dishes

Every marriage has a problem with doing dishes, am I right? Or perhaps NOT doing dishes is more apt.
It's trite and it's petty, but it's everyday life and it all adds up.
I am the dishwasher in my family. My husband works and I stay home, so fair is fair, he says. I make the dinner, serve it, clean it up; there is no expectation that he lends a hand in any of this affair. We have clearly defined roles: he is the breadwinner, and brings in the dough. I do everything else. Our names should be June and Ward Cleaver. It still shocks me that this is my life, but there you go.
I do have a house cleaner once a week, so scrubbing toilets and floors is not part of my game. We hired her because I was too busy caring and running three children around to do a very good job at cleaning. It is not my forte, I happily admit. So when he complained about the dirt on the floor or the mess in the bath tub, I told him to either clean it himself or hire a cleaner. The next day we had a cleaner.
That worked out so well that when he next complained to me about our garden, guess what? He hired a gardener. We now have a small army of people who help us run our household, which he is not at all happy about, but he realizes that, since we can afford this help, things actually operate at a much smoother level. And the garden is weeded and the house is clean, which is very important to him.
But it ticks him off to no end that I don't scrub the floors or spend my time planting flowers and growing vegetables, so it is of utmost importance to him that I do everything else. (He did admit this in marriage counselling, saying he would be happier at work if he knew I was home scrubbing the floors. Can you feel the love?) He refuses to take out the garbage, for instance, insisting that is my territory. I have stopped asking.
It's generally fine and we have both accepted our roles, but he so adamantly enforces the letter of the law it is depressing.
So on the odd occasions where I go out at night, and they are still eating their dinner, I invariably come home to a kitchen frozen in time: every dish, pot, plate and utensil is exactly where it was when I left.
When the children were little and more hands on, I ignored this; it was hard for him to put them to bed. But now our children are at the age where you say, "go to bed," and they go to bed. There is no heavy lifting or difficulty involved in this task. It is probably harder for him, a known neat freak, to purposely leave the kitchen a mess while he navigates around, then it would be to fire a few dishes into the dishwasher and scrub a pot; but this is what he does.
Out of spite, he leaves the mess for me to clean up. Fair is fair, he shrugs.
And since there is nothing I love more than cleaning up a kitchen at midnight after I have come home from a concert, I mindlessly scrape the cheese from the pot and wonder what it would be like to come home to someone you actually liked?

Love - Love Will Keep Us Together. Or not.

Ironically, when I was a child I used to belt out this Captain and Tennille song for the benefit of my older siblings, or for my parent's parties. I loved an audience, and thought myself very talented since I had also carefully choreographed dance moves for my performances. I was classy that way.
It may well be that enduring love keeps Captain and Tennille (and others) together, but it is children and economics that are keeping my marriage together. Not as catchy for singsong purposes. How about kids and cash? That may have a better ring to it, but is decidedly unromantic. Then again, my eyes are wide open about marriage being unromantic; I will never make that mistake again.
So the question is: when love has evaporated from a relationship, and you have children together, do you stay for the sake of the children, thereby giving up your chance at the "flower of life", as Edith Wharton refers to true love; or do you go through the dark days of divorce in the hope of achieving happiness? Hardly an original question, but one that I wonder about every day.
I should assert here, in case you are dubious, that there are no "flower of life" possibilities in my midst, and none that I am aware of in my husband's. If there were, for either of us, the answer may be more obvious. But being blissfully solo, at this point, also holds its own appeal.
The answer, I think, is simply how bearable your relationship is with your spouse. If you have managed to hold on to a level of friendship and respect for each other, then it probably makes sense to keep working hard to stay together.
But if every exchange is fraught with tension and acrimony, and you disagree on both things small and large, increasingly as time goes on, there is a point where you should agree to end the marriage contract. It seems so simple in black and white.
But simple it is not.
My husband has told me he will never agree to divorce, that he made a vow to me he intends to keep, and he thinks divorce would be too hard on our children. Yet he is nasty, difficult and cranky. And I am no wilting flower: I give back what I receive. So we end up living in an almost constant state of war, albeit a quietly staged one. I dream of peace: when he goes away for business trips it is as close to heaven as I think I'll ever get here on earth.
He loves to argue("conversation", he calls it, but whenever I disagree with him he asks, "why are you arguing with me?") and thinks we should "converse" more, the caveat being that I agree with everything he says. It boggles my mind. The key to a successful relationship is communication, but such a huge divide has grown between us that it is almost impossible to bridge. Most days, I simply am not up for it. Silence is so much easier.
He is, and my therapist agreed with me, a tricky one, and getting trickier as time ticks slowly by. My best case scenario if we stay married is to coexist, continue to share parenting responsibilities and speak little.
But as I write this, that sounds more like a blueprint of a divorced relationship than a marriage.

