The short life of a blogger

Well, everyone, this is my last post, at least for now. It seems that my posts were getting in the way of my relationship, so I am going to leave it for now, until Steve and I are both in a better place. It's been fun and illuminating to write this. Maybe when I come back, things will seem funnier. Adios and have a great summer!

Sloppy Second Thoughts

So would I do it all again? Well, I can say it's been a lot harder than I thought it would be. I can also say that I love Steve even more than I loved him before we moved in together. I have never felt about anyone the way I feel about him. Can you feel a big but (no, not a big butt, although there's one of those, too) coming on?

In the past month, I've realized that if I knew everything I know now, I would not have leaped. That doesn't mean that I want to end it---I don't. But I'd have done things differently. Steve pushed me until I had no options but to leap right then. Well, I shouldn't say I had no options. But he was very persuasive. I told him that I wanted to wait what was then five years, until Tom was out of high school. He said we had no way of knowing what five years would bring. I suggested three years---Alex would be almost out of high school, and Tom would be well situated. No, three years was too long as well. He told me, "I'm an impatient man. I want what I want when I want it." He moved into the mother-in-law suite they had downstairs in their house. Once he was in that suite, and had told Alex that he was planning to move out entirely, his impatience increased. He made calls to my house phone late at night when I didn't answer my cell. He even made a call to Tom's phone once. He told me that he felt like he'd done everything to move things forward and I still wasn't moving. I steeled myself and told Mark I wanted a divorce. No need to get into all of the details, but Mark wasn't destroyed, just inconvenienced.

Steve, in the meantime, had a talk or two with Ann, but never got anything settled. I went through my entire divorce and moved in with Steve, but things were never spelled out clearly on his side. One of the odd features of all of this is that Pennsylvania used to be a common-law state, and people who lived together before common law marriages were abolished may still be subject to the rules. Steve saw a lawyer who told him there were no grounds to believe that he would accidentally find himself married, but he never followed through with anything. So there is a chance that Steve could be married, and I, who actually got married, am divorced. Sloppy enough for you?

I am actually rather old-fashioned about some things. Back when Steve was courting me, he twice made oblique, semi-marriage proposals. No, they weren't get-down-on-his-knee-and-give-her-a-ring proposals, but he definitely expressed his desire that we be married. "KJM is good," he said, referring to my initials, "but KJC is better." It was my understanding that he wanted to be married when I was free. He even discussed where with me. I remember feeling a little nervous about that because of my credit score, but I guess there is some law now that says your credit score doesn't transfer to your spouse. I expected that moving in together was a step towards marriage, but since we moved in together, there has been no talk of marriage. And, of course, we can't be married until all of his legal entanglements are worked out.

So, one reason I would not leap so quickly again is because, when I decided to ask Mark for the divorce, I did so because I felt like I was not doing my part. I was dragging my feet and Steve had gone through great trouble and pain to hold up his side of the bargain. Well, since then, it seems that Steve has had second thoughts. He has, to my relief, started to do things to make me feel a bit more as if we are a unit. He's added me to his insurance, made me his emergency contact. But I still think he'd rather be back home, miserable with Ann, but not guilt-ridden over Alex. Alex, by the way, is doing just fine with everything. He is excelling in school, has a girlfriend, and seems perfectly well adjusted. It is Tom who has had problems adjusting, because of course, more has changed for him. He is the one who moved houses, at the same time he was changing schools. And I have tried to make him feel comfortable here, but he doesn't, particularly. He's doing well in school this year after a rough freshman year, but he still doesn't seem happy.

Which brings me to my second reason. Tom. I talked about making Mark unhappy, but I didn't fully realize how much everything would unsettle Tom. Steve tries, he really does, but he is so torn up by the idea that he is not living with Alex that he usually barely tolerates Tom. He chastises him for things that he should just let slide. A small example: We had dinner for Jenna (her husband was supposed to come but had to work) and my friend Sally, who'd come down from New York. Tom was happy and engaged, especially seeing Jenna, whom he likes a lot. It was great to see him so happy. I put guacamole and chips on the table right before we served the rest of the meal. I probably should have put it out sooner, maybe in the living room, but I didn't. Tom, who loves my guacamole, took a chip and dipped it. Steve immediately said, "Tom, wait until everyone is served to start eating." Tom said, politely, "I'm sorry, I thought it was an appetizer." I said, "I did, too." Steve said, "Well, it wouldn't be on the table...blah blah" Then, "Jesus Christ!" And Tom was deflated. Not a huge deal, but just enough to make him feel uncomfortable. And to make me feel wracked with guilt. Alex does a couple of things I find a little rude, but I try to make him feel comfortable. Whenever I tell Steve this, he just gets mad. He cannot get the idea that maybe he should be cutting Tom some slack until Tom feels more comfortable. Instead, he seems to take Tom's discomfort as a slight, so it keeps escalating. Back when they first met, Tom really liked Steve, because Steve was trying to win Tom over. So if I had to do it over again, I would put Tom's well-being ahead of my own.

Reason three has to do with that cliffhanger I talked about---Steve's time in San Francisco. I am not going to go into all the details---yet, but you have probably already figured out that he met someone there. This is not a nameless one-night, or two-night stand, this is a woman he talks to, texts, and IMs daily---or at least did until recently. I asked him to stop communicating with her (in e-mail, my favorite way to have difficult discussions, LOL), and he sent back a sort of "code" e-mail that implied he would stop. But usually when Steve makes oblique references, it means he's not doing what he's hinting at. And given that this was after almost a month of his knowing just how much this bothered me, I am going to guess that he hasn't stopped communicating. I can't find out, though, because he has put a password on his phone (that's how I found out to begin with) and has changed all the passwords he so freely gave me a couple of years ago, for his e-mail, computer, etc. I don't think she's that important to him, but I also have discovered that I am not important enough for him to do anything that he doesn't want to. And that's the big reason I would not do it again. I leaped because I wanted more than anything else in the world to make this man happy, because I was absolutely, positively sure that he would do the same for me. And now I know that he would not. So my love for him is permanently tinged by the fact that I am more hung up on him than he is on me.

Coffee Talk

Don't you hate cliffhangers? Especially when they aren't resolved quickly? Don't worry, I'll get to San Francisco. And Las Vegas, too, for that matter. But I started sounding like too much of a sad sack, when really, I'm not like that (ha! you say). So I thought I'd talk about something near to my heart that I love. Coffee.

Coffee actually plays a big part in Steve's and my romance. We met at Starbucks and then Panera (free WiFi). We both absolutely loved coffee, but Steve was the connoisseur. He was the person who turned me on to Starbuck's African blends. He bought Kenya, then I found Sidamo, which has just a hint of citrus in it.

So much of our romantic history has links to coffee and coffee shops. We met, as I said, at coffee shops when we were falling in love. After he started a new job in Princeton, I would drop Tom off and then go to Starbucks and buy him a double-cupped Americano (and me a Skinny Vanilla Latte) and take it to his office. We would sit in the parking lot for a few minutes before he went back into work.


