Category — marriage

The signs are all there: irrationally crabby, moody, easily annoyed and withdrawn.

I need a vacation.

My first thought upon realizing this was “A vacation from what exactly?”

Let’s face it, I have a pretty sweet life. I have a fantastic (and cute!) fiance who has been extremely supportive and encouraging in my quest to run my own business and do what I like for a living. He is my best-friend. We live in a nice apartment, we have lots of books and toys to amuse ourselves with and we eat like kings most nights.

But, amidst all this happy “we”, a canker is blossoming.

I need time alone. I need to get away from our nice apartment, away from my best-friend, away from our toys and routines. I need to regain my sense of space and self. I want to come home with a sense of eagerness and come back to our life with the ability and renewed desire to participate in it fully.

I felt guilty for wanting it, for needing it – I questioned myself about it endlessly. Do I love Joe less if I need to be alone? Does this mean that I’m a selfish person? Does my need to sprawl out across the whole bed without running into anyone supersede my responsibilities to our relationship?

The answer to all those things is no.

I discussed everything with Joe and I should have known that this would be his response: “You should go – a couple of days of doing nothing by yourself will be good for you.”

Rilke said it best:

“I consider the following to be the highest task in the relation between two people: for one to stand guard over the other’s solitude. If the essential nature of both indifference and the crowd consists  in the nonrecognition of solitude, then love and friendship exist in order to continually furnish new opportunities for solitude.”

My thoughts about love and relationships have changed drastically over the past two years. Yet, there is still this nagging voice in my head (the product of too many romantic films and novels) that needing to get away, alone, from your regular life for a few days was disaster in the making. That real love means merging together as one person forever and ever, it means being a mirror for the other, it means bringing them into your fully-realized world where you entertain them with endless delights and teach them how to live within you.

Now I understand fully that those perceptions are all garbage.

I don’t want to submerge myself in someone else’s personality (nor do I want them submerged in mine). I cannot be anyone’s mirror. I refuse to let some half-finished, disorderly mess of a person come and live in the internal world I’m still building for myself because they find it easier than building their own world.

I find myself agreeing with Rilke again:

“[Young people] (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment…:And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future?

And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and many others who still wanted to come. And loses the vast distances and possibilities…No area of human experience is so extensively provided with conventions as this one is: there are life-preservers of the most varied invention…society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it and easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are.”

Before now I had simply withdrawn deeper into myself to come to the solitude I need to be happy. Now I know that Joe and I can create space for the other to live in and leave out all the guilt that is supposed to be associated with needing that space.

So I booked my two day/two night trip to Victoria, BC (I got an amazing deal with Pacific Coach Lines) and that’s that.

Two days of keeping my own counsel and focusing on my own inner needs will go a long way to regaining and preserving my happiness!

Valentine’s Day is coming up soon and I was curious about its origins. My Google-fu was strong today so I have a few possibilities to list about this day of love and romance:

• We’re celebrating a martyred priest, a dead bishop and a guy martyred in Africa (all on February 14).
• We’re celebrating the martyred priest only (beaten, stoned and beheaded for refusing to renounce his faith).
• We celebrate the St. Valentine who was apparently so heartbroken after getting dumped by his mistress, he cut his own heart out and sent it to her.
• We’re celebrating the wrong St. Valentine altogether (there are five others which are not commonly celebrated).

Of course, most of us celebrate Valentine’s Day the way they did in Geoffrey Chaucer’s time when courtly love was as its peak – a day of romantic love, poetry, expensive gifts and possibly wedding proposals; not that I can find anything romantic about self-mutilation, stonings, beatings and beheadings.

If nothing else, our modern way of celebrating St. Valentine’s Day gives everyone at least one day of the year to feel special, loved and appreciated by their partners.

Yet, every year I feel slightly nauseated at the sight of the shiny red hearts and cute, plush kissy-face critters on sale at the local Hallmark stores. I am annoyed by the number of signs implying that if don’t buy Joe something really amazing, then there is a chance he’ll think I don’t care.

Thank goodness Joe dislikes Valentine’s Day more than I do!

We do exchange cards and sometimes I even get him gummy bears – but that’s it. No fancy dinner out, no diamond ring in the champagne or other Grand Gesture. Nothing that distinguishes this day as more important than any other in our relationship.

