http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/The random musings, bleatings, thoughts and feelings of a soon to be ex-husband trying to come to terms with the break-up of a family.en-EUMokoFeed10http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/http://data5.blog.de/design/preview/ba/a6ca46973ebee5ff5541f4e81cfedd_160x200.jpghttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/02/13/affairs-5566506/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2009-02-13:/2009/02/13/affairs-5566506/Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:05:48 +0100 <p>On the lighter side of things, one has to laugh………………………………………</p> <p><u>The 1st Affair</u></p> <p>A married man was having an affair with his secretary.</p> <p>One day they went to her place and made love all afternoon. Exhausted,<br> they fell asleep and woke up at 8pm.</p> <p>The man hurriedly dressed and told his lover to take his shoes outside<br> and rub them in the grass and dirt. He put on his shoes and drove home.</p> <p>"Where have you been?" his wife demanded.</p> <p>"I can't lie to you," he replied, "I'm having an affair with my secretary.<br> We had sex all afternoon."</p> <p>"You lying bastard! You've been playing golf!"<br> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------</p> <p><u>The 2nd Affair</u></p> <p>A middle-aged couple had two beautiful daughters but always talked<br> about having a son.</p> <p>They decided to try one last time for the son they always<br> wanted. The wife got pregnant and delivered a healthy baby boy.</p> <p>The joyful father rushed to the nursery to see his new son.</p> <p>He was horrified at the ugliest child he had ever seen. He told his wife, "There's no way I can be the father of this baby.</p> <p>Look at the two beautiful daughters I fathered! Have you been fooling around<br> behind my back?"</p> <p>The wife smiled sweetly and replied, "Not this time!"<br> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------</p> <p><u>The 3rd Affair</u></p> <p>A mortician was working late one night.</p> <p>He examined the body of Mr. Schwartz, about to be cremated, and made<br> a startling discovery. Schwartz had the largest private part he had ever<br> seen!</p> <p>"I'm sorry Mr. Schwartz," the mortician commented, "I can't allow you to be<br> cremated with such an impressive private part. It must be saved for posterity."</p> <p>So, he removed it, stuffed it into his briefcase, and took it home.</p> <p>"I have to show you something you won't believe," he said to his wife,<br> opening his briefcase.</p> <p>"My God!" the wife exclaimed, "Schwartz is dead?!?!"<br> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------</p> <p><u>The 4th Affair</u> </p> <p>A woman was in bed with her lover when she heard her husband opening<br> the front door.</p> <p>"Hurry," she said, "stand in the corner."</p> <p>She rubbed baby oil all over him, then dusted him with talcum powder.</p> <p>"Don't move until I tell you," she said. "Pretend you're a statue."</p> <p>"What's this?" the husband inquired as he entered the room.</p> <p>"Oh it's a statue." she replied. "The Smiths bought one and I liked it so<br> much I got one for us, too."</p> <p>No more was said, not even when they went to bed.</p> <p>At around 2:00am the husband got up, went to the kitchen and returned with<br> a sandwich and a beer.</p> <p>"Here," he said to the statue, "have this. I stood like that for two days at<br> the Smiths and nobody offered me a damned thing."<br> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------</p> <p><u>The 5th Affair</u></p> <p>A man walked into a cafe, went to the bar and ordered a beer.</p> <p>"Certainly, Sir, that'll be one cent."</p> <p>"One cent?" the man thought.</p> <p>He glanced at the menu and asked, "How much for a nice juicy steak<br> and a bottle of wine?"</p> <p>"A nickel," the barman replied.</p> <p>"A nickel?" exclaimed the man. "Where's the guy who owns<br> this place? He must be losing money hand over fist!"</p> <p>The bartender replied, "Upstairs, with my wife."</p> <p>The man asked, "What's he doing upstairs with your wife?"</p> <p>The bartender replied, "The same thing I'm doing to his business down here."<br> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------</p> <p><u>The 6th Affair</u></p> <p>Jake was dying. His wife sat at the bedside.</p> <p>He looked up and said weakly, "I have something I must confess."</p> <p>"There's no need to," his wife replied.</p> <p>"No," he insisted, "I want to die in peace. I slept with your sister, your<br> best friend, her best friend, and your mother!"</p> <p>"I know, I know," she replied. "Now just rest and let the poison work."<br> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/02/13/affairs-5566506/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>adultery-affairshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/02/13/affairs-5566506/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/02/02/where-are-you-going-with-your-life-5491294/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2009-02-02:/2009/02/02/where-are-you-going-with-your-life-5491294/Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:46:13 +0100 <p>“He went the way he had to go; rather nonchalantly and unsteadily, whistling to himself, gazing into vacancy with his head tilted to one side. And if it was the wrong way, then that was because for certain people no such thing as a right way exists. When he was asked what on earth he intended to do with his life, he would give various answers; for he would often remark (and had already written the observation down) that he carried within himself a thousand possible ways of life, although at the same time privately aware that none of them was possible at all………………”</p> <p>(From Tonio Kroger, by Thomas Mann)</p> <p><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong></p> <p>If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.<br> (George Harrison – Any Road)</p> <p><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong></p> <p>If you don't know where you're going, you won't know it when you get there.</p> <p><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong></p> <p>"Come, it's pleased so far," thought Alice and she went on. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"</p> <p>"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.</p> <p>"I don't much care where--" said Alice.</p> <p>"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.</p> <p>"-- so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.</p> <p>"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."</p> <p>(Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)</p> <p><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong></p> <p>"If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind."<br> (Seneca (c. 5 B.C.-A.D. c. 65), Roman writer, philosopher, statesman)</p> <p><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong><strong>*</strong></p> <p>"He goeth the furthest who knows not whither he is going." --(Oliver Cromwell) </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/02/02/where-are-you-going-with-your-life-5491294/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/02/02/where-are-you-going-with-your-life-5491294/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/02/02/unrequited-love-and-fidelity-part-5491235/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2009-02-02:/2009/02/02/unrequited-love-and-fidelity-part-5491235/Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:37:47 +0100 <p>(More extracts from <strong>Tonio Kroger</strong> by <strong>Thomas Mann</strong>; translated into English by David Luke) </p> <p><em>How it hurt to feel the upsurge of wonderful, sad, creative powers within one, and yet to know that they can mean nothing to those happy people at whom one gazes in love and longing across a gulf of inaccessibility! And yet – alone and excluded though he was, standing hopelessly with his distress in front of a drawn blind pretending to be looking through it – he was nevertheless happy. For his heart was alive in those days. Warmly and sorrowfully it throbbed for you, Ingeborg Holm, and in blissful self-forgetfulness his whole soul embraced your blond, radiant, exuberantly normal little personality.</p> <p>More than once he stood thus by himself, with flushed cheeks, in out-of-the-way corners where the music, the scent of flowers and the clink of glasses could only faintly be heard, trying to pick out the timbre of your voice from among the other distant festive sounds; he stood there and pined for you, and was nevertheless happy. More than once it mortified him that he should be able to talk to Magdalena Vermehren, the girl who was always falling over – that she should understand him and laugh with him and be serious with him, whereas fair-haired Inge, even when he was sitting beside her, seemed distant and alien and embarrassed by him, for they did not speak the same language. And nevertheless he was happy. For happiness, he told himself, does not consist in being loved; that merely gratifies one’s vanity and is mingled with repugnance. Happiness consists in loving – and perhaps snatching a few little moments of illusory nearness to the beloved. And he inwardly noted down this reflection, thought out all its implications and savoured it to its very depths.</p> <p>“Fidelity!” thought Tonio Kroger. “I will be faithful and love you, Ingeborg, for the rest of my life.” For he had a well-meaning nature. And nevertheless there was a sad whisper of misgiving within him……………the hateful, pitiable thing was that this soft, slightly mocking voice turned out to be right. Time went by, and the day came when Tonio Kroger was no longer so unreservedly ready as he had once been to lay down his life for blithe Inge……….………</p> <p>And he hovered watchfully round the sacrificial altar on which his love burned like a pure, chaste flame; he knelt before it and did all he could to fan it and feed it and remain faithful. And he found that after a time, imperceptibly, silently and without fuss, the flame had nevertheless gone out.</p> <p>But Tonio Kroger stood on for a while before the cold altar, full of astonishment and disillusionment as he realized that in this world fidelity is not possible. Then he shrugged his shoulders and went his way.</em></p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/02/02/unrequited-love-and-fidelity-part-5491235/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>love-fidelity-happinesshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/02/02/unrequited-love-and-fidelity-part-5491235/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/01/29/unrequited-love-part-one-5468136/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2009-01-29:/2009/01/29/unrequited-love-part-one-5468136/Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:07:57 +0100 <p>I have recently read a translation by David Luke of <strong> Tonio Kroger </strong> by <strong> Thomas Mann </strong> (the German author, best known for Death in Venice), which was written in 1903. </p> <p>The main character of this short story is a writer……………“who sets no store by himself as a living human being, seeks recognition only as a creative artist, and spends the rest of his time in a grey incognito, like an actor with his make-up off, who has no identity when he is not performing.”</p> <p>I wanted to share some passages taken from this story with you, as they strike a certain chord, capturing and reflecting the thoughts and feelings about the “unobtainable object of one’s love":</p> <p><em>Ingeborg Holm, the daughter of Dr Holm who lived in the market square with its tall pointed complicated Gothic fountain - the fair haired Inge it was whom Tonio Kroger loved at the age of sixteen.</p> <p>How did it come about? He had seen her hundreds of times; but one evening he saw her in a certain light. As she talked to a friend he saw how she had a certain way of tossing her head to one with a saucy laugh, and a certain way of raising her hand – a hand by no means particularly tiny or delicately girlish – to smooth her hair at the back, letting her sleeve of fine white gauze slide away from her elbow. He heard her pronounce some word in a certain way, some quite insignificant word, but with a certain warm timbre in her voice. And his heart was seized by a rapture far more intense than the rapture he had sometimes felt at the sight of Hans Hansen, long ago, when he had still been a silly little boy.