When we decided that we had to go give it one more try at our respective homes, for the sakes of Alex and Tom, we said good-bye in a Starbucks. We agreed not to communicate for six weeks and then decide what to do. I cried, he had tears in his eyes. The next morning, he called me shortly after I dropped Alex off at school. "Come to me, Katie," he said. He was waiting at Panera. I did. I could not not meet him. After that, we still agreed that we would make a decision on the appointed day, we just wouldn't go "cold turkey." We agreed to meet, yet again, at Panera, if we wanted to continue seeing each other. I got there, my usual early self. I sat and waited. He is usually not ridiculously early the way I am, but he is always on time. The appointed meeting time---9am---came and went and I started to get panicky. It was really only about 9:07 when he showed up, but in those seven minutes, my whole life flashed before my eyes. I could not bear life without him, I thought. I wondered how long I should wait. We'd agreed not to call, but should I? Well, at 9:07, he came running in with roses. He'd wanted to commemorate the occasion, but he'd gotten into a slow line at the market. When I saw him, with his distinctive, jaunty walk, coming across the street (I was sitting at a window), my heart leapt, I broke into a huge smile, and I felt as happy as I'd ever felt in my life.

The rest, as they say, is history.

So, now we are living together, and work schedules and the fact that we don't have to steal minutes out of the day to see each other has meant that my bringing coffee to his office slowed and then stopped. But we still enjoyed long, leisurely mornings on the weekends, drinking coffee and reading the New York Times in bed. I told you in my previous post that I'd been touched that Steve started jumping out of bed to be the one to make coffee and get the paper---I tried to split it 50/50---until I realized that while the coffee was brewing, he was chatting to women with names like "SexKitten4U" online.

But something else stopped the whole coffee-sharing experience, and it's one of those things that make you feel foolish, but wistful at the same time. Steve decided one day to give up coffee. I know I shouldn't take it as rejection or feel insecure about it, but I am, as you probably know by now, a little crazy. It was so much a part of of courtship, and one of the best parts of my weekend mornings. Not that I still don't have coffee---Steve still runs down to make it (see paragraph 6). And he makes himself, or I make him, tea. But it's not the same. We no longer share opinions about new coffee types. We don't give each other the Starbucks MP3 of the week (you get those in the stores). His giving up coffee has sort of eliminated a whole bunch of Christmas stocking ideas, although I've tried to switch over. This must be how drinkers feel when one of their crowd goes to AA. I'm assuming Steve quit because he was over-caffeinating himself at work. But that's one of the mildly annoying things about this. He would not tell me why he quit. He used to buy 1/2 regular/ 1/2 decaf to put in his coffee maker. When you do that, you're drinking about the same amount of caffeine as you are in tea. But he will not go back to it at all, even for a "special occasion." And even though I know it's stupid, it does feel a little like a rejection, as if he suddenly stopped liking some movie star whose movies we used to go to. Mark, by the way, never liked coffee---or tea. He has never drunk any grown-up beverage. He doesn't drink water. He drinks Coke. So I think maybe when Steve and I were learning about each other, I attached more importance to the coffee because of that. Here's a grown-up, I said. And, more important, here's someone who likes what I like.

Oh, well. I should probably give it up anyway.

Sex, Fidelity and Trust

I've thought about this whole subject a lot over the years, and with all the stories in the news, it seems particularly timely today. What do we see? Men cheating, people condemning, and families shattering. If you saw the Sex and the City movie, there was a really good, if extreme, example of a smart, independent woman---Miranda---almost ending her marriage over her Steve's indiscretion. For those of you who didn't see it, Miranda had pretty much stopped having sex with Steve because she was tired and stressed. The last time they had sex, she told him to "get it over with." A short time later, a tearful Steve confessed that he'd had sex with someone else. Just sex, nothing else. Miranda moved out. She said that what she couldn't get over was the breach of trust. Well, that seemed all wrong to me. Steve was horny and he slept with a woman. His relationship with Miranda was important enough that he didn't want to keep it secret from her, so he told her. That doesn't really seem to be breaking a trust. If you've seen SATC, you know that Miranda (and the rest of the women on the show) have had a lot of sex with a lot of different men over the years. It always seems odd to me when women who've had casual sex act like just that sex act is so much more important than everything else that goes into making a marriage or a relationship.

Also, it seems fairly obvious that men and women are hardwired differently. Even though there are a lot of powerful women out there these days, you don't get that many stories about women having sex with men other than their husbands. When you do, it's usually one other man and they are having an emotional affair because something is lacking in their marriage or relationship. There are no female equivalents to Bill Clinton or Tiger Woods because women, generally, are more naturally monogamous. Both sexes are programmed by nature to be the way they are. Men are supposed to spread their seed; women are supposed to stay and protect their offspring.

So I thought I had it all figured out. Here's the problem with infidelity, I said. We expect men to conform to a way of life that is not natural to them. There are, of course, some men who adapt quite happily to a monogamous lifestyle. The benefits outweigh the costs. But I'd say most men, or at least most highly sexed men, at some point either resent their partners because they are keeping them from sex with someone else, or, more likely, cheat on their partners and lie and cover up. It's the lying and covering up that break down the relationship, not the sex. So Steve and I struck a deal fairly early in our relationship. (I still have the e-mails discussing some of it.) He said that sharing was the most important thing, in general. He'd also told me, early on, that he couldn't even pronounce monogamy, much less practice it. Our deal, therefore, was that if he felt like having sex with someone else, he should do so. The only two things I asked was that he wear a condom and tell me about it. Now, I am a fairly insecure person, so it seems masochistic to ask him to tell me about sex with other women. But if he tells me, he takes the fear out of it for me. She might have longer legs or fewer wrinkles, or a smaller ass, but he's telling me about her, which means I am important and she is not. He could also continue his pornography viewing and chatting with women online. Although I didn't love it, it didn't really bother me more than a lot of other things we do that annoy our partners.

The trouble with deals like this, of course, is that we each have our own ideas of what's included. My approach was a sort of Weight Watchers approach. If you've ever been to Weight Watchers, you'll understand this. Their idea is that too many people go on "diets" and see them as all-or-nothing propositions. So if you fall off the wagon, you think your diet is over and you just chuck the whole thing, probably ending up gaining more weight than you lost. So for sex, I was thinking something like If he's on a business trip, in a bar, and starts chatting up some woman, he should just go for it without feeling likes he's betraying me or ruining the relationship.

We have a very good, very frequent sex life, so it didn't seem that there would be much need for him to actively look for more. Well, I was wrong. He is, it seems, a sexual glutton, and some of it has been beyond my capacity to overlook. We will have sex on a Saturday morning and he will go downstairs to make coffee for us. Nice, right? That's what I thought until I realized he was chatting with women and viewing pornography immediately after we'd had sex. That's a little disconcerting. He also left a chat up (and yes, I know I shouldn't have read it) that talked about setting up a meeting with a woman. He told her I wasn't sexually adventurous. I thought that probably he was just chatting and wouldn't really meet, but my curiosity got the better of me, I put an ad on Craigslist, and ended up making a date to meet him. He showed up and started laughing when he saw me. "If you like pina coladas..." He said he was 90% sure it was me because of some of the chat/e-mail exchanges. We talked about the part of our agreement that he was breaking---the "tell me" part. He says it's more exciting not to tell. Well, I don't want specifics, but there's a difference between not telling and hiding, and he seems incapable of the transparency he said he desired. He went to Chicago on business and I told him to pick someone up while he was there, try to get it out of his system. He says he did, but I'm not 100% sure. He may have just been humoring me.

I do think there is something other than sex going on here. This has been a hard year and I think we each have had some problem adjusting. I also think he has always compartmentalized everything. He and his wife seem to have gone their own ways almost from the beginning, and he told me repeatedly that he and Ann share none of the same interests. He wanted to share; he craved a close emotional relationship unlike anything he'd had previously. But I think he is also scared of getting that close to someone and his way of dealing with it is by keeping a little part of himself hidden from me. So, I reasoned, I just needed to be patient and things would work out. And even if some of it was ego bruising, it was just what I'd said didn't matter---casual sex.

