The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

other people's relationships

"other people's relationships" 

Yesterday, talking with A., we somehow arrived at the familiar topic of our relationships. We do this with one another, get into deeper and more personal discussions about this very touchy subject and seldom feel any need to sweeten the message. I've been known to call her an idiot for taking the abuse from her former lover, and she used to make disparaging comments about R., needling me about how mismatched she thought we were. Sometimes we'd get angry with one another, but I think we both knew that we were each other's only chance at flat-out honesty. We forgave each other repeatedly for the frankness of our discussions, although admittedly, some conversations required longer cooling off periods than others. There was that one, for instance, which kept us from speaking for six years. I was the one who instigated that standoff, and I don't really regret it. I suppose at the time I'd had enough truth to last me a while.

So, yesterday, she made this unanticipated remark which kind of stopped me: For such a smart guy, I'm surprised he hasn't put a ring on your finger.

What do you do with a comment like that? Rage against the remark? Sob in defeated agreement? Start doing my own dance routine to Beyonce's 'Single Ladies'? What I did, instead, was deploy my single most patented move: sighed and uttered a haughty 'whatever'.

She knew to leave it alone. She remembers the six years in Siberia.

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Here are some things I am better at today than I was when I started this journal:

1. Tolerating/willingness to understand diverse opinions.
2. Dealing with prolonged periods of phone call drought.
3. Focusing on a conversation.
4. Joining in.
5. Facing the reality of who and what I am. It's not completely pretty.

Here are some things I am not better at today than I was a year ago:

1. Embarking on a challenge with a head pointed skyward.
2. Making microwave popcorn without burning it in the middle.
3. Deflecting mean-spirited, unhelpful remarks.
4. Understanding the relevance of Kanye West or Paris Hilton.
5. Expressing my truest feelings to the people in my life whom I can actually see, hear and feel.


Oh, and of course, I will also say parallel parking. I will drive in circles to find an open lot just to avoid parking in the awkward spot right in front of the place I intend to go. I hate when people look at me, laugh at me, or get frustrated with me. By parking in an open lot, I avoid all three of these things.

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I think it's natural to react to the pain and/or happiness another writer expresses in their journal, particularly if it's related to their relationship. Part of what drives a person to journal is a need to purge all the questions and conflicting thoughts they have in their heads, and to do it in a semi-public place shows that the writer also needs to have those issues seen. It's a bit of relief, allows those feelings to be real, slowly forming into something more tangible. If the sentiment is fleeting, never acknowledged, perhaps it gets buried until it emerges in a different way, like depression or undulating explosions of anger. By writing it down, by having it seen and knowing that others are aware of it, it comes to live, growing bigger and bigger until we can't avoid it anymore. I suppose the anonymity here, the curtain of distance and voicelessness provides the safety we need in order to really get down to business. I would never speak to my friends the way I speak in here. They don't understand naked truth. I wouldn't understand their reaction to it.

We only get the writer's side of things, though. I try to remember this when I'm reading someone's gut-wrenching account of a personal relationship which is on its way to souring. When someone is hurting or confused and they write about it enough that it becomes something of a theme, I might write to them to try to give them an observer‘s view. I suppose this is the counsellor in me, the mother hen, but where would we be if everyone just looked the other way? There’s nothing intrusive about lending a kind, well-intentioned word. Sometimes, particularly when the person is in love, they are paralyzed with fear and devotedness and can’t begin to see the situation for what it really is.

There are no secrets here at the moment. We've been reading one another's journals and we know about the strong and weak relationships. I sometimes smugly sit back and think 'yeah, that relationship is essentially done', but this doesn't take a great deal of intelligence to figure out. All you need to do is read the words and connect the dots. Like when Caroline met her Lion, I knew her marriage was done. I'd been reading her for so long that I had developed a very intense dislike for the way her husband treated her, even when she wrote about him with love. I don't think I ever told her that I couldn't stand to read those entries, the ones in which he would insult her and make her feel small, and even though I tried to consider what his side of it might have been, I could never find a justification for the words he used, the way he used them. That she chose to live her life with someone else was no surprise, and to me, nothing to judge her for. Others have had boyfriends treat them as though they are possessions rather than people, and still others have had their loves step outside the relationship into the worlds of other women. I would always shake my head and my stomach would fall. It hurts anyone, particularly women, to read that sort of thing.

