The Unity Candle is a Lie

“Most people are going to have two or three marriages in their adult life. Some of us will have them with the same person.” ~ Esther Perel

The born again, again experience is intensely personal, but it often happens with unfortunate timing, like, after you’ve been married for 15 years, so that you have to go through this personal experience, while having committed to life with another person. My husband and I met each other at the school known as the Harvard of Evangelicals and lived into the Christian college cliche of achieving the “Ring by Spring,” where young protegees of purity culture try to seal the deal before graduating from a campus full of eligible Christian singles. Well, for us, the ring came after graduation, but we had kissed which basically meant we had to marry. After 21 years of seminary, having babies, serving on the mission field together; of church and potlucks and teaching Sunday school; of struggle and trauma and recovery, I wistfully said to him one night: “I'm not the same person you married.” There are traces of me, the same assertiveness, curiosity, drive to achieve, lingering in the ways I carry myself these days, but I am fundamentally different. I’ve been born again, again. You cannot change your mind about the deepest values of who you are, who you belong to, for what purposes you exist, where you’re go after you die–you don’t get to rearrange everything about being human and claim to be the same person. My husband is now decidedly married to a different woman. “Sorry,” I whisper to him, apologetic that I’ve somehow tricked him into marrying this current iteration of me, not exactly the God-fearing wife he signed up for. He’s still with me, so I think he’s okay with it. 

Some marriages last, others don’t. According to the latest Census, the divorce rate in the United States is 50%, ranking as the 6th highest rate of divorce in the world. The factor that contributes to the highest likelihood of divorce, at 60%, is if you marry between the ages of 20-25. Doing some quick calculations, those of us who got our Ring by Spring lands us at 22 years old, and because no born-again-ers have long engagements given we can’t have sex until the wedding night, we end up marrying between the ages of 20-25, and according to the data, have a 60% likelihood of ending our marriage. The Census does indicate that those who have strong religious beliefs are 14% less likely to divorce, but what if one or both partners begins to question their religious beliefs? As hard as it is to begin rattling the pillars that hold up our institutions of church and belief system, it gets scary when the institution that contains the person you wake up next to in bed comes under scrutiny. Literally a little too close to home.

Those of us who are born again know deeply why there’s a 14% less likelihood to divorce. Divorce in the church is seen as a sin, a moral failing, and the punishment for it will be dealt by the divine and enforced by the church. A divorced person, and particularly the woman, is often shamed and shunned from their community. I’ll never forget talking to a kind, gentle evangelical leader who knew my friend was being abused in her marriage and despite his own temperament and demeanor, declared it is better she stay married and endure the abuse. It chilled me to the bone. Marriage, the institution, takes priority over a person’s well-being. For those who hold to orthodoxy and want to belong to the community, the religious mandate to stay married is stern. 

Having a religious mandate as a foundation to my marriage made things easier in some ways, which is, of course, why that mandate exists. My husband and I never considered divorce as an option, in the tumultuous years of our early marriage, when we were young and bright eyed but didn’t know ourselves very well, we would fight and struggle, but we never went for the nuclear, final decision to divorce, we knew we had to stick with this till death do us part. It compelled us to stay loyal, to find solutions, to not give up easily. It gave us that 14% advantage. But when, 10-15 years into our marriage, we found ourselves dismantling all the reasons to have this mandate in place, we had to ask ourselves, what happens if there is no mandate? What happens if we don’t have to stay married? I think it means we have to ask ourselves, do we want to stay married. 

Becoming born again, again while married is having to develop two relationships at the same time. When I first married my husband at the tender age of 23, I had but one relationship to tend to, the one in my marriage. I was defined by this one role– a wife. I remember meeting new people at the seminary we attended, introducing myself to my new classmates and feeling like they hadn’t really met me until they had met my husband. I had folded my fire into his, embodying the unity candle we had lit together at our wedding. I was who we were. When I began to wake up to the indoctrination that made me lose my Self, I embarked on a mission to find her and to cultivate a relationship with her. And that meant I now had to grow two relationships, how to enter into more depth and intimacy with my husband, and how to do exactly the same with myself. Because in order to ask the question and be able to answer with authenticity, “do we want to stay married,” I had to grow some muscles to flex the first part of that question: what do I want?

