secret marriage

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

May 1995:

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on May 14, 2014December 7, 2021

Persephone confronts me about the letter–College Memoirs: Life At Roanoke–November 1994, Part 5

The following is adapted from a diary entry, which I copied and added many extra details to about two years later. Those details were as accurate as I could still remember:

11/15/94–12:23 AM
Blackness again. The letter is known to Persephone, but I’ve cleared things up with her, and she’s not mad at me anymore.
It still angers me that she even knows about that or the one before it. She refused to see the first one–he offered to show it to her! What a creep.
I thought, after the Tracy letter, which he didn’t show me out of respect for her, that he was more trustworthy than that. But no, he is not to be trusted.
The spiritual marriage has entered the grapevine–probably through Dirk, Persephone says–and is known to people who have no business knowing. She says, “Tell a world, tell a Dirk.”
She herself heard it not through Phil, but through a freshman girl in Muehlmeier who said to her, “I’m really not supposed to tell anyone this, BUT…” I have no idea who all it’s spread to.
I feel weird and indignant at everyone, just when I’m walking around the cafeteria! I feel like they’re all looking at me and judging me now. This could even reflect on InterVarsity.
I don’t like these small-town grapevines. People always have to know other people’s business. Well, get your nose out of my affairs, you busybody! I feel so humiliated. I don’t even like to leave the apartment.
I’m beginning to think about pressing charges, even–breach of contract plus rape. Yes, there have been several times he’s raped me, and only once did I realize that’s what he did. It took a speaker here at school the other week to help me realize that.
God, convict him! That week we were back together, engaged, married even–he apparently wasn’t intending to honor the marriage contract–that’s rape because it was false pretenses!
Persephone pulled me aside after lunch on Sunday to talk to me, and to give me a letter she had written to me.
As I sat there reading it, I felt more and more indignant, and had plenty to say on it because it seemed written by someone who didn’t even know what my letter truly said.
It sounded more like Phil had totally distorted everything for her.
It talked about forgiveness as if it never even entered my mind! I explained that the purpose of the letter, as clearly stated in the letter, was so I could forgive!
There were other things, too, which I’ll mention later, though I won’t necessarily say if they were in the letter or not.
I was mad that Phil had told her about it, but she said that some things should be told. I don’t think this was one of those things, though. I said that nowadays I do nothing without God’s okay, and this I felt had God’s okay.
Persephone thinks Dirk thinks he knows everything. Considering the things he’s told Phil (who listens to him) and me (who doesn’t), I agree. She doesn’t like him, and doesn’t like having to see him all the time because he’s Phil’s best friend.
There have also been things Phil did to me or that we went through that he told her about, without respect for me, thinking she would take his side. Instead, she told him he’s an a–hole. He also doesn’t like that she’s friends with me! She thinks he’s afraid of something.
She says her dad … is very much like Phil. Her mother wonders why she’d want to date someone so much like her father.
She said if I think what he did to me on certain occasions was rape, there are people I should talk to about it. [I didn’t because I didn’t want my parents to find about the spiritual marriage/sex.]
I never told him I could sue him for breach of contract, and he didn’t realize I could until she told him, and that shocked him. [I didn’t want to, but felt empowered simply because I could do it, but didn’t.]
She said it probably wouldn’t work anyway because, in this day and age, people break engagements all the time. But I saw a promo for a news story recently that said people can sue for it, and my dad had brought it up in the first place. I’d never heard of it myself until then.
Persephone said in her letter that, in the Old Testament, when the husband put the wife away, they were divorced. I don’t know why she thought it necessary to say this. I’ve never said, and I don’t believe, that Phil and I are still married. It’s a divorce, and I admit it.
But, though I’m allowed to marry again, having been put away for no fault of my own, if Phil were to marry another, he’d be committing adultery. [I was following Christian rules on divorce, which are different from legal ones.]
Persephone says she doesn’t intend to marry anyone because she knows she herself is grounds for divorce. Phil doesn’t like this. Apparently, so soon after throwing aside his wife, he’s talking about marriage with another woman.
She says Phil says he loves her and she says to that, “No, you don’t!”
She says she knows from her parents (actor-father, maybe? I forget) what real comedy is, and that Phil doesn’t. (Phil makes constant jokes and references that are often lost on others.)
After the Bible verses in my letters were mentioned, the things I said about sin and such, Persephone said, “One thing I’ve seen is that when a person starts using the Bible as a defense, they’ve lost the argument.”
That’s a load of hooey when you’re dealing with Christians. Christians are the ones who usually respect the Bible–who count it as the Official Guidebook, the Final Authority on anything.
When you use Bible verses taken in context, you use the strongest argument you could possibly use with another Christian. That’s the thing that I have seen.
I remember Phil telling me at the beginning of the semester that he was starting to practice better hygiene so he’d be attractive to other women, but I guess he hasn’t kept that up. Persephone keeps having to throw soap and a towel at him and tell him to clean up before she’ll let him in her room! (In some ways, I do admire her spunk.)
He shaved his beard soon after we broke up the first time, I guess as another way to appear more attractive, but probably not until after he tried out for a part in the play and knew whether or not he’d need a beard for the part.
