Description: Two conservative Christians share faith, friendship, and passion
Note: This story deals with the sensitive subject of religion and is about two married people being unfaithful. If you have a strong aversion to these topics, please consider passing on to other entries more to your liking. Thank you. This is a re-write of a 3 part series I posted years ago. I was never happy with portions of it and decided to invest a little more time. I hope you enjoy.
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My name is Brad and this is my story of faith, friendship, and passion. But before I begin, a little background about myself would be helpful. I'm 38 and grew up in a conservative Christian home with great parents. They were wonderful examples of a loving marriage and poured their time and energy into raising a close, God-fearing family. It is because of them that faith has been the driving force in my life since I was a child.
During high school I decided I wanted to pursue architecture as a career and was accepted to several high caliber design schools. However, practicality won out and I attended the University of Illinois after I was offered a full ride scholarship. I quickly became heavily involved in a couple different Christian organizations on campus and met my future wife Trish during my sophomore year. We were seemingly the perfect matches. We both grew up in conservative Christian homes, had similar interests, and became the best of friends. Following a short engagement period, we were married the summer after graduating.
That's when I started discovering that our marriage, particularly our sex life, was not all that I had hoped for. We were both virgins when we were married and the very infrequent sex we had after marriage was awkward at best. We did not make love. It was simply a mechanical act that lacked any kind of passion. It was always missionary position with me on top and an uninvolved Trish beneath me. She was not at all interested in foreplay of any kind, oral sex, or any experimentation outside of the missionary position. Sex was something Trish occasionally tolerated out of marital duty, but certainly never initiated. Needless to say, this arrangement was less than enjoyable for both of us.
As you can imagine, this became a great source of friction in our marriage. Through many arguments, I came to discover that the issue was much more than just inexperience of two virgins. It resulted from Trish's parents' teachings about sex when she was growing up. They drilled it into her head from a very young age that sex was evil and its only purpose is for procreation.
As she grew older, Trish learned the truth that God intended sex for pleasure within marriage and that our bodies were made to be explored in many different ways together. Despite knowing better, she has never been able to escape from the emotional baggage imposed by her parents and our sex life remains rare and missionary to this day. I try to be understanding of her emotional damage but that does not make it any less frustrating.
Because of her parents' false and damaging teaching about sex, and several other situations where I have been severely screwed by holier-than-thou "religious" people, my personal faith has evolved over the years. I still have an intense faith and believe in the Bible. However, I have become much more disillusioned by formalized, "old-school" religion and am much more appreciative of "real" people of faith. By "real" I mean people that are trying to grow in their faith, acknowledge they are imperfect and do not put up false facades to hide that they are imperfect.
Enough background about me for now...on with the story...
My life-changing journey began about 10 years ago when I was 28. My employer promoted me to be a Senior Architect in the firm. Unfortunately, the promotion required that I transfer to the firm's suburban Chicago office within 1 month. Trish and I immediately put our house on the market and began looking for a new home near my new office. We quickly found a house in a new subdivision being constructed. It wasn't our dream home but it was a good value for the money and it was what we could afford at the time.
I was not looking forward to moving but at least we didn't have any kids and all the necessary items that come along with them yet. We put in an offer on the house, signed the closing paperwork, and moved in within 3 weeks. As a bonus, Trish also found a new job at the local hospital during the same period of time. Much to the appreciation of my firm, we were 1 week ahead of schedule and I was working in the new office before the end of April.
Trish and I quickly settled into a daily routine and began to feel at home. Our new jobs were going well and we were anxious to establish some kind of social life in our new place. We began attending a local non-denominational Christian church and introduced ourselves to the few neighbors we had. Many of the houses, including the two on either side of ours, were still being constructed. As each house was completed, we did our best to meet the new neighbors.
After a couple months, the house next door to ours was completed and I arrived home one Wednesday evening to see movers just finishing their work unloading a large moving truck. Trish and I agreed that we should give the new neighbors a couple days to get settled into their home before going over to introduce ourselves.
The following Saturday we saw both their cars were in the driveway and thought we would go say hello. We walked next door and pushed the doorbell button. After a couple minutes without an answer, I pushed the button again and heard the pitter patter of children's feet. Still no answer. We guessed they must not be able to come to the door right now and decided to try again another time.
We tried several more times over the course of the next week. Each time with the same results as the first. One of the attempts was immediately after I heard the family's minivan pull in the driveway and car doors shut. Still the same result. No answer.
Undeterred, I began to pay more attention to their schedule patterns in the hope of catching them as they arrived home. In my observations, I noticed that one of their cars, an older white Chevrolet sedan, rarely left the driveway. Conversely, the maroon Chrysler minivan came and went constantly.
While working from home one day, I had my laptop and design drawings spread across the dining room table at the front of the house. I heard a car approach and looked out the front window to see the now familiar maroon minivan pull in the driveway and a lady begin unloading two boys and several shopping bags. I rolled my eyes and let out an audible groan of annoyance at what I saw. Our new neighbor was probably in her mid-20's and quite small in stature, not more than 5'-1" or 5'-2" tall. I guessed the boys to be around kindergarten and first grade. One was obviously a little older than the other but not by much.
It was not the fact that there would be kids living next door that caused my displeasure. It was what they were all wearing. The boys were wearing school uniforms of blue dress pants and white button down shirts. Mom was wearing a dull blue color full-length dress that was quite oversized and frumpy looking. Her hair was pulled back into a bun and she wore chunky white shoes like nurses wore 20 years ago. This could only mean one thing...my new neighbors were ultra-conservative Christians. Probably just the kind of holier-than-thou religious people I had come to despise. Argh.
After a couple minutes, I managed to suppress my judgmental feelings and put my laptop aside. I exited the front door and walked across my lawn toward them. The boys saw me and immediately scurried into the house like they saw a ghost. Mom had her back to me as she unloaded the minivan.
"Hi there neighbor!" I called out as continued walking across my lawn.
Mom turned toward me with a surprisingly pleasant smile and said, "Well hi neighbor. Nice to meet you!"
