Is Love That Blind?
http://20six.co.uk/oberon
powered by
20six.co.uk
|
|
|
Ok a bit of history – but I promise to keep it brief-ish.
I can’t just plonk you where I am now and ask you to make sense of it, without giving you an idea of where I’ve been before.
Still with me? Good. Five years ago life was sweet. I was married to the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, three lovely children, nice home, good job – the full enchilada.
Then all of a sudden, without any warning (or so it seemed to me) my life fell apart with terrifying rapidity.
My wife, Sara, met and fell passionately in love with Peter the Pervert, and within a few short months I lost my wife, my children, my home and was clinging onto my job and my sanity by my fingertips.
You may be tempted to dismiss this blog as the rant of an embittered man, but that would be a mistake. I’m not so much angry anymore (although I have my moments) as utterly bewildered.
Even today I don’t how it all happened and why.
That’s where you come in.
I’m hoping that in the wide world of blogland, there are men and women out there who can shed some light on the mysteries of female behaviour and in particular that strange and fabled beast, romantic love.
In future blogs I’ll be filling you in on the details of this catastrophe.
Because this is anonymous I won’t spare my blushes, and, as you’ll learn, there have been times when I’ve behaved with breathtaking stupidity.
This is purely an intellectual exercise. The insights garnered here won’t have any practical purpose. I’m not interested in a second chance.
I’ve given up on women – for good.
|
22.7.03 17:27
|
|
A startling observation about female sexuality
As promised a startling insight into female sexuality that, I’m afraid deepens rather than solves the puzzle of a woman’s psyche.
Girls, please avert your eyes for the next few moments, as what follows isn’t suitable for your delicate sensibilities.
Right fellers, now we’re alone, I want to ask you a question. If you are married or in a long-term relationship have you ever found that after a period in the doldrums, your sex life has suddenly, inexplicably, become white hot?
Is the woman in your life demanding passionate lovemaking with a frequency and intensity unknown since the first flush of love and lust at the beginning of your relationship, and perhaps not even then?
Is she initiating thrilling, imaginative couplings in the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, the car and even a knee-trembler in a shop doorway on the way home after an evening out?
If so, you can wipe that stupid grin off your face right now, because I am the bearer of some seriously bad news.
The chances are she is having an affair.
Oh no, I hear you protest, not my baby – she can’t keep her hands off me!
Yes, I know. It is what the anoraks in software development call ‘counter intuitive’, but it’s true.
I have spoken to more than a dozen cuckolded men and they have all experienced precisely the same phenomenon.
As I expound my theory I notice them in deep thought before invariably there’s a dawning of recognition: “Now you come to mention it,” they say nodding, “things did get pretty steamy just before we broke up.”
When a man starts having an affair he is often too knackered to make love to his wife after a raunchy session with his lover.
But when a woman starts playing away, she develops an unprecedented passion for some vigorous home fixtures.
Why this is I don’t know. Perhaps there is some biological imperative. Maybe she is setting up a competition between her two lovers so that only the very fittest sperm has any chance of fertilising her egg.
Or perhaps it is a bit more basic than that. A simple tale of straightforward lust, of a mature woman’s dormant appetite reawakened.
In other words is in something in her genes, or something in her jeans?
Or perhaps it’s neither and she just comparing one lover with another before declaring the final winner?
Does the cheating wife lay awake at night totting up points on a mental scoreboard like a judge at the Winter Olympics?
“5.9 for artistic impression, but he lost half a point for that wobbly re-entry after his triple salco.”
Or maybe it’s more like the Eurovision Song Contest, where a bouncy rhythm and an enthusiastic performance on the night count for all?
If so, I’m afraid I scored nul points. Within a very short time she threw me over in favour of the human equivalent of a dodgy Norwegian pop song.
|
23.7.03 14:22
|
|
Dumb and dumbererererer
Pervert Pete first entered our lives when he visited my daughters’ school and frightened witless a bunch of innocent and bewildered ten-year-olds with lurid tales of the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse.
He was the local community police officer and so self-righteous was his manner and so blood-curdling his delivery that he was immediately co-opted onto the PTA.
There he met committee member Sara, my wife of almost ten years, who up until then had been entirely faithful. Well, as far as I’m aware – but hell, what do I know?
