Cosy Suburbia

Photo credit: dunnepropertymanagement.co.ie

I walk through a leafy suburb peering through the windows of those (ostensibly) well ordered homes, and realise I am yearning for the some sort of middle-class existence that I always thought I would have, and cannot accept that I do not and will not. But I came close, yet only when in the clutches of a manipulative, sociopathic sex addict. Sigh choices, choices...

A recurring theme

Just reading back the last four posts, it seems I am on a theme. Perhaps it's no wonder nobody has commented because if they did they would have to say "Get over yourself". Here I am bleating about the choices I made in life, blaming it on men and trying (without effect or resolution) to turn the personal into the political.

The facts are;
(1) I was not lucky, savvy or calculating enough to find myself a man who earned a living AND was nice to me and
(2) now I am afraid of facing the future, with possible declining health, and definite decline in my own attractiveness, and supporting my child, based solely on my own resources.

Mac-Feminism

I apologise, I had breakfast at MacDonalds this morning. Nasty capitalist world dominating institution that it is. It does rather good Sausage and Egg Muffins. I sat down and got my laptop out, and whilst it was firing up, I looked around. The place was literally full of young, poor, single mothers - whiling away a few hours with their legions of pre-school children. I must be getting old but a thought popped into my head - "What is the world coming to?" or more specifically "Is this what feminism has acheived for us?"

I'm sure its not what the suffragettes and early feminists envisaged for us they were trying to release us from domestic slavery, to give us choices. Instead we have the right to stay home with our kids on the breadline. With the freedom to work nights pole dancing and get a boob-job.

But its not the young middle class girls who find themselves in this predicament, it is the young working class girls. There is no shame in being a single mother now, and women are equal to men. They can go out, get drunk, have anonymous sex...

The young middle class girls I assume supported by Mum and Dad as ever have a termination or two, get through uni, live with their boyfriend for 5-10 years and if they're lucky he marries them. Then they can have a couple of kids and she has a get out clause via the current legal system to be supported by him until the children grow up. Lucky?? alternatively he could realise just as her ovaries are packing up that he doesn't want marriage and kids, at least not with her, and leave her possibly unfulfilled but probably with career in tact.

What honestly is the incentive for men to get married and/or have kids? They can have a lover, a fellow wage slave, home comforts, they can say they're not ready for kids or commitment, they can go on like this for decades.

For women the picture is rather different. If you leave your run too late you may never be a mother, if you get pregnant young and single with an impoverished man and don't terminate the pregnancy you sentence yourself to a lifetime of hard-labour (single parenting) and scupper all your chances at education. So the minority, smart university educated women go Jane Austen style - and snare themselves someone who has career prospects and can support you in the style you would like to become accustomed to. Who could blame them? Cohabitation is all very well, the court will recognise de facto relationships but nothing is quite as concrete as a good old wedding certificate.

Being an educated, middle aged, single parent, I increasingly find myself sympathising with both young poor single parents and fathers in single income families.

Later: I had a couple more thoughts. For the younger poorer girls it is often a rational choice too. Have a baby and get out of home and be supported by the government if there is no dad around.

But here's the thing, many Western goverments have the following philosophy about children:

If the husband can't pay, then the dad should pay, if the dad can't pay then the step-dad should pay, if the step-dad can't pay then the government will pay.

How is this empowering to women? maybe in my case.... if none of the above can/will pay she can pay herself.

Mid Life Crisis

No, its no use, that's what it is. I can't deny it anymore.

When I see those manicured SAHMs with their matching LL Bean kids pulling out of the drive of their holiday home in their top of the range 4WD I can't help asking...

what did they do to deserve that???

shag a banker is what...

or a lawyer,
or a doctor,
or a diplomat...

and more specifically have children with them so they are locked in financially to all eternity..

But in truth, that just sounds bitter. I have my self esteem. I didn't sweat over that science homework, university entrance, graduate school for nothing! No! I get to be an underpaid single parent member of the intelligensia living in a rented apartment. I am not materialistic! Where is all this claptrap coming from?

I think I am angry with myself for not playing my cards better. The choices you make at 21 have a significant impact on your lifestyle at 42 there's just no way of getting around that one. You might marry for love, take the moral high ground, save the whales, see the world, believe in the power of one whatever, but it won't get you a chef''s kitchen and holidays in Martinique.