Those of us with religious trauma struggle greatly with this very simple question. What do you want? What are your desires? What makes your heart sing? When you have been told as a child to obey external authorities, as an adolescent to bury your desires as sinful, and defined as an adult by submission to institutions such as the church and marriage, the question, ‘what do you want’, is formidable indeed.

Whether it’s marriage, friendship, or relationship with an organization or company, it is not healthy unless every person involved in the relationship enters into it as a whole person with enthusiastic consent. A partnership when one party is a shadow of themselves, is not mutually flourishing, it’s oppressive. When we were born again, we became a shadow of ourselves, to become born again, again is to get whole, to reclaim for ourselves authenticity and to consent to what is in our lives. Consent is not a one time thing, a mutually honoring relationship is to make space for consent to be withdrawn at any time. If we empower women to know themselves well enough to know what we want, and give ourselves permission to withdraw consent from being in a marriage, many of us will take the option to divorce. And that is a good thing, because no human being should be forced into a relationship, or stay in one, without their consent. 

But consent is also a large, complicated space. I can consent to something that I don’t want, which feels paradoxical, but is often the choice I make in my own marriage. Dan Savage, popular sex and relationship advice podcaster, calls it the “price of admission.” I may choose to pay the price of not always having my own desires and needs met, because I want to have this person in my life. Consent in relationships isn’t always getting what we want, it is choosing to pay the cost of admission in order to enter a relationship with someone else. My husband loves salads and as for me and my Taiwanese palate, we like our vegetables cooked. My price of admission to be with him is to eat salads at our family dinners. Paying a price of admission is required of every relationship. Sometimes it feels like having to pay a price of admission is oppressive, but it’s not, because the locus of control is still with the person paying the price of admission. Me having the agency to choose to pay the price of admission to be with my partner is very different from slowly erasing ourselves to meld into another person. 

In the born again, again, as we regain our agency in this rebirth, the questions we can be asking of ourselves is whether we consent to pay the price of admission. Some people who faith shifts, or even exits the church or deconverts, decide to withdraw their consent from a marriage that was founded on an orthodoxy they have rejected. This is a divorce to celebrate because any relationship that doesn’t have both parties’ consent does not contribute to the well being of the couple, the family, and to society as a whole. Others may find their faith changing in shape and are willing to pay the price of admission for a partner who is on a different path. That was my story. Over the years, as I slowly began changing my views and emerging into my own self and power, I would share my transformation, which is forged out of a million little changes, with my husband. And I listened while he shifted as well. I wouldn’t have known or used the language I’m using now, but along the way I kept giving consent to being in this marriage we’re in. I kept not wanting to leave. There were periods of our life together where I had deconstructed a doctrine he still held on to, and times where he was ready to let go of a habit from our evangelical days I couldn’t quite yet let go. He has the privileges of being socialized as a white man, with a certain entitlement to take up space the way I did not. And I had been trained as a woman to develop an attention to emotional and relational dynamics which was a great tool for spiritual deconstruction. We borrowed power from each other, and sometimes we butted heads with the ferocity of our disagreement. But what neither of us did was abandon our authenticity or autonomy, and in not abandoning ourselves, we also knew the importance of honoring each other’s path. 

The unity candle is a lie, our fires don’t burn brighter when lit into one candle, they burn brighter when each individual flame grows. After we picked up each of our own perspective candles and lit the unity candle together at our wedding more than 21 years ago, we bent over and blew out our own flames. We mostly did that because we had no idea what we were supposed to do. It was our first wedding ceremony and we were 23 and 25 years old, we were inexperienced. Which was pretty indicative of who we were as a pair of young, evangelical bride and groom. We didn’t know very much about our own selves, having spent our coming of age being told who we were, and so by default to the traditions that raised us, we just snuffed out our own flames. Years later, we would watch the video of that scene from our own wedding, turn to each other with part shame and part compassion for our naive younger selves and we would agree: never again. We stay lit as our damn selves.