A long five months ago our Hammersmith pub conversation opened up with “How do you KNOW?” or “can you ever know, that somebody is The One?” Doesn’t it always degenerate, get tired and dull, don’t you always end up boring one another?
After which he’d crumbled. He told me how he was having an affair with a girl in the office, who he was crazy about. He explained how he was cheating on his wife of a year, which was horrible and hateful but he couldn’t help it, and how the other girl herself was also married.
Now, a long five months later he told how he’d allowed the affair to turn his life upside down. A divorce was proceeding, although he said he wasn’t really reading the letters, and he’d not only moved in with the new woman, they also were moving back to her native America after a month travelling in Thailand over Christmas.
His ex-wife was heartbroken and had wanted reconciliation even after everything became known. Her father had visited him at his workplace and tried to persuade him to try again, even speaking of sex and how such things can dwindle but men have ways of coping, other outlets.
My friend rejected this. He liked the other girl. He loved her in fact, and no longer loved the woman he’d married. This was difficult for them to accept and he received hate email, both from her and from her sisters.
In a separate, dark twist his new partner’s husband died suddenly, overnight. A verdict is still pending.
The original concealment of the affair from his wife was less forgivable, but the manner with which he followed his heart (I can find no less trite way of saying it), grasped a very painful nettle and dared to change his life; I found it peculiarly admirable.
We spoke briefly in the South Kensington pub, before his new partner arrived to join us, about fear and self-doubt, our shared concern of boring people eventually.
If you’re seeing someone younger with plenty of those exciting 20-something years ahead of them – years when they’ll do exciting new things, go to novel or exotic places and meet interesting cool people – how can you not worry that you won’t stand up? You will appear jaded, lazy and uninteresting, old. You will eventually bore. It’s a risk, like everything is. Like “How Do You Know?” You don’t, you can’t.
She arrived in the South Kensington pub after about half an hour: pretty, blonde and slightly nervous of me (as he’d admitted to me beforehand that she was – not having met any of his friends before). He’d been attracted by her quirky creative bent, her desire to make her own clothes and her practicality, the fact she wasn’t a girly girl. None of that came across.
We spoke of the Interpol concert they were heading to from here, how I’d heard good reports and there was a favourable review in the newspaper. From the half hour spent, my impression was positive. She appeared like someone who’d over-lived for 25, had many things happen including the possibly premature first marriage.
I left the couple to head south of the river to my work function, pleased for them and their convictions – more his than hers? – perversely envious of their dramatic, romantic year, sad I might never see them again.
Showing posts with label infidelity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label infidelity. Show all posts
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Thursday, 29 July 2010
A marriage rocked
Yesterday evening I was reminded that my routine failure with females may not be THAT worth the constant whingeing.
Marriage is terrifying both as a concept and in practise: the bond you’ve made, the contract you’ve signed, supposedly for your whole life with all the people you love watching you.
The average age of newlyweds is getting older with generations and there’s less of a stigma attached to singletons and divorcees in their thirties, forties and fifties. It happens. You might argue that it happens because we communicate better, or we communicate more, or because we’re less willing to simply keep up appearances.
Yet there still exists an implicit pressure on twenty-somethings who have been together a while to do just this; those who look – to all extents and purposes – like they’re ‘made’ for each other. If they’ve been together long enough, their families want to see some semblance of security, maybe children; they’re nudged in that direction and if they’re happy and solid, then why not?
But if they are childhood or university sweethearts who haven’t known many, if any other relationships, does there always exist a tiny glint of attraction towards the unknown, towards the other? Is it an innate undercurrent fear which those sort of couples learn to deal with? It might lie blissfully dormant or never be realised (safety first). But it might equally just need an unknown figure to appear and prise the edges apart, so that glint becomes dazzling, hot, scalding.
My former colleague was an amusing, bumbling and self- effacing guy who often exercised pleasing amounts of self-doubt. (I always warm more easily to those who exercise self-doubt). You might have thought him slightly quirky if you only saw him loping caveman-like around the office in his baggy striped jumpers, or at his desk hiding behind a giant box of cornflakes and coffee pot, but. In conversation though – one-to-one or in a group – he engaged indiscriminately with everyone, he was funny and candid.
After living with his long-term girlfriend for four years, they married and bought a house.
Our roughly four-monthly pub conversation kicked off as usual: work, the office, colleagues and former colleagues, my move. Then I asked about married life and he gave hints which I entirely failed to pick up on, only later realising that he was trying to use it as a segway. What do you think keeps couples going until they’re old? How do you keep making a relationship work? What is it? Don’t all couples get bored of each other after a certain time?
