Embracing difference

 One of the thoughts that used to come to mind often was that time mid-morning when one might make a cup of tea or coffee and have a time out. I would try to imagine all the other people doing something similar and that was a pleasant thought - all the people in their homes or out on the site or on the farm brewing themselves a cup of tea. I suppose, I was imagining that the brewing of tea, or coffee, created a connection, an imagined connection.

I have been thinking about the power of imagination lately. I suppose you could call it manifestation, although I don't often have that element of 'this will happen' in it. I simply use my imagination to take a little break from what is happening in front of me. I have always done this. I think another word might be disassociation, I might take myself out of a dull conversation for a few seconds and just think my own thoughts.

I delighted recently in a story Jimmy Fallon told about growing up knowing that he would be on Saturday Night Live. The interviewer asked him, 'what if it hadn't happened?'. He was emphatic. There was just no way it wouldn't have happened in some form, he said. There was no way he wouldn't have made it happen.

My husband said something similar last night over dinner. When he was young, he said, on the farm, he came to have this feeling that he would do something special out in the big world. He wasn't entirely sure quite what, although by the time he was ending his undergraduate degree, he knew it would involve world markets. When he achieved his dream, I think it was the happiest time of his life.

He is very unwell now, but he has this huge belief that he will get better, and seeing how he manifested his dream job, it's hard not to believe him, whilst at the same time, I said to him yesterday, 'Can you please let me take it one step at a time?'

We are very different in this way. I much prefer things to be steady. I like the day to day. I like morning tea. Like that. I like making dinner. I like meeting up with my adult children. I enjoy the beautiful morning sun we are experiencing this winter. I like it when the camelias bloom.

Well, of course, this was the attraction for me, wasn't it? The polar opposite of myself. The guy with adventure in his soul; the dream in his heart. Who else could take me out of myself in this way? Who else could challenge a degree of complacency in my being, the comfort in the day to day?

Man, at times it has been a struggle. My inner being wants to scream, can't things just be normal? But that's the thing, isn't it? What is normal anyway?

You know what though? I think I am at peace with the different perspectives now. I'm curious about it rather than discombobulated about it. I think after nearly 50 years, I am getting used to it.

Anxiety

I am most grateful to have a place by the sea where I can go, sometimes alone, as I am now. I acknowledge that I can become anxious and the opportunity to be alone, and to garden at will, is both comforting and healing for me.

It's well known now that anxious types tend to have had a rather chaotic childhood, and then repeat that sort of situation in the partner they choose. That's certainly what happened to me. So, with plenty of drama and emotional expression swirling around me, my anxiety will rise. 

There comes a point when I know that, rather than just a yoga class or two, I need silence. I need to be completely alone. 

Everything becomes very simple. I buy the simplest of ingredients - fish for my dinners, salad, a potato or two; granola, yoghurt and dates for breakfast, and maybe something like a can of sardines on toast for lunch; a couple of apples.

I don't listen or watch media, although I did bring my lap top, and I felt moved this morning to try to figure out my state by writing something about my inner world.

Which leads me to say that anxiety is a somatic experience, primarily, and so one does need to relate to the body as soon as possible. For me, it's a fluttering feeling, between the neck and the heart; like butterflies all aflutter; restless.

Dr Russ (the Anxiety Doctor) encourages the anxious person, himself included, to look around for signs of safety. Here, they are abundant. The trees, the wind, the view of the sea which I created with much hard work and ingenuity, the birds, the plants in flower, all remind me I am quite safe.

That leads me to say that recently I have felt unsafe; possibly quite erroneously, but not entirely. It can be hard to get across to my husband some ideas that most people take for granted. I don't know why this is so, but perhaps it is his age; the era in which he grew up. I tried to explain that, given his cancer diagnosis, it seemed especially important that I know what to do in his absence. Where were the documents of our lives? What did we have, what did we owe? 

Being the very strong man that he is, I think he has it in mind to be here for a long time, so it doesn't seem something that needs to be on the top of his list. But I hear my friends say that they accompany their husbands to the accountant, and I think to myself, do we even have an accountant?

Whilst my husband can manage risk and is actually as comfortable with high risk as anyone out there, I am, and was brought up to be, a 'term deposit' girl, as was my brother. So, the investments that make up our eventual inheritance are as safe as investments can be. This makes us feel safe.