</p> <p>That evening her image remained imprinted on his mind: her thick blond tresses, her rather narrowly cut laughing blue eyes, the delicate hint of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The timbre of her voice haunted him and he could not sleep; he tried softly to imitate the particular way she had pronounced that insignificant word, and a tremor ran through him as he did so. He knew from experience that this was love. And he knew only too well that love would cost him much pain, distress and humiliation; he knew also that it destroys the lover’s peace of mind, flooding his heart with music and leaving him no time to form and shape his experience, to recollect it in tranquillity and forge it into a whole. Nevertheless he accepted this love with joy, abandoning himself to it utterly and nourishing it with all the strength of his spirit; for he knew that it would enrich him and make him more fully alive – and he longed to be enriched and more fully alive, rather than to recollect things in tranquillity and forge them into a whole…………</p> <p>It was thus that Tonio Kroger had lost his heart to blithe Inge Holm…………<em></p> <p>(Later, at a private dancing class in the drawing room of a wealthy family’s house, attended only by the best families and led by the dancing-master, Herr Knaak, who came once a week specially from Hamburg for the purpose, Tonio goes on to observe):</p> <p><em>……he could not fail to notice that Inge, blithe Inge Holm, would often watch Herr Knaak’s every movement with rapt and smiling attention; and this was not the only reason why, in the last resort, he could not help feeling a certain grudging admiration for the dancing-master’s impressively controlled physique. How calm and imperturbable was Herr Knaak’s gaze! His eyes did not look deeply into things, they did not penetrate to the point at which life becomes complex and sad; all they knew was that they were beautiful brown eyes. But that was why he had such a proud bearing! Yes, it was necessary to be stupid in order to be able to walk like that; and then one was loved, for then people found one charming. How well he understood why Inge, sweet fair-haired Inge, gazed at Herr Knaak the way she did. But would no girl ever look that way at Tonio?</p> <p>Oh yes, it did happen. There was the daughter, for instance, of Dr Vermehren the lawyer – Magdalena Vermehren, with her gentle mouth and her big, dark, glossy eyes so full of solemn enthusiasm. She often fell over when she danced. But when it was the ladies’ turn to choose partners she always came to him; for she knew that he wrote poems, she had twice asked him to show them to her and she would often sit with her head drooping and gaze at him from a distance. But what good was that to Tonio? He loved Inge Holm, blithe, fair-haired Inge, who certainly despised him for his poetic scribblings…………He watched her, he watched her narrow blue eyes so full of happiness and mockery; and an envious longing burned in his heart, a bitter insistent pain at the thought that to her he would always be an outsider and a stranger………<em></em></em></em></em> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/01/29/unrequited-love-part-one-5468136/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>lovehttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/01/29/unrequited-love-part-one-5468136/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/01/20/love-potion-5410597/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2009-01-20:/2009/01/20/love-potion-5410597/Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:10:53 +0100 <p>Apparently "obsession" is a form of madness. Research using brain scans has also shown that being "in love", suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder and being addicted to drugs activate the same areas of the brain.</p> <p>Is it any wonder then that there are so many errors of judgement in marriage decisions and relationship breakdowns - because of the intensity of such in-lust feelings or when the reduction of such intensity is misinterpreted as having "fallen out of love"?</p> <p>Maybe we should all take up the study of biochemistry. If we understood our bio-chemical reaction to others for what it was it would certainly spare us a lot of pain and heartache. </p> <p>Professor Larry Young, of Emory University in Atlanta, suggests that if the secrets of love are unlocked, the path is then clear for finding ways of enhancing it. He suggests that: "Genetic tests for the suitability of potential partners will one day become available, the results of which could accompany, and even over-ride our gut instincts in selecting the prefect partner".</p> <p>I don't think so somehow, despite the trauma and expense of divorce. Whilst I find trying to understand the pattern, the process of love and how it evolves fascinating, I suspect that we would find reducing it to that level of "science" all a bit too clinical. We would still prefer to live our love lives in this fog of "romantic mystery".</p> <p>What if I were able to slip a "love potion" in her drink - and if I could - would she realise that's all it was, would she care?</p> <p>But I think I would care!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/01/20/love-potion-5410597/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>marriagelovebiochemistrydivorceromanticmadnessobsessionhttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/01/20/love-potion-5410597/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/01/06/who-else-would-put-up-with-you-5334082/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2009-01-06:/2009/01/06/who-else-would-put-up-with-you-5334082/Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:10:28 +0100 <p><em>...I lock my door upon myself,<br> And bar them out; but who shall wall<br> Self from myself, most loathed of all?</em></p> <p><strong>I Lock My Door Upon Myself - Christina G. Rossetti</strong> </p> <p>The apparent emotional immaturity referred to in my previous post is one of the most difficult things that I have had to deal with as the tragedy of our marriage separation has been unfolding. She has boasted of her witch’s hair; how fast she drives; her blue/green nails, six-inch heels and six-inch hemlines; of young men who are willing to pay for her drinks in bars in exchange for a kiss – whilst our lives and that of our children potentially stand to be torn apart. </p> <p>She has spent endless hours writing blog entries to elicit numerous replies of ‘go for it’; ‘you deserve to be free’; and ‘you have a beautiful soul’ - while her husband is set to move his office into the very house that she told him all along would make her happy, in order that he is better able to face and manage the bleak reality she will leave behind (especially given the current economic climate of which she seems oblivious) and to be more readily there when the children come back from school.</p> <p>She flaunts her bohemianism and independence while appearing to despise her husband for having had (not out of choice) to work long hours and as a result “not being there” – for the very virtue that has provided her with every conventional comfort and financed her "freedom" - despite both accepting that his long and tiring commute was a price worth paying for a beautiful home in an "idyllic" setting and a "country" lifestyle for the children. </p> <p>In the last months, I’ve shut my eyes to so much, being too frightened to see too clearly - and now I find that, while I wasn’t looking, silently and slowly and surely, all that we had has almost drained away.………..but I try to hang on to the last few remaining drops.</p> <p>I became resigned to my wife’s decision to leave me, some time ago. Since then, I have pieced together enough of my shattered self, to wish that she will find happiness again. I know that she could still find it with me, if only she would just open her eyes and be prepared for us to try, given everything that we now both know – very different to 4 months ago. But to her, keeping to her “principles” once the line is drawn in the sand, means no turning back, but continuing like a lemming, blindly on a set course come what may, regardless.</p> <p>Admittedly, there was a time when I begged her to stay; words of love and cruelty in equal hopeless measure. Unfashionable as it may be, I had hoped to stand at her side holding her hand forever, through good times and bad; loving no one else; wanting no other life for myself.</p> <p>The pivotal moment was not the acceptance that she did not love me any more as I still loved her but, much later, the realisation that my enduring love for her meant nothing, changed nothing; was no match for this quite relentless, unassailable resolve of hers. Yet, at one and the same time, she says that she wants “to be adored”. How much more “adoration” can a man exhibit than I have tried to show through these pages? </p> <p>I have loved, lost and grieved, but the dark days have given way to a heavy readiness to return to life, unafraid of the echoes and shadows she will leave behind; I have already grown used to them in these last few empty months………….…where day after day, she has restated her determination to leave our marriage so that she can find “herself” (though her loving, strong, vulnerable, imperfect, perfect self is already there – and I know where she keeps it), but all she seems (desperate) to do is to search for someone else, almost anyone else, who will pay her attention – such a lonely search for a mythical, but all too fleeting, fantasy lover over whom she can exert her power and control, and feel the excitement, the fear and challenge of new attraction. </p> <p>But this will only be followed again by her inevitable need to feel safe and secure once more within this new “relationship”, which will require fresh mutual commitment, and ultimately result in the same apparent loss of “passion” – and so the pattern will be repeated.</p> <p>I’m not blocking her way. She has locked the door upon herself. My tears have oiled the hinges and my heart has broken the lock – so who can explain why I don’t tell her so, with a last gentle push, that the door is open? I still do not want her to leave, but I am not the one stopping her.</p> <p>The fact is, I am the one who is imprisoned, not her! It is hard to move my life forward when I seem to have my very own “Mrs Rochester” in the attic, someone both beautiful and “mad” as she is to me. </p> <p>I know that deep down (though she would never admit it) she needs me……….as I need her. As we have so often said to one another in the past……….”Who else would put up with you?”………………but, she will no doubt keep forever looking and hoping to find another non-existent such one, in all the dark corners and amongst all the other recycled discards.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/01/06/who-else-would-put-up-with-you-5334082/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2009/01/06/who-else-would-put-up-with-you-5334082/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/12/12/the-dangers-of-taking-our-emotions-too-seriously-5211042/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-12-12:/2008/12/12/the-dangers-of-taking-our-emotions-too-seriously-5211042/Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:06:02 +0100 <p><strong>(or Why We Need to ‘Get Over Ourselves’)</strong></p> <p>We all have emotions and insecurities; things we want to keep hidden and things we need to explore; things that will hurt us forever and things that we learn, with time, to embrace. Thus far, we are all the same, but it’s how we deal with our emotions that defines us. But before I go on, I’ll try to explain the title I’ve given to this post.</p> <p><em>A while ago, <strong>Derren Brown</strong>, on his television show, met around ten complete strangers and then wrote an in-depth analysis of their innermost feelings, for each one of them.</p> <p>When interviewed later, all the participants were amazed at how accurate and incisive their personal assessments had been; that he had managed to perceive, magically, what no one else could ever have known about them. It transpired that every ‘assessment’ was identical! They went along the lines of:</p> <p> ‘I’m confident on the outside but inside…’<br> ‘ I usually feel like I don’t really belong’<br> ‘I’m always the outsider’<br> ‘I have baggage from my childhood’<br> ‘ I always feel I’m looking for something else’<br> ‘ I often feel a failure’<br> ‘My self-image isn’t great’<br> ‘Others seem content, I’m not,’ etc.