I gave bland answers: separate and shared interests, doing new things, travelling, planning, shared experience, family. Our chat progressed to a point when I mentioned my curious evening on the night of the USA-Ghana World Cup match.
“Yeah, I had a.. a strange evening then too.”
“Really, what happened? You go first. You’re not being..?”
He breathed in, looked down and away. He was being..
“You ok mate?”
He wiped his increasingly glassy eye. Did he just wipe his eye? Fuck.
“Hey really, don’t tell me if you don’t want to tell me. Shall I go first and..?”
“Yeah, you go on. Just need more to drink then I’ll..”
I went on with my commentary of that evening, aware that he wasn’t really paying attention, glazed over, trapped in his own world and whatever was going on in there.
“And that was that,” I concluded. “Now you? If you..?”
“Mate, I’m totally fucked.”
He did the breathing, looking down, eye-wipe thing again. His eyes looked full.
“You told anyone about this?”
“One. Best mate. This girl in the office: over the past month we’ve started sort of going out, I’ve taken her to places and we’ve stayed out together until three four or five in the morning. She’s exciting and different and likes me.”
“Single?”
“Married too. But it’s shit; she hates it, and him. They’re getting divorced, selling their house and she’s moving back to America soon.”
“How old?”
“25, so only a few years younger. Got married when they were stupidly young. But mate, she’s so different and like nobody I’ve ever met: hobbies and interests and.. drugs. I’ve always been liberal about that stuff but never tried much. We’ve done lines of coke at lunchtimes.”
I looked at him quizzically, laughed.
“Yeah, scored them off some drunk on the train back from Brighton. It’s overrated to tell you the truth. But she’s just.. You know those shit montages in films which show couples getting together, doing stuff and falling in love? It feels like I’m in the middle of one of those. Thing is, I don’t know if this is what it’s like meeting someone new, if this was what it was like when I first met.. and everything about her was new and interesting. I can’t remember what it was like.”
It sounded amazing, the bastard. I shovelled back the encroaching jealousy.
“And your wife?”
“She suspects. I slept on the sofa last night. Probably tonight too. Doubt she’ll believe I’m here with you, with good reason. Before it all got to the stage it has now I’d talked about not knowing what I was doing with my life, and our marriage. We’ve barely spoken for weeks.”
“But this girl is moving back to America?”
“I’ve said I’ll go with her but I don’t think she took me seriously. She’s impulsive and spontaneous. She likes me, we’ve done – although we haven’t slept together. Mate. I’m totally obsessed with her.”
We sipped our drinks.
“You’re sure you’re not a convenience for her?” I asked. “Attention from a decent bloke and something to do while she sits out the dregs of a crappy first marriage, and before she ups and leaves for home?”
“No. No, I’m not sure at all.”
He held his head in his hands but was no longer on the brink of tears, at least.
We continued to bat it back and forth, speaking of little else for the remaining two hours until closing time: life’s too short, you don’t want to live life regretting. But I also voiced my suspicions that he was being played by some sort of whimsical Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days Of Summer character (although subsequent Facebook snooping revealed a crazier looking girl), and also that he could have ruined his marriage.
This seemed to be less of an issue: he was tired of his marriage, or so obsessed with the new, exciting girl that he couldn’t be bothered to resuscitate it. He was scared but prepared for whatever will happen in the next few weeks. Weakness and that glint of unknown attraction, boredom with his wife; it could easily contrive to make him a single man again in a short period of time.
Fuck David Cameron’s family policies. Marriage shouldn’t be legal until you’re 30.
Viewed through this lens, failing to persuade females to see me more than once might not merit constant whingeing. Relationships and marriage bring levels of stress that single, one-off meetings can’t really match.
Perhaps I should be relieved.
Marriage is terrifying both as a concept and in practise: the bond you’ve made, the contract you’ve signed, supposedly for your whole life with all the people you love watching you.
The average age of newlyweds is getting older with generations and there’s less of a stigma attached to singletons and divorcees in their thirties, forties and fifties. It happens. You might argue that it happens because we communicate better, or we communicate more, or because we’re less willing to simply keep up appearances.
Yet there still exists an implicit pressure on twenty-somethings who have been together a while to do just this; those who look – to all extents and purposes – like they’re ‘made’ for each other. If they’ve been together long enough, their families want to see some semblance of security, maybe children; they’re nudged in that direction and if they’re happy and solid, then why not?
But if they are childhood or university sweethearts who haven’t known many, if any other relationships, does there always exist a tiny glint of attraction towards the unknown, towards the other? Is it an innate undercurrent fear which those sort of couples learn to deal with? It might lie blissfully dormant or never be realised (safety first). But it might equally just need an unknown figure to appear and prise the edges apart, so that glint becomes dazzling, hot, scalding.