And worse despite working hard all your life you might end up in poverty. I think perhaps my awesome childhood raised my expectations that if I worked hard a reasonable lifestyle would come my way, and relying on a man was just a weak and inappropriate way of going about it. I did expect that whatever man I ended up with would work as hard as me, and treat me with the same benevolence, honesty and integrity with which I treat them. Wrong again.

No feminism has not delivered. A colder more calculating way of getting your man and seeing your main chance even if you are highly qualified yourself is a better strategy, because basically men have not evolved. They will rarely enter into a genuinely equal partnership. They need to be teased, cajoled, pampered and played like this and have the bar set high for them. Otherwise they just behave in the lowest way they can get away with.

Calibrating my reactions

When I consider someone has ripped me off, put me down, pushed me too far. This is a sign that I really have been taken beyond all reasonable limits. I know this because I often get remarks such as -"I don't know how you put up with it" "I never would've taken that from her" "Just say no to them" etc. And it's NOT because I have a thick skin, it is a combination of very low self esteem - ie I don't deserve to be treated any better, and being brought up in a culture of forgiveness, and turning the other cheek. In other words my offense-ometer is set too low. It makes me a nice person to be around, I make friends easily, I almost never take offense, however it also means I can be pushed around, abused and assumed to be gullible. And generally I internalise the results of this treatment.

It is also quite rare for me to really know what I want or have a strong opinion about anything. Again externally I am easy going, but on the rare occasions when I do - wanting to have a baby or own my own home or be near my family...I need to be able to stop at nothing to get it. It is totally unacceptable to let the things that are important to you pass you by because someone else has a stronger opinion.

In my new life, when someone oversteps the mark, I am going to look very carefully at my reaction. NO. It is NOT "OKAY" for you to leave me with all the work, put me down in front of my colleagues, subdue me and my dreams. I need to firmly and politely say NO.

Choosing to live alone

Single occupier households. The largest growing group. To my younger self, and to an extent my current self this seems like an unhealthy trend. People are too selfish, damaged, frightened, antisocial, unlovable to share their home with another.

Yet this is the choice I am finally going to make.

And it has a lot (though not everything) to do with my ovaries. Up until 40 there was still a chance of starting a family with a man, now there is not. So unless a man brings me true delight, companionship, love and an acceptance of who I am and where I've been, there seems little reason to open my heart, home and bank balance to him.

I feel I have played my hand all wrong. My life has not been unhappy, and I look forward to the future. I imagine in my solo home I will surround myself with interesting friends, be involved in sport and other activities and live a happy and fulfilled life. However I do feel within me the stirrings of a post-feminist backlash. Whose little mocking voice says: "If you want to raise a family in a comfortable stress free environment, trade on your assets whilst you are young. Use your pretty face and narrow hips to snare the best prospect you can, snare him before he becomes a hardened bachelor, and put your enviable intelligence into supporting his career and raising your kids"

As I sat on the train on the way home I pondered my options. (1) Hook up with my ex (2) Go out there and find the devil I don't know (3) Have an FB

..and in all honesty option (3) is looking the most attractive. I don't want any more court battles. Both Neil and Simon are entirely impossible to live with and by extension probably so am I. And my little frying pan is undoubtedly surrounded by fire.

Emotions

Some time ago I thought Plutchik's wheel of emotion [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emotions] might provide some inspiration for my blog. Just to see if I had visited every emotion and to tell stories from the wheel. I am having some difficulty with my "packages" so today I have decided to address contempt which lies between boredom and annoyance and can escalate an emotion between rage and loathing. This is what I feel for Neil in a nutshell. Interesting to look at the opposite side of the wheel where opposite rage we find terror and opposite loathing we find admiration. The reason I feel such contempt is because during the course of our relationship he intimidated me with terror, I never felt this negative emotion toward Simon because he did not. I feel anger toward Neil for what he did to me, forcing me to submit and not respecting me. On the other hand when asked to recall what attracted me to him in the first place it was admiration. Not love, I now realise, but admiration for his accomplishments in life. Thus our relationship began on an uneven basis with him intimidating me, and me admiring him. So perhaps it is natural that as things came along to challenge our partnership, already feeling intimidated I gathered the strength not to submit, but as contempt took over, to actually leave.

Package #1

I'm not sure if this was in the original bunch of packages, but there is a package that seems to include a bricks and mortar home and aspects of financial security. My parents were reminding me today about how they had to sell their house when my dad re-trained, and we all moved into a rented apartment. How much I craved a house. I used to draw pictures of 'A pritty house' with a front door AND a back door.

