I broke a vase the other day and tried to glue it back together. It looked like it had worked, but when the glue dried it was too broken to hold water and you could see the cracks all through it. I’m scared that might be the case with my marriage.
The sitch is so much more complex than I have portrayed here. I guess all our sitches are.
Our problems started about three years ago when my step son got a brain tumour and had to have a couple of rounds of surgery. My H didn’t cope well with that – but he didn’t talk about it. He wouldn’t. He kept it all locked inside himself. Six months or so later Hs best friend was diagnosed with serious stomach cancer. He was treated for it and survived for a year before he died. I asked H at the time if he was OK and he said he was, that he’d already grieved for his mate and he’d been so sick in the last 6 months that he didn’t really “miss” him. In hindsight that’s when Hs depression really set in.
Six months after the friend died, his widow started an affair with my best friend’s husband (ah, the twists of the middle class). I knew about the affair, but didn’t tell my friend. (This all sounds way more sordid than my life really is, which is why I don’t understand how I’ve ended up here…) My friend and her husband had always had problems and it was just one more – but I did defend my friend, by making it clear to widow that I didn’t approve of the affair – the widow stopped talking to me. That was awkward because my H wanted to support her – even though she was having an adulterous affair – he’d known her for nearly 30 years.
So my H went to play lawn bowls with her every Sunday afternoon and I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to go. I could go and meet them at the bowling club at 6pm, after she’d slipped away. Apparently me and my judgements of her upset her and she didn’t want to see me. She’s a very vulnerable woman – she lost 2 children and then her husband, so she’s always been very sad and all the men have always wanted to ‘protect’ her. If there were any occasions when she and I had to be there together – she just ignored me.
This went on for a long time and over the year or so I got jealous. I didn’t get it. I suspected she was after my H. I don’t know if the affair with my best friend’s husband was continuing, but I suspected it had died a natural death. Then Hs father died, his mother went feral, his sister vilified me, I was in the last months of Post Graduate study, working full time and my world collapsed. I walked away.
Three weeks later my H was f**king the widow. 3 months after that he moved in with her.
How can I ever compete with such a vulnerable woman with so much history?
And given the soap opera that it is, why do I want to?
Perhaps I should put the marriage out with the vase. The garbage man comes tonight. It’s a bad day.
Although I went to the Chinese horoscope site that Yoyo linked to earlier today and my horoscope for the day was “For things to change, change yourself” … the universe is nothing if not consistant.
V
Never make someone a priority, who makes you an option.