Fact or Fiction?

Who hasn't heard the "half of all marriages end in divorce" statistic? If that is the case, where the hell are these divorcee's hiding? There are exactly 5 divorced parents at my childrens' school, which educates roughly 500 students. It doesn't take a mathematician to realize that this is far fewer than that famous statistic would suggest.
Not that I am hoping for others to fail where I seemingly have (not officially, at this point, but perhaps in that direction). But I have finely tuned ears for those stories that are pertinent to my situation in life, at that point in time. For instance, when I was applying for universities, I would be able to filter out any comments about scholarships or tuition fees as I walked down the loud, busy halls of my high school, as though it was the juiciest gossip imaginable. Ditto any Bridezilla stories several years later, once I was engaged. And I hung on to every word of a labour and delivery story when I was pregnant, and every toddler story thereafter.
Now that these stories are old news to me - been there, done that - I barely have the patience for one minute of them before my eyes start rolling back in my head and I try to quell my gag reflux.
However I'm primed and ready, ears perked, to hear real life stories of failed marriages. What was it that finally did them in? What was their marriage really like, once the doors were closed? Did they disagree about everything, or just major things? Did they, at the end of the day, still love each other but just couldn't live together anymore, or hate each other with a vengeance that grew and grew? Please, tell me every little sordid detail and don't hold back.
But no one's talking. When it comes to the good, the bad, and the ugly, it would seem people are not as keen to share the bad and the ugly part, beyond, of course, the all-husbands-are-idiots comments that we trade with winks and knowing smiles. And of the five divorced people I occasionally pass by, I know none of them well enough to delve into their stories. "How's Johnnie doing? And how's that divorce treating you, by the way?" just wouldn't roll off the tongue with ease.
In fact, I wonder if I am missing some social cues, because anyone who spends ten minutes with me, on average, would pick up on my marital problems. And if wine is anywhere on the premises, they will get an earful. Partially because I like to vent, but mostly because I feel like not telling people the status of my heart is akin to lying.
It makes me wonder: is my marriage really as terrible as I make it out to be? Or are my standards impossibly high? And if everyone else is standing around smiling, are they all in love with their spouses and happy as clams, or simply lying?
Not that it matters; I just want their stories. I thirst for them, as only a person crawling through the desert can thirst. So in desperation, I turn to literature.
A picture tells a thousand words; and so do the books piled beside my bed. In the past year I have read Anna Karenina, The Age of Innocence, two volumes of essays by women writers on love and relationships, and, curiously, tributes to their spouses by Calvin Trillin and Joan Didion. I am obsessed with love, especially those who find true love within the bond of marriage; but mostly find comfort in those characters, both real and invented, who don't.
Sometimes I read passages that take my breath away, they seem so close to how I feel, and I am not so alone anymore. Newland Archer, in the Age of Innocence, thinks, "The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future." HERE is something I can relate to. And near the end of the novel, "Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as something so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery. There were a hundred million tickets in HIS lottery, and there was only one prize; the chances had been too decidedly against him."
Sometimes I think I should be more accepting of my fate, like Newland. Other days I believe it is still not too late to change it.

