Sans Fig Leaf
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"The fixer-upper"
20 July, 2006
Many years ago one of my demi-cousins was engaged to a guy with whom she differed on religious grounds. She was a fervent believer who never missed a Sunday service, got tears in her eyes while singing hymns in church, and was constantly asking for forgiveness for the most inadvertant violations of what she thought was god's will. She would frequently make important decisions in life by praying over her Bible, then opening it with her eyes closed and letting god guide her finger to the appropriate verse.
When her finger landed on an ambiguous verse or one that clearly didn't apply, she would agonize over it for hours or even days, trying to figure out what message god was sending her.
Her fiance had been raised in a more liberal denomination. He thought that one's decisions should never violate one's morals, but they should be made with careful thought, not by some sort of "Bible Ouija"--as he called her decision-making method. He thought there was nothing wrong with missing a Sunday service every now and then, as a musician himself he had a rather dim opinion of the quality of congregational singing. He thought that god was less worried about micromanaging every moment of our life and more concerned with people treating each other with kindness and respect.
Every time he missed Sunday service there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. She was convinced that come judgement day, she and their (potential) children would be welcomed through the pearly gates, while he would be cast into the eternal pit of fire--all because he missed a few Sundays. He usually tried to laugh it off. But I remember one time, when a bunch of the family had gotten together for dinner after church (I think it was one of the grandparents' birthdays), when things got a bit more heated.
He'd missed church that morning, so she was upset. While the rest of us were visiting, she had him off in a corner, asking for an explanation. Then she was tearfully begging him to promise to never miss another Sunday. This progressed to pleading with him to change for her, to became the devout man of faith she needed. Suddenly he yelled at her, "I'm your boyfriend, not a project!" and he walked out.
Which of course meant we had to deal with the aftermath.
I had never quite understood what the two of them saw in each other. As far as I could tell, they had virtually nothing in common. He was attending community college, studying music and hoping to make music his career. He wanted to star on Broadway some day. She was attending a nearby Bible college and wanted to become a missionary. He thought missionary work was oppressing other people's culture and heritage by imposing our values on them. She thought that theatre people tended to become immoral and disrespectful because all the applause and attention fueled the sin of vanity. He thought it was a responsible citizen's duty to question authority and look for ways to improve society. She thought a Christian's duty was to obey authority and respect traditional values.
And so on.
He had hit the nail on the head in that she didn't value and love the person that he was. She loved him for who she thought he could become. But that was only half of their problem, because clearly he saw her the same way.
Each of them saw the other as a fixer-upper.
I think everyone tries their hand at a fixer-upper of one kind or another. Sometimes we try to change our friends. Or we complain incessantly about a job, a boss, a co-worker, or a crazy in-law. We want them to be different.
It's not that people can't change. Nor is it unreasonable to want something better than you have right now. But we have to understand the difference between what's under our control and what isn't. It's perfectly reasonable to ask someone to behave in a certain way around you, for example. If they don't once you've asked (and asked and asked and asked), you don't really have any productive options other than learning to live with it in good humor, or walking away.
We also have to recognize the difference between a genuine effort to change, and a token effort to avoid further conflict. Because my cousin and her fiance made up after that argument, with lots of apologies and promises on both sides to compromise. For the next year or so it seemed to have worked. He attended church more regularly, avoided openly mocking her "Bible Ouija" and so forth. She tried not to nag and to be more supportive of his goals.
They both transferred to the University of Washington together. He started attending an even more liberal church--a church that soon came into conflict with the federal government because they were giving sanctuary to refugees from central america that the feds said weren't really fleeing oppression. He became an activist, participating in protests and such. Somewhere in there, she broke up with him.
I never got to hear her side of the break-up, because I never got to talk to her again. When she next came to a family event (another cousin's wedding), she wasn't allowed to talk to me, because I was male but not technically a blood relative. She was engaged to another man, and had brought her new fiance to meet the family, before they both moved to his homeland, Kuwait. She had converted to fundamentalist Islam, and was wearing a burkah and veil.
That was the last time I ever saw her.
I ran into her first fiance some years later, at a fundraiser for a local AIDS charity. I didn't recognize him at first, but soon he was introducing me to his wife and showing me pictures of his kids. He teaches high school band and drama, now. He's active in church and various charities and human rights organizations.
We did talk briefly about his former fiance. His wife said it was ironic that my cousin had abandoned her faith to please a man after trying so long to make another man change for her. Except that she hadn't abandoned her faith. Her faith had never been about theology or morality in the usual sense. Her faith had always been about blind obedience to a strict and demanding god.
His summation of their break up was pretty simple. "She kept waiting for me to change, and finally lost patience."
Patience is necessary to every relationship, but it shouldn't be the primary ingredient.
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.
--Bertrand Russell
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