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I was sitting in a waiting room while my daughter was in surgery, passing the time on my phone, when my mum sent me a message. She asked if my husband was there with me. He wasn’t. Then she said, “You shouldn’t be there alone.”
I remember chuckling to myself and asking her why not. She said I should have support, and I understood what she meant. For many people, waiting rooms are the sort of place where you want someone beside you, someone to talk to while the time passes. But for me, being there alone didn’t feel wrong at all. It felt completely normal.
What I thought, reading her message, was something I have thought many times before. Not unkindly, just honestly. Mum. You have known me my whole life. Why do you still not know this about me?
My grandmother had the same reaction when she found out. She rang and asked if I was all right, and I could hear the concern in her voice, genuine and sweet. She has never liked being alone in her own house, and I understood that she was speaking from that place. It was tender, really. I wanted to reach through the phone and reassure her that I was perfectly fine, that I was quite enjoying the quiet if anything.
This is not a new quality. It has been part of me for as long as I can remember.
When my father passed away, I was nine. I didn’t cry in front of anyone, not because I was holding something back, but because I genuinely didn’t feel the need to. Later, on my own, I cried quietly, and that felt far more natural than doing it in front of other people would have. Years later, when my stepfather died, my mum collapsed when she got the call. Someone had to stay steady, and I did. Not because I chose to take on that role, but because that is simply how I respond. I carried on through the flight, through the family gatherings, and through the funeral without falling apart. Not because I felt nothing. Because I don’t experience things the way most people seem to.
When my husband has been away for stretches, my grandmother would always ask if I wanted to come and stay with her so I wasn’t alone. Every time, I would thank her and tell her I was fine. Every time, I meant it. My mum never questioned it in the same way, perhaps because she understood from her own experience that a woman can manage perfectly well on her own when she needs to. But my grandmother couldn’t quite accept it, and I never once held that against her. She asked because she would have hated it. I stayed home because I didn’t.
Over time, I’ve noticed the way people respond to this quality in me. There is often a look, a slight pause, as if they are trying to work out whether I am holding something back or simply not feeling what I am supposed to feel. It isn’t usually said directly. It is just there. As if I am a bit odd.
But there is nothing missing. I am not covering anything up, and I am not trying to appear unaffected. This is simply how I am. I process things quietly and then I move forward.
Sitting in that waiting room, watching people come and go, I didn’t feel anxious or unsettled. I didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. I didn’t feel that I should have someone beside me simply because that is what people expect in that sort of moment.
I was exactly where I needed to be.
For some people, being alone like that would feel overwhelming. For me, it feels like space. Space to think, space to sit quietly, space to let things settle without noise or interruption. That has always been enough for me.
So when someone says I shouldn’t be alone, I understand what they mean. They are speaking from what would feel right to them.
But that isn’t how it feels to me. And after all this time, I have stopped being surprised that people find that surprising.
— Kate
After twenty years of marriage, people tend to assume they know what love looks like. Comfort. Familiarity. Quiet evenings and shared routines that no longer need much explanation.
In many ways, they’re right. My husband and I have built a life that feels steady. We talk easily. We enjoy long drives together, the kind where conversation fills the time without effort. We can sit in the same room without needing constant attention from each other. There is a deep friendship in that kind of marriage, and in many ways, it is good. Very good.
But that isn’t the whole picture.
Last week made that quite clear. Every day that week, I wanted to have sex with my husband. Not in a vague, romantic sense. I mean I wanted sex. I thought about it. I went to bed expecting there was a fair chance it would happen.
Some nights I curled up next to him, waiting to see if he would turn toward me. Other nights I put my hand on his leg so it was obvious where I stood. There was nothing particularly subtle about it.
And every night, there was a reason it didn’t happen. He didn’t feel well. He was sore from working out. He was exhausted. It was late. All of those things were true. None of them were unreasonable.
And yet I still wanted sex.
Not because anything was wrong between us. Not because I felt unloved. I wasn’t lying there wondering if he cared about me. I knew he did. But being loved and being wanted sexually are not the same thing, and I was very aware of that difference by the end of the week.
I do initiate sometimes. But if I’m honest, I prefer when he does. There is something about being chosen in that moment that feels different. Especially now, when I am more aware of my body than I used to be. I am not the size I once was, and while I don’t spend much time dwelling on that, it sits there quietly in the background. When he initiates, it tells me he still finds me attractive. Not in a general, long-married way. Not in the of course I love you sense. It tells me he looks at me and wants me. That matters more than I tend to admit.
