The second post of the day

I couldn't work at home this morning, the place was a mess, Connor not here, so I set out for breakfast at a cafe with my computer. Soon after a dad came in with his severely intellectually disabled child and sat at the table next to me.

Every interaction that I overheard made me feel close to tears. That the dad clearly loved him so much, that the boy was really trying to read and write - unlike my spoilt, yet perfect child who never tries at anything.

Having grown up with an intellectually disabled brother, you would've thought I'd have something to offer, but more often than not, when I encounter families with disabled kids, I over-identify and become emotional. I really wonder at myself. If they can handle it? why can't I? Maybe its because I know first hand what has to be overcome to keep going in life with a child like that? Maybe some unresolved childhood survivor guilt, that I am OK and I couldn't fix him. Or maybe I am just a sook. But I would be hopeless in a professional role with disabled kids. How would the parents react to a carer who just kept bursting into tears????

Husband-Missing (Or missing the spot where he used to be)

It started as a commment on Et Tu Husband then it just blew out into great big thing that was all about me so I decided to admit it and make it a post. Bernadine was admitting that in one aspect she missed her husband. Now I think I am through the frank outright missing my husband phase... I've had the rebound relationship...etc.... but I was having a similar (or sort of aligned) thought about Simon today

Here's the thing:

He still feels at liberty to laugh at me - calling me a cougar (for no discernable reason) or suggesting my latest craft endeavour is a substitute for sex. In fact Anything I confide in him, or try to negotiate like an adult, he turns into a joke - like an annoying little brother. Sometimes even using a little high mocking voice. (e.g. "whooo! little bit touchy there" when I asked him not to go through my drawers ostensibly looking for something for Connor)

Today I was trying to work out why it annoyed me so much, and it was this. We USED to laugh at each other and that WAS fine, because we knew deep down that we loved each other and were there for each other. Now this trust is long gone, and I can't rely on him, I don't love him, and he irritates me intensely. I no longer feel that is is appropriate for him to laugh at my expense because he's not giving me the safety net for my fragile ego. He is no longer. as one commenter put it, a safe compassionate witness to my life experience.

I can't undo that

But like sleeping beauty's fairy godmother, I can soften it a little....

You won't die of marriage, you will just go to sleep for 20 years....

Before I fell asleep this is what I heard

• There is no his and hers in marriage
• There are no roles to play
• Each person is perfectly and completely respected in the role they choose
• That you don't know the person when you commit, is the most beautiful aspect of all, ie that you trust and grow together
• There will be hard times and you may have to work at it, but never will those hard times eat at you from the inside out, consume your soul, or leave you as a shell: When marriage is working it is not that hard
• You will both make mistakes, but you will never disrespect one another or lose trust and faith in your partner

I expect there are some of you out there who still quite like the concept of marriage...

My take on Marriage

credit:www.wymondham-station.com

In recent years it has been my tendency to blame Neil for my jaded view of marriage, but as I sit here in the school playground - admiring the yummy mummies... and daddies I start to realize the other latent influence in my life EX23 is just as culpable. But I'm jumping ahead of myself. Here is my *current* cynical view

Women in Marriage:

• Are subjugated,
• Lose all their decision making power,
• realize too late the job of child rearing:

1. will be all theirs and
2. will severely impinge on their careers

• Have to turn a blind eye to cheating husbands
• Have to deal with daily put downs from same
• and are made to feel unattractive by same

Men in Marriage:

• Discover that their sole function is wage earning machines
• Have to come home after a stressful day to do a second shift and be unappreciated
• Their wives are increasingly reluctant to have sex with them and give up trying to look attractive
• Whatever they do is not good enough
• If they divorce they have to give away the proceeds of their lifetimes' work
• They ultimately "treat themselves" to extra-marital affairs

My granny used to say "Sex was a lot more fun before everyone knew about it". To me Marriage was a lot more palatable before I saw the underbelly. And affairs were a lot more fun/romantic beforel I was affected by them.

