Chapter 12: Being Married

Emily was about 18 months old and we were going to see friends for the weekend. We had a rare conversation in the car about our relationship.

Martin said at one point, “Suppose 100% of my giving is only 70% of what you want. What then?”

What then indeed?

I had reduced my expectations since we had married eight years previously. In the beginning, from my teenage years, I think I did have expectations. I had feasted on girls’ magazines like Romeo and Mirabelle (although both were banned in my house by my mother because they showed cartoon girls and boys kissing). I had very romantic notions about what a relationship should be like. And I yearned to be romanced – flowers, sweet notes, lovely surprises – sadly, none of these materialised.

It was years before I realised that we give what we want to receive.

I wanted all the things I was giving to Martin. He didn’t really want any of them, so he gave none of them back.

I was 24 years old when I met Martin when nearly all my friends were married or engaged. I was already feeling that maybe marriage was going to pass me by altogether. Every man I looked at I considered as possible marriage material. Although I was striking and confident, I had only had one real boyfriend and I had never had sex. My Catholic and convent schooling had put the fear of hellfire in me about sex and pregnancy. I didn’t even know what masturbation was and had never touched myself. So, when I saw Martin in the staff room at the first breaktime of his first day, I, of course, assessed him as a possible husband and went over to him and introduced myself. He was tall, dark and skinny with long sideburns, green eyes and one of those droopy moustaches that were popular in the 70s. His mass of black hair was curly and untamed. He had a strong Northern accent – he was from Bolton too – so I was predisposed to like him for that reason alone. He had a knack of not saying a lot but what he did say was always succinct and, somehow, carried authority. He sat in the staffroom in a circle with everyone else but seemed aloof. He always looked like he was judging people. I was aware of how loud I was around him and was sure that he saw my ignorance and naivety shining through. Later, I would find out that he wasn’t judging people at all. He was sitting thinking about his beloved Bolton Wanderers, or his other passion – steam engines.

I had bought a cheap second-hand car and Martin offered to give me driving lessons after school, so we started spending a lot of time together. After three weeks of seeing him every day after school and at weekends, I remember being at his house and commenting on how ridiculous it seemed that he had to drive me all the way back across town then come all the way back again to his house. It felt so natural to be with him. We were sitting on the thickly piled patterned carpet on his parents’ lounge floor in their nicely appointed bungalow in a desirable residential area of Bolton.

“Well, there’s only one thing we can do about that,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Get married.”

So that was that. No proposal. No declaration of love. No engagement ring.

Everyone thought we were madly in love and he had swept me off my feet but that wasn’t it at all. I was going to be married! Finally, I was going to have a husband.

The first 23 years of my marriage were largely happy and we settled into an easy relationship. I had tempered many of my romantic notions and there was a lot to enjoy. We were both very independent and never pressured the other to do something they didn’t want to do, wear something they didn’t want to wear or go somewhere they didn’t want to go. Martin liked strong women and I learned to appreciate this more and more as I observed my friends and their relationships. He was always hugely supportive of my career and, for my part, I didn’t mind when he wanted to leave teaching and go for a Master’s degree when I was pregnant. I never assumed that he should be financially responsible for me. The respect that we had for each other was a foundation of our relationship and his respect even extended to my Catholic practice at the time. Even though Martin had no time for the Catholic Church, wherever we travelled, Martin would research where the nearest church was. He would take me and then wait outside until it was finished to make sure I was safe.

We also shared the same values and the same politics, so there were few disagreements. On the other hand, we had few deep and meaningful conversations about ourselves, our fears, our hopes or our marriage and which became, over time, a double-edged sword.

We kept the peace at the expense of being able to fully understand each other.

We talked mainly about our jobs, family and the children. Martin rarely talked about his feelings, so we didn’t have a strong emotional connection and as he was anti any formal religions we had no spiritual connection either. If ever we differed on anything personal that might have led to a big argument, we would say what we each thought but stop before it developed into an argument. I would think about it afterwards and make slight adjustments in my thinking – and I guess Martin did the same – which enabled us to continue rubbing along together. We would rarely go back and revisit the conversation.

I was always terrified that an argument would turn into rage, like I had seen with my father, and/ or that Martin would reject me. It was easy to ignore the hurt I sometimes felt and to just concentrate on the good. And there was plenty that was good. But I think that hurt about petty things never really goes away – so when a really big hurt comes, all the little ones come trotting out behind it like children walking obediently in line behind their parents, waiting to be counted.

Martin was probably the cleverest man I have ever met and, although I was always slightly intimidated by this, it was one of the things I loved most about him. I was always drawn to clever people. He knows a lot about many  things. He’s the one you would want to have as your ‘phone a friend’ on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Martin could read something and remember it for ever. I would read something and forget it within five minutes. I always felt slightly stupid next to him. He also had a very powerful presence, in spite of his mild manner of speaking. I was the loudmouth. I saw him as being the powerful one in our relationship. Interestingly, he told me before we parted that he had always seen me as the more powerful one.

If we both felt intimidated by the other, it’s no wonder that there was little space left for intimacy.