Years ago, we attended marriage retreats, and the message in the wives’ sessions was always the same. Your husband has needs. Physical needs. Be attentive to them. Year after year, the same theme. I sat in those rooms and felt something between annoyance and quiet anger. Not because the message was entirely wrong, but because it assumed a dynamic that has never quite fitted my marriage. I would look around at the other wives and wonder, quite privately, whether any of them felt what I felt. Whether any of them were lying awake wanting more than their husbands did. Nobody said so. I was left to wonder if I was simply rather odd.
I don’t suppose I am. I think it is just not something women say aloud.
I came to faith later than some, and I did not always live by the beliefs I now hold. I had other partners before my husband, and I wish I hadn’t. Not out of guilt exactly, but because I have found, over twenty years of marriage, that intimacy within a covenant is a different thing entirely. It is more connected. More present. More everything, if I’m honest. I tried to tell my daughter that once, not as a rule to enforce but as something I genuinely found to be true. She made her own choices, as she should. But I meant what I said.
I believe sex belongs within marriage. Not as a restriction but as a context, the one in which it becomes what it is actually meant to be. And because I believe that, because I have experienced it, I pray about this. I pray for my husband to reach for me more. I pray for myself to initiate more easily. It is a small and very specific prayer, but I mean it.
In a long marriage, desire doesn’t line up neatly. It shifts with energy, stress, health, and timing. Some nights it matches. Some nights it doesn’t. Nothing is broken. Nothing is wrong. But the difference is still there, and pretending otherwise would not be honest.
You can have a good marriage, a steady one, a happy one, and still lie next to your husband wanting more. That longing doesn’t disappear simply because everything else is working. But I have come to understand that the longing itself is not a problem. It is evidence of something. That after twenty years, I still want him. That what we have built is worth wanting more of.
That feels like something to be grateful for, even on the nights when nothing happens.
— Kate
There is something different about going to church now. Not just where we go, but how it feels to go at all.
After we left, we gave ourselves time before we began looking in earnest. We visited a Presbyterian church several times, drawn in by the warmth of the welcome and hopeful that something might take hold. There were good moments. The messages contained things worth thinking about, points I hadn’t considered before. But something kept us at a distance. The pastor read her sermons, and while I understand that many do, there was very little beyond the reading itself. No lift in the voice at the right moment, no sense that she knew it well enough to look up from the page and mean it. My husband found it nearly impossible to stay fully present. And if the person delivering the message cannot quite inhabit it, it is rather difficult for the congregation to either.
So we kept looking.
We had begun to understand something about what we were after, even if it was hard to put into words. We didn’t want to be overwhelmed when we walked in. Some churches greet you so aggressively that you feel processed rather than welcomed. People come immediately with questions and information before you have even had a moment to take the place in. There is nothing wrong with that approach. It simply wasn’t what we needed. The churches we found ourselves returning to were the ones that let you sit. Perhaps one person says hello, and then you are left to settle. That felt right.
Then we visited a Catholic church, and everything was different.
We walked in to silence. Not the awkward silence of a room that hasn’t filled yet, but the intentional quiet of people who had come to do something specific. There was no music, no greetings, no conversation. People came in, moved to their pew, and knelt to pray before the service began. I stood and watched and felt something shift in me. I had attended church my entire life and it had never once occurred to me to pray before the service. Every church I had known opened with someone else’s prayer on behalf of the congregation. This was different. This was personal, and it was chosen, and I have started doing it myself since.
The structure of the Mass was unlike anything I had experienced before. There were two readings from scripture and then a reading from the Gospel, and the priest’s message drew directly from those readings. You followed along in the Source and Summit Missal rather than flipping through a Bible trying to locate whatever passage the pastor had just referenced. I had never realised how much energy I spent doing that until I didn’t have to anymore. Here, you listened to the readings, you followed along, and you were ready. The message landed because you were already settled into it.
We talked about it on the way home. We talked about it during the week. That had not always been the case with church, and we noticed the difference.
We have been back many times since. Mass has become our regular choice, and something has grown from it that we did not entirely anticipate. We downloaded the Source and Summit app and began reading the daily readings together as a couple. We have recently added a daily reflection as well, a short message connected to one of the readings for that day. Our faith is more present in our daily life now than it was when we were attending church three or four times a week.
There is still much we want to understand before we could say with any certainty where this is leading. The Catholic faith is deep and layered and we are conscious of how much we do not yet know. But we are learning, and we are doing so willingly, which feels like something worth paying attention to.
Our faith has not changed in its foundation. But it is being examined more carefully than it ever has been, and that examination has brought us closer to God rather than further away. We talk about faith more now. We think about it more deliberately. We are more intentional than we have ever been.
We don’t know exactly where this leads. But for the first time in a long time, we are not simply attending church. We are seeking something. And it seems, quietly and unexpectedly, that something may be seeking us as well.
— Kate
Kate Alderwick 