And then he went to San Francisco on business.

Tom

I go back and forth in my thinking about Tom and what effect this whole thing has had on him. For the most part, he seems fine. He has good friends, he's doing fairly well in school, and he is, in many ways, a very mature, together kid. But he used to be a very happy kid, too, and he doesn't seem that way to me, at least not at home. There are a lot of things going on here, of course. He's sixteen---aren't most 16-year-olds sort of permanently pissed off at their parents? Also, a lot of his friends's families have a lot more money than we do. That means that he spends more time at their giant houses than they do at our townhouse---I feel perpetually behind in hosting. This would not have been any different if we'd stayed in the house with Mark; it was smaller than this place is. We probably should have thought more about entertaining and other things when we rented the place, but to be honest, it took Steve so long to find something he liked that I just jumped at it. And it is in a great location; it just doesn't have a basement or any other space for easy entertaining.

So Tom stays over at his friends' houses and then comes home and sleeps the day away. I never know how much is surly 16-year-old and how much is that he feels out of place down in the living room with us. When Alex comes over, he spends some time downstairs with us, watching TV, etc. Tom, who lives here most of the time, spends that time in his room.

This is one of those things that I should have understood/thought about more fully when Steve and I decided to live together. Steve, and especially Ann, run a much tighter ship than I ever have. I also tend to make allowances for circumstances, probably too much, while Steve does not, particularly. Well, he makes allowances for Alex, but not for Tom. That's to be expected since Alex is here so little (Ann is a master of making sure it's as difficult as possible for Alex to be here, while pretending to be accommodating.)

Tom was a remarkable young child. This is not just mother love. He got noticed wherever he went. He talked exceptionally early for a boy and was very good at starting conversations with everyone. He is still amazingly good at interacting with people. He is not quite so good at working hard. A lot of things came easily to him when he was younger, and although he's getting better, he still does not see the relationship between work and reward. If you criticize some writing or something that he's done, he takes it as a personal criticism of him. But that's really just with me---he's great with his teachers.

The thing I feel guilty about is that I did what many people in bad marriages do---what my own mother did. I compensated for the lack of a relationship with my husband by paying an incredible amount of attention to Tom. So now, when I have a normal relationship with Steve, Tom feels like he's not getting enough attention, even though I still do an incredible amount with and for him---well, more for him these days, but that's his choice. He'd rather have Mom drive him and his friends to the movies than go to the movies with Mom. But for Mother's Day, he went with me to see Iron Man 2.

These relationships with our kids are part of what make Steve's and my relationship so much more difficult. Our relationship has to be really great to compensate for all the upset we've caused ourselves and others. It's a pretty tall order. But so far, most of the time, I still think it was worth it. And most of the time, I think Tom will be just fine, we'll be just fine.

The Other Side

My only post that has excited comment (except from my friends) was the one about Steve's anger-management problem. So here's the flip side. First, things always look worse in print. You grouse to your friends or something and someone makes a joke and it's not that bad. You write it down and it sounds much, much worse. Steve has read some of my stuff and, just as I would do (and I do this a lot), he skipped over all the nice things I said and ended up being hurt by the bad things.

So here's my confession: my temper is different from Steve's, but just as ungovernable. At the risk of sounding too much like a granola eater, we are both Pisces, and we are both subject to mood swings. We're also too sensitive to the other's moods. We both get frustrated. I am just somewhat more insecure than he is, so while he gets mad, I get whiny and needy and apologetic and he says, "Why are you always apologizing for everything?" "Sorry," I respond.

This is a vicious circle. Part of what frustrates me is Steve's shutting down; becoming emotionally unreachable, not telling me things. I go along, asking questions and trying to find out what's going on. Eventually, usually fueled with wine, I blow. And I am horrible when I blow. Tom says that there's another person inside me who comes out. I have a different voice and say whatever I can, true or not, to wound. I throw things. I am just not as strong as Steve, so I've never broken a door. So then Steve says the reason he does not tell me things he thinks I won't like is because of my "vitriol." And I say horrific,you-can't-take-them-back things when I do yell. This last time, I impugned the size of Steve's manhood. Any guys who are out there, here's a secret: that is an incredibly easy target for any man except, probably, a John Holmes. In fact, almost everyone fits in that "average" category, both men and women. For the record, Steve is somewhat to the right of center on the bell curve, at least in my experience, but he's still, I guess, close enough to the center for it to be a sore point. And here's a point on which he's a far better person than I: He may yell, or reprimand, about stupid stuff, but he has never made a personally hurtful comment to me, no matter how angry he's gotten. And there is plenty he could say---I am fat, for instance. And he has never made me feel less than sexy and desirable when I am with him. And since I desire him more than I've ever desired anyone, shame on me for saying something like that to him.

So, anyway, I thought it was sort of a commentary on male-female relationships that the two people who commented here were so different in their take on things. As a matter of fact, for a minute, I thought maybe eastcoastbilly was Steve, but he wasn't. I think, to a certain extent, this is the Era of the Woman. So our feelings and wishes are legitimized, and men, acting the way men act, are the "bad guys." Look at Everybody Loves Raymond, or most other sitcoms of that era. The woman is right and the man is wrong, even though they are playing entirely by the woman's rules. So the woman who comments doesn't see all the good things about Steve I've put in previous posts and sees something about his bad temper. The man homes in on the thing that's important to men---sex.

I will talk about the whole sex thing more in another post. Right now, I just want to say that Steve really is a good, generally considerate person, as am I. But we both bring a whole lifetime of baggage and failed relationships. If we were emotionally healthy people, we would probably not be where we are now. I yelled and screamed and did something Steve has never done to me---thank heavens---I pummeled him around the head and shoulders. I was so frustrated and hurt and mad before I blew. But the good thing is, I think, that we both care---even if it takes destructive forms sometimes. With Mark, I was sort of in a coma for years. I never got this upset because I'd just shut down. The only person I cared about was Tom. So I wouldn't trade my relationship with Steve for anything---overall, it's the best time I've ever had.

My Work

So I've told you all the bad decisions I've made, but I haven't talked about what I'm doing now, work-wise. I am an adjunct instructor at a community college. I edit books as a freelancer as well. This was another bad decision I made, by the way. My plan was to finish grad school when Tom was small and then get a full-time teaching position. I didn't take two things into account: 1) Mark lost his job and I could not keep paying for my doctoral studies, so I am somewhere between an undeclared master's degree and a doctorate; and 2) it makes no sense to go back, because there are pretty much no full-time positions out there. Unless you have some weird specialty that is currently in demand.

Instead, I get to go teach my classes for about a fourth of what the full-timers make, with no benefits. The consolation is that the education industry is so screwed up that I have a whole lot of company. Regardless of what the union tells you, here is the truth: Adjunct instructors, some with excellent credentials and some with dubious credentials, make up about 75% of the instructors at community colleges. The other 25% are full-time faculty. So that the college is not accused of getting around paying benefits to adjuncts who are really full-time, we are only allowed to teach 75-80% of the load of a full-time instructor. A part-timer, therefore, has about 12 class-hours, or 3 classes per week to a full-timer's 4 classes per week. The adjunct must be observed, and must follow minimum guidelines for paper assignments, etc. The full-timers, for their 25% additional class time, are paid about four times the salary and receive incredible benefits. Once they make tenure, they are never reviewed or observed and cannot be fired except under extreme circumstances. They can bunch their classes so they are only on campus two or three days a week. And they never have to retire. I don't know why they don't retire anyway, because education is one of the last places where you can still get a defined benefit pension, and it's a really good one. But a lot of people evidently want to keep coming to their offices, even those who don't want to work, so there are no full-time positions opening up.