Within a very short time, perhaps as little as two weeks, my lovely wife and this virtual stranger were shagging at every available opportunity.
The affair first time around lasted for about ten months. Even now as I type this, I colour with shame recalling how incredibly, unbelievably, unfathomably stupid I was.
I never suspected a thing. I was strolling along in the sunshine, whistling a merry tune and smiling to myself like a sap. I just couldn’t believe how lucky I was!
To put the icing on the cherry bun, our sex life (see my previous blog entry) was fantastic, the best ever. What a woman!
As the months went on they left ever-larger clues as to what they were up to, and I ignored them all.
If I would have come home to find them rutting on the kitchen table, I would have found an innocent explanation for it.
In the end virtually everyone knew but me – our friends, neighbours, other parents at the school, the teachers, even some of the kids!
But everything passed me by; The furtive glances when they were together in company, the odd phone calls last thing at night, the unexplained absences, the weekend away with ‘old friends’, the three-times-a-week ‘badminton practice’.
One Friday night when Sara was at ‘badminton’ our youngest suffered a nasty bout of croup. He’d had this off and on for months, but this evening was especially bad. It wasn’t exactly an emergency but I decided to take him to the hospital where they could give him oxygen and a cortisone-type drug to ease his breathing.
I popped next door and asked our teenage neighbour to baby-sit our other two children while I drove my son to hospital. I thought on the way I’d call in at the secondary school where the badminton session was held to let Sara know what was happening, as her mobile was switched off and she wasn’t picking up my messages.
She wasn’t there. The school gym was in darkness. The caretaker was locking up and told me there was no badminton on a Friday. Monday and Wednesday yes, but not Friday.
How odd, I thought, still not suspecting a thing. Perhaps they’d changed the venue and Sara hadn’t mentioned it. Sam’s breathing was a little easier now he was in the cool air, so I decided to call in on Sara’s best friend and badminton partner, Lauren, to find out where she was.
The look of panic and shame on Lauren’s face when she opened the door should have told me all I needed to know.
But it was the reaction of her partner, Brian, a man I’ve never liked, that was the absolute clincher. I caught his eye over Lauren’s shoulder and he was giving me that raised eyebrows, half amused look you reserve for an incredibly dumb person as you wait for the penny finally to drop.
And the bastard, the utter despicable bastard, was smirking at me.
Finally, the realisation that all was not quite right was penetrating my thick skull. All the odd little events over the previous months began to fall into place.
Lauren was in full burble mode. No she didn’t know where Sara was, but she, Lauren, didn’t play on Fridays – only on Mondays and Wednesdays. Friday evening was cubs and brownies, very busy. There were badminton courts down the leisure centre, had I tried there? Had I tried her mobile? Perhaps, the badminton had been cancelled and she’s gone for a drink? She can’t be far away, can she? Is Sam OK? Do you want us to look after the girls?
On and on and on.
I didn’t say a thing. I felt as though I’d been in a car crash. I didn’t have any words. No words were necessary.
As she spoke she became redder and more flustered and less coherent. When she said ‘perhaps she’s gone for a drink’ I’m sure I heard someone snort with laughter from within the house.
As I drove Sam to hospital I felt physically ill - sick with worry over my boy’s health, sick with concern over Sara’s whereabouts and sick to my stomach because I knew deep down that something was seriously wrong, although even then I wasn’t exactly sure what.
And all I could see in my mind’s eye was that smirking bastard’s ugly face.
|
24.7.03 16:21
|
|
A Midsummer Night’s Nightmare
I realise that I’m presenting this affair as a sordid tale of deceit and treachery. But that, of course, isn’t the whole story.
If you asked Sara for her view (perhaps I’ll ask her to make a guest appearance on my blog – some chance, we don’t speak!) she would paint an entirely different picture – one that would be uplifting, wonderful, life affirming and beautiful.
Viewed from her side of the gulf that opened up between us, this is really a tale of two soul mates who were always meant for each other, who found love, joy and everlasting happiness against all the odds and despite the hulking, sour presence of the bitterly resentful first husband (that’s me folks).
Sara told my eldest daughter, who in all innocence then told me, that she never knew what love really was until she met the Pervert.
