Brick

I’ve not blogged much of late, mainly because I have been immersed in various pieces of work for Uni that need to be completed in a scarily short amount of time, but I feel compelled to say just a few things about the Samantha Brick furore.

Three days ago, the Daily Mail printed an article written by Brick. I won’t go into huge detail here but the gist of her article was about the hardships she has experienced in life due to her beauty. Her message? Apparently women hate other women if they are considered more beautiful than themselves. The article in itself was low-brow, contrived and smattered with various photographs of Brick. By the end of that day, thousands of people had left disparaging comments on the article  - here are a few samples:  “I’ve seen better heads on a pint of Guinness”; “She has a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp”; “So lovely, so charming and witty and yet all she managed to attract was a fat Frenchman – says it all, really”. Various  ‘celebrities’ joined in on the act and added their own insults, which I can’t be bothered to type out, and, totally unexpected but utterly coincidentally, The Daily Mail received a reported extra £30,000 in advertising revenue as people queued up to advertise their stuff on the same page as Brick’s article. Brick has been ridiculed on Twitter, Facebook and in other newspapers.

Yesterday Tim Dowling published a spoof piece about Brick in The Guardian which was pretty humorous but this ran alongside a very interesting piece by Hadley Freeman on how Samantha Brick has been fed to the wolves by The Mail - who have completely used this woman’s arrogance and naivety against her for their own gain. And how they have kept on feeding her. Brick yesterday published another article, saying that the vitriol she has received has proved that her original piece was right – she is hated because of her beauty. This article, at the time of my writing this, has so far received 4588 reader comments, mostly rather vile.

But why all this hostility? A woman has written an article stating that she is so attractive that captains on aeroplanes spontaneously give her bottles of champagne and men give her gifts in the street. Or something like that. She complains that she also never gets asked to be a bridesmaid, because brides don’t feel comfortable with her being around their bridegrooms; and her other female friends don’t feel comfortable being around her because she is such a threat to their menfolk too.

Oddly, in a music blog on The Guardian, another reporter has this to say about it all:

When people walk past one of those fried chicken places with the motto “You’ve tried the rest now try the best” they don’t feel the need to storm inside and scream at the manager: “This fried chicken is a disgrace! It is not the best fried chicken! I hope you die!”

Believe it or not, Brick has received death threats via Twitter. But then fried chicken isn’t as contentious as women, youth and beauty are. Of the Daily Mail’s relationship with women, Hadley Freeman writes:

How much does the Daily Mail hate women? It obviously hates female celebrities, despite featuring them so heavily. The paper and, to a larger extent, the website is pretty much built upon a foundation of "articles" – though that word does seem a stretch – about female celebrities who all fall into the dichotomy of being either thigh-rubbingly salacious ("Look at this sexy young woman in minimal clothes! Look! Look at her!") or eye-poppingly repulsed ("Look at this woman who is older than 30, and over nine stone! Ew! Look! Look at her!") Sometimes the two genres are combined…It obviously hates its female readers, too, despite women making up 53% of its readership. The general motto of the Daily Mail seems to be that a woman's role in life is to be pretty, thin, get married, quit work, have children and, ideally, disappear or die before getting embarrassingly old and fat (it is no wonder the paper loved Diana so much.) The paper is full of scare stories warning its female readers about the terrible repercussions of diverging from that course, usually written by female columnists who regret the terrible life choices that have led to them being childless and unmarried at the shockingly geriatric age of 40 plus. Few of them ever talk about the terrible life choices that have led to them selling their souls to the Daily Mail, a development many would probably see as far more tragic than not being married.

Today is Day Three of Samantha Brick’s new-found notoriety. Another article has appeared; this one includes even more photographs of her, more assertions about her beauty and more reader comments – so far 993. Also on the same page is a link on the Mails’ Femail section to a piece on Miranda Kerr. Kerr, aged 28, an Australian model, has been announced as The Most Beautiful Person of 2012, by Who magazine. A reader comment on this ‘report’ states, ‘Fab to see a brunette here – there’s always a misconception about blondes being better looking – sorry Samantha Brick’.

