The Thomas Merton Affair

I’m on Cape Cod this week to read and write. A house and a beach and some woods all to myself. It’s heaven. I brought Thomas Merton with me. I think of him often. He is a writer and a spiritual director that I can truly take to heart. He was a writer, speaker, teacher, monk and a lover.

Yes, we often skip over that part when we tell his story but I think it’s central to who Merton is and was. The reason we can be so consoled by his spiritual advice is because we can know that he deeply knew all of our human and complicated struggles.

Thomas Merton had a love affair when he was in his 40’s. He was then already a writer and spiritual celebrity of sorts. He was a cloistered monk at Gethsemane in Kentucky and he had written his bestselling Seven Story Mountain and other books. He was married to the Catholic Church.

Then hospitalized for back problems he fell in love with a nurse. And she with him. They resisted, connected, pulled back, cried, committed, talked, broke up, tried again and loved each other. The relationship was consummated in a garden near the hospital and they made love there and in Merton’s cloister near the Abbey. Some other monks knew and some sort of knew and others didn’t know at all.

But then the Master of the Abbey got wind of the relationship and confronted Merton, “How could you?” he said, and he insisted that Merton make a choice. This amazing man of God didn’t have an easy time. He saw her again, cried, begged, swore off, went to find her, sent her away and went to find her again, and then left again only to come back. Finally he chose the Church and his life of monasticism. But it was not easy. He was a tormented man even while being one of the world’s most famous monks and a great spiritual teacher.

Two years later—Merton was allowed to leave the Cloister to travel to Asia. It was, perhaps, a consolation from his Abbott. In Asia Merton made one of his greatest speeches and then he died tragically by accidental electrocution. We know from his journals that even that year he was still grieving the loss of his great love. 

I have always wondered about his lover, the nurse, the other woman. How did she hear the news? How did she grieve? She lost him and then she lost him again. Did she know of his despair? And what did it mean to her to later read his great prayer of faith and doubt?

I think of Merton as a man who loved and suffered and lived in the grey of faith and morality. Somehow it helps me to know that even Thomas Merton was never really Thomas Merton. 

Infidelity Keeps Us Together

That’s the title of yesterday’s cover story in the New York Times magazine. Mark Oppenheimer writes about sex columnist Dan Savage and Savage’s suggestion that marriages need less fidelity and more flexibility. Basically what Savage is suggesting is that monogamy isn’t quite natural and that we do relationships a disservice by pretending or insisting that absolute monogamy be the standard.

What’s good is that Savage is not espousing secrets or affairs or running around—rather he’s advocating for talking to your partner before, after, and during marriage to say, “This is who I really am; what I really want; and “Will you still love me if I need to try this out?” In a way, he’s talking about a very high form of commitment.

But just the title and then reading the article was disturbing. (Click on the link below to read the article). Right away I found myself asking, “What if John said he needed something –some kind of sexual experience—I couldn’t offer or even try?” Would I love him enough to say, “Ok, go be you?”

I doubt it.

In the article other experts on sex and marriage weigh in to say that some open marriages work but most do not—not because of the sex but because of the emotions and the dishonesty—again, not the dishonesty of the partner who needs to go outside the relationship but the dishonesty of the partner who agrees or acquiesces and then realizes they really are not OK with that.

But then the bigger and more personal question to myself is this: Do I have the right to want and insist on monogamy and fidelity in our marriage? This is a marriage that came to be from infidelity—so did I forfeit my rights by marrying a man who left his wife? Or do we painfully know just how high the cost is and not wish that on ourselves or on any others?

Reading this article provoked a deep and daring conversation with John about our love life and our sex life and our intellectual lives—and how we keep all of those alive so we can keep things fresh and exciting. And what it means to be sexually “good, giving and game” in a monogamous marriage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/magazine/infidelity-will-keep-us-together.html

If My Husband Ever...

“If my husband ever…”. Yes, with each round of celebrity infidelity we engage in the age-old game of, “If my husband ever…”. At 56, I’ve played this many times at lunch tables and water coolers and sitting on the floor in a girl friend’s living room. But at 56 I’ve also taken enough early morning phone calls from many of those same friends to know that even if you think you know what you’d do if you discovered a partner’s infidelity, you don’t.

Some leave at once, some never leave, some forgive, some don’t. Sometimes the ones that forgive stay but sometimes leaving is the route to forgiveness. Most chilling, I think, are those that never leave, never separate and never forgive. They keep up appearances—maybe are even envied by others for their perfect marriages which are glued together with hatred and spite.

The agony of infidelity does not discriminate. There is enough to go around. I’ve played all the parts: scorned wife, secret lover, other woman—and the friend who knew. There are no winners. No one has more or less pain.

Now, a new novel comes pretty close to accurately depicting each of those points of view. It’s a great read and even better as a book on CD to listen to in the car or at the beach.

If you have ever said, “I’d never” to any part of the extramarital triangle take a look at: “Heart of the Matter” by Emily Giffen.

Home Wrecker

Thank you Oprah and Rielle Hunter for re-framing the feminist discussion: “Are women property?” Most people would say that women are not, but when we enter this discussion it turns out that men are.

Hence language like: home wrecker and a husband stealer. But notice that in these discussions—on the air and all the next day at the water cooler—it’s always the women getting bashed—and mostly by women.

Infidelity brings out the most anti-woman beliefs in the most feminist women. We blame a woman or both women in the social construction of infidelity.

The “other woman” is a thief, home wrecker and man stealer. On the other hand if we determine that she’s not the bad one then certainly the wife is because she didn’t “hold onto her man”. In either case the man is just a piece of valuable property to be kept, owned, held or stolen. Kind of like a check book with a penis.

Oprah for all her big talking and her embracing of the pseudo-psychological and the empowerment of women still misses the basic geometry: Infidelity is a triangle. Three human beings, equally flawed, equally trying, equally noble, equally victims, equally responsible.

It's Not Just the Boys

Another Governor has had an affair. This one is South Carolina. His staff thought he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. But no, he was in Argentina with his mistress. An eight year relationship but he got caught. Tears on TV, a hurt and angry wife. Oh, we shake our heads, “What is it with men?”

But, and I know I am throwing myself in here, it’s not “the men”. Every one of these men who had an affair had it with a woman. So what is it with people?

Yes maybe there is a power/political thing going on. Bill Clinton et al. The privilege of political office etc etc.

But more likely it is something human that says “I want more; I deserve more; it’s here, I’ll try.” There is something about mortality in affairs. Sex is life. Passion affirms libido. Libido is creativity long before it has anything to do with sex. Infidelity is a tragic and very backhanded plea to live.

I was one of the women. I know what a man can look like when he wants to live and when he wants to not have not lived. The best men, the nicest men and even the smartest ones do fall.

The Other Woman

The past two days Dear Abby, the advice columnist, has run letters from and about the “other woman” (OW). Most are scathing—the hatred runs so deep. A few are guilt-ridden, apologetic, defensive. Some are from men—the “other man” and the guilty spouse who is having an affair with OW.

I read them. I make myself read them and I make myself feel the anger and shame all the way through. I don’t want to pretend I was not the OW and I don’t want to defend it. I can explain it to myself and I can rationalize and now—years later—I can say that this is what became of the relationship, and I can enumerate all of the reasons and “issues”. I have lived all the parts of this equation. None of them are good, none of them are faultless, none are without pain.