I think he looks silly without a beard and Anna agrees with me, but Persephone says she won’t let him grow one because he looks like a scuzzball and kind of scares her.
When I mentioned the time I snubbed him in Jubilee, she said she heard about that. She thinks that the way to effectively ignore a guy is not to treat him differently from other guys–not snub him completely, because that makes him feel special, set apart from other guys.
I’m not so sure this is true. Mom always tells me not to talk to the guy who’s done me wrong, but to ignore him–first Peter, now Phil.
And Dad thinks the effectiveness of the “snubbing” method you choose depends on the guy. He doesn’t think anything else would get through to Phil but to snub him completely.
In the letter she says that instead of “marrying,” we should’ve just called it premarital sex and taken the responsibility and consequences “like adults”–an unfair judgment of something she wasn’t even a part of.
And Phil and I had agreed with each other that just being engaged doesn’t mean you can sleep together, so if we hadn’t been married, we would’ve been wracked with such guilt if we’d had sex! This way, there was no guilt or shame, because it’s not a sin to have sex with your own spouse.
She tells me that the first time we got “married,” Phil really thought he’d marry me. The second time, he was just horny! Isn’t that rape?–
–Oh, gosh, and I remember how pushy he was, too, that second time! How he’d push me on the bed as soon as we got into my room and we were alone, without a “how’d you do,” and cover us with my afghan.
Once or twice, when I was preparing for the usual position, he poked his thing in my face–and it was smelly this time, unlike before–for me to suck, and held onto my head so I had to do it.
I told Persephone how he’d also say last summer, when I didn’t want to do anything but vaginal sex, “Sure, have your way, you always get your way!”–Persephone said, “It’s your body!”
She and I both agree he lays on guilt trips all the time. She also says he gets horny and says to her what he often said to me: “Don’t you want a beautiful baby?”–
But she doesn’t even want kids, she wants her tubes tied at a certain age (twenty-two or twenty-five, I believe), so whenever he tries anything with her, she hits him in the balls. She says he’s “an idiot, sexually.”
I told her about the time Phil threw a tantrum and I thought it was his dream-self, not his real, conscious self. I spoke of how awful it was, how awful he acted. Persephone said something like, “Well, that’s over now,” and I should get over it. Her words seemed callous.
[I thought we were sharing? Why did she say this about this particular incident, but not about the others? That makes no sense at all!]
She spoke of Phil’s increasing troubles at home and called his mother a dragon. (Later, she would tell me he practically lived with her in Muehlmeier for a while because of his bad homelife. I remembered I didn’t allow him to stay overnight in my room in Krueger, for two reasons: 1) It was against the rules, and 2) Clarissa wouldn’t have liked it.)
She says even Tracy agreed to do something with him and Persephone recently. It shocked us all–Persephone, me, probably Phil. He ended up driving so erratically that Tracy (obviously when the minivan was stopped) got him to go down on his knees, and demanded his keys from him!
What’s really odd is that Persephone says she doesn’t even like Phil! At least, not as a boyfriend. She rips on him whenever he’s not around, and would have preferred dating James, whom she liked at the beginning of the year.
She said she’d just sent James a letter saying how she felt when Phil asked her out, and then James tried to talk to her but Phil came over. She thought James was sullen after that because: “I think I was the first female to get through to him, and then he saw me with Phil, and he didn’t like that!”
I liked him once, too, and thought he liked me, and then finally ended up with Phil; I wonder if he ever knew I liked him? I know I started dating Phil maybe a few months after I first tried to ask James out….
She thinks it’ll take me at least a year to forgive Phil.
She also says she was taught to believe in the Bible, but be wary of it because it was written by man. I don’t agree, since I believe it was written by God through man….
She also thinks that she, the freshman, knows more about human nature than some of us in the group who are older, but I don’t really think that’s true. She doesn’t even know some of the things I’ve gone through in the past, and I don’t think she should judge us so quickly.
Persephone says Phil had another nervous breakdown after he got my letter….Two breakdowns in seven months?!…Why doesn’t he get help? He doesn’t need a girlfriend, he needs a psychiatrist!
Pearl says so, too; she says he totally doesn’t seem ready for a girlfriend.
Dad already thought he was psycho and on the edge, and he said the other night that he didn’t even know about the first breakdown!
Persephone didn’t even stick around to take care of him–she stuck her roommate Trina with him while she went to do something with the Mirror! I thought it was so very un-loving of her.
I gave up a review for the Botany lab final to take care of him, a review in the woods that sounded like so much fun, and Mrs. Rev understood and said he was lucky to have me!–I held my tongue, though, when Persephone told me what she did.
At the end, she said that not only does she have no reason to be mad at me after all–she took away her letter, which no one else had seen, and started folding it up, like it wasn’t needed anymore–but she will also try to steer Phil away from me, out of respect for my feelings.
Also, I said that, as I told my friends, the breakup with Charles didn’t bother me at all. I mentioned my crush on Mike, and she said he must be an acquired taste. She said she’d like Jim Carrey, and I said, “He must be an acquired taste!”…
I find my observations on Phil are the same as Persephone’s on many counts. She knows exactly what he’s like, things it took me months to find out. For example, he rips on things important to her–i.e., the Mirror–like he did to me–i.e., InterVarsity [and my friends].
There are plenty of other things, too, but I really must go to bed. First class is canceled tomorrow, but not my 10:30.–1:43 AM