And there-in lies my problem with this whole sorry affair. We’re in 2012, people, and yet we still have articles written by women touting the value of a woman’s physical beauty - because this is all she is worth, clearly. When will we get rid of the crusty, absurd remnants of patriarchy in this society, so that women will be viewed and admired for what they have achieved rather than how they look? You don’t think this is a patriarchal issue? Okay, try this. I’m a qualified airline pilot, I’m walking with my crew through the airport lounge and I spot a cute guy with a great butt who I find out is going to be a passenger on my plane. Fabulous!  His cuteness impresses me so much that I just know that once I have him on my plane I’m going to have to reward that cuteness with a couple of cans of Coors. (Humour me, I don’t drink). Of course, I’m too busy in the cockpit, doing big girl things like safety checks, so I have to send the Coors via one of my super cute male air stewards; they don’t really have much to do on the flight, anyway, bar looking sexy in their tight little uniforms, and they fancy me too (doesn’t everyone fancy a pilot?) so they will jump at the chance to help me out – getting me to notice them.

Is this a realistic scenario or would I soon get a reputation as a sad deluded old crone if I did this during my job? How many female pilots would even be thinking about the male passengers on their flight?

A woman’s ‘beauty’ and need to hang onto her ‘youth’ are wholly because of patriarchy. In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf says that the modern concept of beauty did not appear before 1830. Before this time beauty, as we know it, was not much use to a husband. Pre-industrialization,  ‘the value of women who were not aristocrats or prostitutes lay in their work skills, economic shrewdness, physical strength and fertility. Physical attraction, obviously, played its part; but “beauty” as we understand it was not, for ordinary women, a serious issue in the marriage marketplace.’ (p.14) By the 1840s photographs of naked prostitutes, together with the emergence of advertising using images of ‘beautiful women’, started showing women how they were expected to look. By 1990, in the US, $33 billion was being spent on the diet industry, $20 billion on the cosmetics industry, $300 million on the cosmetic surgery industry, and $7 billion on the pornography industry, every year.  And at this juncture I shall indulge myself on one of my porn rants. I have seen enough over the years to feel that I have a relevant opinion on such matters. Apart from women, on the whole, having to have ridiculously ‘modified’ bodies if they are in the porn industry, why does there seem to be only two kinds of women’s characters in porn? It seems to me that there is either the submissive woman (usually very young) being taken advantage of, or initiated into sex. She is labelled ‘sweet’ ‘cute’ ‘teen’. If a woman should dare to be sexually assertive in PornWorld she is labelled a ‘dirty bitch’ a ‘slag’ a ‘whore’. She usually needs to be punished (hurt, humiliated)for being such a whore. By whom? Why, men of course!

For women, beauty and youth are akin to staying child-like. The bottle of champagne Brick received off the captain on the plane – wasn’t that just a pat on the head, a sign of patriarchal approval for her pleasing him with her aesthetics? Why do women endlessly consult their partners: ‘Am I still pretty?’ ‘ Do I still look good for my age?’ ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ ‘Do I look younger than her? She’s the same age as me. Hasn’t she let herself go!’ And I think all women are likely to be guilty of this. My first love (Derek, unfortunate name) eventually asked me out when I was seventeen. I had lusted after him for years. During one of our conversations he told me about a previous girlfriend of his who had hairy nipples. He ridiculed her for not being ‘feminine’ enough. Did I dump him, realizing that he was indiscreet about previous girlfriends? Did I suss that he saw his previous girlfriend as an object? No. Instead I raced home and checked my nipples in the mirror to make sure they were ready for any close-up inspection. Similarly, my January date off the dating site who felt it appropriate to share with me about the woman he dumped because she produced too much fluid during orgasm – I had three thoughts. The third was ‘This man sees women as sex objects and little else’; the second thought was ‘A man is criticizing a woman’s production of fluid at the point of orgasm?!!’ but my first thought was ‘Shit! How much fluid do I produce? Has this ever been a problem in the past? Is there some chap somewhere, sat at a table on a date telling a woman about my excessive fluid production?’ Okay, it was more a chain of thoughts that I had, but it explains much, I think. Women are judged by men and our first response, after years of indoctrination, is not to question it, but to judge ourselves similarly. And whilst we judge ourselves in the same way, we hand over control of ourselves to someone else – to men.  This has so got to change, don’t you think?

In Samantha Brick’s latest little foray into journalism she has this to say about her husband’s response to the negative exposure she has experienced:

At first he shrugged it off, saying they were just the spiteful remarks of a few jealous women. But as the storm brewed…well, I’ve had to hide the worst from him; the tame few I’ve read out have riled him enough to want to take his own form of action!

