Dear Bel, I’m 42 and divorced my husband ten years ago because he made me choose between my marriage and our unborn child. I chose our child and had a beautiful baby girl alone. Since then my ex has kept me on the back burner with promises that one day we will be together. About six months ago I discovered that another woman had been staying with him at weekends and he introduced her to our daughter. He has now moved out of the area to be with her. I am devastated and don’t know how to get through this.
Our 18-year-old son hasn’t spoken to him for three years because of how he treats me, and he uses this as an excuse for not being a family. We had a very bitter divorce and I went through pregnancy and birth alone, just hoping that once he saw the baby he would change his mind. But he has been dangling the carrot ever since. Trouble is — I love him, and can’t see a future without him. But I also know that I can’t go on like this.
At my request we’ve not had contact since I discovered that he was lying to me because it’s worse when I see him. So he is picking up our daughter from my mum’s house. Please help: I don’t know where to go from here.
Karen
Christmas on my mind, something about your letter conjures up the iconic image of the Annunciation: Mary, eyes cast down in fear, accepting the bad news that she has just been brought. She does not want it, but knows she has no choice: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord: let it be to me according to your word.” Let me assure believers that I am not being disrespectful, but addressing an issue which has, it seems to me, been at the heart of the female story.
Mary must bow to her fate as divine will: there is no escaping the pain she will endure, either in childbirth or later, by the side of the Cross. And Karen too, like so many women, has seemingly accepted her sorry destiny — not foretold by an angel but by that nasty little imp Cupid — and sees no escape from suffering in the name of love. This may be part of “the greatest story ever told” but it is also, in human terms, one of the oldest stories ever wept over.
So, Karen, have you heard of Patient Griselda? Let me tell you the tale, holding up a mirror so that you may recognise yourself as a reincarnation of one of world literature’s anti-heroines, written about by Chaucer and Boccaccio, to name but two. Griselda is a pretty peasant girl, spotted by a marquis in need of a wife. He tells her father he will marry her if she promises absolute obedience, then strips her naked in front of his retinue, drapes her in posh frocks and marries her. All is well; she has a baby daughter — but the marquis decides to test her. So he says that he’s disappointed to have a girl and she must give up the child — the obvious implication being murder. Griselda doesn’t make a fuss. Secretly this charming dad sends the girl to be brought up by one of his relatives miles away. Six years later poor Griselda has a boy, and the same thing happens. Believing her second child has also been murdered, Griselda still doesn’t make a fuss.
After six years hubby decides to test this patient wife still further, so says he is going to divorce her to marry a rich young woman and she must get out of his house wearing only a thin shift. So Griselda slinks meekly back to her old father’s hovel. Next thing, the marquis pitches up to say that she’s the best housekeeper ever so she must come back and clean his palace, ready for the wedding. Naturally Griselda obeys, and she’s sweeping around, in her rags when the retinue arrives: a lovely 12-year-old “bride” and a little boy, led in pomp. In time the fun-loving marquis tells his wife these are actually her children, and now she has shown she knows how to be a wife, they can all live together as a family. Hooray!
So Griselda comes down to us as the “type” of victim or of perfect wife, depending on your standpoint. Most of those medieval men approved: women were supposed to know their station. In that moral universe the ultimate virtue is submission — although in the tales there are, I’m pleased to report, some protests from the marquis’s staff at the cruelty meted out to Griselda. When Chaucer’s Clerk tells the story there’s a characteristic note of humanity as he comments that “wedded men will know no measure/ When that they find a patient creature.” Indeed.
Now, no doubt wondering where on earth I was going, you have arrived there — and, looking in the mirror where patient Griselda’s hapless face stares back at you, I want you to consider if you like what you see. You were married (are, actually, for the piece of paper has not changed your emotional status) to a man who told you to abort your baby, and left you and your eight-year-old son when you would not. You divorced him, which was your last independent act.
For ten years now he has tested your patience by promising to start playing happy families with you again, and you have gone on listening to his lies. Now he’s got somebody else (which he’s entitled to do, because you are divorced) and you say you are “devastated”. My God, you’ve actually gone on loving this apology for a man! Do you ever ask yourself exactly what it is that you love?
His tenderness? His fathering skills? Or does he come round every so often and go to bed with you as a favour? Isn’t it interesting how those things we take for virtue — such as constancy, fidelity, steadfastness — can suddenly seem pathetic and weak? If Griselda was any sort of a real woman she’d have got the hell away from the pig in brocade to save her child. But no, she must put up and shut up. And you, Karen — if you had the wisdom to learn from your son, you would be standing up to this man and telling him to get out of your life. Do you want your children to lose all respect for you? Donkeys trot along after carrots, you know. Pots kept on the back burner dry out. Victims open the door to the oppressor and plead: “Oh, won’t you be nice to me this time?” It’s time for you to change the locks, literally and metaphorically. You say you “can’t see a future without him”. Well, you must. You haven’t been in any sort of real, adult relationship with him for ten years, he has used you and your children despicably, and you have no business grovelling under the illusion that what you feel deserves to be dignified by the word “love”. Masochistic dependency might be more fitting; you owe it to your daughter to stop presenting her with a passive, humiliated role model that will store up certain unhappiness for her future. You went through such a lot to have her, and this man showed no interest. His cruelty to you has gone on, and I cannot understand why you are allowing your impressionable daughter to bear witness to it now.
What do you owe yourself? What is the self-addressed gift you’ll unwrap on Christmas Day? Let it be a fresh image in your mirror, and a new map for your life. I get so many letters from women who are so hopelessly entangled in the meshes of their unhappiness that it’s as if their muscles have atrophied, leaving them with no power to break free.
Yet I believe the power can be found — always. Start flexing now. Or, if your muscles are really weak, then just catch this pair of scissors. Sometimes the imaginary sound of snipping is oh-so pleasurable . . .
You must start deciding who you want to be for the rest of your precious parcel of days: 42 sounds young to me, offering time to change things: get a (new?) job, meet people, try internet dating, alter your hairstyle, go on a course, look up people you were at school with, try kick-boxing. You certainly need some acting lessons, because from now on you have to pretend to an indifference you don’t feel, until you can tell him you don’t want him any more — and mean it. My Christmas motto for you — and for all my readers who feel “stuck” — comes in the form of a phrase to point the way: STAR TIME. Recite it to the mirror, until you have it by heart. It stands for: Start To Act Responsibly To Influence My Existence.
Do you agree with Bel or do you have advice for Karen? Submit your comments in the form below
Do you need advice about your relationships? E-mail your problems to: bel.mooney@thetimes.co.uk or write to her at: times2, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT. Details such as your age are helpful. Please include your real name, but we will use your chosen pseudonym if you wish. Bel Mooney reads all letters but cannot enter into personal correspondence
