For several years I have been recalling a scene from our winter vacations. My sister was quarreling with my father. Not understanding what the row was all about, I asked him why she was mad at him.
I was barely nine years old. The words that Dad addressed to me went completely over my head: “You know, Tommy,” he said, “sometimes people are unable to get along and can no longer live together. That’s what it’s like with your mother and me. It happens that a man falls in love with another woman with whom he has more things in common. I have fallen in love with such a woman. We share like interests, get along splendidly, and feel very comfortable with each other.”
I looked deep into Dad’s eyes. Almost unconsciously, I replied with words that trouble me to this day: “Right, Dad. I understand.”
Not long afterwards my parents split up. Because of the difficult situation they created for my sister and me, they said they would cut us more slack in life so as to alleviate the harm done to us. As I got older, I was allowed to come home late, go wherever I wanted, bring home whomever I pleased. I saw Dad rarely. My sense of self-worth rested on what remained of his authority and on the acceptance of my immediate social environment, which exacted certain ways of behavior. Already in grade school I had a problem with self-abuse. Those who didn’t do it were immediately made fun of and called names. At the technical college I was soon persuaded that I needed a girlfriend to have sex with—and this would be a successful relationship.
In those days Dad used to take me to his firm’s integration events where I would meet people I knew. Most of them lived in common law relationships and saw little need for marriage. I saw nothing wrong in this, especially since my own Dad had a woman he slept with. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to do the same?
My whole baggage of experience hinged around “respecting” my girl, which consisted in saying nice things to her and steering the situation toward the bedroom. Whenever the subject of “going together” came up, or acknowledging that we were a couple, my immediate response would be, “out of the question.” I promised myself I would never get tied down. Every more serious problem would be a pretext for breaking off the relationship and burning my bridges. Every relationship was focused on satisfying my needs. I took no account of the other person’s needs. And so it would always end.
I am grateful to my mother for the fact (as I learned several years later) that she prayed for me. Thanks to her prayers and the grace of God, I returned to the Church in my fifth year of technical college. I received the Sacrament of Confirmation. That event led to on my conversion. I wanted to break with sin and build something that my parents were unable to build: a relationship based on the authentic love of Christ, with one person, and in a state of chastity.
But I was too weak. I could not even define love if I tried. Although I struggled hard, the errors of the past still made themselves all too well known. I fell into lethargy. I went to church once a week; the boundaries of sin began to blur in my mind. Chastity, as far as I was concerned, meant “not having sex.” So I wouldn’t have sex. But this did not prevent me from sleeping at my girlfriend’s and “necking” passionately with her. Moreover, I could not shake my old habit of self-abuse. Not only was I miring myself deeper in sin, but I was also dragging in with me the person I had been with for two years; and all the while I nursed the hope that this time I would succeed in persevering in love.
For a number of reasons we broke up, though on amicable terms. I entered into another relationship. This time I did not even try to put up a struggle with the difficulties besetting us.
Eventually I told myself this could not go on. I could no longer remain passive, escaping my responsibilities or the compromises that life sometimes obliges one to make.
Not long after this next break up—providentially, as I am convinced—I met my present wife. Through her God began to act decisively in my life. He made Himself known to me and drew me to His bosom. It was through my wife also (or rather through our mutual friend) that I discovered the Movement of Pure Hearts. If it had not been for my wife and the grace of Jesus, I would never have happened upon this community.
I can honestly say that this community saved our marriage. It taught me what I had been seeking all my life—authentic love. It was there that I learned that love was a boundless gift of the self to another person and that, if one wanted to learn how to love, then the best teacher of true love was Jesus—not the media or one’s school mates.
Together with Jesus we managed to overcome our many difficulties and problems. I am absolutely convinced that it is only through Him that my dreams of enjoying love and a real relationship are being fulfilled. Glory to God!
Tom