Part 2 Of Your Love Life | ? Love in limbo

‘We all remember that time. We weren’t imagining things.’

Doris Lessing’s words in ‘Memoirs of a Survivor’ became my words.

'That time' for me was filled with the slow agony of watching my husband withdraw from me.

I felt I was being forced to watch the previously unthinkable happening in front of my eyes. Believing you were ‘brought together’ all those years ago, committing to each other in a public wedding ceremony, and now one of you unmistakably veering steadily, purposefully, away.

One tiny scene, over in a flash, summed rejection up and stays with me. At what seemed like a moment of faint communication opening up between us, I held out my arms to my husband and he involuntarily backed away from me as though I were defiled.

So these days, when loved-up, newly engaged couples beam, ‘We knew we were meant for each other,’ or, ‘I’ve met my soulmate’, or ‘God’s timing was perfect for both of us,’ I bite my lip.

Because I know such words don’t mean much. Not in terms of outcome.

Those words don’t guarantee happiness. That didn’t surprise me too much. I know loving partners often have difficult paths to tread together that mean they have to grow into a mature understanding of what ‘happiness’ might mean for them as an individual couple.

Those words don’t guarantee fidelity. I had always known that women were attracted to my husband, and life and human nature being what it is, that there might be falls along the way. And the same might apply to me though I was determined I wouldn’t let it. But I thought a fall would not be something we would want to allow to jeopardise us or our marriage.

What I wasn’t prepared for was that one day my husband might think, ‘We knew we were meant for each other,’ or, ‘I’ve met my soulmate,’ or even, ‘God's timing was perfect in bringing us into each other's lives,' not about me, but about somebody new.

So feeling ‘God/Fate/The Flying Spaghetti Monster brought us together,’ doesn’t guarantee anything about the future. All you can guarantee is your own commitment, and trust your partner enough to believe in theirs.

A book by Francine Rivers about a powerless woman in a patriarchal society gave me another phrase that summed up my situation: ‘She did the only thing she could do. She waited.’

I waited. We shared the house while I tried to give him time and space to decide what he was going to do. I tried to keep myself calm and busy, encouraging him quietly but firmly to share and discuss his feelings with his two closest friends.

From my diary of the time:

‘The house looks pretty with hyacinths in the window, pale yellow walls, bright rugs, and red silk poppies in the hearth, but it is deathly sad, and the wind in the chimney sounds lonely. From the outside, the house and garden look breathtakingly beautiful: wisteria on walls, rosemary bush in bloom, hawthorn tree flowering in the copse. It looks idyllic, middle class, secure – that lie!’

Today, all these years later, when I pass a row of suburban houses I’m aware the neatness and order can front quiet suffering within.

As it became clear he was still seeing his new girlfriend and did not want to recommit himself to me and us, I asked him to move out. A few days later I wrote:

‘The day he left, I was watching him from the window, holding our wedding photo in my hands, holding back the tears. He saw me, ran back in, and said in a strangled voice, "I’ll speak to you soon."

'So he left me, and now I am alone. We are separated.’