A very different end

I was with my ex-husband for 16 years, and for a lot of that time I was very unhappy. Because though I didn't realise it, I was being controlled. I wanted a home and a family. I felt he had to eventually come round to my way of thinking, but he never did. I cried on the way to work, I was frustrated. I felt trapped, but had a dogged sense of duty to this relationship. I looked with envy at couples outside. I thought the fundamentals were good. Even though I was impotent in every meaningful decision in our lives, and I was in the hands of an irrational dictator.

Maybe the actual truth was that I wanted a family for most of those 16 years, and it was the sunk cost type of decision making strategy. I had hung in there thus far, if I left now, at 37 I felt I would never meet someone else and be able to have kids.

So I got my kid. He, having lost control of me, and the family situation, had a breakdown, and we split up.

I was so relieved.

Whilst I know I do not want to be here in this relationship, it is different. A generaliszed discomfort and mistrust, profound uncertainty about the future, and a sensation of being a square peg in a round hole. I can keep on sanding myself away. I'm not distraught, but I am afraid of the consequences of "just leaving" in that I have no idea if he will react violently.

But perhaps once again there is an ulterior motive. What I am just as afraid of is that to get out of this, I have to lose my home. The thing I craved for so long.

Breaking up (is hard to do-o)

Its hard for a whole new reason that I have just realised. When I try to break up with Neil in the normal way it simply "fails to compute" for him.

(1) How could someone not want to be with this paragon of manly perfection which leads to
(2) I must be mad

That's it in a nutshell. I have known for sometime that I absolutely do not want to be here. Intellectually, spiritually, emotionally - not to mention the dreaded morally. If I were to try to workshop telling him... (some of this has actually happened some has not -yet)

Fiona: Its not you, its me. I have been unable to accept what happened between us.
Neil: Well get over yourself. It happens in all relationships. What did your mother say?
Fiona: She said it happens
Neil: Well your mother is right as usual.

Fiona: You are not meeting my needs sexually
Neil: Well accusing me like that is very "Sexy" isn't it. The more you talk about it the less likely it is to happen.

Fiona: You are not meeting my needs to be part of a family
Neil: Well you gave that away when you got divorced. I can't be Connor's dad you know.
Fiona: Why can't we eat as a family? go to bed around the same time, get up together?
Neil: Sorry that's just the way I am. You can't change the way I eat and sleep.

Fiona: I need practical support help around the house
Neil: You just won't be happy until I'm doing it all will you?

I'm realising I will never "wrap it up" by nagging, or even improve it. Basically to him, this form of communication is just me having a head-rush. I need to be humored, firmly put back in my place (physically intimidated if necessary) because I am clearly out of order. Then life will carry on as normal.

So the upshot of it is. When the decision has been made, when I am bold enough. I have to just go. Not telling, showing. Which is apparently what his last fiance did, and he simply could not understand it. For years.

What I've learned

Its been four years since my marriage ended and somewhat less since I was introduced to the murky world of infidelity. At 40, I was a babe in the wood, truly. I believed that many, if not the majority of married/de facto couples had meaningful, mutually respectful relationships and regular satisfying sex. I knew that couples argued, and at times loathed each other because I was married for 16 years. In my marriage I was somewhat controlled, and my needs (for a home, a family) were disregarded in favour of his "higher" needs, but we could always trust each other.

Neil has introduced me to a whole new world, in which people are not faithful, 1 in 4 babies is born to a man who is not the partner of the woman concerned. Women and Girls who dress in a certain way literally ask for sex (as in FMBs - he believes they are in fact code). Women and Girls who ask men back to their home/hotel after a party want sex. And if, as a man you merely progress towards sex, without asking permission, 9 out of 10 girls will not stop you. Further 80% of the women are chasing 20% of the men. We are mobile breeding machines, they are alpha males, it is a jungle out there. As I have often said in this blog, I reluctantly accept this. How could I be so naive?

However, it does not appeal to my experience. As a married woman I went to literally dozens of parties/receptions/conferences dressed howsoever I wished, where people came back to rooms and that was not the agenda at all. We would drink, flirt, talk then go home. If the above were true, it is a wonder I had not been either victim or assailant in seduction/inveiglement/lure or rape on numerous occasions.

