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.
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
they fuck each other up, your Mum and Dad
Everyone thinks their parents are strange. Or at the very least endearingly kooky in some way. Mine are plainly odd, first and foremost, it appears to me, in their relationship itself.
You should never presume or make judgements about any relationship from the outside. You don’t have all the information, the chances are that you’re wrong and you probably don’t really care all that much anyway. Which is why it's fun and reckless to make the prejudgements. But with your parents, if they’ve always been together and, just there, a constant part of your life for as long as you can remember, you feel this gives you a little more insight. Reasonable enough.
My folks rarely demonstrate any outward sign of affection towards each other. Not necessarily remarkable because plenty of couples of a certain age don’t. My Dad is fundamentally quite lazy and self-serving around the house. By the same token Mum does do everything but gives the impression of enjoying her martyrdom. It’s normal, natural. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she didn’t feel aggrieved or wronged. I’m constantly paranoid about not offering the correct level of gratitude.
It’s a bit like getting used to being miserable, playing sad music, watching melancholic films, absorbing yourself into that perpetuating cycle: easier than trying to wrench yourself out, force change. I’m probably just as much a victim of that.
Yet they sit there in this probably dysfunctional empty shell marriage for years: passive, unmoving, equally lazy in their own ways, equally disinclined to change.
Before I left home for university, when Mum was first around the menopausal stage, I’d sometimes get back from college to find her in tears about being unappreciated, taken for granted. It wasn’t comfortable. What could I say? Yes, you’re being a mug? So, are you happy? What’s keeping you here?
The most recent gnarly family trauma is Dad’s ignorance of his eldest Grandson, a three year old boy with plenty of vim and vigour, energy and bustle, prone to the occasional temper tantrum. I've little experience with kids but he’s three years old, that’s what they do, right? Dad doesn’t engage or play when he’s in his delightful good moods, to any degree, but freely dishes out advice when he misbehaves; stares daggers at him for disrupting meals. This disappoints everyone.
Apparently he was the same with us when my brother and I were that age, and didn’t have a father-son relationship which was that healthy itself. But that’s no excuse. Play is part intuition, part emulation. To me, at least. Dad simply doesn’t try, which upsets my brother and his wife.
Today he was out of the house and Mum walked into Dad's office room, where I happened to be working. She told me how she’d explained to him that he should try to get engaged more, that it does upset people and is an issue. He was subsequently in a sulky mood but would be better after he’d done some exercise. This was the catalyst for her to reel off a list of her biggest gripes with him and gradually descend into an emotional whine about their relationship.
“You know, I asked him if he still loved me recently,” she said. My stomach tightened as she spoke, I didn’t like where this was going. I'd been home for Christmas too long now. I didn’t have any answers for her. I glanced between her and a hole punch while a dated screensaver played.
“He paused," Mum continued. "properly thought about it. Then, after a second, do you know what he said?”
“No.”
“ ‘I’m very fond of you’."
I sighed, shook my head. Thought about hugging her but selfishly discounted the idea in fear of making everything more emotional.
"You know!” she said, for something else to say.
I shook my head and sighed again. I didn’t know. Still don’t. Probably never will.
You should never presume or make judgements about any relationship from the outside. You don’t have all the information, the chances are that you’re wrong and you probably don’t really care all that much anyway. Which is why it's fun and reckless to make the prejudgements. But with your parents, if they’ve always been together and, just there, a constant part of your life for as long as you can remember, you feel this gives you a little more insight. Reasonable enough.
My folks rarely demonstrate any outward sign of affection towards each other. Not necessarily remarkable because plenty of couples of a certain age don’t. My Dad is fundamentally quite lazy and self-serving around the house. By the same token Mum does do everything but gives the impression of enjoying her martyrdom. It’s normal, natural. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she didn’t feel aggrieved or wronged. I’m constantly paranoid about not offering the correct level of gratitude.
It’s a bit like getting used to being miserable, playing sad music, watching melancholic films, absorbing yourself into that perpetuating cycle: easier than trying to wrench yourself out, force change. I’m probably just as much a victim of that.
