Assumptions and how wrong they can be....

So, picture this story from my life: an old friend--someone you have known 20 years. I met him on an LDS mission when he was assigned as my companion. In those days he was beautiful, fun, and really easy to get along with. We were companions twice (both times I had a serious crush on him). Came back from the mission, arrived at BYU and ran into him a week later and started hanging out as friends, even took some classes together, and became roommates for a year.

He came from a wonderful family, wealth and love combined. When we were roommates, he met and then married a beautiful girl from a similar family. They've been married 16 years by now, and have 3 kids. Great job, doing well financially, living in a great salt lake east bench neighborhood. I assumed life was roses--sometimes thinking--why couldn't my life be like that. I thought he had it all.....

Today i went to lunch with him. I only see him once or twice a year. As we were walking into the restaurant he asked me how things were, and I had to tell him the truth about my marriage ending, wife moving, and things of that sort (though I didn't share the whole story). He said to me--yeah, I know what those kind of problems are like. I looked at him, wondering what he meant.

We got inside, ordered, and he told me that they had had spells of marriage problems throughout their marriage, mostly because they were completely incompatible sexually. He wanted it, she never did. They had saved their marriage once with counseling, but now were back to the same situation.

I was surprised by this, having been through all of it myself. I admitted to him I hated going to church these days, feeling so strange about it, etc.

Then he told me he had been completely inactive for 4 years. His wife longer. He told me about how he never felt any sort of spiritual confirmation of the church, and had lived it just for his family. (mission included). He told me about all his questioning, and how he just couldn't bear to be a hypocrite any more. He was really reluctant to tell me this, but he must have felt like now was the time. He was assuming I would be really disappointed in him, and give him a lecture, or think less of him as a person, and told me as much.

I told him how wrong he was on that assumption. Suddenly realizing how wrong I had been on all my assumptions about his life. We talked quite awhile about all this. We talked about church doctrines on various things, homosexuality included, and how problematic it all was.

Wow. So I sit here this afternoon realizing how difficult life can be for all of us, wondering why on earth God made us all so sexually incompatible. Wondering why many things are the way they are...

So I think back to various BYU days I spent with him, and with a girl that was in love with him. We played, ate out, did some really fun things. The following year he was married. A couple years later I was married, and a year after that this girl was married. Each of us have kids, all three of us ended up in a basically failed marriage. (His wife even told him to go have an affair). the reasons slightly different, but all coming back to some sort of incompatibility.

Good grief. Its a miracle when people make it in marriage--gay or straight. As I think about it, the only really great couples I can think of are perfectly matched in that "sexual way" as well as other ways.

There's my stunning moment of today....