Shannon wrote that she worried about how to navigate ‘through a world where a seemingly remarkable man twice as old as any guy I've ever dealt with romantically still falls back on that familiar weaselly sucker punch, when I am literally relying on my hope that the Justins of life grow out of their uncertainty someday soon’. She was referring to M. and his failure to propose to me. I write about this occasionally, and back in October it sort of came to a head at a dinner party with people who have impeccable manners (not my best moment, I sort of lost my cool). It infrequently eats at me, but to be blatantly honest, the main reason it does is because of what other people say about it. The commitment, with or without the rings, is there, I know it. If I suspected differently, I’d say so, as I’ve nothing to gain at this point by being stubbornly delusional. I think that the idea of myself being the only ‘unmarried’ woman in my circle makes me feel a little bit odd, but I’ve also been in a monogamous, committed relationship since I was basically eighteen. That I chose to jump from one relationship to the other had to do with incompatibility, not commitment or love, and I’m usually secure in the belief that I am loved and respected.

But, I write about it sometimes with tears, don’t I? My specific situation is this: he was married and was treated badly by his ex-wife which scarred him slightly. We had some kinks in our relationship to iron out in the beginning, mostly to do with my inability to just let R. go. M. weathered it, and sometimes I wonder why. He has told me he wants to marry me, but that he is waiting for the perfect time to ask me, and that me raging about it isn’t the right moment, that it would be a proposal inspired by duress. Would I want this? Well, absolutely not. Have I mentioned that ALL of the women in my circle, with the exception of my sister P. had to give ultimatums in order to be betrothed? I will never do that. I would leave first. Count on that.

The point is that I love him, but I’m not blind to him. I’m as susceptible to punch drunk love as anyone, but after all this time, I’m able to really see this situation for what it is, and if I ever feel like he’s never going to commit to me, that if he does it’s only because he feels like he has to, then I’m gone. I know now that I’m capable of leaving. Though I wouldn’t want to, I know I could. Do men ever change? Not usually, but change is definitely possible. It's a willingness issue, I think, and they need to be smart enough to understand that a relationship is a partnership, that concessions and compromises are part of the deal. Unfortunately, pride and bravado have a way of interfering with good intention.

Should women take a page from my book and decide that all men are commitment-phobes? Well, I don’t think they all are, but I do think that jumping in to a living arrangement with someone without getting the proposal first really lessens your chances of an actual wedding if you let time drag on, even if the commitment is there. I got my proposal from R. when I made it clear I was on the verge of leaving, but it was too little, too late. I didn’t know I was already gone.

If your man is hesitant to make you exclusive to him, if he says he doesn’t want to be ’tied down’ or that he needs ’his space’, you probably have yourself a guy who will never commit, one who is quietly keeping his options open, perhaps exercising them from time to time. If he loves you purely, you won’t feel a need to question it. And no, open relationships do not work, sorry. It’s just a tidy way of saying that he has a home base until he finds someone ‘better’. My feeling is that you should end it right away, without lamenting the loss of his warm body or the way he smelled like musk. What you have isn’t love. It is only a yearning for it.

If you cry or feel insecure in your relationship more often than you feel safe or content, you need to get out. You're holding on to an idea that will never be realized. You're wasting your tears, blood and heart on something that will never pay you back. You are making yourself a victim, when all the eyes around you see that you always had a way out, that your weak position is where you stopped and sat down. There are so many directions from there.

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1.The tetris challenge.

I played five rounds and got very, very frustrated. I was frustrated by how long it would take to make 250,000 points. I have stuff to do.

2. The question about the worst things you did in two major relationships and contrasting the reactions of both men.
With R., it was obviously all the subterfuge and deceit of my budding relationship with M. With M., I don’t think I’ve done anything truly offensive. Let’s just say that if I were still the woman with M. that I was with R., M. and I would not be a couple.

If R. had this version of me, he would have been extremely content.

3. The ‘what do you hide in a bag’ question (this entry was really jam-packed wasn’t it? I can’t believe how many topics are in it)
I don’t really have much I would feel a need to hide. My diaries, the ones I handwrote, don’t have anything in them that most people don’t suspect or know, and at twenty-five, my daughter would be welcome to read them. I don’t have any sex toys, illegal substances or phone numbers for suspicious people.

4.The question about which instrumental piece of music would describe your sex life.

‘Clair de Lune’, Claude Debussy. M. would say Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture‘. I disagree.

5.The question about being punished by being watched or by watching your friends forever in their more intimate moments.

I’d go for the ‘being watched’ scenario, just because I wouldn’t be able to stand anyone thinking I was strange and possibly psychotic due to the gag order on explaining myself as to why I keep showing up in their closets and bathrooms. I don’t have too many weird habits, and I suppose someone watching me would be an uncomfortable experience, but much less so than the wrath of those I care about if I intruded on their privacy constantly.

6.Evil sex genie question.

My old sex life would be the same because I would say ‘no, thank-you’ to the stupid genie since I’m under no obligation to do anything he says. It’s not like you have to take the wishes/decrees of genies, you know. You can walk away, or even run, as I would do.

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I think the evil sex genies are to blame for an awful lot of despair in relationships. If we all ran away, perhaps, we’d stand a better chance at love.