my husband, the fashionista

It has to be said, I have historically been attracted to men who care little about their choice of clothing. When I flip through a magazine, I pause longer to admire the advertisements containing unshaven, disheveled men wearing jeans and t-shirts than I do over those containing clean cut, dapper men in well tailored suits, or those wearing carefully styled and matching outfits.
And so I had to cringe when my husband opined about the importance of one's cuff links matching one's tie.
Here we go: yet another largely irrelevant disagreement. Is there anything in this world we actually agree on? But pacifism doesn't suit me. Taking a deep breath, I plunge in.
Really, it's not necessary to match your cuff links with your tie , I say.
Of course it is, he counters, just like you match your shoes to your bag!
I don't match my shoes to my bag, in color, as he was meaning. I try to roughly match their intentions, like if my shoes are my industrial, clunky everyday shoes, my bag will also be correspondingly slouchy and large. If my shoes are dainty, then I will switch to a bag with a smaller profile. Not: blue shoes, blue bag! Never mind that I don't feel the need to match their colors; I have very few options from which to choose. But that is another story.
I say simply, I don't match my shoes to my bag. (He snorts)
Undeterred, I press on: your cuff links are so small and insignificant, barely noticeable underneath your suit jacket; do you really think it's necessary to match them to your tie? (This thought boggles my mind; surely there are better things to think about?)
I want to cajole, why don't you live a little, be quirky, be crazy, and wear whatever tie is crying your name from its rack and put on the first cuff links you reach for? Because thinking about which cuff links best match your tie for one SECOND is really one second too long. But I don't say this. Instead, I silently muse about the metaphorical significance of this conversation: his annal attention to detail versus my throw caution to the wind attitude; and wonder once again how we ended up together.
He dismisses my comment, saying you do SO care about matching your shoes to your bag. I smile as I envision how this conversation could unfold: "do NOT!"; "do TOO!", over and over again. We are so sophisticated.
The following thoughts flood my brain and I am quickly overwhelmed and exhausted: Why do I need to defend my fashion choices to him? Who does he think he is, telling me what I wear and what I care about? Could he possibly believe he knows my mind better than me? Why must we have such a silly disagreement?
Perhaps pacifism has its merits, after all. So rather than go down this futile road, I just stare out the window and say, hmm.
Hmm, of course meaning: you are full of shit and I can't stand your sorry ass.

cc'd to death...

Granted, this is a minor annoyance, but I think it speaks volume about trust (or lack thereof) in our relationship.
If husband is emailing with any of our friends about, for instance, weekend plans, he insists on cc'ing me on all communication, and gets peeved when I don't do the same.
He has gotten angry in the past when I took the liberty of replying for myself ("yes, I'm up for that!") without checking with HIM first, even though we were both on the email list, saying it doesn't look like we are operating as a "team". He has also taken issue with me in the past for corresponding with our male friends and not cc'ing him in the email, surmising, I guess, that we are flirting furiously - cc'ing him on these potentially dangerous liaisons keeps them on the up and up, I guess.
In which case, perhaps he should carry around a tape recorder and make sure he captures any conversations he may have around the water cooler that might be inappropriate. Really, why stop at email?
His puritan upbringing shines through in these moments. I expect something like "You're dancing with the devil" to come out of his mouth at times like these, but of course he is careful to phrase it every other way but that.
Have I mentioned lately that I hate my marriage?

Eat, Pray, Love... if only!

A few years ago, as I was preparing to go on a little trip and looking for reading material, I bumped into an acquaintance of mine who told me, "Oh, you must read Eat, Pray, Love - it changed my life!"
So thinking this was what I had been waiting for all these years, and surely would either be my Holy Grail or Fountain of Youth in the guise of a book, I RAN - literally - to the nearest book store to buy my copy.
I was half way through it before my vacation began, impatiently speed reading it to find what, indeed, was life changing about Elizabeth Gilbert's experience.
I never did find it, although I enjoyed the book for what it was: one woman's experience with divorce and the interesting year of introspection that followed it. And I would love to count Gilbert amongst my friends, clearly she is an interesting person I could have some great conversations with. But what's the big deal about two people splitting up early in a marriage, dividing their assets (and perhaps friends), and sailing off into the sunset?
I do remember reading, and re-reading, the passage near the beginning where she wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to leave her husband. I kept looking for a clue: where did this conviction come from?? And why couldn't I have had a similar experience BEFORE children came into the mix? Sadly (for me, anyway) it seems to be a case of too little too late.
Watching the newly released movie again reminded me of the frustration I felt when reading the novel: divorce, without children involved, just seems like an entirely different beast. They don't ever need to see each other again, let alone talk at length about issues surrounding children.
And as for the year spent traveling to Italy, India and Bali - well, let's just say I salivate to think about spending an evening on my own in my house, never mind a year in such interesting places. I applaud Elizabeth Gilbert for seizing the day, but I relate to her situation as much as I relate to the idea that a young prince will knock at my door and carry me away from this tower that holds me prisoner: not likely to ever happen.
It is all - like most books I read - wishful thinking.
There is no possibility of a year long vacation for me. Instead I have taken up piano (left brain exercise, like learning Italian) and continue to do my yoga podcasts in my own studio (read: living room) while my kids are at school, and dream about, well, a lot of things: a divorce that would be as simple as hers, a marriage that actually worked, or simply the day when I am no longer tortured by the decision to stay or leave this marriage.

