46: A Common Story

I never doubted that mine was a common story but there was an article in a newspaper today which sounded eerily familiar:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/26/im-being-emotionally-abused-by-my-husband

But the gender is reversed.

Yes, indeed, She is very much regarded as charming and efficient and helpful in the outside world. One kid at our son's school said, 'X's mum is always smiling - even when no one is looking.' Trust me - that is not the mum and wife we see at home.

I wonder how a psychology works that nothing is too much trouble for others, ironing may never be done at home but is taken to the in-laws, the son and I are continually told to clear up and tidy up when the house remains a mess for the areas down to her - another suitcase has still not been unpacked from almost eight weeks ago.

Perhaps I should write to the columnist and suggest that it is not always just the husband who creates the stress and any help for the husband/partner would be very much appreciated!

45: How (not) to be an adult - in trouble again - Dec 14

So, here we go again.

It's Christmas. As money spent is what matters, I usually buy an expensive handbag. She then goes and exchanges it in the New Year when the sales are on. No problem on my side with that.

This year she specifically says that she has too many handbags and will go for a coat and boots instead. As they have to be expensive, I figure that choosing with her would be the sensible thing. Because of work and school, we don't get to the shops till Christmas Eve.

I suggest a couple of shops  - 'I'm not going there for a Christmas present - I go there all the time.' ;-)

So we walk around a number of shops, she can't choose anything and now we are in crisis because Santa Claus has not delivered anything in time.

In the meantime, she has spent a couple of hundred pounds of our money on clothes for me for Christmas and my birthday - clothes that I do not like and it is a ridiculous amount of money to spend at a time when we have to be careful with money. And if presents are supposed to be for the receiver more than the giver, she knows I would prefer golf lessons or cable TV subscription rather than clothes - but, as ever, it is about her, her, her.

Just a few days ago I was hearing lots of 'I love yous' - is a material gift really the determinant?

The amount of support I give her, the amount of work I do at home, counts for nothing?!

Four foreign trips, Tiffany's diamond ring, Michael Kors handbag - count for nothing?

New house, bigger kitchen, tons of money spent to make it like she wants - counts for nothing?

This is a person incapable of being happy.

To cap it all, out mobile provider offered a couple of free cinema tickets. Initially our son said, yes, he would like to go. But Santa Claus delivered a couple of DVDs he really wanted to watch asap and so he said he would prefer to stay at home and watch that instead.

She says that he HAS to go and use the tickets and if he did not then he would not be allowed to watch the film that that we had targeted at the cinema ever again.

Sometimes I wonder who is the 42 year old and who is the 9 year old in our house.

44: Happy Birthday to me - Dec '14

So, it was my birthday. A Saturday.

I am informed that we can go to one of three restaurants - our son wants McDonalds but that is out of the question of course. I suggest a couple of good ones but only her choices will do. I pick one and say that we could go there for her upcoming birthday - 'no, it's too cheap.' But I pick one of her choices for a quiet life.

Come home after lunch and she goes to bed. I look after our son, prepare his dinner etc etc.. No problem of course given this is a week-end and I don't mind as it is just another day to me; how I am treated on a special day is immaterial given how I am treated like dirt the rest of the time.

Sunday I don't go to the gym: I know she will be late up as the afternoon siesta has meant that she has gone to bed very late. Usual day, usual work - great birthday week-end.

43: Seeing shadows - or are we on the edge

Things have been going fine since our return from an holiday abroad. Expensive handbag, diamond ring from a  well known shop, workmen in the house - all good. Thank God the house choice was her's or there would be so much and so many 'I told you so's.'

It's been mostly fun at home - a refreshing change. Usual commands and instructions barked but I say nothing about the bags that remain unpacked after four weeks - or, indeed, anything else.

But.....

She goes out for a girls' night on Friday evening. Comes back at 1:30 in the morning. Obviously nothing wrong with that but I only know the time because she stomps about in her boots for ten minutes on our wooden floors. I do mention it the next morning - but only in humour.

Saturday, I do the soccer run while she lies in. No problem.

This morning, I make time to go to the gym at 9 but am back by 11 am. Have set up the son with biscuits and milk expecting her to make breakfast. Nothing done by the time I return - has probably woken late.

Make brunch for us all, do three hours of ironing which has piled up.

She puts some clothes in the wash and brings our son to tears over some simple spelling homework.

I play soccer with him for an hour, she finally showers and goes to the shops.

I prepare dinner for our son, supervise his piano. She prepares our dinner to be fair.

I watch a particular TV show at 9 pm but as I am taking our son up to bed for a little reading, a quick hug and sleep, she says I have to clean the oven. Now.

42: So....

Today really was my last day with the team ... and I had to leave my own leaving drinks early so I would not get another drama at home!

“Sometimes ... it's better for a man just to walk away.

 But if you can't walk away?

 I guess that's when it's tough.”

Arthur Miller

41: Fuck it....

I knew things were going too well. It was at a point where I had cut down on my time at the gym, was even feeling whether I should even be doing; since the gym was part of an escape, now there was little to escape from except for little episodes.

Anyway...

Tomorrow is my last day with my old team and they have organised some drinks. They have paid for it and I've been looking forward to it for weeks. Last time I went out was in late September.

But the new team I will be joining was going out today and invited me. Considering it politic to go I asked whether it would be ok to go two nights in a row. She said yes.

Then, half way through the evening I get a phone call with some drama that I have to do this and that and have to come home. I am also told that I must be back by 7 tomorrow. And going out three nights in the week - one was at a  gym till 7:30 pm - was entirely unreasonable.