I heard later on that, the next school year, Persephone chased Mike! She must have acquired the taste.

So at first, I was the victim being blamed, the victim being told to shut up, the victim being told it’s wrong to confront my abuser.

But by the end of the conversation, she realized there was nothing for which to be angry at me. She took her letter back.

Also, on November 30, I saw in action how Phil ripped on the thing important to Persephone: He wrote a letter to the editor about how terrible The Mirror was, with inaccuracies, proofreading problems–and even accused the staff of lying about addressing student concerns, and only printing letters from staff members!

His letter was often confusing. I wonder what Persephone thought of this baffling and flaming letter against her important thing.

As far as I’m concerned, though she kept telling him he was an a–hole, Persephone knew what Phil did to me, so every moment she stayed with him she was telling him through her actions that it was OK!

As for what she said about knowing more about human nature than my friends and I did–She was dating a guy she didn’t like, she didn’t even seem to like him much as a human being, and knew full well what he was and what he’d done to me, but stayed with him–and she said she knew more about human nature???

I certainly was reassured to hear she took pains to keep from sleeping with Phil. I didn’t like to think of Phil sleeping with anyone else, not while my body still remembered what it was like to sleep with him and still longed for his touch, and physically hurt to think of him with any other woman in his bed.

Phil had argued that I should find someone with my own ideas of fun and partying, as if that somehow determined lifelong day-to-day happiness. Well, he found someone who liked to party, but seemed to forget about the things he said were most important to him in a wife.

Phil refused to use birth control for religious reasons; Persephone did not want children and planned to get her tubes tied. I had agreed to use natural family planning because it meant so much to him, but she would use a permanent form of birth control.

After he complained so much that I would not convert to Catholicism, I don’t know why he wanted to date someone who would have obviously refused conversion even more fervently than I (she was Methodist and later became Pagan, even using spells and seeing ghosts).

He didn’t want “one of those feminists” who didn’t want to obey her husband, but she was far more of a feminist than I was.

Phil followed the Catholic teaching on birth control, but no longer wanted to follow the Catholic teaching on premarital sex. Those two things together are a recipe for trouble, as he learned the hard way eventually. (He had to marry his next girlfriend.) This is probably why Persephone called him “an idiot sexually.”

She hadn’t realized how soon after our breakup they started dating. Apparently he lied to her.