I would proffer that I gave off "Married vibes" and I was steadfastly committed to my marriage vows. I would also proffer the crowd in which I circulated, hard working, professional, men and women of integrity. But not once was I propositioned. I am only human (as we shall see) and may not have been so strong under duress.

So I learn the hard way. About a year into our relationship I learn that Neil is having sex with someone else. I am (in my naive way) shocked, nauseated, horrified, stateless, confused and.... changed.

I struggle not to blame anyone else for what happened next. This erstwhile choir girl, married woman, pillar of society quietly embraced revenge. If you can do it so can I. Not actively, not rushing out there, but alive in that world I had previously doubted existed. And in the fullness of time opportunity came my way.

For maybe a decade before he met me, Neil had no formal relationship, he had a roster of "FBs" who satisfied his needs, and they his. There were no strings, although they did sometimes show troublesome signs of wanting to commit, in which case they were kindly but firmly reminded of the terms of the relationship and if they didn't want it they could go.

So what we have is 4 or 5 women actively trying to "catch him" whilst outwardly declaring they were fine with friends with benefits status. Their role very much akin to that of the other woman (having now been one myself). They would always be dressed well, coiffed, plucked, perfumed, never nag, badger, or complain.

I have learned that living with someone who has been this kind of a "bachelor" (read SA) makes for a very hard act to follow.

I have learned that the reason I did not cheat on my husband was less iron will and more lack of opportunity/motivation.

I have learned to be careful what you wish for

Is this post feminism? One thing that would've kept me on track in my younger days is the sisterhood. How could I do that to another woman (assuming I knew about her)? Are we all just back to snaring a man by fair means or foul? Why am I jealous of my lover's wife who, at quite a mature age managed to marry him, have two kids and give up work for the forseeable future?

How could I undervalue my career so? as I lurch from near disaster, to headlice outbreak, to forgotten lunch, lost hat, board meeting, presentation, bikini wax, sales pitch in the blurry life of a near-single parent? I should remember, she gave up her freedom, her identity and her so-called husband is playing away.

One of the things Neil trotted out when he reached exasperation with my high moral stance was
"There's no law against it"

Well negotiating your way through it without rules may be an intellectual and personal challenge but it does not favour women.

Forgive myself - Understandable?

I wanted a baby, but I realised in the nick of time that I didn't want a baby with him. Or rather, serendipidously it turned out I couldn't have a baby with him in the nick of time.

It is unfair to him because all this was at the core of a shared dream.

I'm not sure how I could've been blind to this. I felt as though I was in love with him

Ein schlechtes Gewissen braucht keinen Kläger

As you may know, my partner of three years is away overseas. And the state of our relationship means that this is little more than a relief. I have half-heartedly attempted to break up with him, and I am still undecided as to whether to follow him overseas, as my folks are over there, but my son's father is over here.

As the COSA philosophy goes on snooping, basically evidence does eventually fall into your lap. So here's the latest. Once again like my "no smoke without fire" it could be my imagination.

First, Neil's widowed father is planning to visit him overseas and during the visit Neil has a business trip to Germany. His father suddenly cancelled because he didn't feel able to organise/afford accomodation or be left on his own whilst Neil went to Germany. If my mother was visiting me on her own, I would have a whale of a time taking her along as my consort to conference dinners and having her explore the town during the day. I have been wondering why this is such a problem...

Second, some time ago a "little bird" told me Neil was rumoured to be sleeping with a colleague who has, incidentally, gone back to Germany.

Third, each day Neil and I send each other SMSs. It is always the same boring "Good morning, darling x x " so I decided to be a bit playful and wrote one in German today. Not consciously thinking about it, just wanting to have some fun with him "Guten Abend Mine Liebling" probably shocking German, then I wrote another... and finally I got one back "W.T.F." (which I'm sure you can translate)

Either he really doesn't understand any German at all (you'd've thought doing business in Germany he might've whipped out a phrasebook once in a while) perhaps he thinks I am making a fool of him, or trying to show off how clever I am...or he was reading something more into my SMS.