Why am I telling you all this? Because it drives me crazy! It turns out that I am a good teacher. I care and I work hard to make sure my students learn. For three classes, I probably work about a forty-hour work week (this will go down somewhat as I teach the same classes over again). But I can't live on what I'm paid for that work week, and the guy in the next office is making quite a nice living and giving fewer assignments so he doesn't have to grade. And it's all your tax dollars! A big part of the reason for all of this is that people have been sold a bill of goods as far as education is concerned. Everyone thinks they need degrees, but they have no interest in or ability for real, college-level study. So they come to us---thirteenth grade. When they get out, many of them are surprised to find that everyone out in the real world knows it's thirteenth grade. They can't get jobs that go instead to the graduates of Stanford or even the good state schools. And if they do well enough, they can go to those state schools for their last two years (the community colleges are two-year schools), but they find that, lo and behold, a lot of their credits don't transfer because, again, everyone knows that "college math" at the community college was what people were supposed to learn by ninth grade. So what is the purpose, then? To give a few people who would be otherwise unemployable really cushy jobs. And to keep kids off the streets until they mature a little.

And since I know all of this, I am a part of the problem. But, hey, would you want unemployment to go up even more?

What I Love about Steve

So Steve read my post about his anger-management problems and, you guessed it, got a little angry. Not door-breaking angry, but sort of hurt-angry. I think he also read a comment someone made, where she told me to dump him. Well the problem with a blog is that is it necessarily one-sided, and usually written when passions are running high. So you're going to get a skewed view. Remember in Bridget Jones's Diary (my all-time favorite movie---Jenna and I saw it in theaters over fifteen times), when Mark Darcy reads Bridget's diary and gets miffed? Bridget had been angry at something Mark did and wrote really awful things about him in the diary. He walked out after reading the diary, but then did something that very few people do---he reflected on the incident.

And that's one of the things I love about Steve. He's a hothead, absolutely. So, for that matter, is Jenna, who has been my closest friend for over thirty years. It's the way they are. Mark (my ex, not Mark Darcy) is the opposite of a hothead. You never even feel like he's listening to what you are saying; you can't get a reaction. A lot of times, I used to end up screaming at him because I just wanted to know he was paying attention. I never have that problem with Steve. And please don't tell me that there's never an excuse for violence and Steve broke a door. He broke the door; he didn't lay a finger on me! I, who generally do not have that kind of explosive temper, once flung a plate of spaghetti at Mark. And Jenna takes the cake. She once, in a fit of premenstrual pique, picked up a 19-inch television, carried it down the stairs, and threw it out into the snow.

So, anyway, what I love about Steve is that he always takes what I say seriously and then tries to do the right thing. This relationship has been very difficult because of all kinds of external things. Let's face it, both of us have failed at past relationships. So it's so nice that, even if he gets mad upon first hearing or reading, he goes back and regroups. Many times, because I am unable to articulate what is bothering me, I send him e-mails. He responds to each point I make using a different color and sends it back to me. You might not like that, but I do. So this time, I told him I wasn't feeling very appreciated for my good points. All I wanted was for him to tell me what it was that he liked about me. We all tend to focus on people's shortcomings; it takes a conscious effort to instead remember the good things, and then to share them with the other person. Since then, that is what Steve has been doing. I love getting the e-mails (again, the way he sends me most of these little notes).

Examples:

I love your sense of humour and I love that we laugh at the same things.

You are a very caring, nice person. I admire you for that.

I like that you do not seem to have the same hangups that other women have about my "roving eye." All men are like this, and it's nice that you recognize that some men just hide the looking better. (More on this in a later blog.)

These are things I think are good about me, and it's nice that Steve appreciates them. I have sent Steve some of the things I admire as well. I've told him I like his enthusiasm for life, his sense of wonder at learning new things, and his sense of humor (I spell it the American way, LOL).

Yesterday, he left a little post-it with a heart on it on my PC so that I found it after he went to work. Then, later in the day, he sent me a poem. Not just any poem, but one that I had sent him back when our love was new and exciting: John Donne's "The Good Morrow":

I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear ;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west ?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.


All of this made my heart beat faster and remember why we put ourselves through all this trouble. We really are each other's world. But sometimes it's hard to "watch not one another out of fear." Everyone have doubts, but amor vincit omnia.

A Short Fuse and a Large Chip on His Shoulder

Hear that? That's the sound of the other shoe dropping. Or the sound of people clapping, if you think I haven't been punished for my actions (I know my sister's out there!) If you read through my last couple of blogs, I know you were thinking it was all too good to be true. I mean, there's a man shortage, according to all the women's magazines, and men go for younger women, etc., etc. For a while, when I was feeling smugly superior (as loving and being loved as a tendency to do to us), I would have told you, "Well, it's because of my attitude---that's what attracts men---a positive, enthusiastic attitude." Or, if I were feeling mushier, I'd have said that it was sheer dumb luck that brought Steve and me together, but we were the people that were meant to be together---soul mates. And I guess I would still say that. But let me tell you, it hasn't all been a bed of roses.

So what's the problem? Well, one of the bigger problems is Steve's temper. Or lack of tolerance. Or both. Here's an example: the reason I haven't posted over the last several days is because the Internet connection was down. These things happen. It was a pain in the butt for me, because I had a deadline yesterday and ended up going to Panera (they have free wifi, thank heavens) during a two-hour break in my day and rushing through the stuff I had to send. Steve is really good about trying to fix things when they break, but sometimes he works on them for too long when it becomes obvious we're going to need outside help. So he went and got a new wireless router, because he thought that might be the problem, and it turned out not to be. We ended up having to call Comcast and I had to wait home for them yesterday. No big deal, as long as my deadline was met. And for Steve, it meant checking his e-mails over the weekend on his iPhone and then going to work on Monday and using the wifi there. Really no big deal. But he gets frustrated and then reminds me of a two-year-old having a temper tantrum. Nothing is right. So, he did that and then had trouble with a light fixture (that was, admittedly, poorly installed by our corner-cutting landlord). The combination was enough to send him into a frenzy. I watched and said, "Sorry" a bunch of times. Here's the conversation:

"This shoddy construction bothers me, but it doesn't seem to bother you!

"You're right, it is shoddy, I just don't think there's anything we can do about it!"

"I've had enough---I'm going to the pub!" (Funny that the minute an Englishman wants to storm out, he reverts to going to the pub, even though we don't actually have one.)

"Can I come with you?"

"I thought you were working." (The deadline to which I was referring.)

"Yeah, but I'm almost done---I could go." (My mistake.)

"I'm sorry. I wouldn't be very good company."

"OK, then, go. No problem." He storms out. He's gone for a few minutes. He storms back in.

"I figure if I'm going to sit outside someplace, it may as well be here." He takes the paper and goes outside. I continue working. Now when I said I was "almost finished," I had maybe an hour of work left to do. I knew I'd be able to get it done by Tuesday (this was Sunday). The big problem was going to be coordinating waiting for the Comcast guy and going to Panera to send stuff in.

So about twenty minutes later, Steve came back in from the patio and says, "I thought you said you were almost finished! How long are you going to be? I've been waiting for you!" Remember, he wasn't waiting for me---at least as far as I know. He'd told me I wasn't welcome.

