Respair, a return to hope
Hold yourself tenderly. Let your inner nurturing parent protect your inner child. We need more space to act out our anxieties.
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Editor's note: “Do you call him your husband?” my therapist, Father Os, asked me one day. “We don’t like the words—husband and wife,” I answered. “I rarely use this word for him.” “Maybe you should,” he said. Father Os had a characteristic shrug. It was subtle. It spoke to me. One thing common between Afzal and me was that both of us had a poor opinion of marriage as a concept. We judged the marriages we had witnessed, especially the ones that our parents had endured as they raised us. In our own way, we had made the decision to not fall into prescribed roles that stifle men and women. We didn’t want to become husband and wife—not like the ones we saw around us. We got married suddenly. We had spent years together toying with the idea and repeatedly coming to the conclusion that we didn’t really want to risk marrying each other. On the day we thought that we would break up with each other forever and ever, Afzal got the bright idea to call Father Os, who had been …
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