Like most couples, my husband and I want to have friends. Not just individual friends, but couple friends, or family friends. Years ago I realized that making new couple friends or family friends was like dating. (Maybe making friends is, too?) But it's more complicated because it's not just about two people; it's about at least four, and perhaps more, if you count in children.
When our oldest was born, we became friends with a couple from our birthing class. The mom and I hung out at least weekly with our new sons. The four of us got together maybe monthly on the weekends. She made me one of the best chocolate cakes I'd ever had for my birthday one year (I think she put beets in it!). She and I talked easily, laughing, sharing stories, trading ideas on babies. But her annoyance with our one-year-old and her criticism of my husband made me reserved over time, then protective, then distant. They cancelled plans last minute, we felt annoyed. Time passed. Other things happened, too, things out of any of our control, but what I remember is that I felt protective of my little guy and, even if I was frustrated with my husband who remain unemployed for a long time, I felt protective of him, too. I could never totally relax.
The friendship passed.
I think of this family -- Emily and Ben and Ethan -- because we enjoyed each other for a long while. We were young families and we went to the beach and spent Mother's Day picnicking at the Arnold Arboretum. We sat at playgrounds and shared meals.
It was a lifetime ago, a sweet time when I was working only some afternoons each week and spent my days with our two kids.
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There have been other friends, too, friends that we hang out with sometimes, but not a couple or family that we spend lots of time with, everyone in our family excited by the gathering. This has bothered my husband more than me. I have my girlfriends, I have people I like to see in our neighborhood, at the kids' school, at work. I enjoy neighborhood gatherings with couples and families I like. I tend to trust that friendships happen and grow when the timing is right.
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My husband and I separated a month ago.
Yesterday was July 4.
Neighbors -- a family of five -- who took three of our (four) kids on vacation last week (camping turned into rain plan of renting air b and b) came over for a cookout. This was low pressure. We like to host and have friends and neighbors over -- a caroling party and potluck at Christmas; an Easter egg hunt and dessert; birthdays; First Communions. But in our separated state, I felt awkward having folks over. We invited this one family because the kids are best friends and we're all here and we also wanted to thank them for taking care of our kids last week. I did not have high hopes -- we talk with this couple regularly, easily, or play Ultimate Frisbee in the street or help the kids navigate squabbles. And we four adults like each other and find plenty to talk about, but it's not connection after connection or laugh after laugh.
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But there we were, six kids inside, the youngest outside with us, we four adults eating, talking about corona and older parents and the local CSA farm. It was so easy, so comfortable. And I was aware that this was nice, really nice, relaxed, comfortable, interesting, engaging...without trying to find any of these...was this what we'd been looking for? is this what we wished for and now could see as we were losing our own relationship? was letting go of us as a team as a couple somehow making hanging out with this couple work? They hadn't changed. Had we? or was it just me, feeling connected to this couple because I wasn't worrying about whether my husband was happy or talking enough or having a good enough time? I was just being.
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I did dishes in the kitchen and listened to Shawn Colvin. The mom came in, offered to help, but I was all set. She returned a bit later for more water, and then asked, ever so simply, "How are things going with you guys?" They were perhaps the first non-family that we told when Daniel moved out, our wanting them to know before their own kids came home and told them. (Five weeks later and our kids still have not told these best friends who live four houses over that my husband has moved out. And he is here so much that their buddies don't seem to have noticed that he's not actually living here.)
The tears came, as they've been wont to do this weekend, and I wiped them away with my apron (an anniversary gift one year). I told Catie how I love Daniel but I have endured too much hurt to do this more...I finally got to the crux of it, the situation that caused me finally to not patch up and adjust to the rest of the cracks: his platonic yet emotionally charged relationships with other women, with another woman, this past year. Emotional affairs, they call them. This was the third, or fourth, depending on how you count them.
Catie listened, kind, patient. And then she talked. Her own father has exhibited similar behaviors, and she has been frustrated with him and also with her mom about not speaking up. I tell her, "Oh, it's not so simple. You think you're speaking up. Again and again, you think you've been speaking up, and you have, in myriad ways, but it's past the point of okay by the time you've finally had it." Her parents are thirty older than we are, and their relationship mirrors ours a bit now.
While for years I've envisioned our growing old together, I now envisioned being in a similar place in thirty years. Not a place I want to be.
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When they left last night I felt relief in having told Catie the truth and cried. I am seeing that I find a relief each time I tell someone the truth about what's going on in our marriage. I feel tense and crunched and nervous before telling someone, and then, once I get the words out, I feel such a relief, a lightening of a burden.
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We invited this family over last night as a thank you for taking the kids last week, as a way to celebrate July 4 for the kids and probably for ourselves, too, in this time of semi-quarantine. Instead, I got an unexpected ease in visiting with the couple on our back porch, and a mutual sharing (is that redundant?) over the dishwasher of vulnerability, heartbreak, sadness. Really: a connection.
It's hard to know when friendships really grow.
