Untamed

Sometimes, when heated conflict arises between Abby and me, we stop talking, take a breath and say to each other, “Okay, let’s not first-marriage this. Let’s second-marriage this.” What we mean is: Let’s not go on autopilot here. Let’s use what we’ve learned and apply it. Let’s be careful and wise and put our egos aside and remember that we are on the same team. Now that we know better, let’s do better.

I would have described myself as the spiritual director of my first marriage. I had the vision for our plot, and Craig fucked it up. I now understand that this is because each person has their own plot. No one can be a supporting actor in someone else’s storyline. They can pretend to, but they will always have subplots brewing inside and unfolding outside.

I am very controlling. I want to control things. This is because I am afraid. Things feel so precarious. When I was young, I made myself feel safer by controlling my food and body. I still do that. But as I got older and became a wife and a mother, I found another thing to try to control to create safety: my people. Since life is scary and precarious, controlling people I love felt like the responsible thing to do.

In addition to the fear factor, there is something else that leads me to want to control things, and that is my belief that I am very smart and creative. I really do believe I have very good ideas and that people would do best if they got on board. This kind of control is called leadership.

For a long while, I have controlled and led my people and called that love. I “loved” my people to a bloody pulp. My role in the lives of the people I love has been as follows: I exist to make all your hopes and dreams come true. So let’s sit down and take a look at this comprehensive list of hopes and dreams I’ve created for you. I have been paying very close attention and trust me, I SEE you and know you better than you know yourself. You can do anything I put your mind to! Let us begin!

But we cannot feel and know and imagine for other people. This is what I am trying to understand. The person who is teaching me this is my wife. My wife is uncontrollable.

I love my wife more wildly than I have ever loved a grown human in my life. Before I met her, I wasn’t even all that afraid of dying. Now the thought of death panics me daily, not because of death itself but because of the idea of not being with her. Death, to me, is just the ultimate FOMA: Fear of Missing Abby. Since I love Abby the most, it follows that I have to control her the most. I want to make all of my dreams for her come true. I just really want my best for her. To that end, I have relentless good ideas to share with her about what she should do and wear and eat and how she should work and sleep and read and listen. But every time I try to share my good ideas—overtly or covertly—she somehow knows what I’m doing, calls me out on it, and categorically rejects my efforts. She does this gently. She says things like “I see what you’re doing there, babe. I love you for the effort, but no, thank you, I’m good.”

For the first year of our marriage, I assumed that this was just a fresh, exciting challenge. I assumed that my job was to find new ways to approach her. Here is an actual conversation with my sister during my first year of marriage in response to the problem of Abby’s continuing to insist that she was the boss of herself:

ME: Okay, I hear you, but what if I actually know my idea is better for her than her idea is for her? Should I just pretend to think her idea is good? Should I just smile and let her try her idea so we can get to mine when hers doesn’t work so well? How long will I have to carry on with this time-wasting charade?

SISTER: My God. Okay. If that’s how you have to think of it, Glennon, then yes, try that. Try to fake it till you make it.

So that is what I did. I just smiled and faked it. I let her lead, but only because it was my undercover leadership strategy. I decided that we would try things her way for a while, until we both saw the light together. For a solid year, we were spontaneous when I preferred a plan. We were trusting of people when I was skeptical. We took big risks even when I had already calculated that the odds were against us. We let the kids try things I was sure they’d fail at and then resent us for forever.

We lived, for a while, as if life were less precarious than it is, as if people were better than they are, as if our kids were tougher than I believed them to be, and as if “things generally work themselves out.” It was reckless and ridiculous and irresponsible. Things do not work themselves out. I work things out. I WORK THEM OUT, and if I don’t there is no working out at all. There is just chaos.

I took lots of deep breaths and started a daily yoga practice to deal with my anxiety, and I waited for things to fall apart so I could save us.

I kept waiting.

Damned if “things” didn’t generally just keep working out. Damned if I didn’t start feeling happier. Damned if our children didn’t become braver, kinder, more relaxed. Damned if our life didn’t get more beautiful. It was annoying as hell, honestly.

I really think that it is possible that Abby has good ideas.

I am beginning to unlearn what I used to believe about control and love. Now I think that maybe control is not love. I think that control might actually be the opposite of love, because control leaves no room for trust—and maybe love without trust is not love at all. I am beginning to play with the idea that love is trusting that other people Feel, Know, and Imagine, too. Maybe love is respecting what your people feel, trusting that they know, and believing that they have their own unseen order for their lives pressing through their own skin.

Maybe my role with the people I love is not imagining the truest, most beautiful life for them and then pushing them toward it. Maybe I’m just supposed to ask what they feel and know and imagine. And then, no matter how different their unseen order is from mine, ask what I can do to support their vision.

Trusting people is terrifying. Maybe if love is not a little scary and out of our control, then it is not love at all.

It is wild to let others be wild.