DIVORCE WITH A NICE LADY: A SERIOUS PERSONAL VIGNETTE
If someone had ever bet me real live money that I would divorce three husbands. leave two long term live-in partners. be widowed once: all by the time I was sixty five...I am sure I would have bet against the possibilities. big time....
I am, as one of my lover's adult children commented, when I was leaving his father, a "nice Lady". so, how did I actually leave his father?... I actually really am a 'nice lady', in every sense of the word. but I am a serial monogamist: I am in love with being in love. I've always wanted to be completely in-love. I don't compromise well. I am too honest for decent compromise. and, Relationship is much compromise... I tend to leave when events reach impasses. when I am called to give up a way of being that is natural to me - that is true to me: then, I'm gone. If it can't be worked out to suit my sense of self at the time, then I can't accommodate any more. this is the way I am. and, it is a fatal flaw....my piece of humanity that makes it clear that I am certainly no better than any one else. and a whole lot worse than many. but not as bad as some...
A great deal of my 'problems' with men have had to do with sex in some way...lately I rated all my more important contacts with sex in my life since age nineteen, from one to ten. they ranged from five to ten and a half...which is pretty good, right?....very good really. in the last forty five years I've probably had forty years of good to very good sex very regularly. in a human life, that's very, very indulgent. really a good, good record, I expect. maybe I'm wrong. but I think a lot of people would think it was very, very lucky. my life, sexually, that is... I'm not sure why I've associated problems with sex and men. I think it had more to do with their feelings about sex than mine.
Most of my partners have had less and less sex with me as time went on in the relationship. no one has actually blamed that on me. in fact they've gone out of their way to tell me I was fine. several times they've complained that I was too demanding. that I wanted a lot of sex too often. I've heard, is that all you ever think about? I've often answered that for me sex has nothing to do with thinking. I don't actually think during sex. I'm pretty sure about that. I just feel everywhere... all just mouth and breasts and so on... but I actually do have to like the man very much, or usually really just love him at least a bit, to get into it. otherwise, I'm only half there. maybe that felt selfish on the other side at times. I'm not sure. there was really very little conversation about sex before. a way, way lot more lately. I'm learning a great deal about sex lately...it's very lovely to have my present Good Man be so sexual. we are happy together. I have much to learn....
So, though it felt like sex was part of the problem...maybe that's my exaggeration. or maybe I mean something else more important. Like that I didn't feel completely my self in those relationships...didn't have time to. or ability to. or experience to. or interest to. or enough love to. or realistic expectations to. something wrong about my perceptions. I used to be somewhat sure that I understood people pretty well. I would have to say that, even after being really close to all of these partners in many ways, I didn't actually understand them very well at all. I think I thought I did. and that they understood me pretty well. didn't actually work out that way: they often were misinterpreting me as much as I was them. not out of a mean place inside. simply out of personal ignorance. an inability - innate in each of us. it is so, so rare to understand any one else well at all - or for them to understand you. that's what I've learned in sixty five years.
I think now that I want to open to loving my present Good Man exactly as he is. to open my heart and head to him exactly as he is. to open my body to his openness. because with me he is very open and honest... tho he is very private and not as honest in the rest of his life. he is more able to compromise than I am. by a long shot. I think I may understand him better than I have most people. I experience that he understands me better than any one ever has in my life. not family or friend or partner. no one knows me naturally as well as he does....
sometimes we go over our past. how we were looking for each other in our separate ways. how we loved anyway. how we were determined to love. how often it didn't turn our as well as we thought it was going to turn out. how we kept searching...now I am very sure that the reason I've been 'divorced' so many times is that all my men feel short of my memories about how my love had felt with my First Love, who is now again my Love. I am sure of this now. not that my Dearest Man is perfect in any way. he isn't. but, he is perfect for me...I think we humans are always looking for the mate is is perfect just for us. it is not usual to find this person. most humans don't get that. but some do...we have. we are sure of that...
All my old partners must have felt that in me...that I didn't feel they were perfect for me. I probably wasn't perfect for them either. tho they may have felt so at the time. a couple of them said so. but they all changed towards me, naturally, when I left them. my last one even left me first: sure that I was going to leave him. I guess I was...because I am...got the divorce, that is. it is all coming on fast again. as it has in the past. but, this time, with some safety. the safety of knowing that, right now, I am loved completely as possible. that my Dearest Man and I are loving each other more and more and more. every day. every night.
When I left people in the past, I did so with eyes wide open. I kept my suffering quiet. I didn't think I deserved to share with people that I was suffering so much. after all, I was the one getting the divorce. and when Alex died, few people even knew I was married. and when I left Rick and Erich, we were not married. so my three years with Rick and the nine years with Erich barely counted in other's eyes. but they counted to me...and the marriages: the kid's dad, Robert. so manic. so truly impossible to live with. but I mourned him... and Michael. a good man. who had gone through a great deal for our whole family... but so completely not the right person for me in any way....and then Stan. who left me before I could leave him. and who is so unhappy with life. yet feeling so justified. while I am feeling mainly relief...relief, but mixed with bouts of severe sorrow: for all the years of illness and pain that we helped each other through...
How cruel I have felt. How often I have cried for what I did when I left people. or did things that made them leave me. With Rick. for example... I wouldn't accept him as he was. I kept trying to change him. he was right to go his own way. I forced him out. he taught me to never try to change another human again. I kept my word to that the best I could...I learned so much from all my men....from Robert I learned all the country ways. which are wonderful. the wholeness of family. and of course. we made the kids together...from Michael I learned the arts of war in family. how to join with a comrade to fight to save a child...how to extend family...from Erich I learned how to dance. how to get up and dance after you fall down...from Stan, I learned how to survive. how to move with grace when everything is wrong...from Alex, I learned how to let go, when death comes and takes one you love....
I am thankful for them. but I would leave them - or allow them to go, if I had it all to do over again....I tried to leave with grace. with compassion. I never asked for compassion for my self. I took responsibility for my actions. I asked for no mercy for myself. I gave up homes. land. property. money. investments. future prospects....the only 'thing' I ever refused to give up, that I fought for like a wild animal, was my Children. I held on to my Children fiercely. took care of them fervently. made sure they would make it. through whatever happened in my life. made sure they would never suffer. to the best of my ability...
I tried to keep being kind... even when my partners were very angry with me for leaving them. I held my own. Insisted on not pretending. on complete honesty. with compassion. with some dignity. some grace. no compromise. I was proud of that. in a very serious way. way to serious about this stuff of life - rightly so. but never compassionate with my self. always had to be strong. on account of how mean I had been, in the leaving of my men. how imperfect I was...made me want to be perfect in every other way... silly to try that. of course I couldn't be. never have been. but I tried. to be good to everybody. for everybody. every day...every patient, when I was a nurse...every student, for my past seventeen years as a school teacher...always as a mother and a grandmother. always as a friend...hoping to make up for the times I left my partners....
Well. this all must end. I am unwilling to ever divorce again. With my Love and I again completely reunited, I will it to be until death parts us. I will never leave him. I believe he will never leave me. no matter what else happens in our lives. I am done.
I have been the 'nice lady' who left my partners. my men.
I will never divorce again.
I know this in the very deep places in me.
I will be true like wildfire. like ice. if need be...
I am true like wildfire. with him. not like ice.
I have no way to be cold to him. no way to hurt him ever again. as I once did.
For the first person I ever left was my First True Love.
And I will never leave him again.
This is my fate.
never to be divorced again.
even death will not win this time.
With my Denny Alan there is no leaving.
no 'nice lady'.
only me with him....
I stand with him. never alone again.
this will be as it always was.
end game.
Love has won....
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