Marriage Blues

Dear Jack,

I have long agonised over how to tell you that I can no longer sustain my marriage to you.

It has been doubly hard coming to this point because you are not unpleasant, aggressive, violent, unaffectionate, or an obviously irresponsible character. In many cultures, being an inoffensive and reliable provider would qualify you as a ‘good man’ and you undoubtedly qualify under those criteria.

However, for several years now I have tried to communicate to you that I need an equal and competent partner who contributes actively across the entire range of partnership and familial responsibility. I have repeatedly warned you that this was not happening in vital ways and despite using every strategy I could think of, in the end you just haven’t responded.

Worse, after I had given up trying to effect change, you took my silence as acquiescence rather than despair.

I had been put in the position of having to accept that I would never get the kind of support from you that I needed and deserved and that in some measure I would have to carry you for the indefinite future.

This has not improved my humour or my desire to be intimate with you. However, instead of connecting this back to my complete frustration with you, you have just come to see me as having become ‘bitchy’ and ‘cold’. (Mind you, it would have helped if you could have learnt to make intimacy part of your sex life. Thus when you would touch me, it would feel less like I was being mauled.)

Despite your periodic protestations that you would up your game, in the end you always fell back into the male career paradigm that defines domestic life as a secondary consideration that can be put on hold whenever there is any work pressure, real or imagined. Since you are always ‘under pressure’, your family is always ‘on hold’.

I have a career too, with exactly the same kinds of pressure on me, only I have to juggle it with my domestic life; the constant thinking, remembering, planning and implementing of all that needs be done at home every day of every year, year in year out. This has forced me to be an incredibly efficient time manager and decision-maker who could match you any day in any organisation. Your needs do not deserve to take precedence over mine on any grounds of competence; quite the reverse.

I know you contribute financially to the family and sometimes you assist with certain domestic duties. When things are happening at home you often do come along for the ride, if you have ‘got time’ or it doesn’t clash with your weekly golf round with ‘the boys’. However even with that contribution taken into account, that still leaves me with many times the number of balls in the air as you. When you return home after what is always a long day at the office, you feel the need to relax. Don’t we all. I hardly ever relax because I am ‘at work’ virtually all my waking time. It may not always be obvious, but then you choose not to notice. At breakfast when you are reading the paper, I am doing mental checklists and follow-ups.

It is clear to me that you don’t really understand or want to understand how taxing all this has been for me; how it has worn me down; and what it has cost me in lost career opportunities whenever I have had to make the tough choice between career and home in favour of home.

It is not that I begrudge you what you have achieved in your work per se. It is just that in part it has been bought at my expense. My career would have been a lot further down the track than it is if you had done your share at home.

Jack, it just isn’t enough to be affectionate and good-natured. Doing your share is what really matters and this goes to the heart of what it means to love someone. Love and intimacy are not just tender sentiment and sex. They are active and thoughtful commitments whereby you give yourself over to the needs of others. This involves attending, listening, servicing and above all giving the time to make that possible.

Relationships do not look after themselves! You have to invest in them, maintain them and repair them when necessary. You have left all that to me because deep down you imagine this is secret women’s business.

I do not regard myself as the sole keeper of our marriage and its familial and social networks. The world has changed Jack. I am not going to keep doing that just for the honour of your company every now and again. You are just not that important.

Your children have been similarly short-changed. Taking them to the footy is good bonding stuff and it does give me a bit a breather, but it isn’t a substitute for getting to know them properly; the hard relentless grind involved in taking an ongoing, systematic and regular interest in their lives and problems. You think you love them but all you give them are treats and money. That isn’t love. It’s a pay off.

This sad judgement has arisen not out of some particular event, but out of a long and anguished analysis of the big picture. Over and over again I have asked myself the question “why?” My conclusion is that you define yourself wholly by your earning capacity and power within a corporate hierarchy. Everything and everyone else has to fall in behind that.

The plight of your family is not a result of financial hardship, but rather your need for a certain type of status and recognition. It is not that the products and services you help to produce are so vital to the welfare of humanity that it justifies putting your home on hold. It is not that ‘bringing home the bacon’ is vital either because I can do that as well as you can, given half a chance. What defines you Jack is your ego, its ambition and its need to show workaday playmates what a big and powerful boy you are. For that you have been prepared to sacrifice the love and respect of those closest to you. It is so sad that you will do almost anything for a customer, but not for us.

I say ‘boy’ advisedly. I have grown from being a girl to a woman not because I grew pubic hair, breasts and passed the age of citizenship and consent. The struggle to almost single handedly bring up our brood as well as hold down a responsible job has forced me to grow as a human being. As a result I am wiser, more resilient, empathic and broader in my understanding of humanity and myself than I used to be.

You on the other hand are still very much the man I married all those years ago. Only your looks have changed. You have stood still in your male complacency. Most of your friendships are a product of your juvenile years and they still reflect the immature and superficial camaraderie from which they sprang. They are critically undemanding relationships that reflect cosily on the parties to them. You would like us to be like that. And yes we could be tolerably amiable if we weren’t partners or co-parents or had to share the same roof. It is not that I dislike or hate you. It is the resentment and frustration that have got to me.

You certainly have developed as a business operator and your position in that environment reflects that. However, it is unfortunate that you have cultivated that part of yourself at the expense of all else. The parameters of business life are so limited they allow emotional juveniles to do well, gain credibility and power and gather around themselves similarly underdeveloped characters to bolster themselves and each other.

I have had to learn to deal with boy politics at work even though I don’t like or respect them. I have learnt to tolerate your mates, even though they bore me silly. However, my ability to tolerate our relationship, which has become so unequal in so many ways has now tested me to my limit. I just can’t take it anymore.

But it isn’t just tolerance Jack. I have done my cost/benefit analysis. When we separate I will have to live in a smaller home in a less convenient and salubrious location. My budget will be a lot tighter and I will have to make do with an older and cheaper car. On the other hand, I will have one less dependant hanging off me. More, you will get the important fathering opportunities you are presently denying yourself, by way of either joint custody, or access one or two days a week. Either way, I am going to get a bit of rest and a personal life of my own which I can indulge with the same freedom you now enjoy.

I have come to the conclusion that you are not capable of running an equal domestic partnership. What you need is someone dedicated to indulging and mothering you. While it is still a very lopsided arrangement, there are still women out there willing to take it on if you financially support them. Good luck if you can find one who will put up with you, for even without an official workforce occupation, she will still be doing a far tougher job than you will ever hold down.

Goodbye Jack

Gill



Dear Gill,

I have to some extent anticipated your letter. I have not been insensate to the increasingly frosty atmosphere within our relationship. I too have given up much hope of salvaging it, even if it were just for the sake of the children.

I do have a career and ambitions that I am not going to give up. To get to the top of the corporate ladder requires one hundred percent of my focus, as it does with every aspirant, male or female. All my competitors expect and get one hundred percent co-operation from their families. In return they get a very high standard of living and social status. That is the deal. That is how it has to be. You don’t like it and you are leaving. I respect that, but I have got to the point where I no longer regard that as regrettable.

For some time now, my secretary Jacqui and I have been developing a very understanding and fulfilling relationship. I am now staying at her place until we can find something a little bigger, once you and I have sorted out our affairs. Naturally we will be happy to see the children one day a week or perhaps for the whole weekend once a fortnight. Maybe longer access can be arranged during school holidays.

As to maintenance and property settlements, contact my solicitors. They and my accountants have been well briefed and thoroughly prepared for this eventuality. Naturally their offer will be very reasonable.

Yours Faithfully

Jack