On Faith

My track record with men has not been great. I tend to get burned. I tend to get cheated on a lot. These stories are old and unfortunate, and do not bear repeating, so I will not.

It's made me think, though, of what I inspire in people. And no, the answer here has not been infidelity. Rather, there seems to be something about me that encourages people to promise beyond their means. My boyfriend Daniel told me years ago that he'd never thought that he'd ever want to have children, but something about me made him see that as a possibility.

Other men have glossed over their demons (bipolar disorder/schizophrenia; womanizing; alcoholism), saying that with me they felt strong enough to deal with these things, to put them behind them. Which is flattering, to think that I inspire that type of desire to change for the better.

But over the years I've grown wary of these declarations. Human nature is dirty and stubborn and virtually immune to change. It's why we continue to drive when we know it's melting the icecaps. It's why we pretend to ignore suffering when we walk right past it.


Over my years with various men I have been lied to, mocked, cheated on, pushed against walls, sworn at, and made to feel insignificant. I have acted as lover, nursemaid, helpmate, confidante, friend, partner in crime. There have been so many mistakes over the years. Over time these hurts, these mistakes, tend to chisel down at you. Sometimes I don't know how much more I can take on.

And sometimes I think that I would risk all of the pain in the world to continue feeling the way I feel about Peter for the rest of our lives.

He is idiosyncratic. He is difficult. He has given me, in the big scheme of things, virtually no reason not to trust him. To not have faith in him. But it wasn't until last night, when he told me that he had faith that we were supposed to be together for the rest of our lives, that he had faith that we were meant for each other, that I realized that I had been waiting for him to tell me exactly that for weeks now. Because he has not said it. Because we had to go through such immense and intense stuff early on, that he dropped back, held back, drifted away from me, because we were supposed to live in the moment, to have fun, to not hold our pain so closely.

And of course I agree with all of this--the having fun, the living in the moment, the spending meaningful yet slightly frivolous time with one another. But sometimes he looses himself from me, even when we are at the same table, and it makes my throat catch, and then I swallow, and stop thinking of it, because he needs time to figure things out, too.


This weekend was intense and lovely and amazing with him. I felt him with me every second, which is a luxury I don't take lightly. He scares the hell out of me. With everyone else, there was something not quite right to which I could cling, to which I could construct my exit strategy when things began to crumble between us. With Peter, I have nothing. No exit strategy. Only this deep, enduring faith that he is the person I was made for, that together we form this cohesive, lovely whole, that he, for all of his faults and stumbles and fuck ups, is the only person I can see myself with. He has my heart, all of it.