Evidence of Love

by John Bloom

  “But what about when I suggested we end it? Remember what you said then? You said, ‘No, you have to see this through to the end,’ and ‘Just because something happens once doesn’t mean it will happen again,’ and things to that effect. Now that you can’t perform with Betty one time, suddenly you want to end it. That’s a double standard.”

  “I’m not saying we should definitely end it. I’m just saying we should think about it. I don’t want to hurt Betty.”

  The issue was left unresolved after the lunch meeting, but they talked several times by phone over the next two or three weeks. Each time Candy grew colder and more antagonistic; she couldn’t bear the thought of Allan having so little regard for her feelings. But then she would cry and feel better and tell him that she loved him.

  “I do love you, Allan.”

  “I know, but we’ve become too close. We’ve become so close that I’m afraid I don’t love Betty anymore, and that was never a part of our agreement. We’ve both been using each other to fill gaps in our marriages, and that’s not right.”

  “It’s just so unfair.”

  After the Friday-night incident Betty Gore fell into a deep despondency that lasted several weeks. At first Allan thought he could talk her out of it by spending more time with her. But soon she was complaining of soreness in her neck and shoulders, and sudden pains of the sort she had when they first moved to Plano. She was sullen and depressed much of the time, especially since she had to start teaching again in early September, and still had the burden of a two-month-old baby. She started seeing her family doctor in Plano again, and he prescribed pain pills to help alleviate some of her complaints. Privately he suspected the ailments were all stress-related.

  Later that month Allan satisfied an old ambition of his and quit Rockwell International to join a tiny, virtually new company called ECS Telecommunications. The company had only one product—a telephone voice-message-answering system—but Allan had good friends there, ex-Rockwell employees who dared him to take the chance with a small, ground-floor firm. The only way Allan could have advanced at Rockwell would have been to take jobs that required extensive travel—out of the question, given Betty’s fear of being alone. ECS was offering more money and stock besides. It was something exciting and something that Allan really wanted to do, if he could get Betty to go along with it. It took a while, but he convinced her that it wasn’t too risky, that he wouldn’t have to travel much, and that it wasn’t going to require more time than he was spending now. Betty reluctantly agreed—if she hadn’t, Allan wouldn’t have done it, because he wouldn’t have been able to stand the complaining—but she remained fearful and nervous, as she was about any new venture.

  The next time Allan talked to Candy, he said that, because of the new job and the additional work, he wouldn’t be able to see her as much. Candy was upset; she was beginning to fear the inevitable end of the affair. But she asked Allan if they couldn’t meet at least once more. They met at the Como for quick, unsatisfying sex, then spent an hour and a half discussing how they could live without each other. Candy was obviously having second thoughts about breaking off the affair; she had grown too dependent on Allan’s kindness. The next time they met, they didn’t even bother to go to the Como. Instead Candy fixed a picnic lunch and they drove to a public park in North Dallas and spread their blanket under a tree. The weather was so nice that it gave a bittersweet aura to the conversation.

  “I love you so much, Allan. I don’t know if I can make it if we break up.”

  Allan didn’t know what to say. He said the usual things about wanting to patch up his marriage.

  “Is Betty better?”

  “She wants to go to Marriage Encounter now.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I asked her once before, but she always said she didn’t think we needed it. I think maybe it will do us both some good.”

  “You’re really going?”

  “We’re going to the next one—in October.”

  “I think Marriage Encounter is going to be the end for us.”

  “Oh no, not necessarily. Let’s see what happens first.”

  On the next volleyball league night, Betty Gore and Judy Swain both had to sit out the game with minor injuries. While they were watching, Judy tried to make small talk.

  “Why aren’t you playing?”

  “I hurt my arm,” said Betty. “I don’t know what it is, there must be something wrong with a nerve or something. Maybe I hurt it reaching for something, or maybe I was holding the baby in the wrong position. I’ve been feeling pretty bad lately. I had some soreness in my neck last week, and sometimes my legs ache, but you know, I haven’t really felt all that well ever since Bethany was born. It’s tough with a baby and the teaching and everything.”

  “You do sound busy,” said Judy.

  “But I’d never give up teaching, even with the two kids. I just love it. I even miss it during the summers.”

  “I guess I’m different. I don’t mind just keeping the kids and the house.” Betty listened attentively as Judy told her about the pinched nerve in her neck that wouldn’t go away. Betty nodded sympathetically. She seemed very lonely. Judy wondered what was bothering her so much that she would pour out all her ailments to a stranger—and the one who had given her the pink jumpsuit, at that. When they parted that night, Betty acted as though she had made a new friend.

  Two weeks later Betty returned to her doctor, extremely tense and complaining of aches and pains in her shoulders. When he took her blood pressure, it registered dangerously high, indicating extreme stress or physical exertion. He prescribed more painkillers and muscle relaxants and asked her to come back in a few days. Betty felt a little better after talking to the doctor. What she didn’t tell him was that all of her anxieties were centered on the coming weekend: she and Allen were about to be ‘encountered.”