They felt guilty about having taken me away, and when they became slightly more prosperous started looking around for places in a much inflated market. One time apparently I fell so badly in love with one of the houses they looked at that I threw up when they decided they couldn't afford it.

Still later when a student I tried to create a homely environment, and fantasized about buying, yes owning my own home. I was put off by my parents who clearly thought I should find a man to do this with. So I married Simon, and imposed this dream on him. He finds property ownership a slightly dirty prospect, but it did not deter me from desperately trying to change his mind for about 10 years as the property prices crept up.

And then, after the divorce I took the short cut with Neil. A house and another baby. My dreams come true. Except they didn't.

This morning a (hippy-ish) thought occurred to me. Maybe the universe it trying to tell me something, I am not, and will never be a home owner. What should I look for as an alternative to this. What precisely is the lure. This is what I came up with so far:

(1) Some sort of dislike of having to pay rent and jump to the command of a landlord

(2) A feeling of security of "owning" or working toward owning a piece of realestate. I actually liked having mortgage that I could see going down each month due to my own dilligence and a beautiful house to live in.

(3) Stability of a place to truly call home.

Perhaps I could invest in something else, or a property I did not live in, and become a kept woman of some sort so I didn't have to worry about a landlord either. Be a housekeeper or gamekeeper or dogkeeper or something so my work was my home.

Loving the unlovable meets the love that dare not speak its name

This has been going on for 2 years. It has never been a transactional sort of arrangement, but just this week. I receive a gift. An unmarked CD of songs that apparently remind him of me. How romantic. I find a time when I am all alone driving and relish the message that it brings. But wait. All the songs, it turns out one by one, are trans-global tales of Hapless females being done wrong by dirt bag philandering males. This isn't how I see myself or how I wish to be seen. It is, if I let myself think about it, somewhat demeaning. I am, if not crushed, strangely unsettled, unconsoled, and disappointed.

Then tears prick my eyes at the thought of just how compromised I have become, that I would yearn for human contact, appreciation, love, being fully willing to return it to someone who cannot do the same for me.

Yet to be given this, this offering.

He urges me to tap my feet to it, and not read too much into it. I guess there are people out there who don't really listen to the lyrics of songs.

I recall a time almost half a life ago, when a fellow at work developed an admiration for me. He was a good looking young chap, and he too had a girlfriend and he too expressed his pent-up, unexpressable emotions by sending me a tape of songs. Loving those who cannot love me back has been a theme of my life. Played out in return, in these instances, by a love that dare not speak its name.

Post (traumatic) Script

I left, I did it. I put all my stuff into storage^ and I fled the country. The sleepless nights I was having over the unbearable weight of leaving my beloved home evaporated, and suddenly I could live with it. Although my life savings are still tied up there.

I am living with my parents on the other side of the world, part working, part recouperating I believe, I feel like Anne Frank scribbling in an attic room.

Simon has let me bring Connor for a protracted stay. However Simon is back in the Psych clinic having split from his partner of 3 years (coincidentally)

I am still fantasizing about true love with my ex of 23 years. He feeds it but has no intention of leaving his wife. And anyway he is in another country, further away now. I'm sorry about this one, but I have to be honest, since this blog is becoming my online diary.

By and large I have disengaged from my life to survive. I don't dare take a good hard look inside my mind, because when I do this is what I see....








Little tightly wrapped packages, they're not labelled, but I know what's in them.

See! this one is packed full of reflections on what happened with Neil and what that has done to me ... all my deepest darkest fears, that he manipulated me, was never faithful to me, converted me to his wrong way of thinking, abused me, abused my child, and is now trying to sabotage our financial future.

Here, this one contains the damage I may have done to Connor through my divorce, through working too many hours, through being stressed, indulgent, inconsistent...

Still another contains the ghost of Simon and our 16 year marriage. Will he try to get back with me? control me? Am I responsible for his illness? for him? What about all those years? were they happy, how do I account for them?

Then there's Ex23. This is possibly the only one I can unwrap with any clarity. It probably needs to end, but I am not ready to end it. I like it. He makes me happy. I am deluded.

Then there's one containing THE FUTURE. By the end of this decade I'll be in Menopause. With a teenager.