Suddenly a curious suggestion pops into my head. He is off to Germany for a tryst with the ex-colleague. That's why dad can't come, and that's why he is angry at my use of German he thinks I am backhandedly accusing him

For a translation of the Title visit "The English German Dictionary"

Loud and Clear

I know, I know, you've lost patience with me. You all voted on my future. I am telling you loud and clear I want to leave, yet nothing happens. This is how it is sometimes I think. Need the right impetus. In the meantime I seem to be conducting my life in two parallel streams.

(1) Please show me a way to get out of this. Just one little exit and I'll be gone
(2) Planning my life in the long term getting the house set up creating a future for my boy

I can't be the first, but I think I would be happier and more able to focus if I was true to myself.

I hear you Elinor

"I have known all of love's pain and none of its reward"

Elinor Dashwood: Sense and Sensibility

I can't find this exact quote anywhere, but I swear I heard it in the 1981 BBC mini series.

This is how I feel about my current relationship. He gives me so little apart from a half share in a roof over my head, and some sort of weird brother-like affection. We no longer have sex, because he is not interested.

It is partially my own doing. I broke off the engagement, around the time we discovered we couldn't have children. Because 2 years after his sudden proposal of marriage, I still could not trust him or understand either his sex addiction or his supposed recovery from it. And after several rounds of IVF I realised I did want another child, but not with him.

And now I think to ask myself the question "why did he admit to sex addiction? why didn't he just admit to a little meaningless sex?" He is quite practised at manipulation and lying why would he have been so candid with me? A little slip-up would've been so much easier for me to accept. In fact that's pretty much how I have dealt with it - imagine it was just the end of his "philandering ways"

So here's the timeline

*Trying to get pregnant
*Shock email from ex-girlfriend describing numerous trysts
*Confession from Neil of sex addiction
*Proposal of marriage
*Uneasy acceptance by me
*More trying to get pregnant
*Give up trying to get pregnant
*Try to end relationship admitting I have not properly forgiven him and the only way I can cope is to disengage.
*I actually want him to go off and find someone else to have babies with
*Sex life ends

From his point of view maybe he was only having sex with me to get pregnant, or maybe he was so hurt by me putting the brakes on our marriage plans, or perhaps, he is just getting sex elsewhere. It isn't such a stretch is it? on current evidence.

In exploring "Husband not interested in sex" the answer by barbarafl about half the way down struck a chord. It starts

Wow Ladies,
I feel compelled to respond. I have been in this situation for 18 years. It is only the last year that I truly discovered the real problem. My husband is a sex addict. After lots of research, and therapy, he is in recovery. A long hard road for both of us. There is many levels of sex addiction. Some only use masturbation and porn and some use prostitutes, affairs, etc. There is something also known as sexual anorexia. Where the sex addict will masturbate but avoid intimacy with you.

I can't discuss it with him. In fact if I do he gets angry or facetious saying things like "you nagging me about it is so sexy"

But he still occasionally says he love me, or that I am his love. I think perhaps he needs a mother. His was depressed angry and unavailable to him. Now it seems he is trying to find this lost comfort through me. Here is what would really work: If I were to run the house like clockwork. Quietly and efficiently moving around him, and never making demands on him. Let him lie in, clear away his mess without ever complaining, never ask where he's been or why, defer to him on every decision and opinion... He will love me totally and will reward me with hugs, and adoration, but never sex.

Really folks what's in it for me? A half roof over my head (I work too remember) and stability for Connor. But Connor is not going to come back to me in 20 years time and say, "thanks so much mum for putting your life on hold and living with that man so that I could grow up in a misogynistic, self centred, dysfunctional - yet stable household"

Is he?

I'm a lizard

I guess this happens to everyone to an extent, but maybe I am worse affected since I have moved countries 3 times since I was 25 and I got divorced. Here is my problem.. I keep leaving large chunks of my life behind. Usually quickly and under traumatic circumstances. Like a lizard losing its tail. For all I know they keep on twitching after I leave them, like the those perfectly nice circles of friends, those groaning bookshelves, a couple of decades shared with my husband. Those severed parts can twitch all they like. Me I just walk away.



Photo credit: www.naturephoto-cz.com

But look, my beautiful tail, it grew back, but not like before. Something is lost, something is changed.