All this probably seems like no big deal to you, and I admit, I am overly sensitive about being yelled at, but if this is where it ended, it would be no big deal. Instead, after a bunch of back-and-forth good mood/bad mood episodes, by the time we go to bed, Steve has worked himself up into a frenzy and the belief that absolutely everything is my fault. And this is where it starts to get really, really frustrating. We repeat patterns, they say, and the way I act when Steve gets into these moods is the way I acted as a child with my mother. The reason for that is they both do the same thing. I remember my mother saying to me one time, "I'm sorry, Katherine." As I started to say, "That's OK, Mom," she continued, "I'm sorry Katherine, but I just don't like you."

Steve, that night, said, "I'm sorry, Kate." I thought he was apologizing for his bad mood until he continued,"This (our relationship) is no good. It's not working out." As he veers from mood to mood, I walk around on tiptoes. Until I get so frustrated I start calling him names. (I didn't do that with my mother.) He becomes more and more generally hurtful. I am stupid, superior-acting, incompetent, "No wonder Mark didn't like you," etc., etc. I crumble under these attacks, which just makes it worse. Here are some of the results of the last couple of years: He got mad at something minor in a restaurant and started saying such nasty things to me I started crying. We left the restaurant with him even more nasty and mad, and he backed his car into someone else's car in the parking lot. Hard. That was an expensive tantrum. Another time, he kept yelling at me---Oh, not yelling. He accuses me of yelling and says he never does---reprimanding me and it was getting worse and worse, so I went upstairs. He followed so I locked myself in Tom's room and he broke down the door so he could keep yelling at---oops, reprimanding---me.

So I can be annoying. My whiny "don't yell at me" attitude is probably hard to live with when you're spoiling for a fight. But Steve is impossible. The fact that I am an innocent bystander to his frustration and I end up being the person responsible for all his dissatisfaction drives me crazy. And women are supposed to be the ones who bring up the kitchen sink in arguments, so why is it that, when I argue with Steve, something that starts out with the Internet not working ends up with a discussion of my shortcomings? The problem is, I'd like to fight back, but I am cowed. I forgive almost before the end of an argument.

Disclaimer: Steve and I have been discussing this, and while I feel cowed, his take on it is that he doesn't like to bring things up because of my "attacks of vitriol." What I see is that after he goes at me for quite a while, if I don't start crying, I start fighting back. And once I get into that mode, I am pretty cutting. I do say things that are vitriolic on those occasions. But I think that's been between four and six times since we've been together. Most of the time, I know he's starting to get mad and I start to try to make him happy. It's just the way I am; I can barely remember what made me mad. But Steve nurses his grudges. He can be completely unreasonable and mad at the world in general and taking it out on me, but the next morning, when I try to act as if nothing happened, he is the one who is still mad. I absolutely hate this cycle, because I am back to my childhood, trying to keep both my parents from getting mad because it is so unpleasant. But I don't know how to make everything more balanced. Any suggestions?

Money Makes the World Go Around

Have you ever noticed that the people who tell you that money can't buy happiness always have more money than they could possibly spend? I swear it's their way of keeping the hoi polloi from revolting. Sure, money can't solve other problems you may have, but think about it---even problems like being sick are made easier with money. At least you can buy the best medical care there is without having to take up a collection. And people swallow it---"Oh, I lost my job and the electricity is going to be shut off, but look at poor Sandra Bullock. Money can't buy happiness." No, but it sure makes unhappiness easier to bear. Your husband may be stepping out on you, too, and having the lights turned off won't make it any easier. Sandy can go to Canyon Ranch to forget about her troubles for a month if she wants.

Steve and I came into this relationship from very different places, moneywise. At one time, I was doing OK. I was never going to be CEO of a company, but I was making a good living and I had a fair amount of money in my 401K and savings plan. I took nice trips and went to the ballet. I bought my co-op in Brooklyn Heights (supposedly at the bottom of the market, but real estate bottoms always occur when a McMahon is trying to sell). Then I married Mark. When we met, as I've said, he was making substantially less than I. But he really liked the business world and I didn't, and he was getting his MBA. By the time I got pregnant, Mark had moved on to a better job, still making slightly less than I was, but he had a future. We were living in my co-op and things were comfortable. We had money (OK, I had money) saved up. There were warning signs. When we were planning the wedding, I kept putting the brakes on and he kept wanting to spend more. I thought it was nice that he wanted a big wedding, so I relented and dipped into my savings to pay for it. I paid for the honeymoon, too. It never really occurred to me that this spending habit of Mark's might get us into trouble.

A bunch of things happened that started getting us a little more behind: first, Mark really wanted to move to the suburbs. I loved Brooklyn, but the co-op was really not big enough once Tom started growing. Well, as I said, the bottom of the market can pretty much be determined by when I decide to sell. We couldn't sell and rented it out, but our co-op board decided somewhat capriciously not to let us continue to rent, even though our neighbors were renting. We sold at a slight loss about six months before the market started to take off. Two years after we'd sold, we could have made three or four times the price I'd paid. Still, things were not bad, we still had some money, and we bought a modest house in the same town I'd grown up in. What I didn't know was that the schools in the town I'd grown up in had changed from mediocre to really, really bad. I was working part-time from home at this point and Mark was still doing well at work. My first clue that the schools were not that great was when I took a job teaching test prep at the school and found out that they'd taken the doors off the toilet stalls so that teachers could always see what the kids were doing. Then Jenna's son got beaten up on a school bus and the bus driver did nothing. We decided to send Tom to private school.

Then the s- started hitting the proverbial fan. First, I lost my part-time job; they decided they wanted someone to be in the office, first one day a week (OK), then full-time. The office I would have to be in was 60 miles from the house. Mark was working in New York, so it didn't seem like a good idea to be working that far from Tom, and to be honest, I didn't want to be away from Tom all day. At this point, I should probably have figured out a way to make a comparable salary close to home, but I didn't. Instead, I started being a part-time everything. I did some work putting PowerPoint presentations together for people, I taught some classes, I tutored. We were still OK, but I was starting to notice Mark's bad habit of earmarking every $500 for $1500 worth of purchases. You know what I mean: he gets told he's getting a $10K bonus. He tells me he "deserves" a trip because he's been working hard, so even though I just wanted to pay off bills, we go to Italy (we don't spend much on these trips, but still ...). I don't feel like I can say anything because I am not making most of the money. This will become a common theme. You'd think it would have occurred to me that maybe I should figure out how to make more money. Anyway, remember, it's a $10K bonus. That means roughly $7K after taxes. So we take the $3K vacation. Then he decides he needs more of a wardrobe to "present the correct image." He goes out and buys two suits and about 10 Ralph Lauren $85 shirts. There goes another couple of thousand. What does he do next? Decide he needs a new car. By the time he's finished, his $10K bonus has added another $2K to our debt. Plus a lease payment every month.

Meanwhile, while I didn't spend money on myself, I did spend it on Tom. There are very few relatives on both sides and the grandparents who were there didn't lavish Tom with gifts the way some grandparents do. So I tried to make up for it. I admit it, I spent too much there, but when it's your first child, no matter how many people tell you, you don't realize that by the time you pay off his "Thomas the Tank Engine" train set, he will have long since outgrown it. Besides, at that point, I was still optimistically thinking there would be more kids. After all, I'd gotten pregnant with Tom immediately, so I'd have only needed one or two more 5-minute bouts of passion to create a sibling for Tom. Well, I have no way of knowing if that would have been the case, but if I had had another child, things would be even more complicated.