Samantha has run to Daddy and he’s going to sort it out for her.

I despair.

 

Hair Bear

On the 29^th of June 1994, in a prison in Graz, Austria, a 43 year old prisoner was found hanged in his cell. The prisoner’s name was Jack Unterweger and he’s interesting for a fair few reasons.

First imprisoned in 1974 for the murder of an eighteen year old girl, Unterweger spent his time in jail writing – poetry, stories, plays and his autobiography. On the strength of his writing (his autobiography was titled Purgatory – a Trip to Prison) various politicians and intellectuals campaigned for his release on the basis that he had been successfully rehabilitated. Unterweger was released and went on to host various TV programmes where he discussed criminal rehabilitation.

Released in May 1990, by the following year Unterweger had murdered six prostitutes. This was presumably whilst his TV shows were being broadcast. In 1991, as part of an Austrian magazine commission to write about crime and attitudes to prostitution in Los Angeles Unterweger travelled to L.A. and spent time with the L.A.P.D. The police force took him out to red light districts to aid the research of his magazine article. During this time three prostitutes were murdered in L.A. Their murders carried certain similarities to Unterweger’s other victims. They had been beaten, assaulted with tree branches and strangled with their bras.

By the beginning of  1992 police forces in both Austria and the US realized, and had enough evidence to prove, that Unterweger was responsible for the murders, but Unterweger was one step ahead and managed to evade arrest. After being pursued by various law agencies through North America and Europe, Unterweger was finally arrested in February 1992 in Miami, by the FBI.

Tried for eleven murders, Unterweger was found guilty of nine by a 6:2 majority. On 29^th July he was sentenced to life in prison with no parole. That night he committed suicide.

In Austrian law at that time a prisoner was viewed as still innocent until he had appealed the verdict and been unsuccessful. As Unterweger had committed suicide before appealing his case he technically died  an innocent man.

In May of this year John Malkovich, actor, director, fashion designer and avid knitter (you think I’m bullshitting – I am not) is performing in a one man play at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall, based on Unterweger’s life, called The Infernal Comedy. There’s a full orchestra and a soprano to boot. Being rather partial to John Malkovich and being more than a little interested in Jack Unterweger, I reckon this production is well worth seeing. Unfortunately not by me. Instead I will be at Symphony Hall the following evening to watch Karl Jenkins conduct some of his own work, with my mom. Mom does Karl Jenkins but not serial killers. To be fair I was the one to tell her about Karl Jenkins as I know she likes him and seeing him live will be a big deal to her. It will be enjoyable, I’m sure. But he won’t be Mr Malkovich, with his lovely monotone voice that is only out-monotoned by Kevin Spacey, King of the Monotones and my absolute acting hero. I’m trying my best to be philosophical.

I could buy tickets for John but I’ve just spent a small fortune on  tickets for various performances – that same week Nathan and I are at Symphony Hall again to watch a screening of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula which is being shown alongside music specially composed for the movie by Philip Glass and performed by Kronos, a string quartet. I think this will actually be rather fun although we are sat so far at the back that I think we’ll struggle to see the screen, let alone any action on it. I shall take my free-for-joining National Trust binoculars and guard them jealously from Nathan.

Later that same week we are back in Birmingham to see Simon Amstell. I have written about Simon Amstell before. In my first year at Uni he was performing just around the corner from my campus and I was gutted that I missed him. I just love his humour, and identify painfully with his neuroses. I just think he’s fabulous – and he reminds me quite a bit of Nathan so a part of me wants to adopt him. I must be getting old.

Last week I brought Nathan along on a Uni arranged trip out to Warwick Arts Centre to see Waugh’s Vile Bodies. I didn’t really know what it was going to be about – I have the book but I haven’t gotten round to reading it yet. I went on the trip as I think there are far worse things to be doing than going to the theatre and, as an English student, I think, if a lecturer has gone to the trouble of organizing a trip for the benefit of his students, the least we students can do is make the effort to attend. And it was well worth the small effort that was required. The play, talked about last week on Vole’s blog, was performed brilliantly by students from Warwick Uni. I’m not particularly charitable so if the performance was rubbish I would say, but they were really good, a very talented group of performers. The actor who played Miles was especially worth mentioning. He had the advantage of being given a fantastic character to play but he made him 100% believable. Through his overtly joyous, gaudy unbridled homosexuality you still saw his vulnerability, was able to forecast, and dread, his sad demise. Just fantastic. But!

