And..
The reasons I am not divorced are 1. I sounded out the children subtly many times and they immediately got insanely upset. 2. Our money and business is tied up inextricably and we would have lost so much and possibly ruined the business if it was split up. 3. I couldn't bear it if my husband had any more children because I don't want to deal with all the crap that that would mean. 4. I couldn't bear it if he was happy with someone else because he doesn't deserve it. 5. I am older now and I don't want to be sad and alone while he is springing around as if nothing had happened ..see 4.

The main feeling I have is a terrible disappointment in him. I don't believe that being faithful all your life to one person is the most fulfilling way to live. I think there are many relationship possibilities and you must choose what feels right. But I came to this point after years of thought and difficult mental 'work'. I spent vast amounts of time with clever, academic people deconstructing ourselves and reading and trying to start again mentally without preconceptions and it was really hard. And I thought my husband was the perfect person to be with because when I met him he was naive but seemed unusually open minded and ready to try a new way of being. And was so surprisingly unjudgmental ... bitter, bitter laugh.

But my whole point, the vital part of this, was that you had to respect the other person and talk to them constantly and treat them as your FRIEND. And .... most crucial ... you had to be totally honest. Or they looked stupid and couldn't make decisions because they didn't have all the facts and I especially didn't want that situation where the past is ruined because when you look back you realise that nothing had been what it seemed ... because the person had been LYING to you. This takes courage and I really think that I had and have it and I stuck to those rules and took the consequences and put up with his behaviour when it was fair enough because I had done the same thing. And because of me we were friends and everyone said that they thought we had one of the best marriages they knew.

And then his life opened up with his new work and he was out and meeting fun people all the time just when mine closed in with three tiny children. And running around selfishly was just not an option. AND we had discussed having a third child and I had said I feel too old and the gap is too big and I don't want to do all that any more. And he had begged me to do it and promised that we would 'Be together on this'.

And then fucked off when I was trapped and fat and no longer a 'player' and lied about everything and left me out of everything. And wasn't the man I thought he was in any way at all. And slowly ignored my influence to the point where I might as well never have met him as he is now a dull, upper middle class snob who goes to the opera and shooting and is passionate about wine and 'knows practically nothing of popular culture - thank god'.

I feel as if I am living with my grandfather. If my grandfather had been a total cunt.

SO ... to analyse or not to analyse. The thing is that I am perfectly fine. HE is the one who is in desperate need of a good look around inside - but he would never understand that or care. Why should he bother? His life is perfect .. and especially if the children are happy with him again.

Oh, Grrrr. and F.ck and Aaarrrgh!
- posted by Iris @ 4/11/2005 12:23:00 PM (0) comments comment

 
Introspection.
I so very much never thought I would say this ... but last week I was thinking of starting a course of analys1s. When I was younger my father worked in that world and so I met many, many analysts under social circumstances - and it was not a pretty sight. In fact it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the ones who had actually managed to stay married were invariably alcoholics and among the single ones the rate of suicide was abnormally high. On one occasion I had a 'session' with one of my father's colleagues to see if he could help with my chronic shyness. Afterwards he phoned me to say that he had transferred me to another doctor and as I was no longer his patient ... how about dinner? He also sent me his interim report, which was soon followed by that from the other doctor - the two reports gave exactly opposing advice.

So my decision last week obviously came from desperation. Two male friends of mine have recently gone through a year's course, (both of them very unlikely people to do such a thing), and both said they felt miles better for it and generally sorted out. When pressed, however, they said that the main revelation had been the chance to talk to someone about their inner thoughts under conditions of total secrecy. That is not my problem. My problem is that I can't let the past go and dwell on it constantly to the point of having screaming arguments .. aloud ... with my husband. Who isn't there.

Everyone I ever mention this to says 'Can't you just let it go?', 'He's behaving so much better now', 'You're only hurting yourself' etc. etc. cliche, cliche. Well NO, apparently I can't because if someone ruins FIFTEEN YEARS of your life that is quite a big deal. And if they were drunk for a large part of those years then you are f.cked because either they can't remember great chunks of it or they remember scenes from their drunk perspective and not as they really were. If I ever recount any of the more horrible examples of his behaviour he, now, laughs in a wry way as if we were talking about some rather amusingly badly behaved friend and says things like 'Really? I don't remember that at all.' or 'God, I've been a bit of a shit in my time haven't I? Ha, ha'. As if he was some sort of rakeish, cool bastard. When he was just a boring, selfish pratt who ruined children's birthday parties by suddenly screaming at the guests for jumping on the sofa and everyone went quiet and wanted to go home when I had spent two weeks setting it up so it would be perfect. And shouted at me or the children in the street or in restaurants so we went quiet and wanted to go home in the middle of family holidays. I could go on, and on and on. So I will. And never came home until late in the evening - ever - and left me to bring up the children on my own and took nil interest in their lives to the most upsetting (to them) extent.

And now, because I have some inexplicable idea that families should stay together, I have made huge efforts to improve their relationships by encouraging both the girls to work for Daddy ... and they have. And apparently when Daddy is in his own environment, where he is king and his word is law, and now the girls are grown up and he doesn't have to do anything for them, he is a kind and charming person. And the girls get on with him really well and they are starting to think that my attitude is rather bitter and extreme. Especially as they have forgotten the bulk of his past excesses and I also kept the worst of it from them and still couldn't tell them because they would be retrospectively upset. You can imagine what I mean .. the word 'faithful' would not be normally used here.

