Entry #290355, added on 05-14-04 @ 9:42 am EDT
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| My-14: Femme' Fatale? | Entry #290355 |
Coming to terms with Life entails one aspect I’m extremely uncomfortable discussing - the men in my life.
I’m no femme’ fatale. But my track record with the opposite sex would indicate otherwise. I suppose you could classify my life as a tragedy of errors that has negative affects on the men I‘ve become involved with.
Case in point - the first young man I fell in love with. Sam was a personable, intelligent and affectionate junior when I met him the fall of my sixteenth year. We hit it off right away and he soon became a part of our extended family. It was a sweet, innocent first love - the kind you read about. He gave me his class ring and I had a portrait sitting done at his request. Then just as we were getting serious, he began to withdraw from the relationship with no real explanation. I always thought it was something I had done - until my senior year. That’s when I found out that Sam actually was a resident of a private orphanage on the other side of town. Piecing the puzzle together, I finally realized that he had pulled away from me rather than admit the truth. This fact would have caused me to hopelessly fall further in love with him, but he somehow felt inferior without a family of his own. Did I cause those insecurities?
By the time this had all come out, I was involved in a new relationship. Lee was to become my first lover and husband by the age of eighteen. We eloped to Texas and I was so not ready for marriage. Looking back now, I believe it was more hormonal than anything. And the hormones went off the charts in directions that lead my wandering husband to other women’s beds - incessantly. After six years of trying to make the marriage work for the sake of our son, I finally gave up and threw in the towel. This entailed three separations and years of unhappiness.
Single life made a brief visit after the marriage. I caught up on the dating scene and could be found in the company of any one of six eligible gentlemen on a typical weekend. Staying home on Saturday nights was not an option then. Enter Ed. We connected immediately and I was completely swept off my feet. Within a few months, we were living together. Within a few years, we were in business together. I blinked and we were married (another spontaneous life decision). It was classified as a strategic business maneuver by Ed. He had the head for numbers, and I was the “talent”. What started out as something good quickly changed to profit and loss. Funny thing about making money. The glare of all that green stuff tends to blind a person from the rest of the colors in the rainbow. After uncountable years of perpetuating the illusion of happiness, and another son later, I’ve bid goodbye to my personal accountant disguised as a husband.
There is a point to all of this. It’s the summation. My first love, Sam and I re-connected at a mutual friend’s party several years back. Never stopping to consider his life might still be in turmoil, I blurted, “You were my first love and you broke my heart!” Yeah, it felt good to finally say those words. I saw Sam five or six times after that at social gatherings, and discovered he was in the process of going through a difficult divorce. I wouldn’t allow myself to consider the what ifs since I was married at the time, but did feel some smoldering sparks. A mutual friend later told me he admitted remorse over the way our relationship ended. A few months later, he committed suicide. Did my insensitive remark add to his final days of turmoil?
My first husband, Lee, did make a final attempt to reconcile after I gave up on our marriage. He went so far as to write, compose and sing a love song to me, which I promptly rejected. Later that same evening, he attempted suicide. I felt bad about it, but not guilty. A few years later, he was convicted of a felony and spent seven years in prison. Could I have handled this better?
And now, in ending it with Ed, I walk on eggshells. He’s not handling the divorce well and I’m trying to be compassionate about his feelings. How I deal with this may verify or dispel my concerns about the men that have been a part of my life.
The fact that each of these relationships has left me stronger and wiser does give me reasons to consider why the men in them come out irreparably weaker.
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© Copyright 2004 Celestial (UN: celestial at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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