Emily was born seven years after we were married. Martin had completed his Master’s degree and got a job in Loughborough, advising companies on educational technology solutions, and so we moved there to start our family life. It was our ‘poor but happy’ period. We loved our little house, a three-bed terraced house which looked small from the front but was like the Tardis from Dr Who when you walked through it. It had a long hall with a tiled floor with painted geometric patterns on it. There was a cosy lounge which looked out onto the street, then a room which became the playroom where Emily and me and the other mums and their children would spend many a happy hour. Beyond the playroom was the breakfast room where we would eat all our meals. The kitchen beyond was tiny and ‘L’ shaped – two people would have to squeeze past each other. Then there was the small outhouse and the long garden. The yard ran from the playroom down the outside of the breakfast room, kitchen and outhouse. It got the sun and that was where I put Emily, in her buggy, for her morning sleep.

I had finished teaching and decided to be a full-time mum. I was curious about what it would be like and was so excited about this new being we had created. But I was also clear I would have things in my life other than nappies! We didn’t have much money, so we only had bacon every third week. No alcohol, no cheese and we only cooked with half an onion, so a pound of onions would last longer. We prayed that no one would suddenly show up who we would have to feed and had more than one argument about whether we could afford a can of lager to share on a Friday night. I would regularly walk down to the local market at the end of the day with Emily in her pushchair to collect the fruit and vegetables the market traders were about to throw out and walk back with Martin after his work.

I made all Emily’s food myself – for example, pureed carrots that I would put dollops of into ice cube trays and freeze – and I made baby rusks that Emily sucked into spikes which could have caused serious damage if she missed her mouth and poked out her eye instead. My view was, and is, that a child joins an existing unit and they are only one of the pieces of the jigsaw – as are we all.

I became something of a creative genius (self-labelled) making Play Doh, collages and clothes from cloth kits (the ones where they sent you all the pieces already cut out and you just had to sew them up). It was very much a middle-class badge to have your children wearing cloth kits. I also made all my Christmas presents which, unfortunately, usually fell to bits about a month after Christmas.

Our life was happy in lots of ways in those years but Martin never told me he loved me, and hadn’t done since I had become pregnant with Emily.

The news of the pregnancy had impacted him hugely, even though it was planned. I think the crushing responsibility he felt about caring for this individual for the next 18 years weighed heavily on him. That was the only conclusion I could reach about his rejection of me. We didn’t make love for 18 months after Emily was born. But then, when we were on our way to see friends, we had that rare conversation about our relationship where Martin made his ‘70%’ comment. We talked for the whole car journey, and the fact that we had had a conversation about our marriage, elated me. Up until then our conversations about the two of us – always instigated by me – consisted of me saying, “You know I’m thinking of leaving you, don’t you?” and Martin saying, “Yes.” That was it, those were our conversations. So, our conversation in the car that weekend was a breakthrough to me. It’s not that anything was decided, it was just that we had actually had a conversation! We had a lot of sex that weekend and it kickstarted our relationship again. Our relationship stabilised. Our patterns became more cemented. We started to develop our own lives and shared intimacy only in sex. But still, I loved Martin and thought he loved me. I was very relieved not to be entertaining any more thoughts about leaving him that I had had for the first 18 months of Emily’s life.

Emily adored her daddy and would rush to meet him when he came home from work and fling her arms round his neck saying, “I love you, Daddy.” Martin started to use the word ‘love’ again, in relation to me.

Meanwhile, he was enjoying his job and I was playing squash and starting to volunteer for the probation service and at the Refuge (in the 80s, safe houses for women who have been abused used to be called ‘Refuges for Battered Women’, a frightful name). I had made some friends and was helping Emily to make her own memories. We were settled and happy.

After three years in Loughborough Martin got a new, much better paid, job as a consultant in educational technology solutions, so we went to Teddington in Middlesex. I persuaded Martin to have another child and Amy was born while we were there. It only took one year in his job in London for Martin to realise that he was now ready to set up his own management consultancy with three colleagues. We couldn’t afford another house in London, and neither of us felt at home there, so we moved back to the Midlands when Amy was 10 months old. We moved to a small village in Leicestershire, near Loughborough, where we had lots of friends from our previous time there. We lived there for 17 years and it was a very happy place. The house was old and rambling with a huge garden, a massive kitchen and bathroom, four bedrooms, a large lounge, a dining room and an office. We built a big conservatory onto it in due course. It was a great family home and I’m glad our daughters had their childhoods there. The thing I am most proud of in my life is helping to produce two daughters who grew into amazing women and for trying to provide a stable, loving environment for them.

I started doing freelance work for Martin’s company and it was he who suggested I start my own business providing self-instructional materials that could replace expensive face-to-face training in organisations. We converted the garages behind the house into offices and I started to focus on building my business. Martin gave me total support, both from a business point of view and with the girls. He would be there to bath the children and put them to bed if I was going to be late, although as soon as they heard my car they would start to call out for me and want me to take over bath time. Martin would try to insist that he would do it, but the girls weren’t having that. Sometimes, I would walk in the house after a long drive back, drop my bag and go upstairs for bath time and reading and bed. I could be in the house for well over an hour before I would even get to make myself a cup of tea. But it was all worth it. I was loving my job and loving my life with Martin and the girls.