I think what I am trying to say is that everyone has a different level of sense of safety, in built. I happened to marry a man who can ride the financial roller coaster without a sense of alarm, whereas for me, it makes me pretty queasy.

I do wonder, something not talked about a lot when it comes to anxiety, if we anxious types look for a sense of control; feel centered when there is a sense of control about things. I have noticed myself being triggered by a friend whose husband is all about a sense of safety, which has enabled them in these later years to have more fun. The finances are not extensive, but they are sorted.

There's some sort of lesson here for me - some sort of letting go into the unknown. At the same time, it's the sense of personal agency in the past year or so that feels so good; an individual sense of agency where I can make some decisions for myself that feels so good to me.

I completely agree with the belief that before there can be a power dynamic there must be agreement, and it has to be said that my husband and I don't, and have never, come into agreement about how much risk one should take. Some marriage experts believe that there are areas of life in which a couple will never come into agreement. Maybe that's the lesson: to accept that, on this issue, we will continue to hold our own opinions, and we each need to respect the other's point of view.

Transformational periods

 I have been listening on Audible to the novel 'Long Island', which I think of as being about 'middle age'. It occurred to me that in my lifetime 'middle age' has changed. It was once thought of as in the 40s of one's life, whereas I think of it now as being later, in the 50s or even in the 60s. We remain more active and fitter for longer now, we have our children later, so I think it is all combined with living in a different world.

So, in the novel Eilish and Tony, in the throes of bringing up their children, of living very close to Tony's family, and he busy working away at his plumbing business, and Eilish working as a bookkeeper, there's a single line that reveals that they have stopped making love.

The problem set up on page 1 is that Tony has fathered a child of another woman, and the Irish husband, knowing full well it is not his (so they stopped making love too...) is planning to put the baby on Tony and Eilish's doorstep.

Eilish refuses to deal with the problem and heads off to Ireland to visit her mother for the first time in twenty years, and the way is now paved for her to have an affair with a man she once thought she might marry.

Toibin, I believe, is interested in posing an event, and then seeing what transpires, and indeed he successfully showed how the ball rolled away in an unstoppable way.

But I am interested in what started the ball rolling and it's not the man coming to tell Eilish about the infidelity. It's the fact that they stopped making love. That set it all off, most probably.

It's in 'middle age', whatever those words mean to you, when the needs of people can sometimes not be in line. It was pillow talk, this novel, last night and my husband offered, 'but in middle age the man is still busy with his work and achievement and responsibilities, and the woman is not.'

I countered, 'Eilish was working. Many women are working. Yet it's almost scientifically proven that it's women who want to reinvigorate their sex lives in middle age, it's the men who are too preoccupied to give it the necessary attention.'

But I heard him. I think he is onto something. In middle age, maybe that's a time when a man is feeling burdened by responsibility and legacy and getting it all right to pass money onto the children, when health issues may crop up.

Maybe middle age for a woman is a time of transformation; a time when she doesn't so much want to reinvent the world, or even herself, but her marriage; looking for something more heavenly, more divine, more sacred; like the love being a river that enables the love of the whole world to flow through it. This is experiential for me, by no means all the time. However, once you have tasted it, you never forget it, and maybe, just maybe this is what women intuitively know is possible.

I heard a man speak about his new woman recently in an unusual way and I think he is an unusual man for doing so. He said something like, 'you are a powerful woman, and you don't need a man, don't need men. So, to love you is not to control you. I am like the banks of the river, and you are the river that flows between the banks. And yet, you want to surrender to the maleness in me and I am trying to figure out how exactly to do this, to hold you in this way. It's not something our mothers and fathers taught us, and I am still working this all out.'

D/s has never been a perfect fit for me and perhaps that's why I am thought of as needing it "in a particular way". It's the powerful piece and the wanting to surrender piece and how they marry one another. At the end of the day, I think of it as a mutual devotion. Since I have thought of it in this way, I have felt much more at peace.