Anyway, we were hobbling along, not paying off our credit cards, but doing all right. We enrolled Tom in a private school. I went back to school to get my certification to teach. Mark found a new expensive hobby---digital photography. Then he lost his job. Five times in about seven years. As I write this, he has been out of work since last May. That didn't stop him from taking Tom on a great trip last June, but it means he is $15K behind on alimony and child support. Every time he loses his job, he calls it a layoff, but he is the only one laid off. And it takes him the better part of a year to find a new job.

I quit school without finishing and started taking more adjunct teaching jobs. And in case you're wondering why he was paying me alimony anyway, it's pretend alimony. By the time we split up, he'd incurred about $50K of credit card debt. He kept refinancing the house, so that there is now a $260K mortgage on a house we paid $160K for. The market crashed; we can't sell the house or even fix it up a little. He is still living there. I agreed to let him pay me $2000 a month in "pretend" alimony and I would pay the credit cards off ($1000 a month on a debt-management plan) and pay for Tom's tuition, or at least a substantial portion of it. He would get the tax write-off. So now, he's long-term unemployed (again), not paying me anything (asks me to give Tom food money when he goes to visit him), and I am stuck with the credit card payments. The school has been very nice and patient about the tuition. I'm making more money now, but Steve is pretty much paying for me (and Tom) to live. And that's where the problem is. I pay as much as I possibly can for groceries, etc., but after the credit card payment and all the expenses that go with raising a teenager, that's not all that much. I tried for quite a while to get a full-time with-benefits job, even one way below what I'd been making 15 years ago, and could not even get a call back. If I'd actually been on interviews, I'd think I was doing something wrong. What I'm doing wrong, it seems, is trying to find a job after the age of 50.

As you can imagine, this has caused a lot of stress in our relationship. I feel constantly like I'm not contributing enough. Steve, at times, feels ill-used. And Mark? Well, Mark thinks he needs a vacation. Thank heavens, he'd just bought himself a brand new luxury car before he lost his job, or he'd need a new car, too.

Soul Mates

So what do I mean when I say Steve and I are soul mates? I may get a little mushy here, so if you have a low tolerance for such things, move on to the next post. I'm sure I'll be complaining about something again soon! What I mean is that our thoughts are connected in so many ways. The first thing I noticed was that we shared a sense of humor. Now that may not seem like much to you, but a lot of people don't get my jokes. I may have laughed at Mark during our relationship, but even in the early days, I did not usually laugh with him. Steve understands my obscure references---most of the time---and finds the same things funny, even when others would find them inappropriate. We laugh at the same movies. We enjoy many of the same activities.

Back when we just started being a public couple, I remember going to a crowded "hang out" bar with Steve. There were no seats at the bar and people were standing around. Steve and I started talking to different people. I just remember looking over at Steve and sharing a glance like the one Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy shared when Lizzy was helping Darcy's sister play the piano. Well, like the glance Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle shared in the BBC version. And I remember my heart catching. It's the kind of thing you see happening in John Hughes movies. Except that we were older than some of the parents in John Hughes movies and it was happening to me for the first time ever. It's a combination of excitement/attraction and comfort/happiness. And if you have never had that kind of romantic relationship, it's incredibly powerful when it hits in your middle years. What made it even better was the post-mortem: when we discussed it after leaving the bar, it was clear that we really had both been feeling the same thing.

We usually understand each other so well in conversation that it is rather jarring when one of us doesn't get the other's reference. Recently, I said something about The Honeymooners and Steve didn't know what The Honeymooners was. I was shocked, until I realized that he'd grown up in England, and even though they broadcast a lot of American TV, evidently Ralph Kramden was not part of the English cultural landscape. This is a far cry from the way things are with other people. I've just gotten used to having to explain everything I say. I remember times when I was married to Mark when what I was saying required so much explanation that the joke was dead before was understood.

In my life, I've had only a couple of people who understand me like that. One is Jenna, who is one of the all-time funniest people I know, and who gets all my references and laughs at my jokes. The other was my friend Terry, who died a few years ago. So I am actually quite lucky, because to have three people in your life who understand you and want the best for you is probably more than most people have. To have one of them want to live with you and share your bed means you are blessed indeed.

Homecoming

Steve came home from his business trip today :) He took the red-eye and slid into bed next to me at about 7 this morning. He's sleeping as I write this. So I changed the settings on this blog so that I could write about---sex. I'm not sure what Google considers adult content, but I figured this way I wouldn't have to worry.

Tom spent the night at his dad's, so when Steve slid into bed this morning, there were no constraints. I'd already awakened and taken off my rather utilitarian nightshirt (I am not a sexy negligee kind of person, and even if I wore one, I couldn't sleep in it---plain cotton Land's End nightshirt is more my style). I was in that sort of half-dozing state, where you hear things but don't open your eyes, when Steve came into the room. I could hear him disrobing behind me, and then he slid into bed and all was right with the world. I felt his naked body move in behind mine and we spooned. I positioned myself closer to him and he said what he always does---"I hope you don't mind if I..." and hugged me close. I said some version of what I always say, "You know I don't mind; I love this."

We slept for a while in each other's arms (well, actually, I was in his arms since that's the way we were facing). I know there are a lot of people in their thirties and younger who think that sexual passion is for the young, but let me tell you, there is nothing better than resuming the sexual part of your life after a long drought. I've told you Steve was the love of my life, but I haven't talked about why. Well, there are a lot of reasons, but sexual attraction is certainly one of them. I see his naked body and I am Pavlov's dog: things start tingling. He is a wonderful lover. There is nothing as good as knowing that this person who excites you more than anyone ever has feels the same way about you. And the closeness, the spooning, just makes me feel like this is home, this is where I'm meant to be. All my doubts and feelings of guilt evaporate when I am in his arms.

What happened next is what always happens. We scootched up as close as possible to one another, my sizable ass pushed into his midsection, and I could feel something start to grow behind me. I turned to face him and---well, just because this is now an adult blog doesn't mean I'm going to share everything. But, as usual, it was wonderful. I love the ferocious look he gets and the way he can't hold back any longer, and I like that I know that when he's finished, he will say, "Sorry, I couldn't help it." And I love afterwards, lying in his arms again and feeling so close. I think that even in our sex-crazed society, we underestimate how important sex is in a relationship. Sharing all those endorphins, knowing that, for those brief minutes, no one can hide or fake anything, makes you incredibly close. It also makes all the doubts you were feeling and the trivial annoyances of living together go away, even though, of course, they'll come back.

Steve fell sound asleep with me in his arms afterwards, and after luxuriating in the feeling for a while, I sidled out of his arms without waking him, stared at his beautiful face and felt my heart swell, and then quietly showered and changed. I tiptoed down the stairs, leaving him to catch up on his sleep for a while, and decided to write about this while it was fresh in my mind, and while all was still right with the world.

Mark

Seems only fair to tell you something about the fourth main player in this drama. Even though he is my ex, he is fourth because, really, he has had less impact on Steve's and my relationship than Ann has. Steve might disagree. Mark is not a bad person, but he is one of the most frustrating people I've even known. And not just frustrating to me. I met Mark at work, years ago. He worked in the back office, on my accounts, when I worked in sales and marketing. People warned me about him---"You have to stay on top of him or he won't do what you need him to do." No truer words were ever spoken. So for the last twenty years, I've been trying to "stay on top of him." And he's rarely done what I needed him to.

