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'Til Death Do Us Part...
One Woman's Story of Facing the Reality After Clinging to the Dream

CHAPTER 15
(Part 4 of 10)

CONVERSING AT LAST

"It's you, Rene. Randy didn't get that reception when he proposed it."

"He was an outsider. He came from more then fifty miles away and carried a briefcase." He was also a man and not perceived in conflict with a spouse. Once again, I was a woman in a man's world. This had been one of the most difficult challenges for me over my lifetime. I had almost always worked in a man's world, and faced the same problem again and again. The humility and frustration that go with it are clearly lessons that I was supposed to learn. This time I'd really like to learn them, if for no other reason than not to have to go through them anymore. "But, sweetie, more than all of that, the biggest fear I've had all along is that we were sacrificing our marriage and everything we've built together. Nothing is worth that to me. And that's what I see happening."

"Then get out of the business, and let me run it. If I need to spend money, I don't want to have to worry about you holding me back. I'm not going to let this business fail."

I didn't answer right away. This was a major crossroad for me. This was the major crossroad. It wasn't a matter of simply reaching a fork in the road and choosing to separate our business partnership from our personal relationship. It went much deeper. This was at the heart of our trust of each other. For me to agree to back away under these circumstances would change the intrinsic nature of our relationship-or at least what I had always thought was our basis. Maybe it was never there in the first place and, with no outside pressure to test this before now, it never showed up. Or maybe with the passage of time and our taking differing stands on issues, it gradually eroded. I felt that my saying yes would move us from a relationship based on treating each other with equal respect to my honoring Mark without his honoring me. I would go along with his decisions about our business, our finances, and the spillover effects this would have on our personal lives. He would not be inclined to change his actions even slightly based on my input. I was afraid of loss...the loss of him...of us. That was far more important to me than even the loss of security. I knew that many men and women have made this kind of a relationship work: the man in the position of authority and the woman submissive to his decisions. But this had never been our agreement. For the sake of preserving our marriage, could I live with that now? In the beginning, he was drawn to the woman who was complete in her own right-the woman who was chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, the woman who had created her own multi-thousand person network marketing organization. He didn't just fall in love with my gentleness and my smile. He fell in love with all of me. So...if I give up part of who I am, what are the chances that he will still love me in the end? "Sweetheart, this is a really important question. Take all the time you need to answer it, but sometime throughout this weekend, I need to know why you've changed on this point. Why did you start out wanting a business partner and now decide that you need to be in charge all on your own and that I am just an appendage in the way? I'm not looking for the superficial reason-that is pretty obvious. But what is going on inside of you to change things so fundamentally for us?"

"See, there you go again. We've gotten off on business, and I really want to bring it back to what I want to talk about. I didn't interrupt you when you talked. But when you interject, you take me down paths I don't really want to go."

I instinctively felt he was telling the truth. I was taking him down a path he wasn't ready to go. He may not have known the answer, or may not have been ready to look at himself that closely yet. But the answer to this question held the key to our future. "I'm sorry. I can be patient, but at some point we need to face this question. I was feeling that we were just getting to the heart of the issue between us. I wanted to say it before I lost the thought."

"You do that all the time. You plan what you are going to say instead of really listening to what I'm saying. Right now, I just want to get through my points."

"And I am so eager to hear them. I have been waiting for this dialogue for six weeks."

"It isn't that easy for me now...just having you come back as my wife and not my partner. I did a lot of reading. In fact, I went and tried to find everything ever written on romantic love and the passing of the newness phase. There is almost nothing written on this subject. Everyone writes about love during this phase, but no one addresses the fact that it goes away, and why. Most people have something in common to hang onto. You and I don't have that. We like different kinds of movies. You like socializing and I hate it. We like different sports. The reason we have never had a fight about religion is that we never discuss it. You are Catholic, and I am Protestant; and we have very little in common when it comes to religion. The newness wore off, and what do we have left? Graham said something interesting to me the other day. He said one reason he felt his relationship was still so good was because of the geographical distance between them. He essentially just sees her on weekends. And after a year, he is as much in love with her as he was in the beginning.

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