Yet they sit there in this probably dysfunctional empty shell marriage for years: passive, unmoving, equally lazy in their own ways, equally disinclined to change.
Before I left home for university, when Mum was first around the menopausal stage, I’d sometimes get back from college to find her in tears about being unappreciated, taken for granted. It wasn’t comfortable. What could I say? Yes, you’re being a mug? So, are you happy? What’s keeping you here?
The most recent gnarly family trauma is Dad’s ignorance of his eldest Grandson, a three year old boy with plenty of vim and vigour, energy and bustle, prone to the occasional temper tantrum. I've little experience with kids but he’s three years old, that’s what they do, right? Dad doesn’t engage or play when he’s in his delightful good moods, to any degree, but freely dishes out advice when he misbehaves; stares daggers at him for disrupting meals. This disappoints everyone.
Apparently he was the same with us when my brother and I were that age, and didn’t have a father-son relationship which was that healthy itself. But that’s no excuse. Play is part intuition, part emulation. To me, at least. Dad simply doesn’t try, which upsets my brother and his wife.
Today he was out of the house and Mum walked into Dad's office room, where I happened to be working. She told me how she’d explained to him that he should try to get engaged more, that it does upset people and is an issue. He was subsequently in a sulky mood but would be better after he’d done some exercise. This was the catalyst for her to reel off a list of her biggest gripes with him and gradually descend into an emotional whine about their relationship.
“You know, I asked him if he still loved me recently,” she said. My stomach tightened as she spoke, I didn’t like where this was going. I'd been home for Christmas too long now. I didn’t have any answers for her. I glanced between her and a hole punch while a dated screensaver played.
“He paused," Mum continued. "properly thought about it. Then, after a second, do you know what he said?”
“No.”
“ ‘I’m very fond of you’."
I sighed, shook my head. Thought about hugging her but selfishly discounted the idea in fear of making everything more emotional.
"You know!” she said, for something else to say.
I shook my head and sighed again. I didn’t know. Still don’t. Probably never will.
Saturday, 4 July 2009
confinement to connection
People can be presented to you in a quite dizzying whirl sometimes, just as you become to feel as if you’re in some sort of pseudo confinement, fundamentally cut adrift from others of your species forever. Unable to engage and connect.
I opened a sporadically read paperback novel today. Out of it fell a slip of paper which I’d previously given up as lost. On it was semi drunken handwriting: a mash of dreary words about confinement while sitting in a Soho pub on my own. That day had come at the end of a long stretch of not actually speaking with anyone. Then I’d gone into town that day and professionally engaged with two separate groups of people. And females too. THAT other unknowable side of our species. And they’d been attractive ones as well.
After several solid days of extracting belly button fluff and intermittently moaning inside my head, I had seemingly transformed myself to a “normal” seeming, vaguely articulate sort of chap. I remembered how to speak, at length, just like that. It flooded back like I was regaining a superpower. And the second meeting was an interview where the industry researchers were actively interested in my thoughts and what I had to say. Me!? My views? But I’m a sad lonely twat who just got made redundant and is trying, quite possibly in vain, to become sustainably self employed. Felt quite preposterous.
It chimed with my experience yesterday, and in the preceding days. This week has slowly lifted me out of a horrible depressed fug simply because I’ve been active, out of the house, attending industry events, engaging and meeting people. Even though there still hadn’t been any concrete promise of money at the end of it.
Yesterday morning I attended a regular professional gathering in the centre of London and met a handful of people. One middle aged man, dressed as if he was in the heavy rock band, Limp Biscuit (or however you spell it), told me about his word for a charity designed to raise awareness of young male suicide: the largest, (or second largest) killer of young men in the UK. He had stats. Another older lady was passionately animated about education.
