Untamed - Glennon Doyle Page 0,93

rounded up the troops, made sure they all crossed together. They were giggling, happy, Abby on one side, Craig’s girlfriend on the other, Amma and Tish in the middle. Nobody seemed to notice my absence or my victory.

A few days later, I stood in my driveway and called Craig.

I said, “She tells Tish that she loves her. Don’t you think that’s a little much? She is your girlfriend, not their mother. We all need some boundaries. You need to help her set them. What if she leaves and hurts our kids?”

I am much more afraid that she will stay and love our kids.

We all ate Christmas dinner together this year. I asked Craig to bring the traditional apple pie. He and his girlfriend brought a strawberry dish instead. When Tish asked where the apple pie was, I shrugged and shushed her. After dinner, we took a family picture: all of us and the dog. After we took it, Craig’s girlfriend said, “Okay, now let’s do a crazy one!” Why all the suggestions? We don’t do crazy ones. All three kids agreed that the crazy picture was the best picture. Then we sat down and ate the strawberry dish. All three kids said it was the best Christmas dessert we’d ever had.

The next day, Craig’s girlfriend posted our crazy picture online. She wrote, “Grateful to have found a love that is inviting and kind, witty and nonjudgmental, a no boundaries type of love.”

Someday I’ll ask her how to braid my daughters’ hair.

Someday I’ll learn how to mother with her, with Abby, like a braid.

Sometimes, when heated conflict arises between Abby and me, we stop talking, take a breath and say to each other, “Okay, let’s not first-marriage this. Let’s second-marriage this.” What we mean is: Let’s not go on autopilot here. Let’s use what we’ve learned and apply it. Let’s be careful and wise and put our egos aside and remember that we are on the same team. Now that we know better, let’s do better.

I would have described myself as the spiritual director of my first marriage. I had the vision for our plot, and Craig fucked it up. I now understand that this is because each person has their own plot. No one can be a supporting actor in someone else’s storyline. They can pretend to, but they will always have subplots brewing inside and unfolding outside.

I am very controlling. I want to control things. This is because I am afraid. Things feel so precarious. When I was young, I made myself feel safer by controlling my food and body. I still do that. But as I got older and became a wife and a mother, I found another thing to try to control to create safety: my people. Since life is scary and precarious, controlling people I love felt like the responsible thing to do.

In addition to the fear factor, there is something else that leads me to want to control things, and that is my belief that I am very smart and creative. I really do believe I have very good ideas and that people would do best if they got on board. This kind of control is called leadership.

For a long while, I have controlled and led my people and called that love. I “loved” my people to a bloody pulp. My role in the lives of the people I love has been as follows: I exist to make all your hopes and dreams come true. So let’s sit down and take a look at this comprehensive list of hopes and dreams I’ve created for you. I have been paying very close attention and trust me, I SEE you and know you better than you know yourself. You can do anything I put your mind to! Let us begin!

But we cannot feel and know and imagine for other people. This is what I am trying to understand. The person who is teaching me this is my wife. My wife is uncontrollable.

I love my wife more wildly than I have ever loved a grown human in my life. Before I met her, I wasn’t even all that afraid of dying. Now the thought of death panics me daily, not because of death itself but because of the idea of not being with her. Death, to me, is just the ultimate FOMA: Fear of Missing Abby. Since I love Abby the most, it follows that I have to control her the most. I want to make