I can't stop thinking about the fine husband I deserted
MCP
I am thinking about my ex-husband constantly. I find myself
craving the security he offered. Since leaving him I've not found his equal
Dear Bel,
I met my ex-husband at school when we were both 17. We married
at 22 and built a beautiful house together. From similar backgrounds, we
shared the same sense of humour, had common goals in life and good jobs. It
was idyllic in many ways. However, two years later we were having problems
with our sex life. I felt that my husband was no longer treating me as a
person he wanted to make love to. The sex was perfunctory and, if he'd had
it his way, would have been done only when the lights were off. Around this
time a man at work made a play for me. I was shocked: we were friends and he
was planning his own wedding. But I was extremely flattered and, I'm ashamed
to say, we had an eight-month affair.
I soon found, to my great sadness, that the affair only made the
gulf between my husband and me even greater. I got a new job, ended the
affair and concentrated on trying to get our marriage back on track. We went
to counselling with Relate. My husband surprised me by going to see his GP
about his premature ejaculation, a problem that he'd had for as long as I
had known him. The advice was to have sex more often. We tried but it didn't
work. It had gone from my trying to get him to make love to me, to his
trying everything to get me to make love to him. I loved him, but in the
same way I would love a brother. I hadn't gone off sex per se; just with
him, my lovely, handsome husband. Four years after our wedding day, I made
the decision that we would separate. I was under no illusions: I knew I
would be hard pushed to find another man as decent as him. I left him with
the house and everything in it because I felt so guilty. He was desperately
hurt. I had ruined all our plans, our dreams - we would never celebrate any
more birthdays or Christmases together, would never grow old together, would
never have those children we had planned, whose names we had already chosen.
Two years later I met someone else and had a little boy. That
relationship, never steady, broke down when my son was a few months old and
I've brought him up alone. He's now a happy, healthy five-year-old who
brings me great joy. My ex-husband remarried and now has two children,
younger than mine. Six months ago, I bumped into him in a pub - the first
time for six years. It was lovely to talk to him again. It turns out that he
has called his children the exact names we had picked together. They all
still live in the same house that we watched being built. I find it bizarre;
it is as though I never happened.
My main problem is, I am thinking about him constantly. I am
older now (35) and wiser, and friends tell me that the sex soon goes out of
most marriages. Happily single until I saw him, I now find myself craving
the kind of security that he offered. As I expected, since leaving him I've
not found his equal. We were always happy to see each other when we got home
from work; the men I've met since have been unpredictable. I was so immature
that I didn't realise how good our life was. Can you offer anything to
explain what is going on in this stupid head of mine? Writing this, in
tears, I cannot breathe. There is nobody else I can talk to about it without
feeling like a total fool. I just wish I understood why I feel like this.
Linda
Those strong physical symptoms are a sign that you are
experiencing a belated state of grief for your marriage, triggered by
running into your ex again. Left with all the good memories and as many
regrets, you've been shocked by the realisation that so much affection
remains. You feel "like a fool" because you believe that you made a terrible
error in leaving your marriage, letting a good man go. If making mistakes
creates fools, then simpletons and clowns populate the world. But remember
that in Shakespeare the Fool was the one with access to higher wisdom.
In The Impossibility of Sex, the psychotherapist Susie Orbach
describes her clients as those "sufficiently troubled about themselves to
want to understand themselves anew". She goes on: "Their struggles have
forced them to confront the deeper questions about human nature . . ." Isn't
that exactly the point where you are now? We must start from the premise
that you will not mess with this man - even if you could. Your task is to
gulp in fresh air, stop crying, and make sense of what's happened.
You were only 22 when your happy life with your husband ran into
sexual difficulties (although you imply that he'd had some degree of sexual
dysfunction all along) but you had already been together for seven years.
Your unedited letter describes how he let himself go (not shaving, etc) and
seemed immune to your attempt at seduction with sexy underwear. This
indicates that he had settled into comfortable cosiness, but you still
wanted passion. Not uncommon, this clash of needs is always dangerous. I'm
guessing that he had passed into the stage of loving, whereas you still
yearned to be "in love".
Someone with this craving is ripe for an affair. You haven't
said that yours was great sexually but I bet it was; you swapped a
relatively inexperienced teenage love for a smart, sexy operator who knew
what he wanted. You showed the strength to end it, but lovemaking with your
husband just didn't stand the comparison. Though you did try to get help,
this was still the point at which you might have persevered - working
through the sexual problems, moving to a state of deeper love. In my
experience this comes because of, not in spite of, difficulties.
You say you gave him the house and furniture because you felt
guilty, but I suggest it was also because you wanted to get the hell out of
there, and that was easier. You're an impulsive person; you wanted to walk
away. Having devised a sweet, storybook narrative with the man of your
dreams, feeling disappointed with the plot development, you ripped the pages
out of your life. Now the child in you is bewildered that the story went on,
without you as the heroine.
Personal growth cannot begin until we learn to live with the
consequences of our actions, and it's only now that you've reached that
point. So meeting your husband once more was a blessing: a painful but
necessary step on the path not only to "understanding yourself anew" but to
realising what love means. The first step was loving him as you did for as
long as you did, and creating together plans which - as they were true -
enhanced the universe, as love and hope always does, whatever happens. The
second was learning how to love a child - subsuming the needy little ego
which constantly cries, "What about me?", and attending to the needs of a
small human being who awakens a totally new kind of love. That's a test, and
on the evidence of that unselfconscious phrase "great joy" - you've passed.
The third step is to stop being angry with yourself. Perhaps
your relationship was destined to run that nine-year course, and teach you
both (through happiness, then pain) that real love transcends passion.
Perhaps the experience of being hurt by you prepared your ex for the next
marriage. Perhaps the experience of crying over your memories now is
preparing you for your very first truly adult love. Perhaps we all have to
learn that dreaming about growing old with somebody may sound sweet, but it
is a sentimental fairytale construct: love the living man's scratchy beard
rather than imagining yourself as some kind nurse tenderly wiping egg from
his dependent jumper.
Two and a half years ago, at a very bad time, I was entering the
Mission at Carmel when somebody thrust a laminated card at me. On one side
was a drawing of the founder of the Californian Missions, Father Junipero
Serra. On the other was his quote: "Always go forward and never turn back."
This was an epiphany; the little card is stuck in my dressing table mirror
now. It tells me I will love my ex-husband until the day I die, yet that
core truth is balanced by an equally important one: I can construct another
life. Enduring love requires a cessation of all blame, which in turn
releases you to move on and write another story. Nine years after your
marriage ended you've realised that mutual happiness "when we got home from
work" is as good a definition of love as any. Build on that, forgive
yourself, engage with your son, think how far you have come - and breathe.