Ooh look, this little one is my health. Gone in one year from master's athlete, to hopeless cripple who can't run across the road. Terribly bereaved by this loss of capacity. Getting flabbier, floppier, more unfit.

Yet on the surface I am a survivor, a funny, sanguine, magnanimous, good daughter, attending to her career, bravely accepting single mother hood, forging ahead.

^I think my life is in storage

TagCloud

addiction away baby child connor family feel fiona friends give going hard home house husband job kids life live love man marriage married maybe met months moved needs neil nothing partner perhaps pm quite really relationship sex someone something son things think thought together wanted woman women work world years

created at TagCrowd.com

Taking Flight

I won't bore you with the legal wrangles, but it seems I am in a corner where I have to give up home (the beloved first home I ever owned) to my ex, and sell it at a loss, since the cost of recouping my investment is greater than the investment itself.

It occurs to me that this is the first time in my life I have voluntarily given up something I love. I mean I, as and adult, have personally taken this decision to give it away.

I searched for analogies of where this happens to people

• A teenage mother giving up her baby in the 1960s
• A woman having her breasts removed because she is at risk of breast cancer though she does not already have it
• prosperous Jews, Palestinians, Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Hootus and Tutsis, who fled their homes and businesses
• Young people in love who are separated when their parents move cities
  
• A couple deciding to abort a much wanted but fatally flawed unborn baby
  

These are all more severe than my situation, but the thing they have in common is that the alternative is worse. Human nature being what it is though, in about half the cases it is because of aggression, intolerance, or disrespect that the alternative is worse.

In my case the alternative is to have a protracted battle with an abusive, disrespectful, manipulative ex partner.

An ironic poem that comforts me

One Art
By Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Hoist with my own petard

Following on from my woman's work post. An irony. The departure of my SA "partner", who I'm rapidly realising was everything but, has left a power vacuum into which comes simon...

He calls me in the morning to micro-manage me, and remind me of the things I have not done or more particularly paid for for our son and of late he has begun what appears to be a campaign to get full custody. All this timed perfectly for when I'm in the middle of a property settlement, moving house and major surgery.

So now I am cast in the role of absentee father, because I work and he does not, because I have to travel for my work, and have no "partner" to look after Connor. It now appears he wants Connor to live with him, and me to pay. All this from someone who was too mentally ill to even have the boy for a weekend for the first six months of this year, someone who didn't want fathehood in the first place.

Life truly has turned into a bad joke.

Motherhood is the thing I cherish more than anything in the world. I fought for it. I am not a man, and whilst I strive, my woman-like outlook and concerns do not allow me to thrive in a man's world. I receive prejudice at that side too.

If I was a man I would climb the corporate ladder treading on everyone in my path to get what I wanted. Wash my hands of all this, and go out and score me a younger woman. But that option is not open to me either.

A rock and a hard place.

Women's work

"I've never yet met a man who could look after me, I don't need a husband. What I need is a wife" (Joan Collins)

Neil had a habit of belittling the work of stay at home moms (SAHMs). His argument was quite logical, that their work simply did not have the value that society assigns to it. Take for example a wealthy barrister. If his wife dies he can easily pay for all the services she provides, childcare ($100 a day - pah), a cleaner, a chef, a prostitute.. this doesn't even take up a quarter of his salary. So how when they divorce does she get half his assets? it is simply out of proportion.

My new found strength and independence has lead me to believe that I can go it alone as a single working mother - I only have one child! 2 of us, that's half a regular family right? Plenty of men on my salary support a stay at home wife and two kids.

So, I now get to do "the practical" of what Neil was describing, and it is very difficult. Because dear friends if I had a wife at home she would be doing so much more than cleaner, childcare, chef, hooker. I could rely on her to pick the kids up if I worked late, she would give me emotional support and feedback on my adult concerns, she would take care of all those niggly little jobs - taking the car for service, liasing with the kids teachers, dentist appointments, booking holidays... Economy of scale! Danah! suddenly 4 can live for the price of 2.

Then there's the house. Somewhere in the recent past I accepted that I live here in some sense courtesy of Neil. The house is an artifact of our relationship. But I have actually put more money onto the mortgage than him. Now the relationship is over, much as it hurts me I have to give up the house.

Not Neil, No sir-eee!! He believes the house is his. Because he is the man of the house. He enjoyed that joke about the global financial crisis which went "this is even worse that divorce - I lost half my assets and I still have my wife". So he thinks he can just pay me off with a token sum and I'll be out of his hair. He actually believes that, courtesy of living with me for 3 years, this asset is his birthright.