My former colleague was an amusing, bumbling and self- effacing guy who often exercised pleasing amounts of self-doubt. (I always warm more easily to those who exercise self-doubt). You might have thought him slightly quirky if you only saw him loping caveman-like around the office in his baggy striped jumpers, or at his desk hiding behind a giant box of cornflakes and coffee pot, but. In conversation though – one-to-one or in a group – he engaged indiscriminately with everyone, he was funny and candid.
After living with his long-term girlfriend for four years, they married and bought a house.
Our roughly four-monthly pub conversation kicked off as usual: work, the office, colleagues and former colleagues, my move. Then I asked about married life and he gave hints which I entirely failed to pick up on, only later realising that he was trying to use it as a segway. What do you think keeps couples going until they’re old? How do you keep making a relationship work? What is it? Don’t all couples get bored of each other after a certain time?
I gave bland answers: separate and shared interests, doing new things, travelling, planning, shared experience, family. Our chat progressed to a point when I mentioned my curious evening on the night of the USA-Ghana World Cup match.
“Yeah, I had a.. a strange evening then too.”
“Really, what happened? You go first. You’re not being..?”
He breathed in, looked down and away. He was being..
“You ok mate?”
He wiped his increasingly glassy eye. Did he just wipe his eye? Fuck.
“Hey really, don’t tell me if you don’t want to tell me. Shall I go first and..?”
“Yeah, you go on. Just need more to drink then I’ll..”
I went on with my commentary of that evening, aware that he wasn’t really paying attention, glazed over, trapped in his own world and whatever was going on in there.
“And that was that,” I concluded. “Now you? If you..?”
“Mate, I’m totally fucked.”
He did the breathing, looking down, eye-wipe thing again. His eyes looked full.
“You told anyone about this?”
“One. Best mate. This girl in the office: over the past month we’ve started sort of going out, I’ve taken her to places and we’ve stayed out together until three four or five in the morning. She’s exciting and different and likes me.”
“Single?”
“Married too. But it’s shit; she hates it, and him. They’re getting divorced, selling their house and she’s moving back to America soon.”
“How old?”
“25, so only a few years younger. Got married when they were stupidly young. But mate, she’s so different and like nobody I’ve ever met: hobbies and interests and.. drugs. I’ve always been liberal about that stuff but never tried much. We’ve done lines of coke at lunchtimes.”
I looked at him quizzically, laughed.
“Yeah, scored them off some drunk on the train back from Brighton. It’s overrated to tell you the truth. But she’s just.. You know those shit montages in films which show couples getting together, doing stuff and falling in love? It feels like I’m in the middle of one of those. Thing is, I don’t know if this is what it’s like meeting someone new, if this was what it was like when I first met.. and everything about her was new and interesting. I can’t remember what it was like.”
It sounded amazing, the bastard. I shovelled back the encroaching jealousy.
“And your wife?”
“She suspects. I slept on the sofa last night. Probably tonight too. Doubt she’ll believe I’m here with you, with good reason. Before it all got to the stage it has now I’d talked about not knowing what I was doing with my life, and our marriage. We’ve barely spoken for weeks.”
“But this girl is moving back to America?”
“I’ve said I’ll go with her but I don’t think she took me seriously. She’s impulsive and spontaneous. She likes me, we’ve done – although we haven’t slept together. Mate. I’m totally obsessed with her.”
We sipped our drinks.
“You’re sure you’re not a convenience for her?” I asked. “Attention from a decent bloke and something to do while she sits out the dregs of a crappy first marriage, and before she ups and leaves for home?”
“No. No, I’m not sure at all.”
He held his head in his hands but was no longer on the brink of tears, at least.
We continued to bat it back and forth, speaking of little else for the remaining two hours until closing time: life’s too short, you don’t want to live life regretting. But I also voiced my suspicions that he was being played by some sort of whimsical Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days Of Summer character (although subsequent Facebook snooping revealed a crazier looking girl), and also that he could have ruined his marriage.
This seemed to be less of an issue: he was tired of his marriage, or so obsessed with the new, exciting girl that he couldn’t be bothered to resuscitate it. He was scared but prepared for whatever will happen in the next few weeks. Weakness and that glint of unknown attraction, boredom with his wife; it could easily contrive to make him a single man again in a short period of time.
Fuck David Cameron’s family policies. Marriage shouldn’t be legal until you’re 30.
Viewed through this lens, failing to persuade females to see me more than once might not merit constant whingeing. Relationships and marriage bring levels of stress that single, one-off meetings can’t really match.
Perhaps I should be relieved.
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