Yes, there’s a but. The evening had a delightfully surreal twist. As I was standing with my Uni chums and Nathan in the queue for food in the art centre’s café I spotted a chap off the dating site! Not just any old dating chap but the one who was my spur to join the dating site in the first place. The one who, when I read his profile and saw his pic, made me think  ‘I like you!’ I admit the liking was less intellectual, more primal. After I had joined the dating site, as a fully paid up member, I pressed the ‘Like’ button on this man, who, for the purpose of this blog I shall call Bear Man due to his tall, big-framed, curly, long haired beardy-ness. I didn’t even care that he was wearing a fleece in his profile photo such was the effect, on me, of all that hair. I gave him 72 hours to respond to my ‘Like’ button – he did not, so I withdrew mine thinking he’d had his chance and blown it.

But, lo! There was Bear Man, twenty paces away while I stood in the café queue with my Panini. I of course exclaimed to Nathan and my friends that I had spotted Bear Man off the dating site but I could tell they were skeptical. I acquired the table right next to his so I could carry out a closer inspection and was only further convinced that this magnificent specimen of hirsuteness was he. My friend Sarah turned her nose up at him, at all that hair, but I suspect that this was just an act of misplaced loyalty to her bald husband. I can see no other plausible explanation.

The next day, over lunch I was still telling people I had seen a bloke off the dating site on our trip out. You’d have thought it was David Bowie I’d spotted by the fuss I was making. But, of course, there was a small percentage of there being the possibility that I was mistaken in who I thought I’d seen.

I have kept my profile hidden off the dating site for a couple of weeks, ostensibly because the dating site has not been quite what I had hoped or expected. I have just two weeks left of my subscription and I have no intention of renewing, but I thought as I have such low expectations now of the site, I would give it one last go. First though I blocked and hid the profiles of the blokes who had already proved themselves to be capable of being little more than non-discerning penises attached to non-sentient hosts.

On the first day of my profile reappearing I was contacted by a chap who is well read, well educated and bright enough to hold a pretty decent conversation. But, on top of that, I decided to send a message to Bear Man (hoping he had not noticed or remembered the churlish withdrawal of my Like button) asking if he had been at Warwick Arts Centre on the night in question. Not only did he reply saying that indeed it was he, he has turned out to be a really nice bloke - quirky, funny, bright and very approachable. He even joked about his fleece, saving me the trouble. How cool is that? I’m beginning to think I could write a book about Internet date site adventures.

Plans

Yesterday I had my interview at Uni as part of my application to study next year for a PGCE in post compulsory education. As I had expressed an interest in my application form for teaching literacy and basic skills I visited a college in January to sit in on an adult literacy class. The level of literacy that the students had yet to attain shocked me. It shocked me so much that I initially decided that this area of teaching was not for me. I even cancelled a second week of observing this class as I had made my mind up. I wanted, more than anything, to teach English Literature.

A few weeks ago though the Uni had a post-graduate open evening that I wished to attend. I had a chat with one of the tutors who teaches on the post-compulsory ed. course and we were talking about training to teach adult literacy and/or literature. What became apparent was that it would be a good thing for me to train to teach adult literacy. Firstly, the need for adult literacy teachers is huge in the UK at present. I have spent three years wondering how I was going to use my degree in the workplace after graduating and I was seriously beginning to panic about the dearth of jobs that are available at present that specify an English degree as a requirement. And I haven’t accrued huge debts and spent three years studying hard to work in a factory, if I can help it. But, secondly, this tutor explained to me that, as I have studied literature as my degree subject, there is no reason why I wouldn’t be able to teach both literacy and English literature at post-compulsory level and that, in fact, my having two subjects to teach puts me in a very strong position (relatively, anyway) in the F. E. marketplace. (I also suspect that teaching adult literacy is likely to be as rewarding, if not more so, than teaching English lit at A-level. I will be given the opportunity to aid others to broaden their horizons and that’s a huge privilege, I think.)

