displaced affection

not a silver lining

Two nights ago I married Evelyn.

In September, when I started finding words to share about my time on the farm, I wasn’t sure when or how in this process I would be able to position her within it. In truth, our (as in, mine and Evelyn’s) shared narrative around the origin of our connection is ever-evolving, expanding, and encouraging more curiosity and compassionate honesty.

The reality, plain and simple, is that I met my now-wife a little over two years ago, when I visited the farm just before moving there, and that at that time she was my metamour (also romantically involved with, and perpetually harmed by M). The level of complexity threaded into that reality renders it less like a quilt - stitched with math and measurement - and more like a suture - stitched with both hope and horror.

If you asked me if there are any silver linings in this story, I would tell you that, in hindsight, I realize that I love animal care and land stewardship so much that I would endure torture to pursue it (and I peer through the seams of this lining with caution, rather than wearing it as a badge of honor). If you were to suggest outloud to me - based on what you know now - that Evelyn must be my silver lining… I am not sure I would trust you with the rest of the story. This is a story from real life - in this timeline - and as far as I am concerned, our timeline is dystopian. Despite my practice of radical hope, I am not sure I can trust someone who is hoping for a fairytale ending in this story, or in any other piece of non-fiction.

One thread of this story, as it pertains to Evelyn, is the power I allowed M to have over my perceptions. They persuaded me to view them as virtuous (a trait which I desire in a partner) by mirroring my own values back to me, despite sharing none of them. They persuaded me to view them as a victim by leaning into my tendency towards trauma-informed unconditional positive regard (a tendency I believed I was smart-enough and boundaried-enough to prevent from being manipulated). And while those two persuasions are what led me to be more susceptible to adopting the rest of their perceptions as my own, the most hurtful of all is what they tried for months to persuade me was true of each of their two partners - myself, and Evelyn.

Braided with that thread of power of perception is the thread of displaced affection. As it turns out, a pattern is clearly developed in whom M seeks out/draws in. I have noticed that those who are compassionate, generous, and who afford people the benefit of the doubt are those who have seemed to have found themselves deepest in the muck of M’s coercions. I think of M’s ex, who spent their own trust fund on the land for the farm (still a shared deed with both names on it, by the way) only to be driven out of state after over a year of hard labor(s) in a way that I felt confused about for months, but can make complete sense of now. I think of the tens-of-thousands of dollars of cash and credit that I dumped into the farm in my ten months there; and of the emotional, psychological, and sexual harm I carried during my that time, heavier still than the hundreds-of-thousands of pounds of feed and hay. And last but never least I think of Evelyn, subjected to her own version of the same. Evelyn! Sweet, loving Evelyn… of all people!

What did the three of us share (aside from compassion, generosity, and positive regard)? We were convinced that M was a person who could love us the way that we love others, including them (but not only them, which was always a problem, but more on that at another time).

The reality, sadly, is they couldn’t love us. The reality, for me, is that all of the affection I placed on M because of who they convinced me they were, was displaced, and was meant for Evelyn. They mirrored traits of each of ours, as they held us both in their orbit over an overlapping span of months. Instead of finding what we each were seeking in relationship with M (an impossibility), we went through a year of self-accountability, rupture, and repair with one another to sort through distorted triangulated perceptions in order to find what we were seeking in relationship with each other (an un-deniability).

That is not a silver lining. It is a punch in the gut.

It felt like an eternity - the time between June 2023 (when the three of us suddenly stopped spending time on the farm together and I was no longer “allowed” to speak to Evelyn, now seen as a threat) and October 2023 (when I called Evelyn after four months of silence to tell her I was leaving the farm). I was more isolated than ever, alone on the farm with M; alone in the car with M; but never alone with my thoughts without M. Their behaviors were escalating, and my spirit was waning. In that moment, I really thought those four months were the hardest I might ever live, and every day I get imagined I might finally tatter away. Unfortunately, the first few months that followed October 2023 were even harder still, as I foolishly continued to communicate with M daily, despite trying to detox from their non-stop abuse… while also trying to rebuild trust with Evelyn. Thankfully, my wife is an incredibly patient person, much more-so than myself. Even more thankfully, while these months were harder than the four that came before, I wasn’t in tatters anymore - instead, I was weaving myself back together.

So, while there are god-knows how many words left in this story, and it might not make sense to you yet how Evelyn fits in… I am introducing her here. Because, in the hours I spend continuing to put words to my experience as I tell this story, she is right here with me. Not looming over my shoulder, or asking me what I am thinking. Not persuading me of her perspective, or trying to change my narrative. She is right here, loving the entirety of who I am, who I was, and who I am becoming through this story, and the hundreds of far better stories that I hope to write when this book is finally bound.