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.
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