Firstly I can tell from the bloody toilet that periods have started. Secondly, as usual, she is stressed because she has left everything till the last minute. Our son's birthday is coming up and it comes - not surprisingly - at the same time every year. I had done my job in persuading him to do something easy and all she had to do was make one phone call and arrange it at a leisure centre. Now we are going away abroad for two weeks on holiday and she only gets around to doing it this week and has had to scurry round gathering invitations etc.. Washing I noted was on the washing machine, wet.

I did something I have rarely done and said that no wonder she was stressed given that she leaves everything till the last minute and doesn't start work till 6 pm. Yes, I had left a dinner plate on the table from last night which I had not moved this morning - my bad. By the way, I had only had some toast, so it was only a few crumbs at worst on the plate. It would have taken all of 10 seconds to move and, for all I care, she could have left it for me to move when I came back.

So here we are at 11:20 pm and I am having to let go of my frustrations here. But I am really procrastinating because I have to do the ironing for my son's school uniform while she has gone to sleep. I can see from the internet browsing history that a significant time has been spent browsing today but clearly it was a tiring day.

Fed up, fed up, fed up - but there is nothing I can do and no one I can turn to ..... except you, dear blog.

40: Oh boy, what a week that was.... and deeper thoughts

Well, today is Sunday and the week is ending relatively well with smiles and calm and laughter.

It started off horribly with anger and scoldings and incredibly poor behaviour on her part. 'Where does this happy and smiley M. disappear to? Where did she go earlier this week?' I asked. She did not take it badly. I suppose I am glad I did not confront her directly earlier in the week, letting the episode blow over instead. But I am conscious that I need to protect our son while acknowledging that she is the full time parent.

As it is impossible to change her, I had the opportunity to chat with our son who joined me when I had to go for a quick errand; perhaps he wanted to get out of the house as she was in one of her moods!!

'My mother always used to scold me - so don't mind it too much. Even if often it is unfair. I remember when your uncle was 19 or 20 and she had to reach up to slap him for not doing as well as he might have in his university exams!' 'Just be patient.'

But there will either be an alienation growing up or a feeling of being beaten up - not a happy choice.

There was this article in the newspaper the other day: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/30/letter-to-my-husband-who-may-be-about-to-leave

It resonated so much with me but she probably missed it and would not understand it anyway. Basically, it covers the realisation from a wife that she may  not have been entirely fair with her husband!

She was teasing me that she meets an ex-neighbour of our's every week now at some kids' activity. 'Aren't you worried that I may do something? After all, he is very handsome.' 'Be my guest,' I replied, 'we live only once and we should enjoy the time.' This was not calling her bluff in any way, I meant it but, of course she was not being serious herself. In many ways, though I cannot imagine it, I hope that she does find someone - someone who makes her happier than I appear to be able to.

It reminded me of an earlier quote in an earlier post:

I can recall a student of mine, a woman in her mid-40s, telling me a long, moving story about being 'awakened' emotionally, sexually and intellectually, when she fell in love with a friend of her husband.

What the adulterer usually wants is better relationships, conversation, support, attention, pleasure. Her question is: how can we get what we want while behaving well, which means, at least, not being ashamed of ourselves?

My student didn't wish for anything like 'total liberation' - a revolution, a new social set-up - just for a satisfying marriage. And it is worth noting about the classic heroines of literature, Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, or even the characters in the David Lean's Brief Encounter, that they are not compulsive transgressors. They are asking for very little, and for everything, which, for them, is a fuller, more satisfying love. Complete happiness is a fiction,  but some happiness is possible; indeed, it is essential. There are some people you can 'realise' yourself in relation to, and they are worth searching out.

'When were your happiest/most content?' she asked me one day. I said when I was 17/18 and in the last two years of school. 'I was in a loving atmosphere, I was confident and calm.' 'I was surrounded by people who liked me and were kind and supportive.'

I told her about and read out to her a comment I had seen in response to an article on empty nesters:

A wife dead, a son at university. Left to chatter inanely on the Guardian website. When we are in a full flush of life we cannot imagine the barrenness of loneliness, could not put a face to the dreadful singularity. To think of those happy hours, overdrafts and family calamities, little local difficulties, the school run. It all seemed so onerous once and yet now what would I give for its return.

It is a terrible coincidence when double loss occurs in such a way and all companionship and the secret family dissipates. The house is silent save for the distant warbling of radio four. How you would long for an invitation to shopping or the delivery of the child to his friend's house. The loss of the familiar names and typical characterisations generated over years of closeness, intimacy. And those jobs you have to do, which you were told about but which remained unattended, they are now unattended forever.

You soon come to the loss of self, did I ever have an ego, I must have done. The inevitable is that life will never be the same. From the full flush of the main current you have been dropped like silt, abruptly, while life flushes on elsewhere. It was once that element of surprise, "When I was seventeen, says the child, "My father knew nothing. Now I am twenty-two I find it surprising how much he has learnt in such a short time". But even that knowledge is of little use for knowledge is nothing without employment and care and attentions moulders in self-pity. Perhaps there is a time for all of us when we should resign from life, when we are best to step aside, who knows. But the truth is that even the bad times were good. I see it all now, too late.

'That will be you when I am gone,' she said.

'No, it won't. I'll have loads of friends and loads of fun.'

'No you won't. I'll come back as a ghost and make your life a misery if you do have fun.'

Nuff said...