Now I know there are men wandering about who have such scant regard for fidelity - ie that its on the "nice to have but not essential" list, and women who are too weak, deluded, desperate to say no. I can't really bring myself to commit to one.

I'm with Miranda

Cynthia Nixon as Miranda Hobbes in Sex and the City

"Believe me, I would love to be one of those people who's all, "we loved, thank
you, you enriched my life, now go, prosper," but I'm much more "we didn't work
out, you need to not exist."

I'm with Miranda on this one. I am sick and tired of managing Ex's. Neil occasionally signs off his maniacal legal demands with "I hope when this is all over we can meet up as friends over coffee". Like HELL we can. If I had wanted cosy coexistence with you, I would still be living in the spare room. I FLED. For a good reason.

And take note all you young things. If you have a child with someone they will always "Exist"...

Lonely

I warn you, this isn't going to be an insightful post. I am self-pitying, premenstrual and yes slightly drunk. I have had a terrible day. It is becoming increasingly difficult to visualise my future.

But then, when could I?

I guess when I was happy, I lived in the moment. For those 3 (4?) years when I was pretending to be in a relationship with Neil where did I actually think it was going to end? Happy reconciliation, kids, family home, world travel, sexy matching careers???

Perhaps more likely I thought we would co-exist amicably, see the least possible of each other, maybe even find lovers outside the relationship, but maintain the all important "family home"

When I split up with Simon where did I think it would end? Happy supportive co-parenting
No I don't think I thought that far, I just needed to be AWAY from his toxic, controlling influence, at that stage Connor was so young I thought of him as part of me, I had no idea I had to negotiate with Simon for-the-rest-of-my-life.

So about my bad day. This weekend I holed up in my tiny overpriced rented accomodation and tried to catch up on the work I had missed with a whole week of family admin: Getting Connor into a new school, buying a car, changing my address on my bank accounts, THE LAWYER in final rip-off settlement with Neil. Moving my stuff about from friend's places, storage etc.

I had a couple of dates arranged with girlfriends at the end of the weekend to look forward to. Then on Saturday night EX23 calls me with a tirade blaming the fact we are not together on me, talking dirty, being incredibly rude to me. But mainly putting me down at an incredibly low point in my life when you might expect an "old friend" to pick you up. He's an ego manic extraordinare. I attract them. I realise he is probably sick and it is definitely over between us. Whatever "it" was. I am so sad about that. Then today both my friends cancel. Finally, Simon delivers Connor back and I have to endure 3 hours of tantrums about how he wants to be with Daddy, he doesn't feel safe with me. This is the child I fought for, the only person who means anything to me in this world. I am so excruciatingly and exquisitely trapped. I am almost ready to give Connor his wish and lodge him permanently at Simon's which is madness. Simon is mentally ill and Connor is the only thing I have ever truly fought for.

Absolutely noone is here for me on this side of the world. I want to run back to my folks.

But even that is sad and regressive, they will die, then where will I be? I can't believe that a girl with such potential could screw everything up so comprehensively? I should be safely ensconced in my family home with 2.2 kids a white picket fence and a cheating husband by now.

So what of the future? a slow decline into menopause or even senililty - my memory is shot to pieces, decreasing control over my child, my career, my life? a crippling mortgage? a loss of ability to do sport which had been my main means of meeting people. Yes, it emerges this week I have the early stages of Arthritis. How to go on? How actually to put one foot in front of the other?? and why bother?

But still on the work front a batch of new projects are looming. I have to front up, be the boss, do my thing. With zero enthusiasm. Someone please paint me a future....what do sports people who become crippled do? what do maiden aunts do? I need role models, ideas I need to move forward.

Control

Over the past few days I've been wondering

Is control a good thing, or a bad thing?

Here's the thing. I have been taking comfort in the fact I have no control over my life in a "Let go and let god" kind of a way. That is, there are certain things I just cannot control and I will hurt myself trying. However I am wondering where the boundaries lie. By which I mean, at what point does this become abdication of responsibility?

i.e I can't control when I feel too tired to get out of bed and go to work!