Oh how the knife twists! I had already been robbed of my future, and this comment robbed me of my past.
All the memories I wished to treasure – our first meeting, our first date, the first time we slept together, our wedding day, the evening we strolled hand in hand in the moonlight on ‘our ‘ beach in Crete – all turned to dust in my mind, now utterly worthless.
The brutal truth, although it pains me to say so, is that she loves the Pervert with a depth and a passion she never felt for me.
As Sara can’t be with us please allow me, as fairly as I can, to present her story for her.
I think she’d tell you that until Peter came along she was like a woman sleepwalking through life.
She married because someone asked her to and she couldn’t find a good enough reason to say no. She had children, because that is what you do. She made a home, because that was what was expected of her.
She wasn’t actively unhappy, or even discontent, because she didn’t know what true happiness was. She had nothing with which to compare her life.
She wasn’t looking to have an affair; she didn’t even flirt with other men. She found the very idea distasteful.
Then – wham – Cupid’s Exocet knocked her off her feet and everything changed.
She didn’t just love Peter, she was consumed by him, besotted, infatuated. He made her feel full of life and sunshine like no one had made her feel before.
She spent the snatched moments with him delirious with joy, and the hours away from him aching for the time when they could be together again.
Over the top? I’m afraid not. I’ve seen them together and it really is astonishing.
Recently I attended a school performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (my eldest was playing Cobweb) and sat three rows behind Sara and the Pervert.
She gazed at him, held his hand between hers, stroked his arm, brushed his hair from his temple, touched his face, brought his hand up her face, kissed his palm, licked the end of his finger with her tongue, giggled, kissed him on the cheek, lay her head on his shoulder – and so on without cease throughout the entire performance.
She wasn’t doing this to wind me up, she didn’t know or care whether I was there or not.
She was oblivious to me and everyone else outside the charmed circle of love that encompassed her and Peter.
He, meanwhile, just grins like a man who can’t believe his luck.
Other people in the audience were nudging each other and smiling. The radiance of her happiness makes other people feel happy just being near her.
Up on the stage Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, had fallen madly in love with Bottom (sporting a grotesque asses’ head), thanks to a magic potion squeezed into her sleeping eyes.
“Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.”
I looked at Titania entwined in Bottom’s arms, and then to Sara entwined in the Pervert’s, and then back once again to the stage.
“O, how I love thee! How I dote on thee!”
That’s it! It was all I could do to stop myself leaping from my seat. She’s bewitched! It explains everything! An evil spell has caused her to fall in love with the first creature she set eyes on and that just happened to be the unlikely figure of the Pervert!
In the play, of course, Titania is eventually released from the charm, reunited with her King and it all ends happily ever after.
“My Oberon! What visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.”
Anyone know of an antidote in real life?
|
25.7.03 12:32
|
|
Ella and the Blond Boy – part one
You’ve been so patient reading my tales of marital woe that I want to reward you with an enchanting little romance that has kept my office enthralled and entertained over recent days.
It involves Ella, 26 going on 14, curly dark hair, dreamy brown eyes, pretty face, nice figure. She drinks too much, takes more fag breaks than the rest of the office put together and never stops talking except when inhaling smoke, slurping red wine or, possibly, sleeping (I can’t personally vouch for the latter).
Her love life is a disaster (who am I to talk!). A long entanglement with a much older married man ended in tears. (He decided not to leave his wife after all – now there’s a surprise girls!). A couple of briefer flings also ended unhappily.
She is good at her job, or can be when she puts her mind to it. In truth she usually finds something more entertaining to occupy her time.
Enter Blond Boy, straight from university, six foot something, tousled fair hair, athletic build, ruddy complexion. Think a more agricultural version of Prince William and you’ll be in the right part of the dartboard.
He works in a different section but passes our desks about eight times an hour to get to the water cooler. That boy has a thirst!
Ella has to stuff a hanky in her mouth to stop herself drooling over the keyboard.
Blond Boy leaves every day on the dot of 5.30. I fancy his mum has shepherd’s pie and jam roly poly ready for him on the stroke of six.
One evening he was barely out the door when Ella strolled over to his work station and logged on. She knows everyone’s log on, even mine. No secret has been safe since she went out with a guy from IT.