We both played at the local squash club and once, when Martin was there on his own, someone asked where I was. He said that I was working away. They asked him if I had left his meals in the freezer and he said, “No, but then again, I don’t leave her meals in the freezer when I am away.”

He was my champion. He was proud of me and I felt blessed.

And the support worked both ways. I helped to care for his mother when she was dying of cancer in our house. I was the one who sorted out the meals and the childcare. I thought we made a good team. And we spoke every day on the phone for 23 years, wherever in the world one of us was.

We had enough money to be able to buy our way out of any trouble. I didn’t want to continue doing the largest share of the housework once I started my own business, but Martin didn’t want to do it either. So, we had a housekeeper who came in every day. We had a gardener who made us a beautiful garden with a pond. I hired someone to cook homemade food for us that I could freeze and hired a local schoolgirl to do the after-school care for the girls. We had two holidays a year, a very nice car each, and wanted for nothing. We took the girls with us to conferences in America and on holidays abroad every year. We entertained a lot – a far cry from our days when we couldn’t afford to feed any visitors – and went away as a family at weekends to see friends. Our lives were comfortable and, I thought, happy.

I had long come to the realisation that you didn’t need romantic love for a marriage to be happy.

It was surely ridiculous to think that two people marrying in their twenties could maintain an all-consuming relationship for 50 years? I wonder how many people who are together after even 20 years are really happy or whether one, or both, were living a lie – the lie they tell to themselves every day about how happy they are – or the reasons they give themselves about why it is a better choice to stay unhappy. I never felt a strong emotional connection with Martin. But I thought it was possible to maintain a happy, stable relationship built on trust and respect. Martin and I shared work interests, financial responsibility and the desire to create a happy, stable environment for the girls. We also shared a love of football, squash and good food and wine. I could never quite get into his love of steam engines.

Having started off shakily, our sex life was great. When you live well and have busy lives and the sex is good you can miss all the signs that your marriage is in trouble. Or maybe there were no obvious signs at all. If someone doesn’t tell you they’re unhappy and there are no observable signs, then how would you know? I was oblivious. Or maybe I just chose not to see.

My needs for intimacy were met by my female friends.

My increased interest in spirituality, after I had left Catholicism, was met by books, courses, new friends and then, ultimately, by my decision to train as an interfaith minister. For some reason this made Martin angry and contributed significantly to the growing chasm between us.

In November 1994, the last phase of our marriage began. It would last four and a half years and was the most painful period of my whole life. I won’t be writing about that period in these memoirs. Suffice to say that by the end there was no trust or respect left. I believed Martin was my soul mate. I believe you make a contract with a soul to come into this world and push each other right to the edge – and over it – and so either you fly or die. Well, I lived, but learning to fly and finding emotional and spiritual freedom proved to be extremely difficult at times. And although I wasn’t in love with Martin when we married, I did grow to love him very deeply. Once I had gotten over my need for romantic love, I thought that the love we had was solid enough. It obviously wasn’t for Martin.

I had settled for 70% of what I wanted but I’m not sure that Martin gave 100% of what he could have.

Still, I often wonder how it could have happened – two supposedly happily married people, considered by their friends to have the ideal marriage, both successfully running their own businesses, with two stunning daughters, a lovely big family home and a very nice lifestyle. As it turns out, Martin wasn’t happy. I saw something today which said that for relationships to work it takes healing from our pasts, owning our triggers and having hard conversations. We did precious little of that. I used to wonder what ‘irreconcilable differences’ meant – now I know. It’s a completely different understanding of what a relationship should be like and a completely different analysis of why it has broken down.

But, through all the pain of our final years together, I learned the resilience to bounce back from set back after set back and I found determination to continue my spiritual path. I held onto the trust that everything would be okay in the end because the Universe really is kind. I learned that self-love is the only love I would ever need. I learned that anger takes energy and eats you away from the inside. I learned that pain can be transcended by always seeing the bigger picture. And I learned the only route to happiness is gratitude.

I regret nothing. My marriage brought me my daughters and provided the most fertile ground I can imagine for my self-development.

Now, 22 years later, I choose to remember the many happy times we had in our marriage, our two wonderful daughters, and the things I loved best about Martin. And occasionally, very occasionally, I cry.

Photo

At my kitchen table in my family home where many a happy hour was spent with friends and family.

Questions For Reflection

If you are in a long term relationship how do you sustain it? If you are not, what would you be looking for in a relationship? How important is marriage to you? Why or why not?

A Blessing While You Reflect

“As warmly as the air draws in the light,

May you welcome each other’s every gift.

As elegant as dream absorbing the night,

May sleep find you clear of anger and hurt.

As twilight harvests all the day’s colour.

May love bring you home to each other.”

From John O’Donohue: Benedictus