</em> </p> <p>This is a good way to remind ourselves that there are certain <em>common</em> themes of need and vulnerability in all of us and that ‘deep-down inside’ we are remarkably similar.</p> <p>Another blogger on this site in a fairly recent blog also captured this perfectly in a post entitled “You”. Perhaps you reader(s) could look it up. The majority of people would recognise themselves to a greater or lesser extent in that particular post. The majority of comments left by others say <em>exactly</em> that, with awe, as if they did not know that this was the basis of the human condition.</p> <p>Most of us understand that feelings such as these are part and parcel of the human condition and emotional development helps us to deal with them and put them into some kind of perspective. Those who understand this, know they must bloody well get on with it….…..thereby becoming the ones destined to support those who <em>don’t</em> understand……and who don’t seem able to get on with it.</p> <p>People who don’t understand that we all have our emotional ‘hang-ups’ end up <strong>taking their emotions too seriously</strong>. They give them disproportionate importance – <strong>they never learn to ‘get over themselves</strong>.’ </p> <p>They think that they are “special”; that they are more emotionally evolved than others; that their feelings are stronger and more worthy of consideration; that life is more “painful” for them and that those who try to bring some balance to them are “controlling” and “uncaring”. They use their emotions to absolve themselves of the control, perspective and selflessness that others achieve with emotional maturity.</p> <p>Relationships, of all kinds, are difficult to sustain for these people. They contribute little to the healthy balance of relationships, wanting to be equal but needing the constant emotional support of their partners to be so. Relationship difficulties are blamed on aspects of themselves that they see as admirable - their complexity, independent spirit or challenging intellect, for example – so they see no need for themselves to change.</p> <p>Ironically, they ruin perfectly loving relationships because they cannot be convinced that they are loved enough. It’s almost as if they resent the strength of those who love and support them because their fragile egos feel subjugated and somehow diminished. They look at healthy, loving couples and ask why such a man could love such a fat/ugly/old woman – and they will never know the answer.</p> <p>Looking for someone else to address these issues makes us high-maintenance, resentful and full of misplaced blame. It also keeps us forever seeking “something else”, while the problem travels with us wherever we go. </p> <p>Eventually, they find that the only people who have time for them are those who employ the same kind of self-obsessed clichés and live the same kind of flawed reality. They can’t sustain relationships with those who are confident, balanced, ‘successful’ …or recognise why the people to whom they relate most closely, are troubled and alone.</p> <p>Because they are always sub-consciously seeking emotional support, they lay bare their private emotions to anyone who shows interest. Every new contact becomes a new best friend or a new best lover. When each relationship ends, they view it as <em>betrayal</em> not failure, thus becoming the victim. They need to be adored while offering jealousy and self-obsession in return; no lover will ever make them feel secure enough and no friend will ever be blindly supportive of them enough.</p> <p>They consider that they demand more of life than those who function uncomplainingly in the real world – those who aren’t praised for fulfilling their responsibilities; who are judged on just who they are, not how they look; who know when others need to come first even though they have their own personal disappointments to deal with; who are not the centre of anyone’s universe but are happy to make others the centre of theirs.</p> <p>The all-too-obvious irony is that emotional obsessives will never reach emotional maturity because they are simply too wrapped up in themselves.</p> <p><em>(This post has been brewing and festering for a while. My thanks to a dear friend for their great input and help in getting it to an end result). </em></p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/12/12/the-dangers-of-taking-our-emotions-too-seriously-5211042/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/12/12/the-dangers-of-taking-our-emotions-too-seriously-5211042/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/11/25/what-is-love-5104500/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-11-25:/2008/11/25/what-is-love-5104500/Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:02:36 +0100 <p>I have tried to keep away from these pages for my sanity, and because of other priorities, but may occasionally dip back in as now:</p> <p>My (nearly ex-)wife ponders how long she can hold a man to her, to get beyond the seduction stage to something more lasting and manage to maintain it? I ponder this general question.</p> <p>Unlike the moth that she likens herself to, drawn to and forever burnt by the light, coming at relationships from the right perspective helps for a start.</p> <p>It is easy to confuse love with the <u>need</u> to be loved. Before we are able to love, we must already be loved – by ourselves. Before someone else can love you fully it requires that you consider yourself worthy of such love.</p> <p>True love is more than just a warm feeling in the chest. When it comes to romantic love it is more than just desire, but also a commitment to want to really know another human being, to want to care about them for the sake of the joy we experience when we are caring – not merely for the sake of manipulating them into caring for <u>us</u>. </p> <p>Romantic relationships never turn out right for people who have not learned to love. Without a commitment to love, once the free fall of falling in love is over, the differences between us can be seen as deficiencies and our knowledge of them used to hurt one another rather than to love (I, too, have certainly been guilty of this).</p> <p>It is ironic that complementary differences between us, that can form the very basis of a strong love-bond, can become the points of contention between lovers, impair communication and form the basis of hate.</p> <p>Even if a couple were to separate to find other lovers, they will still need to first learn to love if they are not simply to repeat the pattern. It is so easy to forget love, and treat it as if it weren’t important to love consistently despite adversity. Shakespeare had it in his 116th sonnet:</p> <p>Let me not to the marriage of true minds<br> Admit impediments. Love is not love<br> Which alters when it alteration finds,<br> Or bends with the remover to remove:<br> O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,<br> That looks on tempests and is never shaken;<br> It is a star to every wandering bark,<br> Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.<br> Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks<br> Within his bending sickle’s compass come;<br> Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,<br> But bears it out even to the edge of doom.<br> If this be error, and upon me prov’d,<br> I never writ, nor no man ever love’d. </p> <p>For a truly successful relationship based on love, lovers need to be prepared to go beyond the initial superficial “attraction” and genuinely learn to appreciate the differences in one another and, through this knowledge, feed and help their relationship grow in a unique way.</p> <p>In the film <strong>My Dinner with Andre</strong>, Andre says to his friend:</p> <p>“Of course there’s a problem, because the closer you come, I think, to another human being, the more completely mysterious and unreachable that person becomes. I mean, you have to reach out……….<br> Have an affair and up to a certain point you can really feel that you are on firm ground. You know, the sexual conquest to be made. There are different questions. Does she enjoy her ears being nibbled? How intensely can you talk about Schopenhauser, (or) some elegant French restaurant? Whatever nonsense it is. It’s all, I think, to give you the semblance that there’s firm earth. Well, have a real relationship with a person that goes on for years. That’s completely unpredictable. Then you’ve cut off all your ties to the land and you’re sailing into the unknown, into the uncharted seas.”</p> <p>A real relationship, based on love, is like sailing into uncharted seas. It is mysterious and unique - but you have to work at it.</p> <p>(With acknowledgement to Blase Harris, M.D) </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/11/25/what-is-love-5104500/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>lovehttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/11/25/what-is-love-5104500/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/22/nothing-left-to-lose-4912991/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-22:/2008/10/22/nothing-left-to-lose-4912991/Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:09:13 +0200 <p>I have taken a few days out to rest and think and suddenly it’s clear that I have to say goodbye to many parts of my life - including my brief time on these pages (at least for now).</p> <p>I have poured out my soul into this short blog for anyone to see. I’ve endlessly professed my love for my wife and my despair at the thought of parting. I’ve taken comfort and criticism from strangers and I’m grateful for both.</p> <p>But I’ve been living in a fantasy world of hope and denial - and that can’t continue for all our sakes. I have to face up to the things I can’t change and get real.</p> <p>I have four children to provide for, including two aged 5 and 7 who need their father’s focused love and reassurance; I need to maintain this echoing house to give them continuity when their mother leaves; I have to safeguard my business, with others looking to me to protect their jobs in these bleak times.</p> <p>What use am I to those I love and have responsibility for, if I carry on as the zombie I have been of late?</p> <p>In recent weeks I’ve felt that I have no influence over the situation - except to trap her with my pain when I couldn’t keep her with my love.</p> <p>But I know now what I have to do….</p> <p>I have to say ENOUGH – and set us both free. We need to stop the leaking tap and retain the last few drops of what we had, to sustain us in our separate years ahead. No more persuasion; no more harsh words; no more what-might-have-been; no more traps; no more guilt to hold her back… </p> <p>Thank you for the happy times that we had and for our two precious children. We will be OK now….that’s my parting gift to you, my darling wife. </p> <p>“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/22/nothing-left-to-lose-4912991/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>freedomhttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/22/nothing-left-to-lose-4912991/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/16/is-your-glass-half-empty-or-half-full-4883446/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-16:/2008/10/16/is-your-glass-half-empty-or-half-full-4883446/Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:57:34 +0200 <p>The only certainty in life is that we continue getting older and then die. </p> <p>How long can one keep "chasing and searching" outside for happiness, rather than trying to develop and make what one already has more meaningful and find greater happiness from within?</p> <p>Too often though, we look at what we have and decide that the glass is half empty, rather than half full. And at least we have a glass. </p> <p>No-one really knows how to get that glass completely filled up, but it certainly is less likely to happen by continuing to discard its contents and looking around, hoping to find another tap to fill it from empty, rather than from half full. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/16/is-your-glass-half-empty-or-half-full-4883446/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/16/is-your-glass-half-empty-or-half-full-4883446/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/16/the-saddest-day-of-my-life-4881573/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-16:/2008/10/16/the-saddest-day-of-my-life-4881573/Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:16:51 +0200 <p>Yesterday, I had to sanction the solicitor’s letter to be sent to my wife, inviting her to agree and sort out our separation/divorce affairs (through a Collaborative Process hopefully, rather than the more confrontational court route). Today, she will have received it.