I attended the interview yesterday expecting to not be successful – I have been fretting over this for weeks. Weeks. No exaggeration. To begin with I have had to research the teaching of adult literacy in order to complete a written task at interview and, no matter how much I have tried, no facts or figures would stay in my brain. A report on adult basic skills written in 1999 I had memorized as being written by a Sir Santa Moser instead of Sir Claus Moser and when I got to the interview and saw all the other applicants armed with writing pads, pens and exam certificates I realised I had forgotten pretty much everything I was supposed to take. Luckily I at least had one pen and a side of A4 (that had directions to the Uni printed on the other side) for me to write on. 

After watching a PowerPoint presentation from the admissions tutor we were to complete the written tasks before being interviewed individually. I was called in first whilst I was in the middle of the first task. I was dreading it, knowing I would look sloppy with my lack of prep but the interviewer was lovely. He wasn’t bothered about my lack of exam certificates (these are to be posted to him later). I explained to him that I had initially been shocked about, and put off by, the adult lit class I had attended and he said he was glad that that had been my reaction. I suppose he could see that I had no false illusions as to what this career choice would entail. I know it’s going to be hard, poorly paid with sketchy, erratic working hours but I can think of nothing else that I want to do – and I’d really like to make a difference in my career choice. The admissions tutor told me, before I really said very much (and I did speak, a lot, because that is what I do) that he was so impressed with my application and personal statement that the Uni would be happy to offer me a place for next year. Because as a mature student who is passionate about, and a success story for, adult learning I was well placed for understanding the needs of fellow learners. That I can inspire others with my own experiences. I’m well chuffed, relieved and very excited. At last I feel like I know the direction I’m going in and it feels good. No more waking in the night panicking about my future. Not for a while, anyway.

Although I’m studying for a PGCE I will also gain half the points needed for an MA in Education. I asked the admissions tutor if I could study the remaining modules for the MA in English Lit. He thought this might very well be possible but that I would need to have a chat with the course leader of the English MA, to make sure. The two modules I would have to study would be Research Methods (standard MA fare which applies to both MA in ed. or lit) and a dissertation. I’d already had a chat with the English MA course leader in September about the required dissertation and possible research subject. I mooted the idea of doing a dissertation on holocaust survivors’ narratives, both factual and fictional (Primo Levi, Martin Gilbert, Elie Wiesel, Rena Kornreich Gelissen, etc.). It’s an area that has fascinated me for decades and to be able to research it on a more thorough, formal basis would just be the bees’ knees for me. The course leader thought that this subject was perfectly do-able and I know one of my Uni lecturers has an interest in holocaust literature so there should be someone available as my project supervisor. If I could do this it would be wonderful.  And, of course, this joint MA option would mean that, as half of the MA’s cost is covered by student loans, I’ve only got to fund the second half, up front.  This makes my MA possible to complete during 2013-14 instead of it feeling like a vague, sometime in the future, aspiration. And, if the admissions tutor is correct in his assertion that my first year’s college teaching will most likely be part-time until I take on other roles and responsibilities, then this will be as good a time as any to complete my MA and consolidate my qualifications.

This weekend though I need to put try to put all this on the backburner and put some work together for my current independent study project. I’ve been looking into racial passing literature and I have found this subject matter incredibly fascinating.  From real-life slave narratives and fiction by black/mixed race writers to Philip Roth’s The Human Stain this is a huge area of fiction I hadn’t really come across before a lecturer brought my attention to the Harlem Renaissance. It’s been a huge eye opener for me. At the moment I’m reading Black No More by George Schuyler. Considered as one of the final pieces of Harlem Renaissance literature and written in the 1930s Schuyler, a black journalist, considers what would happen if America’s blacks could undertake a genetic ‘modification’ process to become white. Neither the Ku Klux Klan nor the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) are happy with the eradication of black people. The KKK, made up mostly of uneducated, low income whites, now has no one to look down on and persecute, and the NAACP, funded mostly by middle class white Americans, starts losing its sponsors (no lynching = no sponsoring) thus reducing the salaries of the very comfortable, nay very wealthy civil rights leaders at the top of the organization. It’s biting satire and very thought provoking. I’m just toying with the idea of writing an essay on this with District 9 as a contrasting work as the opening chapter of the project.

I’m having a rare moment of really enjoying (completely) where I am at this point and it feels really rather nice.

   

My mistress' eyes

In two weeks’ time, on the 19^th of March to be exact, it will have been a year since I last had sex and, if I’m honest, I am rather ambivalent about it.