So, just walking around the cafeteria, I felt like everybody knew about the secret marriage and was judging me.

Of course, now that my friends, Phil’s friends, and who knew who, knew about the secret marriage, you could say that we met another important criteria of marriage: common knowledge that we were married.

(There are those who say a marriage isn’t valid unless it’s public–discounting even a legal elopement or Romeo and Juliet’s marriage.)

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

May 1995:

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on May 10, 2014July 6, 2021

Friends tell me Phil is controlling–College Memoirs: Life At Roanoke–October 1994, Part 8

When we went to school events, Charles put his arm around me and I didn’t mind, but I feared other guys would see this as a sign that I was “off-limits.” I wasn’t: We were both allowed to date anybody else we wanted.

That’s what we meant by not being serious, by taking it slowly, by being, as Charles told Pearl, “very casual.” And I wanted to date at least two other guys at the time, including Mike.

Helene and her best friend Kay became my friends junior year through Phil, who liked to sit with them at lunch. They met in Sophomore Honors and liked him then, but now they were my friends as well, and Helene didn’t like him so much.

Helene said, “Phil has been talking to Kay. I think he sees her as a sister.” That might explain why she got quiet when I said Phil was a jerk. What truth twisting did he tell her?

Helene said Catherine told her Phil and Persephone were dating. Helene’s thoughts:

“It shows he misses you….You shine compared to her….It confirms my worst fears about him. I really think little of a person who–like a person who gets a divorce and then goes out and finds someone else right away. They don’t want to work on the relationship they have, and they go out and find another one?…He’s going to regret it.”

(Pearl said that Persephone’s going to regret it–which turned out to be true, a year later.) I said Phil didn’t want a feminist; Helene noted that Persephone was extremely feminist.

Helene also said, “Last year, after you two got engaged, Phil came to us [her and Kay] once and said you had an argument but worked it out. But he complained that you wouldn’t just do whatever he wanted. We saw this as controlling, and hoped you would realize this before you married him.”

I remembered that argument. It was over whether or not I could listen to a rock station in the minivan, one which only came in outside the campus and played better songs than any other station. Remember, this was in the Stone Ages when college kids couldn’t just hook up to campus Internet and pull in a webstream whenever they wanted.

I found the following paragraphs in The Psychology of Romantic Love by Nathaniel Branden:

Imagine that an individual feels, perhaps beneath the level of conscious awareness, that he or she significantly lacks worth, is not lovable, is not a person who can inspire devotion for any sustained length of time.
Simultaneously, this individual desires love, pursues love, hopes and dreams to find love.
Let us suppose this person is a man. He finds a woman he cares for, she seems to care for him, they are happy, excited, and stimulated in each other’s presence–and for a time it seems that his dream is to be fulfilled.
But deep in his psyche a time bomb is ticking away–the belief that he is inherently unlovable.
This time bomb provokes him to destroy his relationship. He may do this in any number of ways. He may endlessly demand reassurance. He may become excessively possessive and jealous.
He may behave cruelly to ‘test’ the depth of her devotion to him. [Phil once told me this was why things had gotten so bad. It’s in my diary.]
He may make self-deprecating comments and wait for her to correct him. [Phil did this all the time.]
He may tell her he does not deserve her and tell her again and again and again. [Yep.]
He may tell her that no woman can be trusted and that all women are fickle. [He refused to let me meet his “vampire friend S–,” with the fear that I’d fall for S–. And he didn’t believe me when I said I would never leave him even if I found a “soul mate.”]
He may find endless excuses to criticize her, to reject her before she can reject him. He may attempt to control and manipulate her by making her feel guilty, thereby hoping to bind her to him. He may become silent, withdrawn, preoccupied, throwing up barriers she cannot penetrate. [This whole paragraph sounds like Phil over the course of our relationship.]
After a while, perhaps, she has had enough; she is exhausted; he has worn her out. She leaves him.
He feels desolate, depressed, crushed, devastated. It is wonderful. He has been proven right. The world is the way he always knew it was. ‘They’re writing songs of love, but not for me.’ But how satisfying it is to know that one understands the nature of reality!
Suppose that, despite his best efforts, he cannot drive her away. Perhaps she believes in him, sees his potential. [That was me.]
Or perhaps she has a masochistic streak that requires that she be involved with such a man. She clings to him; she keeps reassuring him. Her devotion grows stronger, no matter what he does.
She simply does not understand the nature of the universe as he perceives it. She does not grasp that no one can love him.
In continuing to love him, she presents him with a problem: She confounds his view of reality. He needs a solution. He needs a way out.
He finds it. He decides that he has fallen out of love with her. Or he tells himself that she bores him. Or he tells himself that he is now in love with someone else. Or he tells himself that love does not interest him.
The particular choice does not matter; the net effect is the same: in the end, he is alone again–the way he always ‘knew’ he would be.
Then, once more, he can dream of finding love–he can look for a new woman–so that he can play out the drama all over again.
It is not essential, of course, that his relationship end so conclusively. A literal separation may not be necessary. He may be willing to allow a relationship to continue, providing both he and his partner are unhappy. This is a compromise he can live with. It is as good as being alone and abandoned–almost. –p. 128-129