</p> <p>I did not want to have it posted - I had “sat” on the draft letter for a few weeks. But, my wife has made it eminently clear that she will not relent and do one of her famous handbrake turns that she is so proud of. </p> <p>It seems that I have no option – matters cannot just be allowed to drift on indefinitely as they are. My life has been “on hold”, in limbo, since the end of August – she might contend, possibly even longer. </p> <p>I need to start the process of getting some closure, to wrap this beautiful period of my life (despite its ultimate, truly tragic, disappointing end) carefully in ribbons and lace, and place it into my box of memories.</p> <p>But that is so hard to do. I still cannot believe it is over, finished, gone forever, at a stroke. The door was opened, love walked out and slammed the door shut firmly behind her.</p> <p>It is truly “The Saddest Day of My Life”.</p> <p>The irony is that at the end of next week will come the anniversary of our wedding day, the day my wife has always (not just distantly) described as “The Happiest Day of Her Life”. </p> <p>Why was it so? Was it the fact that she was placed high on a pedestal, the focus of everyone’s attention, it being very much her day? Was it that, as events go, it had been superbly managed and choreographed, by her with all her superb organisational skills and creativity? Was it that she had at long last realised a “dream” by getting married? Was it that we had many of our friends, as well as family members (on my side at least), gathered together? Was it the combination of all these factors all brought together?</p> <p>She now tells me that she "never wanted to get married"............was it a shot-gun wedding then? She does have Italian connections after all. Confusing? Of course! It must have been one of her other personae that I married, rather than the one I am left with now. </p> <p>She was certainly the focus of all our attention on that very special day. She looked "my dream", absolutely stunning in her orange, yes, orange (her favourite colour) wedding dress of her own design; and with her long dark red hair sprinkled with orange rose buds. She looked so radiant and so very happy. </p> <p>She still makes my knees go weak when I see her looking her best, looking good and ever so radiant as she can be. But that is no longer an appearance that is reserved for me. I feel so sad that she cannot feel like that for me, in my presence any more. </p> <p>I wonder if she still thinks back to that day in the same fond way or whether it has now just faded into another bad memory? Does she have regrets like I do, not of the day itself, but of the way through the carelessness of us both, that we allowed things to develop as they have? To reach a path that, with only very small steering inputs and corrections, we could have avoided going down altogether?</p> <p>Surely, if she really, really thinks back to that happiest of days for us all (not just her’s and mine, but for the two children too, who were already born) there must be enough of a germ of something “warm” still there, in her memory, something to salvage and build on to get us out of this scenario. Is it really not worth the effort? Is it really all we can do to simply place these memories, the cards, the photographs, all neatly away in a box and move on?</p> <p>If she was prepared to search out a wonderful fireplace in the salvage yard, why not seek out and try to fuel the (dying) embers of what we once had between us? Can she only look through her dirty, smudged glasses?</p> <p>Engaging reverse gear is impossibly hard for her, does not come naturally, goes against all her principles, even when stuck on the level crossing with an express train bearing down upon her. </p> <p>To keep charging ever forwards, “head on”, as the Taurian bull that she is, is all that her instinct, her “gut feel”, has taught her to do. Her pride would countenance nothing else. </p> <p>And, as an Aries, I keep butting my own horns against the brick wall.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/16/the-saddest-day-of-my-life-4881573/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/16/the-saddest-day-of-my-life-4881573/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/what-s-the-difference-between-the-credit-crunch-anddivorce-4869751/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-14:/2008/10/14/what-s-the-difference-between-the-credit-crunch-anddivorce-4869751/Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:55:32 +0200 <p>On the lighter side....................</p> <p>A friend told me of a report in the paper yesterday on the effects of the Credit Crunch. A City worker, who was asked about how they had been affected by it, was quoted as saying:</p> <p>"It's worse than divorce. I've lost half my money, but I still have the wife."</p> <p>It did make me laugh. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/what-s-the-difference-between-the-credit-crunch-anddivorce-4869751/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>jokedivorcehttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/what-s-the-difference-between-the-credit-crunch-anddivorce-4869751/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/now-you-see-it-now-you-don-t-4869534/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-14:/2008/10/14/now-you-see-it-now-you-don-t-4869534/Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:16:56 +0200 <p>A few posts ago, my wife states that she realised (though she did not comment to me on the fact of her observation at the time) that I had removed my wedding ring. </p> <p>This was in the context of a post debating whether or not she should take up an invitation to attend a firemen's party; and whether or not wearing a wedding ring might give off the desired right or wrong signals as to one's "availability".</p> <p>Her inference and insinuation being that I might have removed mine for some such "predatory" reasons.</p> <p>She decided that it was "hypocritical" - on the basis that I was not wearing mine (not for any other reason) - for her to hang on to her wedding ring, so she followed suit.</p> <p>Had she asked when and why I had removed my wedding ring I would have told her. Not at all for the reason she supposed. </p> <p>It was during a christening church service that we had been invited to attend a couple of weekends ago. </p> <p>I knew that, despite being very much more the conscientious church goer than I, she had felt uncomfortable about attending and had held off accepting this invitation, because of the "hypocritical" scenario it would have placed her in. </p> <p>However, I very much felt that it was the "right" thing for us to attend; as the family concerned were close neighbours (and will continue to be for me at least) and had been very good to us. There was no reason to appear to "snub" them in this way, whatever our situation. If anything, it was I who would feel uncomfortable at the gathering, knowing that most already knew of our impending situation, directly or indirectly through my wife; but would not know whether or what to say to me.</p> <p>Ironically, the service included a sermon on the subject of "Happiness and How We Find It". It was whilst listening to this that I was struck by the irony of the message, and how it would clearly go right over my wife's head.</p> <p>It was at that moment that I removed my wedding ring. I put it in my pocket and actually felt like throwing it away afterwards on the way to the christening reception party. However, I have put it away for safe-keeping, a souvenir to add to the collection.</p> <p>No, I did not remove it because I thought it might "enhance my prospects"! </p> <p>From everything I read in blog land, it would appear that having the "married status" label is the more sought after and desirable - it suggests only an interest in casual sex, no commitment, less "complication", likely dissatisfaction with what one has and therefore "up for it", lesser expectation, an easier prey, a take it or leave it attitude. </p> <p>Maybe she should keep her wedding ring on.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/now-you-see-it-now-you-don-t-4869534/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/now-you-see-it-now-you-don-t-4869534/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/seeking-the-holy-grail-finding-happiness-4869286/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-14:/2008/10/14/seeking-the-holy-grail-finding-happiness-4869286/Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:27:28 +0200 <p>Reading the post of another (anonymous) fellow blogger I came across this quote:</p> <p>"When I was very, very young I used to think that I would find someone who would be the other half of me who would be able to take all this away and make me feel part of a whole, who would be able to neutralise my sadness and loneliness and make it all better, but that was a childish fairy tale. Everything in life that I have ever thought would make me happy didn’t. I will only ever find happiness if I can find it within myself and I have no idea how to even start."</p> <p>Even though she does not have a clue as to how to start to address her own demons, at least she has the right idea as to where the true happiness she seeks might lie. </p> <p>It is down to ourselves to find and develop our happiness from within, by nurturing what we already have, not by readily discarding what we have that is anything but rotten fruit. </p> <p>Happiness is not to be found by seeking this Holy Grail externally, as though it is something that will be readily obvious and dangling, waiting there for us, to be plucked off another fruit tree........just like Eve in The Garden of Eden thought she would find. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/seeking-the-holy-grail-finding-happiness-4869286/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>happiness-eve-fruithttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/seeking-the-holy-grail-finding-happiness-4869286/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/empty-words-and-empty-statements-4868653/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-14:/2008/10/14/empty-words-and-empty-statements-4868653/Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:12:45 +0200 <p><strong>“I did not mean to hurt you……….”</strong> – well what exactly did you expect might result from what you did?</p> <p><strong>“Short of getting back together, I will do anything not to see you hurting like this……”</strong> – well what else apart from that is there that you could do to stop me hurting?</p> <p><strong>“It’s all about me, it’s not about you…….”</strong> – well, that makes it alright then.</p> <p>Do wives/husbands/partners really think about what they are saying before they come up with “kind”, vacuous statements like these? Are they just trying to deflect their guilt?</p> <p>We are not teenagers or “boyfriends or girlfriends” breaking up - and off to the next. </p> <p>You are talking to someone who has made a life-long commitment to you, and you to them. Someone with whom you have had children. Someone with whom you have been living for 8 years, who must have had some positive redeeming features to them that you recognised along the way.</p> <p>They deserve better than such flip remarks. </p> <p>They deserve better than a shallow analysis of whatever their failings might have been to lead you to reach the conclusion that breaking up is “for the best”. </p> <p>They also deserve that you are fully prepared to examine your own contribution to the situation. You deserve that too. Because if you don't, you not only risk throwing the baby out with the bath water, but you too may well repeat your own mistakes in the future.</p> <p>They deserve better than “instant dismissal” – after all employees are entitled to a “fair” process of consultation compared to this. </p> <p>They do certainly deserve a chance of redress if that is what they want, uncomfortable though that may be for you.</p> <p>Stop ignoring and exorcising the guilt. You feel it for good reason.