thoughts on marriage, 2

read previous entry first.....

since so many marriages, 50% i think it is, end in divorce, clearly the promises of "forever" have little or no meaning. the struggles and strains of a committed relationship are the same, whatever the external trappings, rules, regulations. the divorce rate shows that the supposed "supports" of society for "marriage" don't really help all that much.

the reason i can pick a mood (sad) from the pathetic roster of moods above is that something happened today which has made me reflect on an event in this lengthy relationship.  the event which almost ended us five years ago.  this is more personal information than a public journal should contain, but my mind is entirely overwhelmed by this.  during a time of extreme stress on both G and myself, i had an affair with another woman who had been our friend. a really stupid thing, a thing i regret deeply. everyone got badly hurt, and everyone behaved badly at some point. the woman (we'll call her M) involved ended up with a good friend of mine and moved across the country; G and i endured several years of hell working thru the pain of the affair plus the issues underlying my foolish decision.  for four years the two resulting couples have had no contact.  bitterness for some, bewilderment and confusion for others. feelings never resolved.

this morning a friend called to tell me M died last night, suddenly and unexpectedly, although she'd been in the hospital for several weeks.  she was only 49.  a painful situation ends painfully.  bad behavior will never be redeemed.  i am in shock, in pain, in disarray.  should i call her partner, my former good friend lost to me for years now because of bitter feelings?  should i let the dead past bury its dead?  i need time to let this sink in.  sad, indeed. 

if G and i had been "married," chances are we would have gotten a "divorce" over the whole thing.  as it was, we had to marshall all possible resources of heart and character to talk, fight, cry, yell, throw things, hold each other, spend time apart, talk to those who loved us both, threaten suicide, slam doors, etc. 

June 3, 2004
i'm back with a little addendum to this entry now.  because krobbie asked in her most recent entry a question from her Book of Why - the question is what is the biggest (worst?) mistake you've ever made in your life.  the above story is mine, hands down.  for so many reasons.  all the people i hurt when i had the affair, my partner, my longtime friend (who turns out to have been involved with M during the time she and i were having the affair), M herself, and in some terrible way i haven't yet recovered from - myself.  there's a poem in the play Colored Girls where the woman talks to a lover who has "run off wit all her stuff" and she wants it BACK.  her "stuff" is not material goods, her "stuff" is her ego, her self esteem, her sense of worth and dignity and goodness, her very self itself.  these are the things i lost in that episode of my life.  and have not really entirely recovered.  feel i may never recover entirely.  i never gave myself away in that total a fashion, and have never been injured that badly.  because M died, there is so much that can never be resolved in any way.

i did have a meeting, in March, with L, the friend who ended up in an actual realtionship with M.  it was short and strange and sad.  we have had to contact since then, but i think we should - and i'm trying to decide how to do it. 

i know people have affairs, relationships, breakups, etc all the time, every day, millions of people.  this was the mistake that felt like a dirty bomb that blew up the person i thought i was, that G thought i was, that i would like to be again.  and never will be.  G and i are in an okay place, most of the time, we have such a deep friendship that we cannot imagine life w/o one another.  there's bomb crater in there, though, no matter how hard we try to make it go away.