It sounds mad .. but I could leave it and go forward if he would just sit down with me and agree that his behaviour was totally inappropriate and horrible and I coped amazingly under the circumstances and he is really sorry. But when I have had conversations moving in this direction he gets furious and says, ' What about YOUR past behaviour .. eh? eh? .. what about THAT?' And just can't see the difference between wildness and running around BEFORE you have children and, all right I admit it, when they were very small ..and carrying on like that right through their entire childhood when they are easily old enough to notice and in fact still doing it at a small level even now. And it isn't the running around anyway it's the horribleness. The spiteful asides and shouting in public; the 'not being there' when it really mattered to me or the children; the letting me deal with every dreary little detail including coping with all illnesses completely on my own; the cutting me out of huge parts of fun social life because he didn't tell me until the last minute or, probably, because he wanted to take someone else or going abroad at times when I couldn't leave the children; and the endless, endless judgemental criticism of every single thing that I (or the children) do.
- posted by Iris @ 4/11/2005 10:32:00 AM (0) comments comment

 
Search.
I was thinking how odd it is that I nearly always write on the computer at breakfast time when I'm drinking my coffee. Whereas I would normally talk to people, from choice, in the evenings and with large amounts of whiskey to help with flow and leaps of thought. Partly it's because it is still so cold ... how is that possible? So at night I don't want to be crouched in here freezing and anyway my son is on holiday and in the middle of 'D@rw1n1a' and turns like tiger if I lay a hand on the keyboard.

But I can't imagine a real life friendship that was conducted solely in the early morning giving much impression of the 'real' me.

Anyway ... last night I was moved to go and look something up at midnight and checked my e-mails from habit and one said that my subscription to Fr13nds R3un1t3d needed renewing. I have been reunited with no one in the three years since I started but I thought 'Fuck it'. And went back one more time. In the ages since I've been there they've introduced new things including being able to put in any street name and people who once lived there have left messages under their house number. And 'G3n3s R3un1t3d' which is an anc3st0r hunting site but done really easily where you also just type in any old name and it immediately comes up if anyone else has that in their family tr33.

Naturally hours of fun immediately ensued and by two am. I had found a girl who lived across the road from me when I was eight years old; a man who had my great-grandmother in his family tree and two people who thought my father's family was connected to them in some way. How amusing is that? I e-mailed them all with the wild insouciance of the late night drinker and by tonight I had two replies.

One of the reasons that I wouldn't have e-mailed at breakfast time is that I didn't know the girl very well at all even though we were at school together and neighbours. I remembered her because she had exotically arrived in our class in the middle of term and she was DANISH and spoke not a word of English. She had white blonde hair and was very pretty and smiley and all the boys were very caring about helping her with the language. In fact she learnt at the speed of light and after a couple of months was speaking perfectly well and was really popular, much more so than me and although we sometimes 'played' after school I was never sure that she thought of me as totally cool.

The other reason was that years later, when I was about 20 and hadn't seen her for ages because we had moved schools and houses, her older brother came to live in my boyfriend's house. He had bought this house when he left university and let out rooms to students. This was while he thought what to do with his life ... and he and I set the whole thing up and ran it together for a bit. Anyway suddenly there was this gorgeous, moody older brother figure living there who couldn't even recall meeting me although I had been to their house under the 'playing' circumstances several times when I was eight. Obviously not a precociously cute eight.

He was quite scary and never smiled and played depressing music and didn't join much in the life of the house - but WAS fucking gorgeous. A few weeks after he arrived my boyfriend was wandering around late at night and smelled gas coming from his room. After banging on the door he burst it open and found the brother lying by the unlit gas fire. The door and window had been amateurishly padded with clothes and there were exerpts from 'The R@ven' written out and scattered around. But the brother wasn't even unconcious because the padding had been done so badly that there was a brisk draught of fresh air. He just had a splitting headache and felt like a total fool. But when I wrote to her I felt sure that later on he must have succeeded and I only hoped that it was long enough ago for her not to be upset by my mentioning his name.

Today - by return of post - an e-mail of amazing friendliness and charm. The fact that she hardly remembered me didn't matter in the least. She had moved back to Denmark and lived near C0penhag3n and would be totally thrilled if I was ever out there so that we could meet for dinner etc. etc. and included addresses and numbers to make this possible. And what fun that I also knew her brother (plainly not dead) who had become a famous writer (though only in Danish) and lived in a beautiful house in B@li and if I ever happened to be out THERE he would be only too pleased to .... etc. etc.

AND ... the other e-mail was from the man with my great-grandmother in his family tree. He was really sorry but he and I were not related as he was making the tree for his cousin and my family were joined by marriage only so it was pretty remote. But he had piles of research and would send it all and I sounded really nice and he would be happy to help me look for my ancestors if I liked etc. etc. .... And he sounded really nice too...

So how is that for an hour or two after midnight? And how unlike the results of an hour or two while eating toast and marmalade. Time to move my internal clock around, get an extra radiator and hide the 'D@rw1n1a' disc.
- posted by Iris @ 4/09/2005 12:22:00 AM (0) comments comment