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/empty-words-and-empty-statements-4868653/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>guilthttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/empty-words-and-empty-statements-4868653/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/why-do-you-feel-guilty-4868516/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-14:/2008/10/14/why-do-you-feel-guilty-4868516/Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:46:00 +0200 <p>My wife makes reference to her feeling of “guilt” in a number of her posts. These references were usually followed by reassuring fellow blogger comments that she should not feel that way because she “is doing the right thing”. </p> <p>All of us at various times talk of “feeling guilty”. What is this guilt, where does the feeling come from and, more importantly, how do we attempt to deal with it?</p> <p>Unlike animals (though I do not know how we prove it), all human beings have been given a conscience. God gave us it. Even tribesmen in Africa, who have not heard of Jesus Christ, have a conscience. Whatever your religious belief, you have one.</p> <p>Through our experiences and nurturing gained through childhood we acquire an intrinsic sense of right or wrong. But in some people this can be overcome or suppressed – bad nurturing or bad teaching can overcome the sense of social conscience that is enshrined in us all.</p> <p>Guilt is God’s way of letting us know that we have taken an action that goes against our conscience. It is the soul’s equivalent of the pain we feel in our body through our nerve endings – which God gave us in order to preserve our lives, to sense when we are in physical danger. Feeling guilt and, more importantly, acting appropriately when we feel it is how we survive spiritually.</p> <p>I am not referring to the kind of “guilt” that we all profess to have when we eat too much chocolate! </p> <p>I am also not referring to the kind of guilt that might be felt when, for example, we have unintentionally hurt (or even killed) someone through our reckless behaviour. There is nothing we can do about the latter to undo the damage and make us feel less guilty. In such a case we need experienced professional help to remove and diminish this kind of guilt.</p> <p>What I am talking about here is the guilt that we feel when we are aware that we have wronged others by our actions. Something that we have done over which we had a choice of action – whether it was motivated by malice, selfishness, greed, revenge or other self-interest – actions that we perform, the motivation for which is seldom laudable. </p> <p>Such actions inevitably lead us to a feeling of guilt – the echo of our unheard conscience.</p> <p>“You have done wrong – you should put it right!” is what our conscience is telling us. “Don’t do whatever you are doing that is causing you to feel the guilt.”</p> <p>However, modern “faddy” psychology has dictated that having a “guilt complex” is “bad” for people. Feeling guilt is a “bad thing”. Therefore, rather than examining and eliminating the action or redressing the action that is causing the guilt, we are advised that we should exorcise the guilt feeling. </p> <p>We have been made to believe that if we can only live “guilt free” we can lead happy and unencumbered lives. Let’s just pursue our “happiness”, irrespective of what that might do to others. </p> <p>Is it any wonder that we now live in a society where we all just pursue “what we want to do”, where one’s obligations to another human are now ignored altogether and all that matters is the pursuit of our human “rights”? </p> <p>The modern “mantra” is all about goodwill to self, pursuing our own “happiness” at all costs.</p> <p>The first such “self-help” step was taken in The Garden of Eden in the conversation between the Serpent (Satan) and Eve. Eve had been told to “leave that fruit untouched”. However, the Serpent led Eve to believe that it was her “human right” to taste the fruit. </p> <p>Ever since Eve’s particular action we have believed that we know what is right or wrong for us, and have not allowed ourselves to be bothered or dictated to by our conscience or any sense of guilt. </p> <p>To experience a feeling of guilt is because you know what you have done is wrong. But, instead of addressing it in the correct way and putting right the wrong, we try to get rid of our guilt, suppressing it, ignoring it and trying to off-load it by finding blame in someone else for the actions that led to it in the first place - in this way, thus "justifying" our action.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/why-do-you-feel-guilty-4868516/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/14/why-do-you-feel-guilty-4868516/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/13/trapped-in-fantasy-trapped-in-reality-4863788/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-13:/2008/10/13/trapped-in-fantasy-trapped-in-reality-4863788/Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:00:19 +0200 <p>The fragility that was always there, both physical and in her soul, and which perversely was such a key element of why I fell in love with her, wanting to "protect" her, is still very much a part of her. It will never go away, "hard" as she tries to portray herself now. </p> <p>Nevertheless, deep down, she is like a frightened rabbit in the headlights, trying to be strong, looking for any escape route, any "safe" haven to leap into. But not mine.</p> <p>At every opportunity I've agonised over what is really going on deep down within her, rather than on the surface. Flirting with strangers on the Internet is merely camouflage to bolster her self-esteem. Her self-image always was, and still remains, very frail and volatile. </p> <p>I imagine that she probably feels a "failure" in having so much and yet, in her eyes, appearing to make so little "success" of it. It's easy for her to therefore tell herself that the circumstances are wrong. Possibly she feels embarrassed by the fact that she has not created the (real) friends, the social life, the publishing deal, the easy children (otherwise referred to as her "pests"), in the country idyll, which our "comfortable" life together should have facilitated. </p> <p>So she tries to reject and change the things that are easy to blame, rather than looking within herself. She blames the (married) life she wanted and the life I gave her. She blames me, but I know that I am not blameless. </p> <p>I was certainly guilty of too much devotion to duty, to responsibility, of carelessness perhaps, of working too hard - not to take care of my own "self-worth" at the expense of hers. She has always been jealous of the fact that I was able to gain my self-esteem from my work, but was unable herself to find the same reward merely from the role of mother. I worked hard, not to bolster my self-worth, but out of necessity, of wishing to better our lives and that of our children (or so I thought), of wanting to make a significant improvement for them on what I had experienced myself. I was guilty of having too many other plates (work / clients / candidates / employees / house / step-children / our children / my aging parent(s), not necessarily in that order) to keep spinning all at once whilst trying to give her and the family the best of what I could; naively believing that she of all would "understand" the sacrifice I was making. That, by acting so, I was not putting her “last”, but “first”. </p> <p>But I did not sufficiently recognise the sacrifice in her “self-worth” that she herself was making, did not appreciate the extent of her need for complete attention from me to bolster her perhaps and, because of her insecurity, that she needed and expected this regardless of what was going on in my “other life”.</p> <p>One of her biggest fears is financial insecurity, the fear that she coined as “ending up living in a cardboard box". And there I was never believing that, by doing my all to ensure that she never had to face up to that particular fear and reality, that it would come back to bite me with such irony. Now I am able to apply so little concentration to my work for all the mental distraction going on, her worst fears may well come true for all concerned, credit crunch or no credit crunch, still married or divorced. Just rewards indeed? </p> <p>She has it “all”, too late, as she no longer needs it, wants it. But I cannot just stop being there. And I cannot stop her spirit still being here, in my singular world with me.</p> <p>You see, it does not matter what acceptable part of you one tries to be, there is always another side of you that you could and should have been to her. One can never "win". We both can only lose. I don't think that anyone outside of her can make her truly happy, just for a brief while perhaps, but then her demons will return. </p> <p>Only by addressing her inner self and what makes her so, does she have a chance of gaining true "happiness". Not by looking for someone else to do it for her.</p> <p>Finding and apportioning blame is not the answer. Looking for "happiness" elsewhere will not change the underlying person. She will simply transplant herself to a different set of circumstances, but the recipe for more disappointment will still be there. </p> <p>Meanwhile, she will have lost her only true bedrock, "restricting and choking" as she appears to now view it, the family (both immediate and extended) that she so much craved to have, to be a part of something, to give her a sense of belonging - what she has not truly had before from such an early stage in her life. At the same time, being part of a family seems to go against her grain, because she feels that she has become a "belonging" and that somehow I "own" her, because I provide for her. </p> <p>Am I the one that is confused here? Am I not the one that is truly “trapped” – trapped by and shackled to an inescapable treadmill, whilst she in fact is already free - to a greater degree, not bound by work, but only by family duty – to choose how she deploys the balance of her life?</p> <p>This is the same woman who virtually in the same breath states to me: "I shall never know about men - you men just confuse me."</p> <p>I remember only too well how miserable she was in her previous life when I met her and how she saw me as her "knight in shining armour" who came along to give her everything she wanted then - not least, at one stroke, bringing her into an “instant family” (with my other children, her step-children; then aged 11 and 8). </p> <p>She at a stroke became no longer the nomad, the gipsy. Despite the attentions of a multitude of journalists and other male work acolytes, she had always felt herself to be the one on the outside, on her own – as she was then – yet another “mistress”, Mr Bastard’s. </p> <p>If she had not at the time gained a husband and children (she wanted five when I met her by the way. Phew…..I did escape lightly!) she would have felt a failure then....…………….and so the cycle continues. </p> <p>At the end of the day, short-term "fun and excitement" attraction factor apart that she seeks to find, ultimately like all of us, she will still need and want someone to trust. Trust is such a long word in her vocabulary and such a big need for her soul. But is someone one is likely to meet who spends their time flirting on the Internet, whatever their own circumstances, worthy of such trust? Will they stop this addiction once they have met and become “attached” to you? </p> <p>She needs someone who will be capable and willing to truly support and take care of her, not just through words and from the romantic viewpoint. Someone, who unlike the romantic dream that is divorced from reality, who will no doubt revert back to being relatively "dull" again like everyone else once placed in a real context and laden with their own set of responsibilities. </p> <p>She needs someone, who is willing to stand there beside her always, whatever is thrown at him and who will not run away. Someone willing to slay the demons and dragons (though she would have one believe that she does not have any that need slaying). Not merely someone who hides within the screen, at the end of a keyboard and does battle with a mouse (mind you, she has more experience of getting rid of real mice than I). </p> <p>Unfortunately, this involves facing and dealing with reality, much harder than addressing a fantasy.</p> <p>But she still remains both my fantasy and reality.