Sexual liberation

I went to a session recently where there was a panel of erotic/porn writers talking about their work. In their discussion there was talk of the institution of marriage and it was made clear that it was passe (imagine a mark above the e) to have female characters remain in, or return to, their marriages. Notions of women's sexuality had gone beyond that idea, they said. It almost felt wrong to remain committed to a relationship that was average when there was so much untapped potential out there, at least in terms of telling a story that involved women's sexuality.

Even Elizabeth Strout, author of The Burgess Boys, a self-confessed conservative woman from Connecticut, had some concerns about her character Helen, also a conservative woman from Connecticut whose husband has been unfaithful, accepting Jim back. Part of her, she said, wanted Helen to go out and grow.

Helen is very interesting actually because there's a paragraph in the book that alludes to Helen feeling uncomfortable about some other person having been found to have whips and rope and nipple clamps in their house. She's not being judgmental about them here. She's jealous, because thoughts have crossed her mind but she's put them aside; certainly not discussed them with Jim. And, here the exploration of Helen's sexuality remains; locked.

It's an important next stage of women's rights to live a full life, I think, this exploration of their abundant potential for sexual fulfillment. I cast no blame per se, for there is nothing to be gained by blaming anyone, but many the married woman has had a tepid sex life and that's no longer something that is seen as being acceptable or necessary.

This is all very personally interesting to me because if I allow my protagonist to go off and satiate her appetites (such as Emma in The Secret Lives of Emma), does she have an incentive to return to her marriage? Naturally, love, commitment, duty, family, a long past together and so on are important factors, but if she is sexually fulfilled in very new ways 'out there' can she return to what she already knows? Logic tells me that she can only return if what she is returning to has also grown; enlarged; transformed. Is it possible for both people in a marriage to grow such as they can complete one another again together? Is there acceptance of the notion that it is just as much about the two individuals as it as about the union of the two individuals? Are husbands ready to accept that?

As I see it, this generation is more savvy and more gun shy about marriage. They still want a lifetime partner, eventually. The desire for a mate seems to be hardwired into us, but they are in no rush and they seem to want to try out a lot of partners. You can say that the boys are in relentless pursuit of the next catch, but lots of girls want to play in this way. They aren't in a rush to settle down either, until they are, and then they want a man to commit to them, because that's the way life works on the whole. We understand the importance of family.

I do wonder and that's all it is, wondering, if men are struggling to keep abreast of the changes in thinking on relationships. If women are less prepared to put up with things, what then? I know that I'm very close to my elastic limit on the limitations I have put on myself - to put everybody else's needs ahead of my own; to be the 'support company' of the cadet unit, to be the reliable one who sends everybody else off fully equipped for a wonderfully fulfilling time. The support company is an essential part of the unit, of course, but where's the fun for them?

I'm smiling as I write this for I just remembered something. I was in my late 20s. My boss was twice my age and I was complaining that I got to stay in the office and mind the shop whilst he got to travel and have fun. "Well you go off with Kevin (the Chairman) to Sydney, then," he said. "Let's see how you  like that!" Of course, he knew I couldn't think of anything worse. The other side of the fence isn't necessarily as green as you might think, was his point.

Another time I said that it was all right for him. He was sitting on his side of the desk! "Well, let's change spots," he said, and he came and took my chair and I took his. He pretended to be me, always good for a bit of acting, was he, while I laughed away sitting in his big chair. Nope! I wasn't meant for that chair at all. He had made his point.

I don't want to manage the money, or make the trades, or wear the pants. That's not what I mean. I just don't always want to have to wait until every other member of the family has all their needs met before I can do what I want to do. I want for my wants to be as important as their wants. When I explore this thought with my husband I can see his mind processing the danger. "She's getting feisty as she ages," I can hear him thinking.

But, when you are surrounded by thoughts that women have rights - and not just to vote but to live a full and satisfying life in every way - it's impossible to not hear the call.  "Move over," we seem to be saying to men collectively. "Make some space!" "Listen to my fantasies, because I have a plentiful store and let's get on with the business of satisfying them!"

In my opinion, this is the tip of the iceberg and there is no going back. A woman has a bountiful libido; a rich and very naughty mental file of fantasies. This is the new message. The woman who wants to have her goals taken seriously has been with us for while. I have just been slow in insisting that mine be taken seriously.  But, the sexually liberated woman has arrived and look out, because she is not going away.