Sunday, March 08, 2009
ancient history: sunday mass
It's sunday morning and that is where my lover is, at mass, with his wife and children.
He often texts me during the service, and sometimes demands that I masturbate and come for him during it, though he won't be able to check his voicemail until it is over.

Although I comply, I feel contempt for him over this. Although I am, now, the atheist, I was once a good Catholic, and his notions of sin and trangression and forgiveness are so very far removed from mine. I am the atheist yet I judge him harshly because he does not hold his faith dear enough--his principles. My former Catholicism is why I find boundaries and transgression so compelling, but I don't think one can truly understand transgression or sin, or guilt, without having such boundaries.
---------------------
He tells me he doesn't worry about discovery, that he believes his marriage would survive it. What is between them would be strong enough to endure that revelation.

I have my doubts about this. One can love and wish to forgive, and yet ultimately find it impossible to forgive such a betrayal. I do not think any of us can predict in advance how such a betrayal will take us, much less another. The theory has a way of coming apart from the practice.

What would not survive that discovery would be us, him and me. I have no doubt that it would be a condition for her that he sever all contact with me.

I also have no doubt that he would comply.

My wife, he calls her to me, sometimes. My wife. I know her name and we use it, and these words from him, my wife, they fall on me like a blow to my chest. In those words and tone I hear finality. I hear both possession and being owned. I hear the weight of the things that hold him together, these things he has freely assumed that give him identity, that help constitute his self, the public one and the one he holds most dear.

I am no part of that identity; I am inimical to it. There is no place for me in his public world. Men shouldn't leave their families, he has said to me, and I do not think he sees why this causes me pain. It's not for any trivial and obvious reason--I don't want him to leave them.

It's because what this means to me is that I am shameful to him; it is not love for
others, but shame and the fear of shame that will ultimately keep him where he is. Like Peter, he would deny me three times and turn his face from me.

She is his other half, but I am his other self, the secret one. Yet I know and have always known–I am only transient to him, an obsession he secretly hopes will lift and fade with time.

What is between us merely adds to the sum of his happiness, although it is the whole of mine.

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
Philip Larkin, Church Going


Reminder: all posts starting with 'ancient history' are posts I wrote but didn't publish then about my old situation, not now.

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posted by O @ 11:37  

16 Comments:
  • At 08 March, 2009, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    This is beautiful and perfect. You're very right. After all, who was it that said that the spouse always wins over the lover?

    Part of me still wishes it didn't have to be that way.

     
  • At 08 March, 2009, Blogger DnWormer said…

    It was interesting that he had such faith in his marriage yet he was unwilling to commit totally to it.

     
  • At 08 March, 2009, Blogger L. said…

    The last line reminds me of this saying I came across: "Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option."

    Not that I'd ever listened to such sage advice, myself.

     
  • At 08 March, 2009, Blogger alphagirl said…

    "I am only transient to him, an obsession he secretly hopes will lift and fade with time."

    ahh so true...

     
  • At 08 March, 2009, Blogger Frequent Traveler said…

    He is a selfish, destructive assclown.

    I know you love him, O, and I also hate the price tag associated with the pain that comes from choosing a love who belongs to someone else, and is so smug about it and so willfully unaware of the emotional damage his actions would and already do cause.

    And he goes to Church. What a joke. But it fits - he pretends to be a good person, why not pretend that sin/transgression/forgiveness are just words and not actions he actually has to genuinely make amends for and not repeat ?


    Grrrr !!!

    I've had affairs. I'm no angel. I also had a wife committ suicide because of one. And that stopped me cold.
    Granted she had terminal cancer and he's cheated on her both before and after me. So what ?
    It's still a hot button for me now. I'll NEVER have one again, and have no respect for the b.s. of men who do.

     
  • At 08 March, 2009, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I've tried time and again to write a post about this. I don't know how someone can marry the two (infidelity and religion). Although, many ministers, pastors, and priests have proven time and again that it is possible.