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/13/trapped-in-fantasy-trapped-in-reality-4863788/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/13/trapped-in-fantasy-trapped-in-reality-4863788/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/13/when-the-earth-stops-spinning-4863351/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-13:/2008/10/13/when-the-earth-stops-spinning-4863351/Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:30:47 +0200 <p>Like every other morning since my world was first shattered and broken, when I leave home to set off into my new world of "solitude", by the time I get to the office my legs have still turned to jelly and the pit of my stomach is knotted. </p> <p>How do eight years of apparent love turn so suddenly to this? Will I be able to feel love for someone else, to trust someone again? Is this why I cling on so desperately to the memory of what I thought I had? </p> <p>Everything about my world, my hopes, my dreams, my work has come to a complete stop and are going into reverse. Like when the earth stops spinning, and all is no longer held by gravity, things are falling off.</p> <p>She admits to her own life having become stationary. But, mentally, she has already moved out. Moved on and left me behind. We are still in the same house, but alone, in our separate worlds. </p> <p>But I can't help but think about her, even though her full presence is only now in my private world. All the time I think back on her many wonderful talents and qualities, our many good and loving times, and how I can never replace her. </p> <p>I just wish I had told her enough, not that I didn't at all. </p> <p>It's late in the day, the stable door is slammed shut and the horse has already bolted, but how much more attention can I give her than write a blog devoted to her for all the world to read?</p> <p>Well, I could have taken up skywriting I suppose.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/13/when-the-earth-stops-spinning-4863351/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/13/when-the-earth-stops-spinning-4863351/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/11/will-i-be-reclaimed-4856378/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-11:/2008/10/11/will-i-be-reclaimed-4856378/Sat, 11 Oct 2008 21:06:41 +0200 <p>It's a bit of a reclamation yard the Internet it seems. There are some treasures to be found amongst old, discarded items and people do seem to look for them. </p> <p>My wife found us an old fire-place at a reclamation yard. It looks rather forlornly at me as I sit and play the piano. But I can leave it behind me when I exit and close the door of the music room. </p> <p>She also found something else on the Internet. But that's something I can't escape away from, wherever I go. It follows me, haunts me, everywhere. At work or at home. Day or night. Awake or asleep.</p> <p>I hope someone comes looking for me in amongst the scrapheap. </p> <p>Outside the window, here where I write, earlier on today there were some people with metal detectors in the ploughed field opposite. They are there regularly. Methodically searching. </p> <p>They are looking for something. </p> <p>Maybe they know that I am around somewhere nearby, but hopefully not in the ground. </p> <p>Not yet. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/11/will-i-be-reclaimed-4856378/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/11/will-i-be-reclaimed-4856378/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/11/this-house-is-empty-now-4856278/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-11:/2008/10/11/this-house-is-empty-now-4856278/Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:50:37 +0200 <p>Today I have had a preview of what it will be like when she goes. A reminder of life "on one's own" with nothing in particular to do, no-one to see. I remember it well from 10 years ago, in another place.</p> <p>My wife went off at lunchtime with the children to see a lady friend of hers near London and to take them to the circus, possibly the cinema. They are not yet back. </p> <p>I was hoping to try to see one of my brothers, who himself is going through a divorce process at present, to drown in our mutual sorrows. Talking to him and seeing his situation, actually "picks me up" would you believe? A great pair we would make around the dinner table!</p> <p>His situation is worse than mine - his wife (who is French) wants to go off to France with their two children, to be close to her particular Mr Lost that she also found through the Internet. He's been off work on doctor's orders, stuffed full with anti-depressants. He finds it hard to sleep (on the couch). He could hardly find the energy to speak with me on the telephone, never mind get himself out of the house, he was so "tired". </p> <p>I would have gone round to pick him up (about an hour and a half from here). But he declined. I went for some retail therapy instead and tried him again later in the afternoon. Still the same. I contemplated the idea of "going for a drink" on my own, but past memories told me it was too sad an option, so I decided to come home and talk to you kind people instead.</p> <p>As I sit here, the following song by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello came to my mind. I'd like to share the lyrics with you at least, as you cannot hear my playing it on the piano:</p> <p><strong><u>This House Is Empty Now</u></strong><br> Words and Music by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello (from the Album "Painted from Memory")<br> Copyright 1998 NEW HIDDEN VALLEY MUSIC and SIDEWAYS SONGS<br> <strong><br> These rooms play tricks upon you.<br> Remember when they were always filled with laughter?</p> <p>But now they're quite deserted.<br> They seem to just echo voices raised in anger.</p> <p>Maybe you will see my face reflected there on the pane -<br> in the window of our poor, forlorn and broken home.</p> <p>Still this house is empty now.<br> There's nothing I can do make you want to stay.<br> So tell me how, how am I supposed to live without you?</p> <p>These walls were lined with pictures.<br> Remember the glass we charged in celebration?</p> <p>But now I fill my life up with all that I can to deaden this sensation.<br> Do you recognise the face fixed in that fine silver frame?<br> Were you really so unhappy then? You never said so.</p> <p>This house is empty now.<br> There's nothing I can do to make you want to stay.<br> So tell me how, how am I suposed to live without you?</p> <p>Oh, if I could just become forgetful when night seems endless.<br> Does the extinguished candle care about the darkness?</p> <p>It's funny how my mem'ry will bring you so close then make you disappear.<br> Meanwhile, all our friends must choose who they will favour, who they will lose.</p> <p>Hang the garland high or close the door and throw away the key.<br> This house is empty now.<br> There's no one living here you have to care about.</p> <p>This house is empty now.<br> There's nothing I can do to make you want to stay.</p> <p>So tell me how, how am I supposed to live without you?<br> </strong></p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/11/this-house-is-empty-now-4856278/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/11/this-house-is-empty-now-4856278/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/11/fantasy-or-reality-lonely-with-you-lonely-without-you-4855958/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-11:/2008/10/11/fantasy-or-reality-lonely-with-you-lonely-without-you-4855958/Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:36:03 +0200 <p>Shame I do not have much hair that I can let down like her, or so she thinks………….the smell and sight of her long hair arranged on the pillow would always arouse……..my own fingers unable to resist travelling down to that warm, soft valley at the base of her back where her hair almost reaches, between two firm mounds.</p> <p>She has pulled far away now……………too far for me to reach again it seems, however far I stretch my arms. Now my fingers can only play on the keyboard. Not soft and smooth like her. But it can still achieve the hardness that she craves. </p> <p>If only I had grabbed her more firmly when I could, when she was within reach, and been able to be my other self; told her some of what I try to say here. Instead, we settled into and played out our defined separate roles, of Mamma and Papa. My other self became a Mr Lost, but one never to be found, filed away and forgotten.</p> <p>I admit that she did hint at times, but too cryptically for me. Not demonstrably as now. The message did not get through. I was not tuned in - as Papa she would not let me find and ring her bell. But if I had, unlike others, I would not have run away. It’s not a game I play. </p> <p>I could not find that spot, that bell. She kept it from me it seems. Legs entwined, but not around me. If only she had pulled me on to her, looked with open eyes into mine own without closing them and perhaps dreaming of others, and let me know more clearly what she “really” wanted from me, we would not be lost as now.</p> <p>All it would take is the tiniest hint, a caress, a gentle kiss, any indication that desire is not completely extinguished. That “bitter and twisted” could be put aside and is not all that I imagine that she reserves for me; and she thinks I hold for her. She could release such a fiery passionate flame that has thus far been well suppressed, kept under tight control, believing that it was not something I held for her. I know that she is not just Mamma. And I am not just Papa.</p> <p>Ignite it. The pilot light still flickers………….it’s not gone out. It’s right here – she’s just not looked for it in the right place, searched with the right questions, probed with her fingers. Why does she seek to find it like a needle in a haystack, across the screen when it is here, beside her all along?</p> <p>At least she should know that I can spell Love, not just Sex. I, too, want her to find the old “ME” that was her (and I). I’ll even lie on the trampoline, gazing at the stars, if it would let us bounce again. I know that she can summersault and do handbrake turns. If only she would show me. Do it for “ME”. Do it for her.</p> <p>But, it’s all just wishful dreaming. My own little fantasy to escape my impending reality. </p> <p>As surely as the Titanic filling with water, I know that we are sunk. But I hope that she will allow me a little grace, like her, to fantasise a little myself even. No harm intended. Just love escaping………..dripping away, like a leaking tap.</p> <p>Lonely With You, Lonely Without You. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/11/fantasy-or-reality-lonely-with-you-lonely-without-you-4855958/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>lovehttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/11/fantasy-or-reality-lonely-with-you-lonely-without-you-4855958/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/10/becoming-mr-invisible-4849683/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-10:/2008/10/10/becoming-mr-invisible-4849683/Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:16:53 +0200 <p>Life and purpose have become suddenly "empty". My wife is still here in body, but her soul is elsewhere. I am still very much here both in body and soul - but somehow feel that I could be in danger of becoming Mr Invisible, already cast off into history. </p> <p>We don't do things "together" anymore, much as I would like to and suggest it, even for the sake of the children. We seem to already have time with the children in "turns", organise diaries separately, have separate existences within the same house - apart from meal times. </p> <p>She will say that our lives were always like that - separate existences. But, there is a difference when you know and <u>care</u> that the other is there, and gain comfort from it - wherever else they are in the house - even if you are not conversing. When you care that they are late home in case an accident might have befallen them. That you really care if they might look crestfallen, not merely out of politeness. That you want to know that they are ok, that you care about them, whether they are near or far. Wherever you each are - you care. </p> <p>I hope that we will not reach the point where we do not talk. We do at least manage a "hello", a "goodbye" or even a "see you later". To be fair, we do talk at (shared) meal times and when I can prise her away from the Internet. </p> <p>I even manage to surprise her by "snatching" the occasional hug when I leave in the morning to drop our eldest son off at the school coach. </p> <p>Up to six weeks ago a kiss and/or a hug when I left for work was only natural, mandatory even; and she would notice and complain if not given. Now her lips are averted, not even her cheek is offered. I go for the neck instead - she thinks of herself as a vampire after all!