  Dunfey’s Royal Motor Coach Inn, a fake medieval castle full of tunnels and turrets and gables and the regal purples and scarlets of an adult Disneyland, was the site each month of the weekend called Methodist Marriage Encounter. It was less a counseling session than a total-immersion experience. Though it had the tacit approval of the church, it was run completely by laymen, and it began with a Friday-night dinner at which the rules were explained. Spouses were expected to be at each other’s side at all times. Televisions were not to be turned on in the rooms. Newspapers were forbidden. Nothing was to get in the way of the couples communicating about their feelings.

  “Communicating” and “feelings”—those were the watchwords of Marriage Encounter, as Allan and Betty were to find out soon after arriving at Dunfey’s and checking into Room 321. They were led into a large meeting hall, with three dozen or so other couples, and introduced to their Encounter leaders, all married couples who had previously gone through the program. It was explained that the couples onstage would talk openly about their marriages, but no one else was expected to speak except in the privacy of their motel rooms. The procedure was that the leaders would propose a question—the first one was “Why did I come here this weekend and what do I hope to gain?”—and then the couples would retire to their rooms to write answers to the question in their individual Marriage Encounter spiral notebooks. (Under the Marriage Encounter insignia on the cover was the Bible verse, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”) Once they had written their answers, they were expected to exchange notebooks “with a kiss,” read each other’s answers, and then discuss how those answers made them feel. When their time was up, they would be summoned back to the main room for more testimonials, followed by additional questions. The group leaders gave them printed sheets explaining “how to write a love letter,” “how to dialogue,” and “what is a feeling?” and assured them that everything written in the notebooks would be strictly private, known to the couples themselves only.

  Allan and Betty, like most couples entering the program, were skeptical at first. It sounded silly, writing things down in a notebook. But they had n
o choice in the matter. That’s what they were told to do. They were sent to their rooms. They started to write. Allan didn’t know what to put down. Finally he wrote:

  “I wanted to come here because I could see from the examples of Richard and JoAnn, Stu and Diane and especially David and Elaine that it could strengthen or rebuild a marriage. I think too that I haven’t felt real close to you for some time and I don’t like that. I hope I can learn to talk to you. I hope you can learn to talk to me. I want to be able to understand why you do the things you do, and I want to be able to tell you what I want.”

  Betty’s notebook answer was more specific:

  “I came for several reasons. First—for a weekend of relaxation which will probably help my nerves. The relaxation is a period free from the pressures of life at home (not that that is bad) just that it takes lots of energy and time. Second—and most important to get off by ourselves together. It’s been a long time since we went to Switzerland. I miss not being able to really be alone and share things, but the time we’re home together as a family are too great too. I’m not a person to be left alone at all. I want my husband with me and that’s what we’ll have this wekend—just us!!

  “I hope to gain a little more freedom in expression between us. I don’t often hold back my feelings unless I’m mad—then not for long but I feel that sometimes you don’t let me know when things are bothering you. We need to work on this!”

  As they read over their answers and then discussed what they had written, Allan was pleased to see that Betty really was responding to this concept. After a few minutes, one of the group leaders came by and knocked on their door. It was time for the next session.

  The questions became progressively more personal. The next session was called “Focus on Feelings.” The couples were asked to retire to their rooms and answer three questions:

  What do I like best about you? How do I feel about that?

  What do I like best about myself? HDIFAT? [one of many official Marriage Encounter abbreviations]

  What do I like best about us? HDIFAT?

  Suddenly the Gores were in a realm that brought out emotions Betty had never been able to express before. To the first question, she wrote, “The thing I like best about you is your calmness and your ability to look at everything squarely. You don’t know (or maybe you do) how this affects me.… You’re my tranquilizer.…” She liked herself, on the other hand, for her devotion to little things: doing the dishes, seeing that the toys were put away, duties that were important to her even though Allan thought she “overemphasized” them. And her final answer—what she liked about them as a couple—was “that special feeling I get when we’re together … Warm and happy—It’s horrible when we’re not—it’s like I’m only half me—maybe that means I’m not secure enough. I don’t think so—your presence is just important to me.”

  Allan’s answers were much more prosaic. He liked Betty’s “dedication to raising the children and [her] job,” even though he sometimes resented the attention her teaching got. He liked himself for his calmness and rationality. He liked them for their “promising future.” He felt “secure, but not totally fulfilled yet.”

  The “encounter” session was in full swing on Saturday, and as the day wore on, through meals and pep talks and instructions on how to DILD (“describe in loving detail”) or “share our uniqueness” or “open up the gift of dialogue,” and as the questions got progressively more personal and incisive, the group started taking on all the outward appearances of a love-in. Encouraged to show affection publicly, couples started emerging from their rooms with arms entwined, holding hands during the meeting-room sessions, and exchanging light kisses at meals. Everyone was issued a name tag. Allan’s said “Allan and Betty Gore.” Betty’s said “Betty and Allan Gore.” The couples were encouraged not to carry on any conversations with others without including their spouse entirely. Given the total immersion, the lack of outside influences, the complete concentration on one person for an entire weekend, it wasn’t surprising that remarkable things were beginning to happen. Allan was beginning to realize why, when couples emerged from Marriage Encounter, they were likely to become evangelists for the cause.