Clearly he lives in a man's world with mans concerns where women's work is valueless and all women are out to fleece men regardless of their own (the women's) earning capacity and financial standing. Because they give birth they can never truly perform in a man's world and as such are by definition eternally beholden to their men folk, and further they should be grateful for this and not get antsy in any way up to and including divorce.

So many reasons

I would be the first to admit that I am in a strange place at the moment. Finally accepting that I can't make it work with my SA partner, after months (years) of giving him the benefit of the doubt, thinking things are never perfect, doubting myself. So I feel quite strong in a way, and one worrisome dimension of this new found strength, is is a strong, and reasoned urge never to let a man live with me again.

I thought of taking my dad's advice and meeting a "retired professor" yet suddenly it becomes totally unappealing because this person (or their family) will think I am somehow after their assets. I never ever want to be beholden to anyone, nor did I ever. I am perfectly capable of supporting myself and my child. The level of false accusation surrounding finances in my current breaking down relationship makes me sick, I wish I had never combined my life financially with him.

I worry that these years with a promiscuous SA have left me with undiganosed STIs which might rear their ugly heads at any time. I feel as though I am a time bomb. No decent new man deserves that.

I acknowledge I am very bad at nurture. Having worked for 20 years and toughed out this single parent thing. I don't want some hyperchondriac old man to look after.

I don't want to have kids now, and soon the chance of that will be finished. So I don't need a sperm donor.

I have lost faith that any man will effectively contribute to the domestic economy (cleaning up after himself) and feel I am on the back foot asking for this with a child around making mess. No I will deal with that too thank you very much.

Perhaps when the storm clears there will be room for a lover. That's all.

A Villanelle

Did my fifth decade forge in me
a fiery ship of burnished steel?
A long withheld capacity
to love you and to let you be
the helmsman of my wheel?
Did my fifth decade forge in me
a passion from across the sea
So strong, and desperate and real?
A long withheld capacity
to be myself and truly see
the way you make me feel?
Did my fifth decade forge in me
A softness borne of misery
of wounds that never really heal
A long withheld capacity
to give you all that I can be
Since you laid down the keel
Did my fifth decade forge in me
A long withheld capacity

It's better to have lived and lost....

Sometimes when I get materialistic or wistful for the things I don't or can't have, I bury my envy with a mantra that goes something like this.



So you'll never go to Hawaii again? so what, at least you've BEEN to Hawaii...



You'll never be married again? at least you WERE married once.





You've known love... You've known what its like to have a loving husband...





You can't have any more kids? oh well at least you've been part of a big happy family....







You'll never have a house on the river? you were lucky enough to grow up near your grandparents who lived on a river.





Your career is stagnating? Oh well, at least you could once claim career aspirations. It was good for a moment there.





I worry that I won't have enough to retire on. Then I look at what retirement means to the current generation of baby boomers. Endless cruises, seafood buffets, holidays in Asia, beautiful perfect home. Its all great but how much does someone need? wouldn't all this comfort pall after a while?

I guess the philosophical point in here is that life is short, and full of experiences, but we don't need to gorge on those experiences to be happy, we just need to have them. Dive on the barrier reef once, see the Taj Mahal, Fall in love, have a baby, get published. It may never come back again, but enjoy it whilst you can.

Protect, Provide, Defend?

These are apparently the roles of a man. And I have been REJECTING them, ALL MY LIFE. Since I drank at the fountain of feminist enlightenment with my Grandmother. NEVER DEPEND ON A MAN, GET YOURSELF A CAREER, BE SELF-SUFFICIENT.

It would be an insult to expect someone to provide for me. Taxpayers have invested good money in my education, and further I do not want to be beholden to a man. When I first heard the expression "Marriage is prostitution" (at the tender age of about 30) I had no idea what it could possibly mean. I have been married once, but I have never expected a man to PROVIDE for me in return for services in the bedroom and kitchen. HORROR.

As for protection. I am not weak, I do not need protecting.

During my marriage, this worked quite well. In Simon, I had not sought out a provider, he was ineffective at work, but still had the manly attributes of strong opinions and apsirations. We both worked, we both cooked, we both cleaned. Until the baby came along. Then Simon lost his mind, and, just as I had never expected to be protected or nurtured, I found myself quite incapable of nurture.