</p> <p>Let me just say, our own situation thankfully has not reached this - well, not yet, and I hope that it will never do so - but all too often, love turns to disdain or contempt. We have sailed close to these particular rocks but, thankfully managed to steer clear thus far.</p> <p>"Good manners cost nothing" as it used to be said, but during a separation process it is so easy to get to the situation where one is not even accorded the simple civility reserved for strangers........</p> <p>Far worse than being hated is to be ignored or accounted as unworthy of attention. Because when we are hated it is at least an acknowledgement that our existence provokes a response from the other......that we are able to stir up their passions (unfortunately not the right ones!), negative though they may be.</p> <p>To be ignored altogether is a sign that we no longer matter to that person......we are rendered powerless to affect them in any way. It is the most frustrating of situations, especially for one who was formerly the object of love or adoration. One so easily can feel and become Mr Invisible.</p> <p>This sense of worthlessness or emasculation is the most destructive of emotions when suffered by those whose upbringing or past experiences has left them ill-equipped to deal with it; those without close family bonds or intimate friendships to offer a source of love and reassurance separate from the one who has now abandoned them. </p> <p>Fortunately, I do not fall in that category, and have plenty of family and friends who are helping support me through this time - and I am grateful to them.</p> <p>Nevertheless, to have almost reached an age when one is supposed to enjoy the fruits of one's labours and the love and warmth of one's family, with a wife that one adores, but to be denied and have that dream taken away still makes it very hard to endure, to understand. To believe in love. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/10/becoming-mr-invisible-4849683/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/10/becoming-mr-invisible-4849683/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/10/the-virgin-and-the-harlot-are-one-woman-to-me-4849348/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-10:/2008/10/10/the-virgin-and-the-harlot-are-one-woman-to-me-4849348/Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:51:30 +0200 <p>More (a poem) by the late Tim Hardin:</p> <p><strong><u>For Susan</u></strong></p> <p><strong>Just as I listen to the<br> sounds in the air I,<br> hear only you if that's where<br> I'm looking -<br> in you, of you, about you<br> for and with you<br> are my reasons and<br> response<br> and<br> in you is the one long<br> span of everything<br> and<br> the one short length<br> by which all can be divided</p> <p>Thinking of you at dawn<br> the wind seemed to lick<br> the hill<br> soft and powdery licks<br> to my skin -<br> I return the wind's<br> romance<br> and caress the thoughts<br> I put you in<br> and in the moving air<br> begins a dance<br> then the minutes passing into<br> daybreak - then your mouth,<br> and kissing - like the wind<br> but more still</p> <p>I see innocence<br> you turn to show me<br> and<br> your face holds the<br> sophisticated secrets<br> a courtesan plays<br> the virgin<br> and<br> the harlot are<br> one woman to<br> me<br> and<br> other subtler facets<br> that colour what I see<br> have part of you<br> and<br> you are all to me</p> <p>How frail your senses<br> to such a texture of<br> life in its being so much<br> applied to that balance and reaction<br> I love you<br> I love thee<br> and yet -<br> kiss me biting<br> move against me<br> hard<br> hard<br> and yet<br> so frail<br> and yet feeling all of<br> how hard we're moving<br> the sharpness and searing<br> of kiss from softly to<br> the screaming of the<br> same<br> kiss<br> I love thee<br> I love you -</strong> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/10/the-virgin-and-the-harlot-are-one-woman-to-me-4849348/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/10/the-virgin-and-the-harlot-are-one-woman-to-me-4849348/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/10/how-can-we-hang-on-to-a-dream-4849229/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-10:/2008/10/10/how-can-we-hang-on-to-a-dream-4849229/Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:21:38 +0200 <p>A very short song by the late, great Tim Hardin (probably best known for the song "If I Were A Carpenter") sums up how I feel:</p> <p><strong>How Can We Hang On To A Dream?</strong><br> (Words/Music by Tim Hardin. Copyright 1966, 1968 Faithful Virtue Music Co, Inc)</p> <p><strong>What can I say?<br> She's walking away<br> from what we've seen.<br> What can I do, still loving you, it's all a dream,</p> <p>How Can We Hang On To A Dream?<br> How can it really be the way it seems?</p> <p>What can I do?<br> She's saying we're through<br> with how it was.</p> <p>What will I try?<br> I still don't see why<br> she says what she does,</p> <p>How Can We Hang On To A Dream?<br> How can it really be the way it seems?</strong></p> <p>Is this really all just a bad dream, a nightmare? When I wake up in the morning will she again be lying there beside me once more? </p> <p>If only, but sadly, not.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/10/how-can-we-hang-on-to-a-dream-4849229/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>dreamhttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/10/how-can-we-hang-on-to-a-dream-4849229/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/08/handbrake-turns-and-skids-all-over-me-4838943/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-08:/2008/10/08/handbrake-turns-and-skids-all-over-me-4838943/Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:34:09 +0200 <p>My nearly ex-wife is one of the few mothers of two who is adept at performing handbrake turns with a car - when its direction of travel is reversed through 180 degrees, before setting off at speed in the opposite direction.</p> <p>Of course, she would not do such a thing on public "roads".</p> <p>She is a fast lady and a very capable driver - I would readily admit, better than I - except for her lack of concentration and focus. She regularly allows herself to be distracted by her mobile 'phone or by her rear view mirror, that is trained on the life that she had previously, and the one she wants to leave behind to "regain" it. </p> <p>She usually often has the rear view mirror trained on the children on the back seat. But, as she should know, they will follow her everywhere anyway, as they cannot get out of the car, being well strapped in - for dear life! </p> <p>As I have said before, she's never had any sense of direction. So she's driving the car by looking only at the rear view mirror and hoping for the best. Let's trust that the road ahead is clear, with no obstacles or potholes - as the fact that the road behind looks clear gives no guarantee that the road ahead is too. </p> <p>She's convinced that she is on the right road. No point in a map, SatNav, or listening to any directions. All that matters is that she alone knows where she's heading, so how can anyone else beside her be of help? </p> <p>But she does not know how far she will get - because, in typical manner, she's running the car on fumes as getting to a petrol station first would be inconvenient. Impulse and spontaneity come first with this girl. Consequences follow well behind. That does not matter. The breakdown truck will need to be following closely to pick up and mend the pieces. </p> <p>I did not know that by not allowing her to abuse one of our cars performing handbrake turns and similar antics (because I admit I am a bit of an "anorak" like that - cars being expensive to repair - especially when you have a few and they are not "company cars") that she would decide to practice her handbrake turning ability on her life and mine instead.</p> <p>She's put her foot very hard down and I have the skid marks all over me to show for it. Maybe I'll know better next time and keep well out of the way; or not.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/08/handbrake-turns-and-skids-all-over-me-4838943/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/08/handbrake-turns-and-skids-all-over-me-4838943/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/07/i-am-not-alone-there-is-life-out-there-in-the-beyond-4834198/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-07:/2008/10/07/i-am-not-alone-there-is-life-out-there-in-the-beyond-4834198/Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:51:27 +0200 <p>I just received a private message from another blogger which, understandably, was not made public, and whose anonymity I will preserve.</p> <p><u>The message went as follows:</u></p> <p>“What a very brave man to put your point of view so clearly and without venom. I admire your stand - too often people only see one side of a marriage breakdown.</p> <p>I have observed many instances of married women having their heads turned via cyber 'friends' and wish I could warn them that being a divorced woman isn't all it's cracked up to be!</p> <p>I hope your blog will redress the balance.”</p> <p><u>I replied as follows:</u></p> <p>“Thank you so much for your kind comment and observation. </p> <p>I don't think there is any venom in what I have said about my wife, but she may beg to differ!</p> <p>I very much appreciate your message of support. I am sure that I am not alone in experiencing my relationship being "turned" like this, being tipped over the edge, by cyber "friends". I know that their comments were well intentioned and I do not blame them.</p> <p>However, cyberspace has become like a drug, an addiction, a "fix" for too many. Somewhere where you prefer to be and talk, rather than addressing directly those in your reality to improve your situation.</p> <p>Thank you again for your comment - I thought that I was writing in a vacuum. It has cheered me up.”</p> <p><u>I then received this reply in response:</u><br> “I'm glad my message cheered you up - I guess I should have commented publicly but didn't want to appear to be taking sides.</p> <p>Cyberspace has to be handled with extreme caution after all we must live in the real world.</p> <p>It's a shame when couples stop communicating with each other.”</p> <p><strong>I would like to publicly thank this kind person once again for speaking out. I hope that others will. I don’t think that anyone should be seen as “taking sides” for doing so.</strong> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/07/i-am-not-alone-there-is-life-out-there-in-the-beyond-4834198/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/07/i-am-not-alone-there-is-life-out-there-in-the-beyond-4834198/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/07/wife-mother-or-lover-4833339/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-07:/2008/10/07/wife-mother-or-lover-4833339/Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:49:05 +0200 <p>My wife hates to be tagged and play the role of "wife". That's part of the problem. She does not do "mumsy". She freely admits that she has never been and will never be an "earth mother".</p> <p>But I have never wanted an earth mother for a “wife”. Our children certainly need her to be a “mother” – and she is very much a “fun” mother. Probably more so than I can be a “fun” father, although many has been the occasion when she has pointed out how much of a “child” I can be. This is not just a reference to some of the ways, the inventiveness and creativity of certain games and play that I have with the children. I suspect that she meant the term to refer to how I react to her sometimes! Whilst she brings more the practical and activity based fun, I tend to bring more the cerebral, love of heroes (from history) and sports side to our boy's development (and maths, as my wife is hopeless at that!).