Helga's question

Helga, you’ve asked what I was holding on to in my marriage.  So I will try to answer that now.

I believe I was holding on to the belief that I could have  a partner who would be my friend for the rest of my days.  My husband always seemed like such a ‘steady Eddy’ guy- no dark side- no skeleton in the closet, no wandering eye.  He was dependable, honest, and good and seemed to think everything in his life prior to knowing me was all meant to direct him on the path which would cross with mine.  He was so good, so normal and so even tempered that I would not have been attracted to him as a younger woman- too safe, too easy, too boring. But by my late 30’s and early 40’s, I’d had it with volatility and men who ran hot and cold with their affection.  I was looking for Mr. Nice Guy.... sure we’d never have ‘make up’ sex with wild abandon (sorry mom if this is too much information), but neither would we have those desperate ugly arguments that used to make me feel like that character in the Alice Munro story who pulled up clumps of grass from the lawn in the backyard with tears streaming down her face.  I was finished with Mr. Dark and Complex, and ready for Mr Straight-forward with No Surprises.  Ironic, huh? I thought I’d found him.  I thought he would be the one I’d grow old with, create photo albums with: of travels, and children and friends and birthday parties and Christmases.

 Just before my father went into surgery to have a lung removed, the nurse came in to give him a sponge bath.  My  mother took the things from the nurse’s hands and said “Let me do it.”  I excused myself and stood outside the room, thinking “what must it be like for my mother to bathe my father whose body she’d known since she was 19?”  Every freckle, scar, each little skin tag.  I imagined her lovingly bathing my father and savouring each  portion of him, committing it to memory in case he did not survive the surgery, as they’d been warned could happen.  I remember thinking right then and there that I wanted that depth of love with a man.  I wanted that depth of commitment. I wanted to know a man’s body as well as I knew my own, to know it over decades as it changed, softened, aged.  I wanted to try “in sickness and in health” again.  I wanted that absolute assurance that when I needed a friend, there would be someone whose top priority would be to be there for me.  It seemed at that moment that the world was a sad and scary place and that it was best navigated in pairs.

I married my husband a few years after that day.  (My father survived the surgery and against all odds continued to fight his cancer for 7 more years!)  I thought I’d found that person to grow old with, to take care of and to be cared for by, to build a life, grow a family, establish traditions.  But he jumped ship, and here’s a sad but true story.  At Christmas time, I was cleaning out a desk drawer - about 8 months after we’d split; about one month after I’d learned he was with someone else, and about a week after the failed seduction scene.  I found an unused address book.  I recognized it as a gift my husband had given me several years before, but I’d somehow lost track of it without ever making any entries.  Idly, I flipped through the pages and my eyes landed with great surprise on his words written in pencil.  How had I never seen this when he’d first given me the book as a gift? Next to Name, he’d written his first and last name.  Next to Address, he’d written “Anywhere in the world as long as my wife is there too”.

I wanted to call him and say “You’re not allowed to change your mind about that.  You’re my best friend.”  But I didn’t, of course.  Not after everything .  I just sat on the floor and wept, grieving the loss of  growing old with my friend.