But, it seems the joke is on me. Because many men want to fulfil the protector and provider role and many women of my generation are happy to nurture them in return, and, in maybe half the cases, where they are able to respect one another, there is not even a sniff of prostitution in the process.

I could've forgotten about getting an education, focussed my energies of attracting a provider and lined my little nest. I have to say this would've been much easier than the single parent role where I try to be Mummy and Daddy... huffing about trying to get ahead at work by day, endlessly wiping and cleaning by night...

But stay, what of that other 50% those unhappily married for whom the deal did not work out. They have no skills they are trapped by a unfaithful, disrespectful, user and abuser.

Perhaps in my attempt to avoid this, I also passed up the opportunity to allow a good man to protect and provide for me.

For a little moment here I had the worst of both worlds. I was able to go out and earn a living in a respected professional role, whilst having to opportunity to share my home with someone who expected me to be a chef in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom, an who would physically slap me down If I tried to speak up for myself or negotiate in the domestic economy. Someone who offered me a form of protection and provision I never asked for - "Oh you have magnificent breasts! What's for dinner?" The protection and provision were so hard to discern they were almost theoretical, and yet he traded on them. You clean up after me, because I work FOR YOU.

I have, in my time, been guilty of feeling sorry for my single friends because they could not snare a man. Oh the lonely life of a spinster, to be pitied. And yet that joke is on me too, because had I not entered into this whole marriage/partnership enterprise I would be in no worse a position. Perhaps better even. No unemployable husband living off me, no testosterone charged zealot cheating on me, hitting me, spending my money of flat screen TVs. I would've been able to direct my hard earned dollars to investments that worked for me. If I had not treasured old fashioned notions marriage and family I could even have become a parent.

But now I picture a new stronger me. My efforts will no longer be focussed on finding a partner to share my life, but to creating a better single life for myself. The best it can be.

And what of my feminist grandmother? She died last year, protected and provided for her whole life by a man who loved and respected her. Perhaps she felt dis-empowered, so she had these dreams for me, dreams of freedom, autonomy, personal wealth and its rewards, respect from society.... I think I know where she was coming from.

Yet somehow I think perhaps like many of my generation I am caught in that narrow alley between feminism and post-feminism where there are three options;

• throw caution to the wind and love freely hoping to be given the freedom to pursue your dreams,
• trust only yourself and remain single, or
• become a case study in mismanagement of the feminist ideal as have I.

It was always there

I have been squeamish about including the term sex addiction on my blog. I preferred to think of what happened as a little slip. A one-off infidelity. Maybe I thought Neil's searches for it would bring up my blog. But now our relationship is officially over. I venture to suggest that his sex addiction never went away. Nor was it ever really a problem for him. It is a lifestyle. A real woman with hangups, domestic concerns, worries, hormones, demands is actually something he doesn't want to deal with.



I believe and acknowledge that our relationship is over, and yet for some reason I am driven to have one last snoop. And as always, it bears fruit. Sexually explicit SMS from someone we both know, which leaves me in no doubt that they are or have been intimate.

Its not as though it is the first time this has happened. Let me remind you...

1. The original No Smoke Without Fire in which I surmise that regarding an earlier row over a text message, his infidelity was not in fact in my imagination. Too bad I've had several rounds of infertility treatment and bought a house with him in the interim.

2. There was the STI scare (and he currently has another) although these things can lie dormant and don't really signify infidelity in any real sense. Disturbing for a good convent girl who knew for a fact she had not been with anyone else.

3. The second No Smoke Without Fire in which he accidentally stays logged into his email and I find quite a few leads..

"Nah" I think, "I'm imagining it. They are probably just good friends". One at least turned out to be a male colleague of his!! Lesley!! (and anyway I'm no saint myself by this time)

4. The unexplainable receipts

5. The German controversy

... and finally this. Finally there is very little doubt that he has never been faithful to me (if that matters)

I have repeatedly given him the benefit of the doubt, wondering if I am reading too much into this? Is it all in my head? Are they just good friends?

I am not particularly hurt by this, but it does give me the impetus to actually move on and start a separate life. I love my home, and I have no doubt this will be damaging to Connor, but I can't live my life as the room mate/ house keeper/ admin assistant and Connor won't look back when he's 40 and say "Gee mum, thank you for staying with someone who you didn't love, and who continually cheated on you to give me a stable home"