The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Oh, What a Funny Growth.

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It never ceases to amaze me what people put up with in their romantic relationships. I'll include myself in that, too. Oodles of books written on the subject, countless talk shows in which 'experts' discuss it, many evenings of cheesecake or wine with raccoon-eyed girlfriends tearfully admitting to the horrors of her marriage or partnership and yet, there are no answers to any of it, no unfettered solutions.

I'm not one of those women who blame men for the unfavourable outcomes in broken relationships. I find that way of thinking to be dense because it implies that women are always innocent, always the unwilling victim, and that is completely ridiculous. Every single time I was cheated on (three times, actually), I felt it. Without the words, without the sheepish, darting eyes, I sensed the crawling curiosity of my wet-earred boyfriends. Oh, I would pretend it wasn't so, convince myself I was everything they needed, and when the truth was eventually revealed to me (one was an anonymous phone call, the second was my best friend telling me that she'd seen him with another, and the third was the boyfriend's best friend who called me to tell me what was going on before asking me out himself), I always felt unjustifiably betrayed. Hadn't I kissed them? Held their hands? Had catastrophic arguments with my parents over them? I felt I'd been the innocent in it all, that I had been deceived because of my good nature and trust, rather than acknowledging that there had been serious cracks in those 'relationships' from the beginning.

The thing is, if you can easily pull out the faults of an ex-boyfriend/husband before the corpse of the relationship is cold then you already knew it was not going to work. Sure, no one is perfect and we shouldn't expect them to be, but to have a laundry list of flaws ready to go isn't exactly reassuring. Boyfriend #1 for me was too old for me, and I'd known it. He was nineteen to my fifteen, had had the sex with other girls while I was still pure and milky, and he had the relationship savvy which had eluded me to that point. I giggled when he took my hand at the movies, I tried to appear aloof and confident but I came across as withdrawn and sedate and when he tried to run his hand up my thigh, I think I might have pushed him away a little harder than he might have anticipated. It shouldn't have been that big of a surprise when he went off with a girl who ran faster and harder. Boyfriend #2 cheated on me for two months before my best friend saw them together in the mall holding hands. I'd suspected it for a while, but because he had seemingly 'worshipped' me, I told myself I was being paranoid. When I confronted him, he denied it. When I received more evidence from the friends who knew all about it, I confronted him again by hitting him across the head with a phone book and knocking him into a wall. He said it was because I wouldn't have sex with him, that I was distant and controlled around him and that she was 'easier', in every conceivable way. Boyfriend #3 simply got bored with my 'ah ah ah' whenever he tried to put his hand between my legs, so he moved on to Miss 'Yeah Yeah Yeah'. He also said he felt that I wouldn't let him get close in any other way, that I wouldn't let him know me and that he always felt like I didn't like him. I dismissed him as I did the other two and I set out to find a 'real man', until I stopped for a moment to consider my role in the divide(s).

First of all, I was young. Second, I willingly dated them, even when I knew in my gut that none of them had much in common with me. I dated #1 and #2 because I was bored and because they liked me. I dated #3 because he was a little bit dangerous, with a black leather jacket, knee-high Docs and an enduring affection for Skinny Puppy, and he was classically handsome. I knew the other girls would be jealous when they saw me with him, riding along in his white Mustang with the music blaring and my hair undulating in the air behind me, so I gave him a few months of my time in exchange for the experience. Loving them didn't seem like an option because I didn't know what love actually was. Sex wasn't an option either because I was the sort of girl who, despite a very rabid case of curiosity and interest in the whole thing, didn't have any intention of giving to someone I didn't love or trust. I kept an emotional distance, a physical distance and my friends and schoolwork had always been my first priority. When I looked at it from this angle, I realized that their cheating on me was something which was kind of inevitable. They wouldn't have told me upfront because they were hoping I'd suddenly change, becoming what they wanted me to be. I think #2 was the one who actually said this out loud. He said it from across the room, far away from phonebooks and other heavy objects.