So I turned to Amazon.com for the answer. Broadly it seems anything to do with controlling your diet, or your anger, is OK and controlling your life is OK until it becomes OCD. Having anyone else control you is toxic and bad and you need to learn to say "No"!!!

I think as my ex husband's psychiatrist said, we all need some level of controlling behaviour to function in professional roles, but the trick is not to let it get out of hand where we need to control other people to feel in control of our own lives. This will never be me. I always follow the codie route in that regard.

Thank you Blogosphere

When I think about the challenges I face. From the tiring, work-a-day tasks, to the awkward to the truly unpalatable, the sad, hard or heartbreaking choices I have to make. Nothing consoles me more than the thought I can write it out here. When nothing else remains, I will still have writing, and for this I am very grateful.

Feminism, the sisterhood, bitchy women and the games people play

Once again life with my SA partner has called me up short on how I see the world.

In his mind, all his ex's and FBs had mental health issues. In his words, they were MAD!.

They called him in the middle of the night MAD!
They tried to get revenge by torching his clothes MAD!
They ranted about feminism MAD!
They wanted more, and simply could not accept his "deal" MAD!
They clung on when it was well and truly over MAD!

As far as I can make out some of these are a bit deranged, some of them could be construed as love or infatuation. And his response to that? "I told them I was only in it for sex, if they wanted more they were perfectly at liberty to leave"

And what I read in all these comments (eventually) was "You, Neil, are a toxic, woman hating mysogynist" It is also a very easy way of covering up a rogue sms or phone call. "SHIT it's that MAD! woman calling me again. Can't believe how many times I have told her to sling her hook"

Now there is a beautiful post on MAD! women over at woman of experience, which completely explains how all this fits in with your sex-addict-woman-hating-mysogynist-fuckbuddy philosophy...

But suddenly I begin to see a different angle on this. Which is that if not mad, many women are bitchy and do play head games with men. And if men like them a bit mad, truth be told they also like them a bit bitchy. In my clumsy forays into dating I have found the old addage of "treat them mean, keep them keen" (which I always hated) has worked inadvertently more than I could possibly have imagined.

I hated that addage because I thought it was disrespectful to men. If you love them, let them know, if you don't let them know also. Treat them with the openness you would expect yourself, and through mutual respect build a loving partnership. I remember some nerdy young fellow who had been chasing the prettiest girl in my stats class saying to me "the thing about you Fiona, is that you are so, SO, er...straightforward" I took it as a compliment. Likewise regarding the sisterhood. I would never talk disparagingly about another girls physical attractiveness to a man, put another girl down, sleep with another girl's boyfriend...

But hang on! I actually don't think men want a straightforward girlfriend. Seeing from this middle age vantage point how very very much young men want sex and what they will do for it. Playing them, and trading up could have very serious advantages for a young attractive girl. Plus they love the thrill of the chase.

I see little girls doing it to their Daddys. They won't smile until they get what they want. They keep him waiting, they pout and cheat and lie to get what they want, and the Daddys fall for it every time.

And frankly I wish I had more than that. If men are going to be nasty manipulative mysogynistic bastards. Sock it right back to them. All's fair in love and war.

You'll never walk alone

Last Wednesday I set out on my bicycle to my friends house, about 5 miles away for an evening with the girls, it was a lovely warm evening, and the bunny rabbits were hopping in the long grass as I took the path across the common and down by the river in a secluded spot behind the golf course. When I came to ride home in the dark, it was a different matter. I heard every fox rustling in the undergrowth and every cow ruminating and shifting its bulk as I took off across the meadow on a damp moonless night with only the rasping of my ancient dynamo light on my bike to light my way. In a word I was petrified. I was so delighted to finally get home around 11.30pm I nearly kissed the earth.

