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!"
"Nice to meet you too. I'm Brad and my wife is Trish. Unfortunately, she is at work right now. We have both been looking forward to meeting our new neighbors."
There was a brief awkward pause, then she responded, "I'm Rebecca, and I'm sorry for not answering the door when you came over before. My husband, Jonathon, is quite shy and resists meeting people outside our church family."
Just as I thought. Because of my past experiences with some holier-than-thou people, I knew what Rebecca said was church-speak gobbly gook to politely say they are not supposed to socialize, or even speak, with "heathens" outside their church. That also explains why the boys raced in the house when they saw me.
But then she surprised me and continued to tell me about her family, "Jonathan works from home for a missionary organization and is a volunteer lay pastor at our church. Luke is in pre-kindergarten and little Jonathan is in kindergarten at Kane County Christian Academy."
"I stay at home and attempt to keep Jonathan and the boys happy," she said with a pleasant smile.
Rebecca's expression changed a little as she said, "It was nice to meet you. I better get this last bag of groceries in the house before the ice cream melts."
"Ok. Nice to meet you too neighbor. You know where to find us if you need anything," I replied and walked back toward my house as Rebecca closed the van door and headed into her garage.
I went back into the house and sat down with my laptop to continue my work. But for some reason, my mind drifted back to my short conversation with Rebecca. She said the words that indicated she shouldn't be talking to me but she continued telling me about her family with a pleasant smile and perky voice. These seemed to be signals that the short conversation wasn't just what she had to say to be polite. She seemed to want to talk. Not at all what I was expecting when I saw her frumpy dress and hair bun. Perplexing.
Over the next few weeks, I saw Jonathan outside a couple times. Pardon the stereotype description, but he is exactly what you would expect from an uptight church guy. Mid-20's in age, medium height, maybe 5'-6" or 5'-7" tall, extremely skinny, thick rim glasses with thick lenses, dress pants, dress shoes, button down shirt, and a generally mousy appearance. Even his walk lacked any type of confidence and made him appear as if he would run and hide under a rock at any moment.
My initial impression was confirmed when I attempted to say hello to him on two separate occasions. The first time was the evening of the day I first met Rebecca. Jonathan came out of their house and apparently didn't realize I was outside weeding our front landscape bed. I saw him and as I started to stand up from my weeding said, "Hi Jonathan," loudly enough to be heard. He quickly looked down at the ground and scurried back into the house.
The second time was later that week. I was outside doing more yard work when he pulled into the drive in the white sedan. As he got out of the car, I again said "Hi Jonathan." Once again, he looked straight down at the ground and quickly entered the house.
Maybe it is my outgoing personality or maybe it was a subconscious desire to break Jonathan from his "shy" religious snobbery but, as of that day, I made it my personal quest to get him to at least say hello to me.