Later, yesterday evening, the other end of a sweaty coach journey west, my parents dragged me to our local village pub. There I chatted with an arrestingly sharp pensioner. A single lady who had lost two husbands, one exceptionally tragically together with one child and her own foetus in a car accident. She had worked as a nurse in West Africa, travelled extensively and spent her whole career serving the medical profession. She had serious cause to feel harshly treated, to become depressed after loving and having those loved ones snatched scarringly prematurely from her. Then lose her second husband too. She then spoke about the therapy of healing through the channeling of energies, an area I find rather alienating. Added to the insights she offered about the village’s history: the last trains to run through it, and the builder of its small primary school, which I attended; she was a fascinating person to meet and converse with.
Others in the pub supported the notion of a traditional country pub being a place where people can closely mix, banter and generally converse across generations in a way that’s much harder, or simply not done in a bustling city pub. Sure the physical dimensions of this particular pub are such that avoidance is difficult, if not impossivle, but even so the atmosphere is tangibly warm, open and inclusive.
Tried foolhardily to engage my mother through explaining my own ongoing angsty, misery, worries and fear. She accepted this as a cue to talk about her own insecurities about work and employment. Not that she needs to work anymore, and has a comfortable, large house in beautiful countryside, an adorable new puppy and a husband of fortyish years. I quickly gave up, just nodded and appeared to sympathise with her predicament.
I opened a sporadically read paperback novel today. Out of it fell a slip of paper which I’d previously given up as lost. On it was semi drunken handwriting: a mash of dreary words about confinement while sitting in a Soho pub on my own. That day had come at the end of a long stretch of not actually speaking with anyone. Then I’d gone into town that day and professionally engaged with two separate groups of people. And females too. THAT other unknowable side of our species. And they’d been attractive ones as well.
After several solid days of extracting belly button fluff and intermittently moaning inside my head, I had seemingly transformed myself to a “normal” seeming, vaguely articulate sort of chap. I remembered how to speak, at length, just like that. It flooded back like I was regaining a superpower. And the second meeting was an interview where the industry researchers were actively interested in my thoughts and what I had to say. Me!? My views? But I’m a sad lonely twat who just got made redundant and is trying, quite possibly in vain, to become sustainably self employed. Felt quite preposterous.
It chimed with my experience yesterday, and in the preceding days. This week has slowly lifted me out of a horrible depressed fug simply because I’ve been active, out of the house, attending industry events, engaging and meeting people. Even though there still hadn’t been any concrete promise of money at the end of it.
Yesterday morning I attended a regular professional gathering in the centre of London and met a handful of people. One middle aged man, dressed as if he was in the heavy rock band, Limp Biscuit (or however you spell it), told me about his word for a charity designed to raise awareness of young male suicide: the largest, (or second largest) killer of young men in the UK. He had stats. Another older lady was passionately animated about education.
Later, yesterday evening, the other end of a sweaty coach journey west, my parents dragged me to our local village pub. There I chatted with an arrestingly sharp pensioner. A single lady who had lost two husbands, one exceptionally tragically together with one child and her own foetus in a car accident. She had worked as a nurse in West Africa, travelled extensively and spent her whole career serving the medical profession. She had serious cause to feel harshly treated, to become depressed after loving and having those loved ones snatched scarringly prematurely from her. Then lose her second husband too. She then spoke about the therapy of healing through the channeling of energies, an area I find rather alienating. Added to the insights she offered about the village’s history: the last trains to run through it, and the builder of its small primary school, which I attended; she was a fascinating person to meet and converse with.
Others in the pub supported the notion of a traditional country pub being a place where people can closely mix, banter and generally converse across generations in a way that’s much harder, or simply not done in a bustling city pub. Sure the physical dimensions of this particular pub are such that avoidance is difficult, if not impossivle, but even so the atmosphere is tangibly warm, open and inclusive.
Tried foolhardily to engage my mother through explaining my own ongoing angsty, misery, worries and fear. She accepted this as a cue to talk about her own insecurities about work and employment. Not that she needs to work anymore, and has a comfortable, large house in beautiful countryside, an adorable new puppy and a husband of fortyish years. I quickly gave up, just nodded and appeared to sympathise with her predicament.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)