Marriage is supposed to be hard...

I know it's not a cakewalk. But shouldn't you be able to laugh at things together, rather than constantly butt heads? If you can't - and indeed, never - laugh together at anything, surely that is a sign that it's time to pack it in?
I have asked him to be less controlling and uptight, but I know people are who they are, this may be trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. And of course he points out that I am not accepting him for who HE is, but he is the one who is bound and determined to make this marriage work, while I am prepared to call it a day.
"But partners are supposed to make each other better," he argues.
Of course, I don't agree, and tell him I would take a self improvement course if I wanted to improve myself. I believe my partner is supposed to provide love and support for the flawed person I may be (flawed meaning I may keep a pile of papers in the corner of the counter rather than in the filing cabinet where I will surely forget their existence, not flawed in the serious drinking habit sense...), and stand behind the direction I decide I want to grow, rather than stand in my way at every turn.
A classic example is I have decided I enjoy reading more than watching television, so once the kids are in bed I crack open my book rather than sit beside him watching television. This has created a boatload of problems for him (I'm lonely! I can't talk to you when you read! Now we have no time to discuss things!) But it's hard to get any intellectual stimulation when you are unloading a dishwasher or chauffeuring children around to activities, so this has become my lifeline for my declining brain cells, as well as the way I want to relax every night, I tell him. It falls on deaf ears and he continues to moan every night.
How hard would it be to give in to this minuscule request?
And this, sadly, is typical of the tussles we have: the little things in life that I feel one way about, and he feels another, need to be debated at length at every turn. I am exhausted, and don't feel up to arguing any more than I feel like giving in to his request.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Really, who wasn’t inspired by Julie and Julia? After watching that I bonked myself on the forehead and said, why didn’t I think of that? 

If millions are interested in some woman cooking her way through a French cookbook, surely some poor soul would be interested in my train wreck of a marriage.  And so I propose:

If I write everyday about the ins and outs of my marriage, good and bad (though you should be forewarned, there is extremely little good…) surely you will get an idea of what the hell I should do: stay or go.  And if nothing else, it will be an outlet for me; a journal of sorts, but one that is on record and can’t be tossed into the garbage bin (like I did with my old journals that he was so disapproving of, lest they contain negative commentary about him, which they were indeed full of.  I’m less influenced by his disapproval these days, I hasten to add.)
We did try marriage counseling for six months, but were very quickly going broke because of it and seemed to be going nowhere fast.  If money was no object we would still be going.

Of course, anonymity is of chief concern here in this blog, as even my now cold-hearted self can understand he would be outraged and hurt, to say the least, should he find out that our marriage is the subject matter of a blog.  Although it would give me some perverse pleasure, I must admit, given he is a very private, all about image, don’t ask don’t tell kind of guy.  But for my sake (and who’s kidding who, it is all about me at the end of the day!) if you figure out who I am, mum’s the word.

First, a little preamble.  He is, as he points out to me quite regularly, not a bad person.  He works hard at his profession (ALL for us, he assures me, even as he heads out for yet another round of golf or to Las Vegas for a meeting, NONE of this is any fun, he promises), and he is an extremely dedicated, if too indulgent, father (the kind who caves too easily when the children beg for the toy that I have refused them all week).

He was raised in an extremely religious family, one whose views are so radically different from my own that I am relegated to discussing only the weather.  Anything else would result in uncomfortable moments fraught with tension.  His father frequently hushes his mother: if he had his way it would be wives, not children as the old saying goes, that should be seen and not heard. 

He was brought up as the cherished only son in a small family, the star athlete who wasn’t allowed to go to school dances (since dancing could only lead to things that the devil surely approved of).  Their idea of a good time was having tea after church every Sunday.