(According to the author website, this book is now out of print, but you can find it at the above Amazon link.)

Around this time, I saw Phil with his head on Persephone’s shoulder in the cafeteria. It made me sick. I was glad to have Charles around.

Charles and I were taking things very slow and casual, while Phil just seemed to jump from one serious relationship to another. The bed wasn’t even cold before he started dating her!

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound

January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD

February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

May 1995:

My letter to Phil, Part 2–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–October 1994, Part 5

First part of letter

Trust seemed to be a problem as well. Up until I found out about the games you’d been playing with me, like you termed it I’d have trusted you until the ends of the earth; but for some reason, you seemed to have trouble trusting me. I don’t know why that was.
Like you thought that someone could steal me away from you even after we married, even though I told you how firmly I believe in the bonds of marriage. As the Bible, the Catholic church and the Nazarene church affirm, those bonds are not to be broken, and I was not going to break them.
It hurt me that you kept thinking the “perfect” person would steal me away or that you could never introduce me to your friend S–. (Really, we’d probably have gotten along well, but I loved you, and I’m not into sadomasochism!)
As a song by the Christian group 77’s says, “If you’re looking for a perfect man that you can worship, baby, He ain’t on this earth, baby, no more.” Couples can’t be clones of each other; they’ve got to be individuals. Your old-fashioned, non-feminist (usually) [as he said he wanted] girl was not going to run away to find somebody better!
That bit about “being a better person when not with you”–that was taken straight from “Mrs. Doubtfire,” wasn’t it? Well, I didn’t buy it then, and I don’t buy it now. It’s not a biblically sanctioned reason for divorce. If you don’t believe me, grab a concordance and a Bible and look up passages on the subject.
It also feels to the other person like they’re being blamed for how their partner acts. The person isn’t the problem, it’s how their partner relates with them. They just need to learn how to relate better.
As that very movie shows, divorce tears families and people apart. That’s why God hates it (Malachi 2:16 and surrounding verses; also see Matt. 5:31-32, Deut. 23:21-23; verses that may relate: Deut. 15:12-17).
(You may call me a holy roller, may even say I’m preaching, but if I know someone’s a Christian, I feel free to make references to what God says in the Bible. Not spouting off verses right and left, but mentioning or quoting things that apply when it seems appropriate.
(Usually, people seem to appreciate it because it reminds them of how God feels about something they’re struggling with, gives them a better understanding of things. If it convicts them of wrongdoing, they might not always like it so much, but that’s human nature.
(I don’t like to feel convicted of something wrong, either, but sometimes a person needs to hear it. You even tell me Bible verses at times.)
You say the counseling idea is “like beating a dead horse.” Well, I don’t agree. It was never given a chance to revive the horse.
Three “dead horses”–couples that were already divorced–saw those tapes I mentioned, and were brought back to life: they remarried their ex’s. According to Gary Smalley, good results because of the tapes have been reported without exception.
Love, happiness are increased; even the once-divorced couples report more affection for each other than they had even when they were first married. This would certainly include a restoration of cherishing, which means “to care for kindly” and “to hold dear.”
Maybe this sort of thing could even help your parents restore their first love–in fact, probably could. [His mother had told him the only reason she hadn’t divorced his dad was because Phil and Dave were still at home.] And keep things from breaking down again, as long as the principles continue to be applied.
Once again, one person could feel their life had been wasted until they met the other person. [Phil used to tell me that his life had been wasted until he met me.] If I didn’t think this sort of thing had a fighting chance, I wouldn’t bother with it, wouldn’t bother even mentioning it.
One of the principles, one example of how to break the communications barrier, is one Smalley learned from his wife: When a woman says “Don’t touch me,” what she really means is, “Hold me, talk to me, make me feel better.”
This is true. I can think of an instance in which you apparently didn’t know this, and it had consequences. It was after that horrible argument we had near the beginning of the summer, when you were getting overwhelmed by that second sales job.