This is all my fault, of course. Think about it: people were warning me about him before I ever met him! Yet we ended up having one of the earlier cyber-relationships. This was before chat and IM; e-mails were just something you used at work. But since Mark worked on my accounts, we e-mailed and used the internal messaging system, first to discuss work matters. We then started having more personal conversations.

Second red flag: He was a thirty-year-old man who lived with his parents. Don't do it, ladies! I thought I was being unreasonable. It's not like I emancipated myself from my parents as a teenager or anything, but when I got out of college, I found a job and a (tiny) apartment, and then found a night job when I needed to to make ends meet. Mark, on the other hand, had a really nice car and stereo system; he had a state-of-the-art VCR. And his mommy did his laundry. He told me that no one could afford to live in NJ for what he was making---well, that's true if what you want to afford is a four-bedroom house in Morris County, but of course other people were living on their own, even raising families on that salary.

By the way, the third red flag is: He was thirty and I was thirty-three. Doesn't seem like much of an age difference, really, but combine it with the experience difference, and the IQ difference, and you have a recipe for disaster.

So why did I do it? Well, I thought I was just going out with him for a while. We were like Liz Lemon and Dennis Duffy on Thirty Rock. Mark was easy to go out with, and it was nice to be going out with someone. Then a whole bunch of things happened. My father died. Best friend A (Jenna) moved to California after meeting her future husband at a wedding out there. And best friend B (Will) got laid off and decided to move back to Texas. Then my on-again, off-again boyfriend of many years, Nikos, decided to marry a Greek girl and move back to Greece. (He is now high up in his family's shipping business---talk about a cliché!) Now I'd never thought of Nikos as husband material. He was fun to talk to, I had great stories, and I had great sex. But his leaving at this point made me look around and realize that I was in my thirties and had always assumed that someday, I would have a family.

Mark was much more likely husband material. Most of this was not conscious, by the way. It was just a series of path-of-least-resistance decisions. So, we married. Because by that time I was thirty-five, we decided that we would start trying to have a baby after six months. I got pregnant the first night. So much for women over thirty-five having fertility problems! And so much for any, and I mean absolutely any, sex life. I tried. It started when I was pregnant with Mark saying I could miscarry. Of course, this was nonsense, but I am superstitious. So once he said it, I thought, What if I argue this and then I miscarry? It was only nine months! Hah! The next "problem" was that Mark didn't want to let Tom sleep alone in his room, so we had him in a bassinet until he started having a permanent tilt to his neck because the bassinet was shorter than he was. I still didn't get that this was sex avoidance, but it became sort of obvious over the years. What had happened was that, once I had Tom, I became Mark's mother, too. Really. Ask Jenna. She will tell you the creepy way he called me "Mom," or the way he acted like a kid. And over the years (still), it's gotten worse. This is why the age difference was so important. I was older than he was, more experienced than he was, and better at taking care of myself. But most of all, this was a marriage of laziness and convenience. Had he left me before the wedding, I'd have been a little hurt, but it really wouldn't have devastated me. And that's the problem, and that's why it's my fault. I feel affection for Mark on some level still, but I was never in love with him. And I think he was never in love with me; he just wanted someone to take care of him. Marriage is a difficult thing under any circumstances. If you are in it in a halfhearted way, when things start to go wrong, you will not weather the storm. What went wrong, besides the lack of sex? That's a topic for another day...

Ann

Ann is the baby mama. When I wrote my first post and called her the "former baby mama," Jenna corrected me. There is no such thing as a former baby mama, she said. Once a baby mama, always a baby mama. And she is right. Unfortunately. So, anyway, Ann is the mother of Alex, or as she calls him, Alexahnder. I am probably losing your sympathy with my tone. After all, Steve left her for me (sort of). But she is not some innocent, wronged wife. She is an Ivy League-educated control freak who has had 2 children, conceived with different married fathers. I'm sure she was surprised when Steve stuck around, and she certainly made him pay for the privilege.

I still haven't convinced you, have I? Maybe this will. When Steve first left the house, he was communicating with her by e-mail. He had a standard closing on his e-mails that said, "Steve." She wrote back, "Whose Steve? In this household, you were always Stephen." I told him he should write, "Certainly not yours" to the question, "Whose Steve?" But let's look beyond the incompetent spelling. That bitchy comment lost more of you, didn't it? But since she likes to remind everyone how smart and well-educated she is, I figure she should proofread her e-mails.

Anyway, back to the Steve question. I thought, Maybe he used to go by Stephen. He's British---a lot of Brits go by whole names that Americans would shorten. (Of course, Ann is American.) I asked, repeatedly, because it seemed incredible to me that a woman would insist on deciding what her forty-something lover could call himself. So he showed me old name tags from sales conferences he'd attended. A couple said "Stephen," but most said "Steve." Then he showed me programs from community theater groups he'd been involved with in the UK. All listed him as "Steve Copperthwaite." So let's think about this. There are a lot of people who insist on being called one thing, usually their whole names. I have never been one of those people. I am Katherine, Kate, Mac (for McMahon). I am even Ed (Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson's old sidekick). At the bar we hung out in after work, I was likely to hear "Hi-yo!" when I walked in. For those of you under forty, that's what Ed McMahon used to yell when Johnny came out.

But I know people who might only want to be Margaret or Elizabeth. That's their prerogative. I make an effort to call everyone what they introduce themselves as. There's the second level of control: women (especially) who want their kids to be called only one thing. Back when I was little, parents called their kids things like Joey or Jonny. Now you're likely to hear "Joseph!" or "Jonathan!" at the playground. Again, this might seem a little pretentious, but you can understand it. They named the kids something they liked; they have something invested in those names. So I'm a zero on the 1 to 10 name-control scale. Women who want to be called one thing themselves are maybe a 3. Those who then start correcting people who nickname their kids are, say, a 6. But have you ever met anyone who renamed her lover/significant other and then insisted he call himself that? She is over a 10. It is especially frustrating because her name is about as short as you can make a name: Ann Dun. Maybe she has short-name complex.

You can imagine this causes problems in our relationship and in Steve's relationship with Alex, a.k.a. Alexander. And as the only non-control freak in the bunch, I am the one who pays. So Ann limits Steve's access to Alex. (She's very clever about this, making appointments, etc., so that it would be churlish of Steve to demand more access.) And Steve takes it out on me---and Tom, because Tom is here.

Housekeeping

I am something of a slob. If left unchecked, I am perfectly happy to leave dishes in the sink for a week. When I am doing research or correcting papers, the stacks around my computer rival the Collier brothers' piles. Back in my single days, I sometimes said no to sex with someone I actually wanted to sleep with because I was embarrassed to have him come up to my apartment. That's why when I tell my best friend, Jenna, some of these stories, I know she doesn't believe me. I will tell her, "I have been very neat," and she will respond, as if there's a bad translation, "Well, if it bothers Steve, he should clean." I repeat, "I know you don't believe me, but I really have been at least as clean as he is." I hear something that sounds suspiciously like her mother's "mmm-hmm" of disbelief. So now I will tell you. I have not been up to my grandmother's or Jenna's mother's standards, but I have been very careful to be neat. I have two warring factions in me---my natural slovenliness and my good-girl desire that I make everyone around me happy. For example, I never litter. Steve will roll down his car window and throw his gum out; I never would. Of course, that means that when I take the gum out of my mouth, I find a receipt or some other piece of paper in my car and then put the gum in the ashtray or something, adding to the horrible mess in my car.