We tend to pick out little gifts all year long; a book, candy, a video game or silly card. We show our appreciation for each other everyday. Small gestures like a genuine “I love you” or taking care of a chore the other despises so the other one can play a video game instead. Those small things add up throughout the year so that Valentine’s Day has become just another scheme to make me part ways with extravagant amounts of money on cutesy stuff that will end up on a donation pile within six months (or less).

I never thought that cynicism could be born out of feeling incredibly lucky – but there it is: I’m incredibly lucky to have someone who shows his feelings for me everyday without all the fanfare and soppy drivel that usually accompanies Valentine’s Day.

Happy Wednesday Joe – I love you.

Anyone not living under a rock (or who has been watching the CBC series The Tudors) is probably marginally acquainted with the story of King Henry VIII.

For my own purposes though, I’d like to recap King Henry VIII’s history as it concerns Anne Boleyn.

King Henry VIII’s court is a great centre of scholarly learning, artistic endeavours and “glamorous excess”. Henry himself is an accomplished musician, hunter, poet, sportsman and lover. However, for all his love and pursuit of the fairer sex, his own wife, Catherine of Aragon, is unable to provide him with the much needed and expected male heir to the throne.

That Catherine is a faithful and loyal wife, the keeper of his household and much beloved by the people of England does not concern Henry – he is anxious for a male heir and grows discontented with Catherine and blames her for not giving him a son.

Enter Anne Boleyn.

Anne is by all accounts an attractive, intelligent and accomplished young lady. Unfortunately she is also deceitful, vindictive, coldly ambitious, short-tempered and jealous.

Anne’s past is, in part, hushed up. She has been betrothed to James Butler, but no wedding ever occured. She was also courted by Henry Percy, they were engaged (and possibly lovers) however, no marriage ever took place. Anne’s older sister, Mary, failed to engage the king’s interest for very long and the Boleyns looked to Anne as their only hope of rising up in the world. Anne herself is not adverse to this. Why take a fairly common man when you can have a king?

Anne becomes a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine and one of the most popular young women at court. She is referred to as a “glass of fashion” and becomes known for her ability to hold men at arms length while retaining their good opinion and never losing her allure. King Henry is instantly enamoured.

King Henry courts Anne and, unlike most of his conquests, she refuses him until he promises that she will be his lawful wife and queen. Only then could she in good conscience be with him as he wished. Henry is utterly besotted and agrees to her demands.

Catherine is soon banished from court and all her old rooms are turned over to Anne.  Henry lavishes affection and trinkets on her – and soon enough they are secretly betrothed and then married. Only when Anne becomes pregnant do they have a public ceremony.

Anne has many of the King’s former advisors and aides executed on trumped up charges which are fully supported by King Henry. Anne’s immediate happiness and security is his first and foremost thought and his former supporters, already wary of Anne, pull away from Henry as well.

King Henry’s infatuation with Anne was not to last. The excitement of the chase was over, the thrill of secret betrothals and marriages was over and – worse – Anne had still not produced a son and heir. King Henry began to look for a way out that would leave him free and guiltless while Anne, unaware of her precarious position, spent money freely on whatever her heart desired.

Eventually, Anne is accused of adultery, incest and treason and is executed only days after some of her closest friends at court – including her own brother – are executed on similar charges.

Barring a few of the details (royal blood, executions, charges of treason etc.) King Henry and Anne’s relationship is not unlike some relationships I have witnessed personally.

I suppose it’s an old story really; wealthy young man meets beautiful opportunistic girl, falls in love, gets screwed over and loses his marbles. It’s old hat, but it still happens.

What puzzles me is why it still happens. Are these young men really that insulated from reality? Has life really been so easy for them that when a beautiful girl falls into their arms they really believe it’s that simple and easy and forever? Are the charms of these young women so potent that young men can’t see avarice and indifference when it’s looking them in the eye?

I suppose this is the benefit of a low-cut clothing and bedroom eyes, but it all seems so ridiculous!

And what about the Queen Catherines of the world? Where do they fit in? I would say that in Catherine’s case she was a martyr to the misery of having such a selfish shit for a husband. Then again, who hasn’t done this? Are there people who can say once they realized they were throwing good love after bad that they just stopped and moved on? I can’t say that of myself – I’m the sort to pine and dissect things at least for a time.

Catherine of Aragon proclaimed herself the true wife of King Henry and the true Queen of England right to the end. She never once wavered in her belief in their marriage and she always loved the Henry she saw in him even though it was rarely the Henry she got in reality.

That kind of faith in another is either rare and precious or completely stupid and pointless – I can’t decide which.