</p> <p>But whilst I know she adores our children, it is clear that they got in the way of her “other self”, the one that she was when we first met, the one that also attracted me to her, the one that I know is very much still there within her and bursting to get out, to be released. </p> <p>She is a number of different women, all residing within one person (I guess that makes me a bygamist!). Schizophrenic – but that can be endearing as well as unsettling at times. Not everyone can “handle” her. It’s not been an easy ride, but by and large, I have coped for over 8 years probably because I am a relatively “stable” person myself. Different to her, but that is my strength and the balance that I can give back to her. Because, admit or not, she does need stability and commitment from someone. </p> <p>But I knew this, that’s why I married her (and all her various other personae). She can certainly satisfy all (well, most) of my own different needs. The trouble comes when it is not obvious, and she does not let on, which of her many personae she has decided to be that day/evening, so that I cannot respond accordingly. Then I cannot satisfy her need(s) of the moment.</p> <p>When she dons one of her short skirts, is fully made up and looking glamorous, it is usually obvious who she has decided to be that day. But what about when she has her bathrobe, slippers and glasses on? Is she what she was before she put them on, what she is at that moment, or what she intends to be after she takes the bathrobe off? </p> <p>It is not always obvious you see. She can camouflage herself well; does not always speak her mind as clearly as she says she does. But her legs will always look great, whoever she is, and they do distract me enormously and sometimes fog my eyes as to who she is. </p> <p>I did not ask or want her to change from her “old self” – from “ME”. Her change came as a result of nature’s development of bringing children into the world. </p> <p>We did not get married until three and a half years after we met, after the second child. We have been together a total of eight and a half years. Quite some record by her past relationship experiences I understand. I don’t believe that it was merely down to the fact that she was “saddled” with marriage. But I am now viewed as “Mr Husband”, rather than “Mr Lover/Rescuer”, yet she keeps saying how I have never changed since she has known me, but that she has.</p> <p>I find myself contemplating whether, had we not decided to live together and gone ahead and had children – especially as quickly as we did – if we would still be “a couple”. I think that we probably would be. Is that a sad or heart-warming fact to recognise? I do not know.</p> <p>I don’t in any way regret us having our two children – they are beautiful and a blessing for us both – even though I already had two kids from my previous marriage and was not hankering after more. My “wife” stated that she wanted five at the time, but I knew that she would change her mind after the first child was born, and our second was an accident (he still is one at times). </p> <p>At the time I realised that I would either have to take on “the whole package”, her complete (then) ideal, or I could not have her at all. I could not just selectively have her, but exclude her desire for children. And I certainly wanted her; still do. </p> <p>I did not shirk away as many a man at a similar stage in life might have done, leaving her behind to later label me as yet another “Mr Bastard” or “Mr Non-Commitment” from her past.</p> <p>Last Saturday night I “let her off the leash” that she believes I have her held by. She spent the evening reminiscing with a past work related friend over distant memories and she felt that she was already back to her “old self”. The friend thought that she “had not changed” from the “Ms Pre-Wife” of old. But 8 years cannot be swept under the carpet. She will never be exactly the same as she was. </p> <p>She came back quite radiant, even though she had driven through the night and a rainstorm to get home; and I was worrying for her. A couple of gin and tonics (out of character for her, as she does not normally drink) might have had something to do with it.</p> <p>Do I not also have the old “ME” lurking inside that she/I can rediscover too? Why does she not bother to look, to try? Maybe reminiscing about the (good) old times might help there too? I’ll even dust off the gin bottle.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/07/wife-mother-or-lover-4833339/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/07/wife-mother-or-lover-4833339/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/07/bitter-and-twisted-definitely-stirred-4833233/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-07:/2008/10/07/bitter-and-twisted-definitely-stirred-4833233/Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:23:30 +0200 <p>Last night after I got home, my wife was very upset with me because of my last post, with reference to “lamb and mutton”, etc. Trouble was, she had cooked tuna steaks; and very nice they were too. Unappreciative bastard that I am, I should have known. </p> <p>I thought my last post was quite amusing, even though I say it myself, and a little lighter than my usual offering(s). It was just a play on words and applicable to any husband/wife relationship at a similar stage.</p> <p>She thought that I was only managing to make myself come across as very bitter. I was being disparaging towards her. That my blog was all too much of a personal “attack” on her.</p> <p>Well, if that is the case, then I here publicly apologise to her – in front of the whole blogging fraternity. I am not trying to be “nasty” towards her. If anything, if she really were to read much of what I have written, a lot of it is very positive, loving and flattering about her.</p> <p>But I am only trying to express my overall feelings; and I can’t get away, and neither can she, from the facts of what has happened.</p> <p>What am I meant to feel in the circumstances? What has anyone else felt when betrayed in this way? What other word is there to describe it? </p> <p>Joy (maybe for her)? Happiness, Gratitude and Relief (maybe as other husbands might feel)? I haven't yet found it. Perhaps other readers know and can comment.</p> <p>I certainly have a very heavy heart, a lot of hurt and sadness, a lot of regret (for my past apparent failings towards her) and, yes, bitterness – because of the way it came to this and because it all seems to be so needless and tragic for us all; her, me, the children. </p> <p>But I also retain a lot of love for this woman, who will always be a woman, my woman, to me. </p> <p>Can she and everyone else not see that side too?</p> <p>As it happens, once she had calmed herself down and we had both taken our helmets off and put the grenades away, we did end up having a reasonable and pleasant conversation (which inspired my next post). </p> <p>And she did stay in the kitchen throughout. That's something, I suppose.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/07/bitter-and-twisted-definitely-stirred-4833233/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/07/bitter-and-twisted-definitely-stirred-4833233/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/06/more-cold-shoulder-for-dinner-4830401/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-06:/2008/10/06/more-cold-shoulder-for-dinner-4830401/Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:37:59 +0200 <p>My wife will give me hell probably - I've just realised the time! I must dash home for some more cold shoulder - and I don't mean lamb, unless it's mutton!</p> <p>Actually, I am being very unkind. She's both a great cook and still a good-looker. She has definitely not turned into mutton yet, but she does like to dress as lamb quite a bit (more about that in another post perhaps). </p> <p>Last night, for all of 10 minutes, she managed to make herself "available" to speak with me. She did naturally retreat to the other side of the kitchen when I moved a little closer to her, in case I tried to propose any kind of truce. But at least we spoke across the trenches and through the barbed wire, with the odd stun grenade lobbed over for good measure. </p> <p>We definitely did not venture into No Man's Land with white flags raised, but kept our heads well down and helmets on.</p> <p>"What do you want to talk about?" she asked. "Music?", "Film?". All being subjects on which she knows she herself has little to offer, and limited opinions on. She was trying to bait me and demonstrate her stated view that: "We don't have much in common" - hence one more reason to get divorced.</p> <p>I nearly proposed in response: "Medieval Plumbing, Basket-Weaving or Courgettes, take your pick", but thought better of it.</p> <p>How can it take 8 years to realise that you "have nothing in common"? Hence, my incredulity when she comes up with such a "stock" statement as one reason why we should divorce. We have plenty in common believe me, and when she has been more tenderly disposed towards me, whilst we have had more "common purpose", we have not been at a loss for conversation. </p> <p>It's just that now (well, for months) she prefers to talk to others in cyberspace about everything and anything rather than come down to the kitchen, which can get a little too hot for her comfort (we do have an Aga).</p> <p>There is not much that I am not prepared to try to talk about, take an interest in, if people in whose company I am with want to open a conversation. There is quite a lot I know something about and a few areas I know a hell of a lot about. But I will always try and make conversation when and where I can.</p> <p>As my wife well knows, I will even give my opinions on Gina high-heeled shoes (many of which I have bought for her), handbags and skirts if asked. Sometimes I will even comment on such subjects when not invited to (another of my undoings it seems).</p> <p>Right now we have an awful lot to talk about. Certainly that I want and need us to talk about, even though it will do me no good at all. And, if I can't say it to her directly, I may well write it here - though she will try not to read my blog "because it will only upset her". </p> <p>Sorry, to also put you through it, poor reader!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/06/more-cold-shoulder-for-dinner-4830401/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>short-skirtshigh-heelshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/06/more-cold-shoulder-for-dinner-4830401/#commentshttp://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/06/she-s-always-a-woman-4829582/tag:gazing-at-the-stars.blog.co.uk,2008-10-06:/2008/10/06/she-s-always-a-woman-4829582/Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:59:21 +0200 <p>This is one of my wife's favourite songs and one that I would often play for her on the piano. I can't sing (to the standard of my playing!), so I've never really taken much notice of the lyrics before, but I've now realised why she is so fond of this song:</p> <p>"She's Always A Woman" - Words/Music by Billy Joel (Copyright 1977/78 IMPULSIVE MUSIC). </p> <p>She can kill with a smile.<br> She can wound with her eyes.<br> She can ruin your faith with her casual lies.<br> And she only reveals what she wants you to see.<br> She hides like a child, but she's always a woman to me.</p> <p>She can lead you to love, she can take you or leave you.<br> She can ask for the truth, but she'll never believe you,<br> And she'll take what you give her as long as it's free,<br> She steals like a thief, but she's always a woman to me.</p> <p>Oh - she takes care of herself - she can wait if she wants,<br> she's ahead of her time.<br> Oh - and she never gives out and she never gives in,<br> she just changes her mind.</p> <p>And she'll promise you more than the garden of Eden.<br> Then she'll carelessly cut you and laugh while you're bleedin'.<br> But she brings out the best and the worst you can be<br> Blame it all on yourself 'cause she's always a woman to me.</p> <p>Oh - she takes care of herself - she can wait if she wants,<br> she's ahead of her time.<br> Oh - and she never gives out and she never gives in,<br> she just changes her mind.</p> <p>She is frequently kind and she's suddenly cruel.<br> She can do as she pleases, she's nobody's fool.<br> But she can't be convicted, she's earned her degree.<br> And the most she will do is throw shadows at you.</p> <p>But she's always a woman to me. </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/06/she-s-always-a-woman-4829582/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>http://Gazing-at-the-Stars.blog.co.uk/2008/10/06/she-s-always-a-woman-4829582/#comments