I went over and stood at her shoulder to make sure she didn’t do anything too stupid.
First thing we saw was a screensaver (downloaded in contravention of company IT policy) featuring a sweaty man on a bike wearing a yellow jersey.
“What the hell’s this?” she demanded. She was expecting the more usual shots of Kylie’s bum or Jordan’s chest.
“It’s Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France,” I replied.
She looked at the muscular thighs encased in skin-tight cycling shorts.
“Oh no, not another one – how many good-looking gays can one office take?”
“Not necessarily, he might just like the cycling.”
She brightened: “Well, at least it’s not David Beckham, so I suppose there’s the off-chance he might be straight.”
She hacked into his personal emails and was reassured to find no homo-erotic musings but lots of manly messages to mates about the progress of the Tour de France.
Onto his browser, where his history list showed he had spent the day surfing various cycling websites.
Memo to self – we’re not giving the boy enough to do.
When I left Ella was busily scribbling down the urls.
To be continued...
|
27.7.03 15:13
|
|
Ella and the Blond Boy – part two
For the next three days I can’t get a stroke of work out of Ella. Every time I ask her to do something, she is making notes from another cycling website.
“Can you just do this?”
“Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Yes, Ella, but this is work you actually get paid for.”
“Oh, put it on the pile and I’ll get round to it later.”
“ No, I want you to do it now.”
Cue loud, theatrical sigh, followed by the slamming of drawers and a glare that says how hateful it is to have a boss so unreasonable as to expect a bit of work on occasion.
The following day Ella and her posse were having their water-cooler moment, which in their case can last up to 50 minutes. As usual they were discussing the burning philosophical issues of our time: Will Scott and Nush get together? Isn’t Ray a wanker! What’s wrong with Cameron – don’t they have sex in Scotland?
After about 15 minutes of this I usually do my sheep dog act and round them up, nipping at their heels until they return to their desks.
But on this occasion I could see Blond Boy was going cold turkey for the want of iced water. He was dying for a drink but was too timid to break through this gaggle of women. Eventually, thirst got the better of him and he made his way to the machine.
Ella caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye and, in a voice that rattled the windows, launched into a well-rehearsed monologue.
“Well, people said Armstrong was past his peak but when Ullrich piled on the pressure, he really showed what a fantastic champion he is. He is a true credit to the Maillot Jaune!”
The girls looked at her open mouthed. She might as well have started speaking in Swahili.
Blond Boy was also rooted to the spot. “You’re talking about the Tour!” he squeaked.
Ella turned to face him, frowning, arms folded. “What?”
“Sorry, I couldn't help overhearing and you were talking about the Tour de France.”
Overhearing? You could hear her in the car park.
“So?”
“It’s just that I’m a big fan too. I spent last summer over in France watching it.”
“Really? How nice for you!” And she turned back to continue her conversation with the posse.
With shaking hands Blond Boy filled his little paper cup and scuttled back to his desk spilling most of it on the way.
More later...
|
27.7.03 17:27
|
|
Ella and the Blond Boy – part three
The next day Blond Boy tried to reach the water cooler without being noticed, but she was after him like a time trial sprinter.
“Did you watch it last night then?” she asked.
“Yeah, fantastic! I think it’ll be the closest finish ever.”
“ Well, I don’t think it’ll beat LeMond and Fignon in ’89, but I know what you mean,” she said with a dazzling smile.
I should say at this point that part of Ella’s job, if she ever bothers to do it, involves research. Give her half a day on the internet and to the untrained eye she will appear an expert on any subject under the sun.
But scratch away the surface of this superficial knowledge and you reveal unfathomed depths of ignorance.
She was wobbling badly now. He was expounding at length on the advantages on Ullrich’s time trial bike with its 56-tooth by 11-tooth gear. But she managed to get to the end of the conservation without actually falling off.
She was blowing like a rider approaching the summit of L’Alpe D’Huez by the time she finally returned to her desk. But it was all downhill from here. She had him in her sights; it was just a matter of reeling him in like a rookie on a three-gear Raleigh Chopper.
More later...
|
27.7.03 18:34
|
|
[next page]
|