Ben Wilson, LPC

"It isn't what you think it is, Don." Paul takes his gaze form the city and eyes the pipe in his hand. He turns it over and taps the top ash onto the roof, rolling the embers under his sneakers.

    "What isn't?"

    "Marriage." He looks me in the eye. "It isn't fulfilling in the way you think it is."

    "Paul, will you be honest with me if I ask you something?"

    "Yes."

    "Are you happy?"

    "Define happy."

    "Are you glad you married Danielle?"

    Paul puts the stem of his pipe back in his mouth.

    "I am happy, Don. I am verry happy."

    "What do you mean it isn't what I think it is then?" I was expecting him to talk about sex. 

    "Well, maybe I can't say what you think marriage is. Maybe I should say it isn't what I thought it would be. I thought to be married was to be known. And it is; it is to be known. But Danielle can only know me so much; do you know what I mean?"

    "There are things you haven't told her?" I ask.

    "I've told her everything."

    "Then I don't know what you are saying."

    Paul pushed himself up a little to the pitch of the roof from which you can see the Portland skyline. I joined him. "We all want to be loved, right?"

    "Right," I tell him. 

    Paul continued. "I'm saying there is stuff I can't tell her, not because I don't want to, but because there aren't words. It's like we are separate people, and there is no getting inside each other to read each other's thoughts, each other's beings. Marriage is amazing because it is the closest two people can get, but they can't get all the way to that place of absolute knowing. Marriage is the most beautiful thing I have ever dreamed of, Don, but it isn't everything. It isn't Mecca. Danielle loves everything about me; she accepts me and tolerates me and encourages me. She knows me better than anybody else in the world, but she doesn't know all of me, and I don't know all of her. And I never thought after I got married there would still be something lacking. I always thought marriage, especially after I first met Danielle, would be the ultimate fulfillment. It is great, don't get me wrong, and I am glad I married Danielle, and I will be with her forever. But there are places in our lives that only God can go."

~Don Miller, Blue Like Jazz