The Existential Bliss of Loving a Man Who Will Never Love You as Much as He Loves Jesus

an essay on girlhood.

I do not speak for all women, and I recognize that I am likely some sort of outlier here. I am surrounded by Christian women, I am a mother, I am active in my church, but I am a Christian only in name, and I suspect that there are many more out there who are like me. Maybe some day I will grow to love Jesus, but I don’t. I don’t believe there ever was a Jesus Christ and if there was, I don’t think he’d be divine. I am utterly agnostic about the Big Man, Himself. Ultimately, I love my children, I love my husband and I love my community, but I am almost certainly an atheist. You understand then why I am writing this anonymously.

My husband is the man of my dreams, and the man of many women’s dreams, except that he does not choose me first, and he never will. And this has always made him more attractive than any other man I have ever met. For this reason, among many others, I am ruthlessly loyal. The man is a smoke show, he is a firefighter, he is a great father and he is fundamentally disloyal to me. Not with other women, he is not a cheater, in fact he never could, but he loves someone more than he could ever love his family. He loves Jesus. I don’t know if this makes him a better man, I suspect that with or without John 3:16 he would still be the best man I’ve ever known. But he would never make me as rabidly horny as he does without Christ between us.

I don’t talk much about libido in my personal life, I mostly don’t need to, which makes this fun to discuss here. My hubby is a great and caring lover. It’s always important to him that I finish and in our sinful youths we had both had sexual partners before, so it wasn’t like we were unpracticed virgins, but our sex is relatively vanilla. But it is better than any other kink or sweaty, drug fueled sex-fest that you could imagine. If you could imagine laying on your back in missionary, bouncing along to the same steady rhythm as ever being the greatest thing ever, just know that this is only achievable if your husband loves everything less than a single idea. This single idea, that of Christ is the sole thing that motivates his actions. When sex is a barrier or insult to him and his Jesus, I can tell. It is too loving, too involved, too obsessive over pleasure. But most of the time pleasure does not matter to this man. Like Job, he would allow the world to crumble before giving up his God. Including his children. Including me. To my hubby, we are gifts to be cherished, an appetizer to the main course of meeting his ultimate hero after death.

I never considered myself a chaser or a pickme, and realistically I am not. In college, I never followed men around with those puppy-dog eyes like my peers did. When they showed interest, I simply did not care. When they did not show interest, I did not notice. But then I met my husband whose name I will no offer here. I met him and he showed interest, but not that boyish fixation that drives men to strip clubs and internet porn. He saw me and through his eyes I could tell that he liked me, but not more than something else. At first I assumed he was already married or seeing someone else and I couldn’t tolerate him. But he orbited the groups I was in, and we continued crossing paths. Eventually we spoke. One of the first questions he asked was whether or not I had faith. I was raised Protestant, but loosely so, so I lied. I told him yes just to see how he would respond, if not to chase him away. But he lit up. And for hours we discussed the lofty ideas of his faith; I should say he discussed it. And I am used to the smile and nod of listening to men yammer about their interests, but for the first time, this man’s interests were interesting, not because I found them truthful, but because he did. And he became an object of fascination. I found myself looking for him, finding him on “accident” around campus. We kept meeting, kept talking. Then I found myself in a bible study with him. At first I felt like decoration. But then I realized he wanted me to love his first love the same way he did. And I wanted him to want me. So I played the part.

It’s been almost 15 years of this role play. 15 years and it’s a fantasy I never want to end. I know many older couples slowly start to lose their faith, but not us. Our faith is as strong as ever. Our love is not as strong as our faith, it shouldn’t be. But I chase it. I vie for his attention in church and small groups and potlucks. I want to tear my clothes off and spread my legs to him, yet even if I did, he would not look with his hands over his bible. If he did look, the fantasy would collapse and my love for him would too.

Some women chase men who come home stinking of fish, and those men always cheat, always leave. We don’t want this man because he will destroy us, we want this man because he could. It is a trust exercise. I am putting my little life in your hands, will you cradle it? The fishman will never cradle it. But the Christian man will. The Christian man recognizes that the woman in his life is a gift, and gifts must be cherished because all gifts come from the Lord. And the worst lovemaking is better than anything else, because of its inherent existential threat. This man could sell his whole life away and become St Francis of Assisi. He doesn’t though. He walks the thin line that cuts fantasy and reality. He lives in that world as I do.

I may be an atheist at heart, but I have faith. Not in God, not in Jesus. I have faith in my hubby. And that’s the thing about faith. When talking about God Christians always say that sin is innate, that we will always fail in perfect worship, that there is some circular reason that compels us to do the impossible when we worship, and that Christ’s intercession is what fills the gaps. I will never extract from my husband the love that I have for him. But for as imperfectly as he loves me, it is me who fills the gaps where he puts faith above me. It is this unattainable fulfillment that makes me God.

We can never love God fully, so God has to love Himself in our stead; God must create a fantasy for himself where he becomes a man and sacrifices Himself entirely. God must die in the name of love He can never achieve. After all, all of God’s creation is a fantasy made true. God can speak the Real into being by way of his own imagination. And if God were to be loved wholly, there would never need to be a God in the first place. That is my fantasy, that is my life.

I would not have it any other way.

I love my husband. I love my life. You can judge me if you’d like, but it won’t matter. If there is no heaven after life, there would not need to be one for me. I am yolked to my heaven, and it is bliss.