  During their time together in Room 321, Allan and Betty were certainly starting to feel closer. Responding to a question about “masks,” Allan wrote, “I wear the mask of the loving husband and father because I want my wife to be happy and fulfilled … sometimes I want to have close relationships with persons outside our family and to do so makes me feel that I am taking away from what I should be giving to them … I wear the mask of the ‘super-worker’ … I tend to discard the ideas of others in favor of my own.” But once he had written it, he decided not to show it to Betty (an allowable Marriage Encounter option). Then when the couples were asked to write a “love letter on feelings of disillusionment,” Allan unloosed the dikes: “I have feelings of boredom, emptiness, and sort of loneliness. I don’t really know why, but I do. I don’t feel like I really know what makes you happy, and that’s frustrating.… Sometimes I feel like what is most important to you is your classroom—not me. That may not be true, but sometimes I feel jealous of that classroom.”

  Betty’s “love letters” on Saturday began with a confession of her shortcomings (“I wear the mask of the ‘Do it all’ person”) and led up to her most deep-seated fears. “So many times,” she began one letter, “I feel that sex is an area that we are a long way apart. I guess part of it is the way I was brought up—that sex is dirty and wrong—and for a long time the fear of becoming pregnant when I didn’t want to be.… I want to be desirable to you—and I want to make you happy.” In response to another question, she touched on an even more general anxiety:

  “I guess the thing that I find hardest to talk about is the fear of what is to come. If only all of life would be mapped out so we knew when was the best time to buy a house, when to move, when your parents would die and all the rest of the things we wonder about.

  “It’s hard for me to talk about sex too (more of the upbringing stuff). Sometimes it’s so hard to feel calm and quiet as you need to be to enjoy sex. I guess the relaxation part is the hardest part for me. That’s why in Switz. a little (or a lot) of wine helped. It relaxed me so I could really be free to enjoy it all. I’ve tried several times to have some but what we’ve gotten tastes bad, or Alisa’s up, or it’s a school night etc. There’s always a drawback. Does this mean I’m not comfortable with sex if I need wine to make love more pleasant? I don’t know.

  “Also—you know that I’ve not been very happy at Lucas at church. I guess we’ll just wait out the minister because the friends are there that mean so much. But the extent of discontent I feel with the services and the minister ruin and almost diminish any feelings that I gain from church services. How can you feel close to God and one another when the minister doesn’t?… I need a minister who really says something and is sincere. I’m not sure ours is either. I don’t enjoy singing in the choir that much. I feel inadequate as a singer and so why waste my time? Maybe all these feelings are just something that I’ve invented out of nothing. But I always feel that the choir sounds pretty bad, so why waste time on it.”

  When the sexual topics started showing up in Betty’s letters, Allan felt unable to respond. How could he tell her that one of the reasons he didn’t want sex as much anymore is that he was sleeping with Candy? The weekend was supposed to bring about total honesty, but that was one detail he intended not to reveal. When they went to bed Saturday night, exhausted from the long day, they made love before going to sleep—and Allan could tell that the weekend was going to be good for both of them.

  Sunday is the final, and the most special day of Marriage Encounter. It begins with religious services, then more group sessions, and then each couple is given a mimeographed sheet. On it is the Big Question of the weekend: “What are my reasons for wanting to go on living?” The couples retire to their rooms for ninety minutes of writing in their notebooks, followed
by ninety minutes of dialogue—a total of three hours to do what is called the “matrimonial evaluation.” It’s a session intended to bring out the intense emotions that have been building throughout the weekend. After the “go on living” session, couples frequently emerge from their rooms with tear-stained faces and tousled hair. In the case of the Gores, it was a totally engrossing—and satisfying—experience. They declared their love over and over, both in letters and the dialogue. They recalled their favorite times together. They remembered their impressions when they first met. Near the end of his letter, Allan wrote: “Before this weekend … I was beginning to feel like I didn’t know if I really wanted to live with You. But just in the short time we’ve had together this weekend, I have realized that what I was feeling was not ‘I don’t like you’ but more like I don’t feel excited about you because I’m too used to the way things are.… I want to share a lot more of your feelings and I want to be able to share mine with you.”

  Betty was equally ecstatic, but near the end of her letter, she turned suddenly solemn:

  “Here I sit crying because I am so happy and so proud to be your wife. I’ve known that all along, but when you really stop to think about it we are so lucky to have each other. Let’s don’t let anything come between us. We’ve been through so much, all of it we can look back at as good (except the times you were gone for a long time). Those times I’ll never see as good. They were very difficult and when I think of your being gone more I remember those times with dread. The aloneness, the coldness of a house that really wasn’t a home without you there, the fear for your safety, because you were where I was not, and I couldn’t make sure you were okay. I never really felt fear for my safety at home alone, but the feeling of being alone is the worst possible one to have. It’s like you’re in a dark tunnel and you’ve got a long ways to go to the light. The light isn’t there till you’re home again safe and sound. And sometimes the times you were gone made the tunnel very long.”