[This was when I thought he was talking in his sleep as he often did, but he just had his eyes closed.] I finally got you to come upstairs and go to bed, my bed, but I was so angry and felt so betrayed that I said, “Don’t touch me.”
If I’d really meant that, I’d have told you to sleep in the guest room. I wanted you to hold me, to try to talk things out, to be so worried about my attitude that you’d make me let you hold me. Instead, you took me at my word, and turned over to go to sleep, leaving me feeling abandoned.
If you’d known what a woman really means when she tells her husband not to touch her, we could’ve resolved the problem better and more quickly. It isn’t that she’s lying, it’s just that she’s upset.
Another thing is the “space” issue. I see that as another example of poor communication. I’m not always a good reader of body language; I go by what people say.
When you’d say you just needed some space, that it wasn’t me but you needed to sleep in the guest room that night, I wouldn’t like it, but I’d understand and sleep alone that night without complaint.
When you just disappeared and I found you in there, I’d feel like you were deliberately snubbing me or running from some argument. I’d feel hurt, angry, abandoned.
To kindly say you need some time alone is much more effective than just getting mad or running off. I’ve done that sort of thing myself before (to Clarissa), and it didn’t work, just made me feel ashamed because I knew I was probably doing something wrong.
We used to be able to resolve things [in the beginning of the relationship, we prided ourselves on being able to resolve things using already established principles that we hadn’t even heard of until afterwards]; I think we’ve forgotten how.
And I think if we learned how again, plus more tips that we never knew before, we’d see that “first love” returning, remember why we wanted to be together in the first place, why we wanted to be married and knew we were each other’s ideal.
But even if we didn’t, we could learn principles that can be applied in other relationships. Either way, we’d both win.
We wouldn’t have to “get back together” before watching tapes or reading books or whatever; we could watch them, and then see if we’d want to give it another try or to just move on.
But there couldn’t be a “yo-yo effect” afterwards. If we decide to try it again, then we’ll have to both give it a good try, not keep changing our minds when problems don’t go away right away.
Maybe there wouldn’t even be any left by then; maybe they all would’ve been taken care of through time and through learning how to communicate more effectively. And I think God would be pleased by our efforts and bless us.
It seems we resolved things better until after we married. Perhaps what happened was, you unconsciously tried to make it into your parents’ relationship, which is familiar to you, and I unconsciously tried to make it into my parents’ relationship, which is familiar to me.
The two conflicted–unhappiness is incompatible with happiness, “light has no fellowship with darkness”–and everything broke down.
I hope you take this letter well, and in the kind spirit it was intended in. I wanted to tell you about the tapes and other possibilities, and to tell you some things that I feel you should know.
I don’t know if you’ll listen to me, but I couldn’t trust that these things would be said to you by anyone else, as much as some others want to say them to you. If some anger or bitterness still came through, well, I felt I needed to say what I did. [Reading it over, I don’t really see any.]
But forgiveness is divine. I don’t hate you. If I can never even be friends with you, it would kill me. I hope and pray you don’t turn into another Peter, because that would just finish me off, to see someone else I care for turn scuzzy.
But anyway. If Mom can get ahold of these tapes or something like them, I plan to watch them. But don’t tell me yet what you think of the idea, what you think of seeing them yourself.
Sometimes decisions made in haste are regretted later. Give it maybe a couple weeks or more, let it sink in, mull it over and put it on the back burner; then decide.
Don’t listen to friends who don’t know what they’re talking about, which would probably be most of them–“The worst thing you can do,” Dad says, “is talk to your friends.”
[Dad’s advice used to be so influential with Phil. He’d sit talking with him for hours–though Dad, at times, thought he was an idiot!]
Advice should be taken from the wise. Pray about it, pray for guidance; God, the wisest of them all, hears the prayers of His children, and won’t leave them all alone. That includes you.
Love,
Nyssa

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel: