married or not. There was this overwhelming thought that marriage might have been a way to eradicate feelings of guilt for our moral failures.

The two of us had talked about this some and realized that while it may have been part of our collective subconscious when we married, it was a terrible reason to get married. But I knew there was more to it than just premarital sex.

I will likely be stricken deep into the world of dementia before I forget the conversation where I was first willing to address the topic. We were laying on our fully made bed during the late afternoon. The sun was shining through the windows of the bedroom, bright light reflecting off the yellow and browns of the floral pattern on our bedspread. It was a quiet, calm conversation. We were discussing the next step for separation, how we’d tell our family and handle the emotional fallout we were sure we’d create for our conservative parents. She’d protect me from her family’s reaction to the news, and I’d protect her from mine. We cared about each other. The marriage just wasn’t working. Still, I gave counseling one more try, this time laying all the cards on the table.

“Joy, are you sure we can’t just try counseling first? Just to make sure we’ve talked about everything?” 

She looked at me, resolute, but with compassion in that moment. “Jeff, we’ve talked about it all. I just don’t have the energy for it. It's too late.”

“I…don’t think we have talked about everything.” I said, staring at the ceiling. “I mean, you’re right, we’ve talked about a lot. But we haven’t talked about the circumstances surrounding us at the beginning.”

“What do you mean? What…circumstances?”

“That we had sex before we were married.”

“Oh.” She paused for a beat before continuing. “Wait, what? We definitely talked about that.”

I continued, “I think part of the reason we might have gotten married was to alleviate some of the guilt we felt about the premarital sex. Like, in our minds it was kind of a way to pardon the sin. To make it ok, after the fact. …I don’t know…” 

“Yes. That’s right. We have definitely talked about this already and what terrible logic we had at 20 years old. But we can’t continue to let that bad logic shape our future choices.”

I took a deep breath.

“But we never talked about how it started. It wasn’t healthy.” 

Joy grew annoyed at my pressing. It was beginning to sound like I was grasping for straws.

“Jeff…”

“I didn’t mean the start of our marriage.” I demurred, unsure I wanted to say the words I thought needed to be said. My eyes welled up with tears.

“Then…what do you mean?” Joy looked at me and shifted onto her side.

I continued to stare at the ceiling, feeling safety in its blank response. My emotions were growing heavy, and the world began to well up and blur.

“We never talked about the first time we had sex.” I said. A tear rolled out of my eye, down my face, settling in my ear canal.

“Oh.” I felt Joy’s body shift a bit. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her head tilted downward.

I knew I had one more thing to say. I had to say it. I had to be looking at her when I did. She seemed to know and looked right back at me.

I gathered my courage. Looked at her, and confessed.

“I think it was sexual assault. I think, maybe I raped you.” My words came out quickly, racing to escape my mouth before the next tear fell.

“It’s always been there…since the very beginning of our relationship. We never discussed it after the next morning. You didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s like we buried it. But it was always there, like, haunting our relationship whether we knew it or not. Divorced or not, Joy, I think we need to deal with this.”

She looked away, considering my words.

“I’m sorry, Joy. I can’t believe it happened that way.” My throat began to ache. “I never would have dreamed I’d do something like that. But I did. I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I don’t even feel like I have the right to ask for forgiveness.” 

It was all I had.

Joy didn’t look at me. “Yup. That sucked.” She paused again. Then continued, “Why… me?”

“What?” I wasn’t really surprised by the question. I just didn’t know how to answer her. I didn’t know why I did it, let alone know why her.

“Why me? I mean, you kept saying you just wanted to know what it felt like. You wanted to know what it felt like? Like…where did that come from? Why were you so intent on knowing what it felt like?”

It wasn’t the response I expected. Nor were the thoughts I had the moment she asked. A lump formed in my throat. The tears came faster. There was an answer to the question, no doubt. I knew the answer. I knew exactly why I, at 19 years old, had been intensely curious about what sex felt like. The achy lump in my throat exploded. The gentle tears gave way as my shame burst forth into full-on, sob crying. They were childlike tears filled with shame, regret and fear.

“Hey…” Joy said, confused by the strength of my emotions. In all the years we’d been together, it was an emotional outburst she’d never seen from me. I was melting; a puddle of tears, saliva and snot, all of which I wiped away with the sleeve of my shirt. This was something different. She sensed it was about more than us.

“What’s wrong?” She asked.

I didn’t reply.

My lack of response was too much. The annoyance she felt at her husband was gone. Her husband was gone. In his place was a crying little boy. The mother in her took over. Placing her hand on my opposite cheek she gently pulled my gaze towards her. I averted my eyes from hers, looking anywhere else I could. When she removed her palm from my cheek, I moved my head back to the original position, again fixating on the emptiness of the ceiling.

She replaced her hand and tried again. “Hey…hey… look at me. What’s going on?”

There are things you don’t know about me.” I squeaked between sobs.

“What things?”

“Things.” I didn’t want to tell her. They were days I didn’t want to revisit, from years before I knew her.

 “Jeff, what things?”

“Things from when I was a kid.”

“Jeff, what are you talking about?”

Laying there on a pillow wet with tears, staring at the ceiling, I began to understand I hadn’t dealt with some experiences that had nothing to do with Joy. I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t know if they were reasons, or excuses…or whatever. But suddenly, I decided she deserved to know.

So, I told her. All of it.

She was pensive. The quiet was unsettling and I filled the void with the only thing I knew to say.

“I’m sorry.” I repeated with desperation.

“I know.” She said, once again laying her head on the pillow, now staring at the ceiling with me.

As we lay on the bed next to each other, we were an emotional mess. Our lives were askew, regardless of what it looked like from across the street, or at church, or wherever else we were faking it.

I moved my hand to where my pinky was touching the side of hers. She placed her hand on mine and gently took it into hers, stopping short of the intimacy of interlaced fingers. We were two people who cared for each other, but unsure what anything meant.

Eventually, Joy broke the silence.

“I’ll…go to counseling with you.”

This conversation happened in the summer of 2007. 17 years have passed. 

We’re still married. And, I might add, we’re wild about each other. Meaningfully so.

My confession to Joy on that sunny afternoon was the most important moment of our marriage, and probably the most important moment in my life. Not only because I confessed a wrong to Joy, but because it opened the floodgates for me to address some other issues I’d been ignoring for a long time. It was hard. Sometimes it still is. But it made all the difference. The tears I cried that night washed away a veil through which I’d viewed life. A new path began for both of us.

In the coming weeks, however long it takes, I will continue to share this story with you.

My story is not yours, or that of person you might be thinking about right now, and those stories are not mine. But they all have similarities.

There is a chance you read this and you’ve come away with a weird, cringe-y feeling that I glossed over something important that was happening. As you read about my crying, it jumped out to you as another form of manipulation. Perhaps reminded you of gaslighting. The kind that happens when an abuser will cry intense tears in an effort to get their victim to stick around. You’re not falling for my sob story, even if she did.

It was a reader called me on this in a comment elsewhere. I didn’t like what they had to say, but they were right. I did use the tears to manipulate. Even though I’d convinced myself that’s not what was happening. I had to reconsider what my confession was.

The process continues.

Longtime readers of The Unfiltered Scribe will be familiar with some of the circumstances that led to the conversation above. For others, you can read about it here.

It’s important we begin to hear the #Ididit validations for those with #MeToo stories. Use the button below. Share it wherever you want to.

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Now, here’s where the relationship began:

(Trigger warning: This article contains discussions of sexual assault which may be distressing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.)

(It may be helpful to understand how we got on the road to where we’re going.)

I recently finished season 3 of Bridgerton. The series is something of a guilty pleasure for me.

If you’re unfamiliar, Bridgerton is a series on Max (formerly HBO). The period piece is set in Londons’s Regency era of the mid-late 1810s, and weaves tales of British High Society. “Dearest Gentle Reader,'' is the salutation of Lady Whistledown, a fictional gossip column serving as the source of all gossip and scandal for the ton1. Eventually, just who authors the column becomes a scandal in and of itself. Because, what kind of horrible person would write about everyone else’s secrets?

That’s basically what a scandal is, right? When a person is outed for nefarious…stuff? 

I’ve been considering what, exactly, makes a scandal. While something might be scandalous, it’s not really a scandal until people know about the thing that happened. If nobody knows something happened, then nobody cares, and it — whatever it is — never becomes a scandal. Deep, dark secrets remain in the shadows to avoid becoming scandals.

Deep, dark secrets.

It’s been said everyone has them. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the idea is somewhat comforting because I definitely have mine.

For the next few weeks, or however long it takes, I’m going to share this secret with the world.

I’ve been wanting to share it for some time now. It’s why I started this Substack.

While I’ve enjoyed writing for the past year and learned a lot about how to write online, you might consider all the work I’ve done to be a yearlong endeavor of running off-track.

I do have a concern about sharing this part of my past, but not for how it might affect the way people see me. The vast majority of the people in my life are graceful. I am well-loved. My parents surrounded me with people of genuine spirit, not fakes. These people would be sure to tell me that everyone has their stuff if I needed the comfort and reassurance.

The truth is, my concern is for my family. Mainly, my parents. What I did isn’t their fault. They didn’t raise me to act in the way I did. They were good parents, and you’d be lucky to have two people love you the way they loved me. 

In fact, it was because of the values they instilled in me that I was eventually able to face my past. They’re the reason I believe in truth and integrity, a value instilled in me by my mother. I was quite young when she taught me about the importance of truth and integrity. There’s a whole cute story I’ll share with you soon about just how and when this happened. Of all the lessons I’ve ever learned anywhere, that’s the one I can point to and say, “My mother taught me that, and it’s the most important lesson I ever learned.”

Own Your Actions

The action I’m owning was a sexual assault. If you know me, then there are probably several reactions you’re experiencing. You might be feeling a combination of surprise and sadness. Perhaps there is even some denial or defensiveness for me. As I’ve shared my story in confidence with people I trust, they’ve often responded in ways that are meant to defend or protect me. I’m told that I’m being hard on myself, or something to that effect.

I appreciate their support. The fact is, sexual assault is a broad term, and it can be difficult to define just what it is. There are a lot of reasons for this including cultural, legal, and social complexities. The term encompasses a range of behaviors involving non-consensual sexual contact or behavior, but its definition can vary widely. As I’ve spoken with people about it, the complexities became clear.

I first began to take a hard look at the night it happened when I was studying for my graduate degree in College Student Affairs. We studied sexual assault on college campuses somewhat in depth. When I was working in Student Affairs I occasionally had to help students understand what sexual assault was. I later worked in college security and then was on staff in a college police department. The issue was always staring me in the face. While I appreciate people’s attempts to protect me, through my experience in these professions, I grew convinced.

I know what it was.

In the days I’ve spent confronting what I did, I’ve wondered what the legal ramifications would have been for me. Would I have faced jail? If so, would that have been followed by mandatory registration as a sex offender? These are hard questions to ask. I’ve often thought about how lucky I am. But “lucky” is a horrible word in this circumstance.

When it comes to legalities, I am lucky. But whatever the legal fallout might have been, it wouldn’t have done anything to address the debt I owe to my victim. “Luck” is the least empathetic word we might use. 

I was lucky. She was not.

I was fortunate. She was not.

I made a choice. She did not.

I was/did … Well, you get the idea.

Time and time again, we see headlines for men who are accused of sexual assault of some sort. It’s always scandalous, and it’s always met with some sort of denial. From the vociferous I didn’t do that which begs Shakespeare’s, “[they] doth protest too much, methinks.” To, “I’m sorry I misinterpreted what she wanted.” I struggle to find one man who’s ever said, “She’s right. I did that. I’m sorry.”

I feel comfortable saying that somewhere north of 90% of the women I share my story with are unsurprised. They have a story of their own.

They’ll begin, “Yeah, something like that happened to me too.” Their story is always somewhat different than mine, but there’s always a victim, and the perpetrator is out there, living their life.

For every #metoo, there is also an “#Ididit.” For obvious reasons, that hashtag never caught on. Nobody is ever willing to say, “I did it.”

I can’t help but wonder… When are we men going to get in front of our actions? Why do we wait to be accused? And when we’re accused, why don’t we ever address it in a way that might bring healing?

It would be unfair and unwise to suggest all men are guilty of sexual assault2. Nonetheless, there are a lot of us out there who have hurt someone, and we’ve shown little public remorse until we’re already on the defensive. 

The lesson my mother taught me about owning my actions goes straight to the heart of what it means to be a person of integrity. Further, integrity goes to the heart of what it means to be a good human. I happen to think the most masculine thing we can do is get in front of our wrongs before we’re forced to defend an act. We don’t all have to share the story like I am going to be doing for the next several weeks, but I think there are probably ways to confront our deepest secrets which will help bring healing.

Confession Leads to Healing

Among the most meaningful podcasts I’ve ever listened to was called The Confessional. It’s been some time since there was a new episode, but it’s worth listening to what was published in the past.  Guests join host Nadia Bolz-Weber and confess their biggest regret. This confessional experience relieves the guest of the burden they’ve carried in silence. But the genius of the production is that it brings a sense of relief for the listener too. Episode after episode provided me with an understanding that confession is the first step in a longer restoration process.

By the time I discovered The Confessional I’d already long confessed to what I’d done. Not to a priest. Not to a pastor. 

To my victim. 

It was hard.

But it was worth it. She healed. I healed. We found a new sense of mutual respect and understanding for each other. She’s on board with this little writing project of mine, and you can be confident you’ll be hearing from her too.

In fact, she’ll see and have content editing privileges for every one of these posts before they hit your retinas or eardrums. Moreover, this very post you’re reading right now is the result of her advice to me to slow it down a bit. I was going to start with the next one. She reminded me that sharing the story will affect my readers, and it might be best to explain myself before dropping a bomb on them.

She gets a voice this time.

I don’t share my story to relieve myself of a burden. That happened years ago.

I share my story in hopes that maybe another man like me will read it and find a way to address what they did as well. I share it in hopes the healing my victim and I experienced will be an experience others may enjoy as well.

This…is why I write. May the story find its way to the reader’s heart. And may it be a small part of moving the world towards something better.

Likely, you have thoughts, questions, comments or concerns. The comment section right here on this article is the perfect place to leave them. Honestly, in the moment I’m typing these words — knowing I’m putting this out into the world — the quiet is deafening. A word or question from you will show this isn’t in vain.

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I share this story with intention. The hope is that it helps men like me begin to address the things we’ve done. If you think this is an important thing for men to do - own our stuff - share it wherever you might. The easiest way is to click or tap the share button here. It is open to the public.

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Finally, as I mentioned, this will be an ongoing story for the foreseeable future. Subscribe to follow along and see how my story and her story might inform yours.

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Keep reading for the next installment in this story. In it, I drop the nuance of the term “sexual assault.”