I, on the other hand, was one of several children in a raucous family, my parents too busy trying to provide for our family to give me much notice or any boundaries like a curfew. They drank and smoked and peppered their phrases with “oh my god!” and “for Christ’s sake!” and never paid much notice to table manners (I acquired those slowly over time by quietly watching and learning and mimicking, although the bread plate still gives me some grief). We knew we were loved, although it wasn’t ever said, unless it was Christmas Eve and the Crown Royal was flowing.  And come hell or high water, we went to church on Sunday, and confession twice a year.  Religious in the polar opposite sense of the word.

It’s an understatement to say we have extremely different backgrounds.  He grew up under a microscope, while I went about my business unnoticed.  Therapy has taught me (duh!) that not having that structure in my formative years made me crave it; so there was a certain allure to his family for me.  Like honey to a bee, I was drawn to it, although it is hard to write about it now without cringing, or recount it to friends and not say, ”WHAT was I thinking???”

The model that my husband was subjected to is one where a wife having independent thoughts and ideas (not to mention a livelihood) of her own was foreign – and perhaps dangerous - concept.  I don’t think my mother-in-law has ever ventured across the street without first informing her husband and gaining his approval.  In my own humble opinion this influence on his life has been a big source of problems in our fifteen year marriage.

That old saying that opposites attract played an instrumental role in our early courtship and in my decision to marry this man who is clearly very different from myself.  My twenty-one year old self was carefree, social, and left leaning.  He was a graduate student, intelligent, serious and conservative.  Although I kick myself now, since after all, we are who we are, I told myself then that he would be good for me; I could use a little kick in the pants since school was finishing and I was venturing into the wide, wide world.  He would surely help to refine me; if I stuck with him surely success would follow.

It’s funny how things lead to things, and before I knew it I was walking down the aisle, my boisterous and loud family acting like they are in a circus ring (I’m pretty certain I saw some objects flying through the air before I started down the aisle…), his family sober, quiet, and respectful on the other side, fully horrified and surely whispering about the goings on across from them. 

I think it’s fair to say neither of us were over the moon in love, ever.  It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time, to settle down with each other and think about starting a family.  Our first child was born a couple of years into our marriage, our second and third children following at even intervals.  Presto: a functional, if not always happy, family is born. 

And so now we are living the dream: professional father, stay-at-home mother, three cute kids, nice house, nice vacations.  Friends scour my photo albums and remark “you all look so happy!”  It’s easy to smile for a camera, I tell them.

Slowly resentment has grown to be our gigantic elephant in the room on both sides: he is resentful that I have time to brush my teeth in the morning and actually fit a workout in now that the children are in school; I am resentful that he has no idea and no respect for what I do all day, having sacrificed my career after our second child was born (fielding ten phone calls from him a day asking how our child was doing in daycare was tough to deal with, so I packed it in.)

The reality of that dream isn’t so pretty from my perspective: he is controlling, uptight, and has a drastically different outlook on life (Life should be hard! Strive for excellence in all areas!  Now that we are parents, it is all about the kids!) from my own, and discards any of my outlooks as selfish, lazy or hedonistic (those might include: life is short, let’s have fun! Let’s do things with other families and be social! I want to continue to be an interesting, dynamic individual, not just a mom!)  Turns out, we each want to live completely differently.

It is not lost on me that my situation seems atypical.  It is more common to hear of the husband who doesn’t know his kids exist, or the guy who can’t give up golfing every weekend with his buddies to spend time with his family, so I understand this may be hard to relate with.  I dream about a husband who wants to go out with his friends for beers, or wants to go on a guys trip – and I frequently suggest he do this to add some balance to his life, have a little fun.  (Life isn’t all about fun, he replies.)

I love my kids and have been happy to raise them in close proximity, 24-7, although I have certainly had crazy moments where I fantasize about getting in my car and driving into the sunset, never to be heard of again.  It’s fair to say I find it easier now that they are older and more independent; diapers, sippy cups and car seats no longer playing an instrumental role.  Yet there is a heaviness that follows me around, like a cloud above my head, that continually chants “I can’t stand my husband,” and I’m not sure what it will take for me do something about this bad situation- what will be the final straw: Affair? Cancer diagnosis? Leaving the cap off the toothpaste? 

It perhaps would be easier to do if he were a raging alcoholic, womanizer, bad father, or just a dead beat, but he is none of these.  We are simply incompatible, I surmise.  He refutes this, saying we must stay together for the sake of the children; he will never leave.  If anything is to change I will have to initiate it.
So, my mission in the next year is to decide: should I stay or should I go??