marriage issues

I Have Been Writing – Honest


But not here. I guess you could say I have been stepping out on my blog and dear readers à la Tiger Woods except that I have told you that I am poly-blogging, so you went into this with wide open eyes. Please don’t reach for the 7 iron.

Two pieces up at 50 Something. One on marriage, or what constitutes a happy one, that I wrote after reading Weil’s book excerpt at the NYT’s and another on our adventures with the Balloon Man at the children’s Christmas party that Rob’s company hosts every year.

I’ve had three pieces up at Care2 (here, here and here) and even got a kudo from my editor despite my profound lack of journalistic ability. The job is a challenge for me. I like challenges, but I hate not being awesome at what I do. I think this is why I really need to be self-employed. It’s less stressful. My editor also informed me that the second piece on entertainment education provoked a fellow blogger there to request response time – “respectfully, of course” – which makes me shudder a bit. Bloggers are seldom all that subtle or respectful when they take an opposite view and “respectful” usually means that the blogger will not call you names or imply you are descended from cousins in a flaming sort of way but rather in the unmistakably subtle way that people with a flare for words have. Naturally, I can hardly wait to read it.

Ironically, I just left a comment on another blog about how I find posts that are merely excuses to link to other people’s work to be extremely lazy, but since I am linking to my own writing – I will give myself a big ole pass.

How Did Tiger Find the Time to Golf?


Nine mistresses? Over the span of five married years? And he still managed to knock up his wife twice? Where did he find time to golf? Or make good on his advertising commitments? And what wife in her right mind would be okay with her husband spending so much “alone time” in Vegas – especially since nothing much seems to stay there?

After mistress number one was outed, Tiger’s trophy wife renegotiated their pre-nup and took a hefty cash advance ($75 million I’ve read) to ride it out by his side for a reasonable length of time. I think it was mistress number six that kicked her sense of pride into gear and she has since moved out. But six? One affair is okay. Two through five is simply smile that pursed lip Stepford grimace.  Six, however, is the magic back-breaking straw?

Count me as someone who doesn’t understand forgiveness of infidelity. Double my confusion when public humiliation is involved. But anymore society simply shrugs, makes jokes and accepts the really indefensible act of breaking faith as simply human nature. Human beings – men in particular it seems – aren’t hardwired for monogamy. The basis for this incredibly tired reasoning goes back to our primitive pea-brained ancestors. In the hunter/gatherer days of yore, mother nature needed men to spread a lot of seed – pun intended – and so couples mated for only the length of time it took to make, bake and wean a wee one or two before the male went on his Johnny Appleseed way and the female secured a different genetic donor (maybe so her offspring could mate with one another in a pinch – who knows). I am weary of the polygamy drives us theory. It implies that we haven’t evolved from our knuckle-dragging days of yore, although my husband firmly believes that many of us haven’t. It’s a shifting of accountability, and society too freely spreads culpability as it is. Most of all, it’s not adult. It is one more nail in the coffin of what used to be maturity. We are not a nation that strives to grow up in any meaningful way anymore. We want more ferociously than toddlers and woe to anyone or thing that gets in the way. Literal woe.

The truth is that we know better. If we didn’t, there would be no need to “come clean” or “apologize for transgressions” or buy silence. Does the alpha lion apologize to his pride? No, because he is acting on biological/survival impulses. He doesn’t even bother to take it to the tall grass when he is feeling frisky. Men, and women, hide and lie and confess when lying and hiding cease to work. Because they know better and they did it anyway.

Why?

Stupidity. Insecurity. Childhood issues. There is probably a website whose main purpose is to supply good reasons for bad behaviors. But mostly? Because they can. People cheat because it’s easier than dealing with whatever character flaw or issue is really at the root of the problem. Sarah Palin worked harder to write her memoir than many folks do on their primary relationships.

Marriage, apparently, should an extension of dating. A wonderland of flying monkeys with sunshine eternal shining out their bum holes.

The author of Julie & Julia has a new memoir out in which she details an affair she had. Emma Gilbey Keller’s latest column is about how a woman saved her marriage through cheating on her husband. It begs the question – WTF? But it is so typical of our culture anymore that it should be little wonder to any of us why we are targeted for extinction by jihadists.

Things


I have two friends with husbands who are ill. Both have been in the hospital recently and I have been following progress and sending notes via Twitter, Facebook and blogs. I remarked to Rob that I hoped this sick husband thing was not contagious which, of course, just invited the jinx right through our front door. There is feng shui in our thoughts and words and I should have taken more care.

The original issue was a sore lower back. Rob’s back is his Achilles’ and he has been seeing the chiropractor and our massage therapist for all summer only to quickly undo any good they were doing with his insistence on death march renovation practices. While I understand the time pressures that the nano-bit of warm weather places on many of the things that need to be done, I still think he pushes himself too far too often. And he knows this.

Issues came to a literal head after the camping trip he and the older girls took over the weekend after Canada Day. He had a sore tailbone that went from red looking to inflamed and bulging. When gutting it out – Rob’s preferred method of dealing with illness – didn’t work, he went to see our elderly Chinese doctor who was horrified enough by what he saw to make Rob sit up and take notice (though not literally, sitting was decidedly difficult by that point).

“It’s a pilondial cyst,” he told me. “And please don’t blog about this.”

And I didn’t. I caught many a Facebook friend unaware when I announced that Rob needed to go into the hospital for what turned out to be minor surgery in the ER (though we had no idea how slight or extensive a procedure he was in for until we got there and the DR on call took a look). I was sorely tempted to blog. Unbelievably amusing moments arise when one is called upon to pack one’s husband’s bum crack on a daily basis. At one point I was peering to get a better look and he said,

“Could you stop with the inspection, please?”

“I’m just trying to get a good look, ” I said. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“That’s because you are a woman. You’ve had a baby. You’ve no dignity left.”

Which is a good point, but I was howling with laughter. It’s not about dignity but that as a woman, I am oddly more comfortable unclothed and being examined than I am dressed up and wondering who thinks I look fat.

Dr. Foo wanted Rob to go to ER on Friday night. Just go straight there and I could bring him anything he might need if he ended up being admitted. Dr. Foo was pretty certain that a major carving and scooping out of sinus cavities at the base of the tailbone was called for and that Rob would be in the hospital for at least a week and be home another month after, dealing with wound care. They do open wound with packing for these types of things.

Rob was quite sober when he called to explain what he’d been told. I was too.

Fortunately, Dee’s sleepover was easily switched from our house to her friend’s, whose mom offered to take Dee for the day Saturday too if needs be – which was awesome considering I only just met her, but some people are wonderful like that.

Rob spent the evening informing his work, his daughters and mother, and schooling me in the basics: insurance and benefits contacts, passwords for important accounts and reminders about where the personal directives and the wills were. 

“Do you want to know what my wishes are? Just in case?”

Yeah, that conversation. One that we’ve been having on and off all year because neither of us wants to end up in the basement storeroom with Shelley’s remains.

“I’m sure I will figure something out,” I said.

“As long as I don’t end up in the basement.”

“Oh, you won’t,” I assured him. “I have a thing about dead husband remains in my basement.”

“You do? I thought you buried Will’s because that’s what he wanted?”

“He did,” I said, “but I also couldn’t stand the idea of having him in the house with me.”

Later he remarked that he thought only two widowed people could have the kinds of conversations that we do sometimes. I am not so sure but maybe.

So now he is upstairs resting. I have some wound care on the agenda for later and I am tired. Worry is exhausting.