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 comment