    I've all but severed my ties to Catholicism (I feel the need to go somewhere on Christmas) and yet M doesn't miss a Sunday or a Holy day. It's more than hypocritical. It's blasphemous. He receives communion without going to confession. I can't help but wonder what he meditates on during mass. I suspect he fights the pull of the shame spiral.

    She is his other half, but I am his other self. So true. I'm still not sure which one I'd rather be.

     
  • At 08 March, 2009, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    You've written a lot about this affair and I've known (and read) other women in similar situations. I'm always curious to learn about the very beginning of the affair; what you knew or didn't know, what you expected.

    Maybe it's just the sissy pov, but it's always struck me as obvious and sad how these things unfold. I'm always suprised that (the collective) You are suprised and hurt when you realize you are being treated like chattle.

    sss
    xoxo

     
  • At 08 March, 2009, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    How do you feel reviewing your old observations and sending them into the world? I read some of my old notes a few nights ago and time travelled from a strong but melancholy me into a raw and weak girl who let her defences down. And probably will again.

     
  • At 08 March, 2009, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I'm non-Christian, and I find I have a difficult time dealing with people who profess that faith in particular, then do deceitful, lousy, hurtful things to other people. It's not that people of other faiths don't do that - they do, of course - it's just that there's this sort of public trumpeting of virtues the trumpeters rarely seem to have or aspire to. I suppose that's also true of trumpeters of just about anything, religious or otherwise. The louder someone's shouting about being kind, loving, tolerant, honest...whatever, the less likely I am to assume it's the truth.

     
  • At 09 March, 2009, Blogger O said…

    Thanks everyone for all the comments. I think I might have to write more about the religion issue.

    Boy Next Door, Aren't you kind to remember what I'd written. Thank you

    mnwhr, yes, very interesting. One of the problems with lying to others is that it fosters self-deception too. (i don't exclude myself from that category, of course)

    L, I'm so glad you're still around. I hope things are going well for you.

    alphagirl, I owe you an email. I've been thinking of you.

    loving annie, You're right, of course. I'm sorry for all you went through. I can't imagine that.

    button, I see that like me, you retain the Catholic's preoccupation with moral shadings. Yes, I find it blasphemous. Right word.

    sss, good questions. It is really obvious, isn't it? I'll have to think more about how to answer that.

     
  • At 09 March, 2009, Blogger O said…

    thedirtyblonde,

    Good question. I feel... strange. I couldn't publish these things at the time, and I can't rewrite them now. It's disorientating. As a blogger I have always struggled with the public/private line, and it has gotten more complicated, not less. I find I don't want to write about what's going on with me now, and when I do it's in a very different way.
    It's also painful. It reveals aspects about my own character that I do not particularly like.

     
  • At 09 March, 2009, Blogger O said…

    LM, my fellow Larkin fan. I need to write more about religion I think. It was a huge factor for us. You're right. A big part of his character is bound up with his faith...

    I really need to write about this separately and address some of what you, button, Annie and thedirtyblonde have said.

    Thank you for giving me much to think about.

     
  • At 09 March, 2009, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I been meaning to give you this as well, and have been forgetting. You've probably already run across it, but this is the last poem I can remember making me want to grab people and shout "READ THIS NOW!"

    Shirt

     
  • At 09 March, 2009, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    "She is his other half, but I am his other self, the secret one."

    No one writes things with your clarity. It's like reading a really good wine.

     
  • At 11 March, 2009, Blogger Kimberly said…

    Transient is the perfect word. As always, you hit it exactly on the head!

     
  • At 21 March, 2009, Blogger Dangerous Lilly said…

    Its funny, I became accustomed to "the wife" "my wife" and then soon nicknames of the not-nice variety (they're not happy, obviously) but what hit me hard was the first time he used her name.

    Made her a little more real. It was hard, and I didn't like it.

     
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