Then two days later I was driving to the doctors when a song came on the radio "You'll never walk alone" sung by Siphiwo Ntshebe. He was going to sing at the world cup but died of menigitis. He was in his early 30s and a magnificent African tenor. As I listened my eyes filled with tears. That Siphiwo has been taken from us, and that I feel as though I am very much walking alone as I return to the other side of the world to carry on my life, away from my family. In fact it feels very much like plunging into that dark, dark forest with all its unknown assailants and associated terror.

INFP: The Idealist

Reposted from The REAL Personality Types:

I am and INFP and am starting to wonder if this is the problem. I am attracted to ITSJs in a predator-prey type of way (with me being the prey)

The INFP is a dreamy, imaginitive, idealist, capable of finding the good in anything or anyone, even something as foul as Newark, New Jersey. INFPs are sometimes dangerous to the well-being of society as a whole, as they are prone to adopting subversive and destructive ideologies like "The world should be fair," People should treat one another well," and "You know, 'Friends' is a really, really stupid television show."

These irrational thought patterns may sometimes cause INFPs to run off and join the circus, the Resistance, or the Rebellion, where they tend to do well in any position requiring excellent hand-eye coordination or mastery of the Force.

COMPATIBILITY: INFPs and ISTJs generally exhibit a natural predator/prey relationship, which, though it might appear harsh and cruel from the outside, is all part of the natural cycle of life. In fact, were it not for the predation of the ISTJ, the population of INFPs would soon grow to unsustainable levels, overwhelming the ability of their ecological niche to support them.

Famous idealists include that girl in your sixth-grade homeroom who got the teacher fired for saying that girls aren't good at math; that guy in the cubicle next to yours who got the manager fired for saying that women don't make good employees; and Anais Nin.

Limited Liability Love

I've just been to see sex and the city 2, and yes story-wise it probably is as bad as the reviewers claim. Maybe not like being lobotomized with a pink plastic teaspoon....... as Hadley Freeman of the Guardian would have it. However the insecurity that Charlotte feels surrounding what her husband might do with the Nanny whilst she was away got me thinking.

If not exactly triggering, it made me return to my own experience of infidelity and how I might handle it differently next time. The train of thought went something like this:

I will never demean myself by getting into such a state about my partner and another woman
I will trust him implicitly....
...no hang on....
I could never trust any man implicitly
I will keep my own counsel and have enough going on in my own life not to waste time obsessing about this....
Whilst at the same time loving him appropriately and giving him enough attention so he doesn't want to stray.... and if he does I will love him enough to forgive him....
but hang on, all this love and forgiveness... will he do it for me?
or will he waltz off with my home, my child, my savings....
I will be hurt
Best not to go there at all
Best to just have an arm's length lover
...And won't "having enough going on in my own life" and "giving him enough attention" be mutually exclusive?

It seems in love there is no compromise. As I seem to recall the archbishop of Canterbury saying a couple of decades ago (before I got married).

If we love on a limited liability basis, we limit our ability to love at all

So I feel that all this self protection and boundary setting will ultimately be futile. If you love you need to do so fully. It is not inconsistent with having a really healthy self esteem however. In which you know you can survive whatever happens and you only rely fully on one person - yourself. It's a tough call.

I would be scared of anyone who was attracted to me right now

Photo credit: virginmedia.com

This is a quote from Et tu Husband which has become bed-time reading for me lately.

Yes. Until we fix ourselves we can go on attracting the same type of garbage.

Lately I have been feeling totally fine without a man in my life for the first time. Thought it might be the beginnings of menopause! (I'm only 44 though and no other symptoms as of yet) ... it'd be a shame.

...or more a sort of way of protecting myself from predatory men who see me as a weak animal ready for attack.

Something like when I tore my ligament and all my muscles went on strike to protect the knee. This is something I have to go through to know what I want.

And Ex 23 is definitately a preditor if not an SA. However much I may believe that I love him. A healthy choice about this is pending.

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.