#4 was R. He appealed to me because of his visible kindness, white teeth and long hair. He was an innocent, like myself, and this appealed to me too. Nevermind that he didn't like books, that didn't bother me. Nevermind that he wouldn't discuss religion, politics, race issues or gay rights, that had nothing to do with us. I glossed over his aversion to wearing anything but jeans, his refusal to eat in restaurants with cloth napkins and the fact that he used the word 'crik' instead of 'creek'. He liked beer and wore baseball caps and he said he would never want to travel because everything he needed he had where he was. When he drank, which wasn't terribly often, he would drink until he became ridiculous, vomiting on me, running around shirtless in snowstorms, throwing things at the wall. After one difficult evening of it, I told him 'never again', and for many years he abided by this, until one day he didn't. He spent his money on snowmobiles and big televisions and cd after cd. He said if we ever had kids, which he desperately hoped we would, I would have to deal with all of their education because he didn't want to, and if I wanted 'religion', that was up to me to. Oh, and no marriage unless I agreed to take his name and abandon my own. That was the rule.

Oh really?

But, I (all together now!) loved him. All we needed was the love, right? Love was the glue, it was the stuff of magic, and a good orgasm was the antidote to all which ails. His smile was like elixir, his laugh a tickle on the soul. We would be together forever, he said. I emitted a wholehearted 'Absolutely!' and meant it. I meant that for almost thirteen years.

Loving someone isn't always a good reason to share your life with him. The small little pricks in the fabric of the alliance eventually run long until the there is nothing left but track-like threads on the verge of giving way. When he rejected the meal that I had worked on for four hours because he didn't want to eat the kidney beans, I was annoyed. When he told me that he stopped talking to his favourite uncle upon learning the man was gay, I was concerned. When, after something like twelve years, he still hadn't proposed because of 'the name thing', I was heartbroken and angry. The orgasms had stopped somewhere in the middle, not entirely, but almost, and I wasn't wanting his hands on me anymore. I still saw the smile and the kindness, and even though the hair was gone, he was still a good-looking man. I just couldn't get past all the differences between us anymore. The love, though real, had ceased to be enough.

When you start to grow, when you begin to figure out who you are and what you need to make each day worth living, you develop a greater awareness of what you need in the person who shares the bed and the rent. Sometimes, as was with me, you look back and realize you left your true self at the door when you stepped into the structure of the relationship, that, like many women, you pretended to be someone you never were in order to make the man you love happy. You do stupid things like go four-wheeling without a helmet, witness the strange art of midget wrestling, spend two cold days shivering while seated in the pit of a car race. You walk around car shows or find yourself becoming genuinely interested in hockey games. You forget that you used to like to write because you have no one to share it with. You gain twenty pounds because he likes fast food and refuses to walk anywhere with you. The empty beer bottles start piling up in the garage and you suddenly forget how to breathe because the world around you looks nothing like the one you want to live in. When you do write poetry, it has a desperate theme in it, and it isn't even good.

Leaving is the hardest thing to do, but in time it stops feeling like a mistake. The clarity comes when the sun breaks through the morning clouds and the man sleeping on the bed next to you has a book on his nightstand which is swollen from the touch of his fingers. You shower and open the bathroom door to the smell of coffee and the sound of him humming from down the stairs. He asks you how you slept, and he winks at you because of the animal acts between the sheets before all went black and you slyly smile back and say 'like a baby'. He tells you about something he just saw on the news and he asks your opinion and when you give it, he listens. When you make dinner with kidney beans in it, he tells you it's delicious and then he tells you he read your latest poem and he has some suggestions, if you're willing to hear them.

This is when you know how it feels to be loved, and to love. You feel yourself letting go a little, the light inside of you reaching out and connecting with the light that is coming from him. There are shared thoughts, laughs at private jokes and somehow, you feel more like yourself than you ever have before. This, then, is what the fuss is all about, you think to yourself.

You could possibly come up with things about him which annoy you, but it would take you some time to put the list together. All you can see is his body, his eyes and his quintessence. The sheen of it presents you with a reflection of yourself and there you are, smiling, looking like you again, though after a closer look, you realize you look a little wiser.