So that's the background. And one of things that really worried me before I moved in with Steve was that I, and Tom (my son), would not be up to Steve's standards. Well, I was right, but that's not because I am a slob. It's because whatever Steve does at any point in time is, in his view, the only right way to do it. Also, he's one of those people like I used to know at work, who manage, almost effortlessly, to tell you every single thing they've done so that it seems like they've done a lot more than you. I'm getting better, but I still don't know how to do it. Here's an example: Now, when I've vacuumed, just so that he notices I've vacuumed, I will say, "I can't believe the electricity in this place; I had to plug the vacuum cleaner in 3 different outlets before it worked (true story)." Or, "I missed Jenna's phone call because I didn't hear the phone while I had the vacuum on."

I probably shouldn't be using vacuuming as my example because I will admit that is one of my weaker areas. It doesn't occur to me to vacuum until I see cobwebs in the corner or food on the floor. The vacuum cleaner is also very, very heavy, so I avoid taking it upstairs, or, when it's up there, I avoid bringing it back down. So, I will admit to everyone, here and now, that Steve vacuums more than I do. But the principle is the same for everything. I'd say we somewhat equally clean the bathroom, probably not as much as we should, but it's not disgusting. When he cleans the bathroom, he manages to tell me in such a way that he is chastising me for my negligence. I just can't figure out how to do the same thing. I cleaned the bathroom before he came back from a business trip yesterday and I couldn't figure out how to tell him that I'd spent a long time on the black mold in the shower. (No, not because we neglect---because no matter how hard you clean, there's black mold there at the bottom of the shower stall again in a week. Bad ventilation.) So here's the rundown: Steve mostly vacuums. I mostly do the dishes. I probably dust more frequently than he does, but when he does it, he makes a big commotion in front of me so I know he's doing it and he does the entire house at once---usually dusting the TV while I'm trying to watch it. I am more likely to see that dusting is needed and do it on a case-by-case basis. And I'm making sure not to get in the way.

Cooking is another subject. Steve is a fabulous cook and he likes cooking. I like cooking, too, and I am a good cook, but he's more adventurous in the kitchen. In comparison, Mark, in fifteen years of marriage, cooked one meal---my first birthday after we were married. I've also limited what I cook over the years because Mark and Tom pretty much liked pasta. And a couple of other things. So I am really, really happy to have a grown-up who likes to eat the same things I like to eat, and is good at cooking them too. And he's amazingly competent in the kitchen. Ask Steve and me each to dice an onion. By the time mine is done, Steve will have diced the onion, gone for a walk, and read the paper. So I really have no complaints here---except... Steve takes over when I cook. He'll throw something he thinks belongs in a sauce I'm making, even if I didn't want it. He'll turn down the heat or start making something to go with whatever I'm cooking, and before I know it, I'm in a small corner of the kitchen, trying to slice and dice and pour, and I spill something and he shakes his head with a little superior smile, because he doesn't spill things the way I do. And...sometimes, when he's in a bad mood, he acts like I'm not pulling my weight in the kitchen, either. Imagine if you loved playing the piano and everybody liked to listen to you, and complimented you on your playing. When a less competent piano player tried to sit down to play, you said, "Here, let me." Would you get mad that no one else was playing?

The problem is there is nothing I can do to feel like Steve thinks I'm doing my fair share. Our incomes are disproportionate. I know there are things that I do more or better than Steve does. The problem is, it is not my nature to be aggrieved and I think it is very much Steve's nature. Or maybe it really is like Steve sees it---I'm not aggrieved because he is perfect, and he just suffers through my incompetence and sloth.

So why am I starting a blog?

Well, the reason I'm starting it right now is because there are about 10 other things I'm supposed to be doing, so it seemed like a good idea to start something new.

The reason I'm starting it overall is because so much has happened in the last couple of years that really wasn't supposed to happen, and I think there are probably a lot of people like me. I am one of that first wave of women who came after the previous generation opened doors. We thought we could do everything, but a lot of us---certainly I---felt like we had to do everything. And every single major decision I've made in the past 20 years has been out of guilt or to please someone else. Lately, I've reserved the guilt mostly for my 16-year-old son.

Why do I feel guilty? The general answer is because I think every mother feels guilty. That's the legacy of those women who opened doors. Once we felt we had free choice, we could second guess every choice that we made. I was watching Shakespeare in Love (again) last night and thinking about it. Sure, Viola de Lesseps was unhappy, and was being sent across an ocean to a strange country with a man she hardly knew and didn't like. (By the way, there are going to be constant movie and book references in this blog, because I love movies and books and this is the way I think.) Anyway, Viola could never have considered staying with Will instead. So, she may have been momentarily unhappy, but imagine what would have happened if she'd stayed. For the rest of her life, she'd have been poor. She'd have been shunned by polite society. And, certainly, Will would not have remained as besotted with her if she'd stayed as he was because she left. Let's face it, in six months some other pretty girl---or boy---would have been the inspiration for some other play or sonnet. But because women had no control, and were expected to be obedient, she didn't have to feel particularly guilty about leaving him behind. Today, she'd have been guilted into running away with Will, her family would no longer be speaking to her, and once Will found out he was financially responsible for her, she would no longer have seemed like such a prize.

The specific reason for my guilt, however, is a lot of the reason for this blog. Two years ago, I left my husband of fifteen mostly unhappy years. The beginning of the end, or at least what shook me out of my stupor, was our tenth anniversary. I'd gone to get gas at the local gas station and the attendant (this was in New Jersey, the last state in the union that still bans self-serve gas) propositioned me. Now, I hope you understand how thrilling this was to a 40+ woman whose husband had not wanted to have sex with her for oh, nine years. Sure the guy had some sort of weird tooth issue and had to ride a bike to work because he couldn't afford a car---he was still a guy and he propositioned me! I laughed and blushed and left the station. I told my husband---remember, this was our anniversary!!! He said, "Whywould he do that to YOU?!"

That was the moment I realized that this lack-of-sex thing was not temporary. He'd turned me into his mom ever since I'd gotten pregnant six months into our marriage. We'd planned the pregnancy, but I hadn't planned the result. People used to ask me when I was going to have another child, or why I didn't have another child. The answer was quite simple: you have to have sex to have a child. It took me another five years to get out.

But here's where it gets sloppy. The push to move out was that I'd met the love of my life. My soul mate. (Or so I thought at the time.) We'd known each other years before, when he was married and I was a carefree, independent single woman. Oh, how things had changed. When I'd met my husband, I'd been making twice as much as he was. (Never a good idea.) Now, I'd taken responsibility for our son and was freelancing and adjunct teaching and making less than I'd make working at Shop Rite. I had no benefits, except through my husband, and that nice full-time job I thought I'd be able to get with my education and experience turned out not to exist. I timed my leaving to the economy's falling apart and found out that I was obsolete. It didn't matter that I had two degrees from good schools; it didn't matter that I'd had more varied experience than just about anyone I'd met. I'd been out of the full-time workplace for over ten years. Not that I hadn't been working full-time; I just had to do it at a bunch of places for less money! That had allowed me flexibility. Now I found out that you can't be very flexible when you have no money and no insurance. So, in order to move out, I had to move right in with Steve. who'd moved out of his own (also sloppy) domestic arrangements the previous summer.

This blog, then, is my account of what it's been like, and is still like, blending the lives of two middle-aged people with tons of baggage---including two teenagers, one ex-spouse and one ex-baby mama. (The marriage he'd been in all those years ago had ended around the time he'd gotten the baby mama pregnant.) Hence the title of this blog. Can it work? I'll let you know.