It sounds surgical every time I say this, but I am separating from my husband. I often wish it were surgical as both the procedure and the recovery time would be shorter. Besides all the material I have on the subject which you will no doubt be subjected to at a later date, I have to mention that our child has not slept in his bed for a very long time. Now most often when couples allow their babies/toddlers/children to sleep in their beds I would profess to an unhealthy marriage and one that is most likely going to break up. But my child has been in his own room, in his own bed since the day we arrived home from hospital and has only slept with my husband and me since we have no longer been sleeping in the same room let alone the same bed. I can’t help but wonder that perhaps the child in the bed thing gets a bad rap. What if the child in the bed is only the scapegoat for a marriage that is on the rocks anyway? What came first: the broken relationship or the child in the bed?
Posts Tagged ‘marriage’
The chicken and the egg
Monday, June 21st, 2010The first day of the rest of my life
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
~ Isak Dinesen
I sit on the cusp of my story. My story is not, like Isak Dinesen’s, of Africa but it does contain heartbreak and sorrow and promises of new beginnings. There are no happy endings like we were all promised in childhood. Nothing ends happily ever after. There are only ever happy beginnings. And sometimes we have to jump between the two in an attempt to minimise the cataclysmic fallout the ending may have.
My cusp sits somewhere between what my child terms as mum and dad splitting apart and an awfully big adventure. My child and I are going backpacking around India.
Now, everyone has an opinion about this. It’s too dangerous, he’ll get lost or stolen; he’ll get dehydrated or get malaria; he’s too young etc., etc., etc. But say I’m going to leave him behind and the opinions change to I am abandoning him.
As his mother – not the one who yells and says f*ck a lot but the one who loves her child so much it hurts right down to her toes – I decided to take him along for the journey. It wasn’t intentional, it just happened. I was chatting to him at bedtime about all the stuff going on in the house at the time and the options that were open to us … and the India adventure thing just popped out. I regretted it instantly and immediately told him what a bad idea it was because of the disease and the poverty and the filth and the sewerage. It was already too late though … I had him on ‘adventure’ and he wasn’t letting me back out.
The planning process ensued and having so much time to organise meant OCD overload with purchasing and decanting and labelling and packing and printing and unpacking and folding and rolling and changing the itinerary so often, I think it has included almost every part of India at various stages of its lifecycle.
I now have such an awesome first aid arsenal it is more like a pharmacy and it takes up half my backpack with just enough space left for two changes of clothing each. I have been frenetic but I’m not sure the output has quite matched the input as I seem to still not have everything done and I leave today! I believe I would be at the same stage had I given myself a week to get ready for this journey.
During this process I have waited daily for a break in the cold war but it has never come. My seventeen-year cycle has run its course and I look to India now for the beginning of my next new cycle. I feel excitement, fear, happiness, gratefulness, anger, privilege, frustration, pain, joy, sorrow and betrayal … as well as emotions that haven’t yet been named.
There was a grim temptation when packing the pharmacy to calculate if there was enough clout there to obliterate the pain of a broken heart. But I didn’t think I could handle a failed suicide on top of a failed marriage.
Darkness makes way for incense, marigolds and kindred souls. I will eat bravery; I will drink inner peace and I will find strength again to travel towards a new me.
So, farewell until we meet again. I’ll be a totally new person, but you’ll recognise me by the smile on my face.
You can’t have your cake and eat it
Monday, September 7th, 2009A new friend is a friend out of our connection over the lack of any real need to have children. I am known to her boyfriend as the evil one as he is determined to have kids (to the point of dumping her if it doesn’t happen). I suppose it is unfair of me to try and dissuade her as there are things that can be done to pre-empt any of the crap that enters your relationship when having a baby. There are practical tricks and tactics that can be deployed.
For example:
discussing expectations of parenthood;
defining a budget for things such as a night nurse;
planning logistics around routine and responsibilities;
looking at the potential need to move in order to accommodate a child;
balancing work and social commitments and sacrifices;
counselling sessions before even trying to fall pregnant.
You can’t have it all. We want it all – I suppose that is normal … what makes us human. But having something always comes at the cost of giving up something else. And perhaps that should be fine. Having a baby costs. We can’t expect to keep everything of what we were before having a baby … and have the baby too.
No degrees for separation
Friday, July 17th, 2009Relationships are based on what you have in common, and you stay together as long as you maintain some element of that. Then, just like that, you suddenly realise that there is something to disagree on … something big, huge in fact … and it was never there before. Not only that, but it is never going away. It’s your own child.
People have babies for many reasons – one of them to glue the relationship back together – when, in fact, there is a greater chance that it might pull it further apart. Since my child was somewhat a surprise to me, I am obviously not referring to myself here. I am sure though that everyone knows at least one couple – at least one – that has split because they thought a child would be the answer and they failed to look at the real reasons their relationship was failing.
Separate Lives
Friday, May 22nd, 2009Kahlil Gibran, in The Prophet, wrote that in marriage you should have spaces in your togetherness and that you should not stand too near together.
But what happens when your separateness is more frequent than your togetherness? What happens when your branches and your roots grow so far apart that they forget they belong to the same tree? It is no wonder the divorce rate seems to soar at the age when people have toddlers. It’s sometimes just easier to chop the tree down that navigate your way back to the trunk.
A lot of people are fine with separate lives – it works for them. I don’t see the point. For better or for worse, a relationship should be the thing that binds the family. Without that in place, what is the point … what really is the point in being together?
Travelling around
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009If I had to compare my family to a country, it would have to be England: so mild that anything extreme tears it apart. My marriage on the other hand is like India: it simultaneously tugs and pushes away until I am not sure whether I love it or hate it.
Welcome to my Flower Chamber
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008There is a matriarchal tribe in China called the Masuo. They don’t believe in marriage and having babies in a relationship. They believe in flower chambers and love and desire. These women choose who gets invited to their flower chambers and who will give them their baby seed. They raise their children with the males in their immediate families and there is no need to either settle or settle down with anyone for any indefinite amount of time.
If I wasn’t before, I am now totally into cultural diversity. What a healthy outlook. Why limit yourself and stunt your spiritual growth by having to constantly work around the needs of another. Selfish, perhaps, but definitely healthy. Simple rules, simple pleasures and realistic expectations.
I have waited a long time for things in our relationship to get back to normal post baby. But, when normal has shifted, how long does one have to wait to find it again. When everything has changed, how does one ever go back to being the same?
Perhaps our individual priorities have shifted in such a way that we will never be the same individually and, therefore, never the same together.