One of my new year’s resolutions, at the beginning of 2011, was to have a year off from men – to have a year of abstinence. This was chiefly because I felt I needed to have a period of normality to emotionally recover from my marriage but also (more so?) to recover from the previous year’s relationships – from Simon in particular. It was somewhat of a self-defeating blip then that I should zip off for a weekend to Stratford with Simon in March after receiving a phone call from him telling me that I was one of his closest friends, that he had cancelled his MBA in order to spend more time with his family and close friends, and that he was eager to spend time with me.

The hotel was beautiful, built in the mid 19^th century but in the Jacobean style – masses of oak paneling, cantilevered staircases, huge stone mantled fireplaces – and with a new addition of a spa. The early part of the first evening was spent in its outdoor heated pool, in the dark, save for the few soft lights recessed into the ground surrounding us. Simon talked about the hard time he was going through with his first wife, difficult daughter, estranged son. The conversation paused intermittently so that we could listen to the owls hooting in the woodlands beyond the hotel grounds.  He told me about a course he had been on, some spiritual awakening thing that had been recommended to him. He said he wanted to send me on this course because this course had made him feel so happy. I took this offer with a pinch of salt.

The sex, after dinner, was the same as usual. Even from the first time we had slept together the sex felt like we’d been together for years. From the beginning there was never any passion, nor urgency, just a comfortable-ness, an easiness, a fitting together. Neither of us felt self-conscious or awkward to ask for the other to do something that we liked, although Simon became, over the months, less reticent to oblige unless there was the possibility that he might be able to inflict pain.

On the Sunday morning I wanted to talk to him about his apparent emotional detachment from everyone. His best mate had once told me that Simon would treat you, when you were with him, like you were all that mattered to him, but that the minute he was walking away from you to do something else, you would already be forgotten. Other people had to do the running if they wanted any kind of a friendship or relationship with Simon. I asked him if he agreed with this. He just shrugged his shoulders and said yes. I asked him if he had ever felt any emotional connection with another human being. This one he thought over a little longer before admitting that the answer was no, not really, not since he had been packed off to boarding school as a child - then he offered me a piece of Cadbury’s fruit and nut and we changed the subject. A few hours later we were walking in the sunshine around Stratford – no hand holding, no physical contact or public displays of affection because Simon didn’t do those. There was but one small, discreet display of affection from him – an Arvo Pärt CD which he had bought then handed to me mumbling, as he did so, that he thought I might like it.

We went our separate ways and I came home to an empty house (bar Fat Rabbit) and I felt even emptier, literally like there was nothing inside of me. The whole weekend felt somehow completely pointless. Yes, I’d spent the weekend with Simon and we had chatted, laughed, eaten great food, rucked up the bed sheets, but I knew that for Simon it wasn’t that important that I was the one he was sharing the weekend with. He had admitted on the Saturday that although he fancied me, and that he would always want me as he liked what I did and my lack of inhibition, he ultimately slept with me because, seeing as we were together in that moment we might as well take advantage of the convenience.  It’s no great surprise that passion was nowhere to be seen. I think, perhaps, that Simon had had so many sexual experiences with so many different people that sex had ceased having any real feeling attached to it – not even lust. It was just something that you did.

I saw Simon for a total of just eight weekends over the course of ten months but the emotional upheaval caused by those 24 days was immense. The first few weekends were spent with him needing to be reined in – he wanted us to go away at Christmas together to Cuba, he wanted to move to Shrewsbury to be nearer. By the third weekend instead of calming down and being more sensible he swung completely the other way – he was now not after a relationship, just fun; he spoke endlessly about his plans that featured just him, only him, living alone, being alone, growing old alone. I would then head home, or he would, and I would believe that was the last that I would see or hear of him. Then a few weeks later he would get back in touch, telling me that he had missed me, that I was special to him, that he wasn’t ready for a relationship but, if we continued to meet and have fun, if we could just carry on with what we had been doing, then something might develop.

I spent ten months in a kind of limbo. I was single but this man assumed that I would be his whenever he needed me to be. And I was – even though I told him off many times, even though I bolted from him many times, I still agreed to see him, hoping that this next time would be the time he’d make some kind of emotional connection with me. He was arrogant, at times obnoxious, misogynistic, selfish, superficial…but I felt such affection for him.

Maybe I felt something for him because I knew he would still wake up at night sometimes, crying, convinced he was going back to boarding school the next day. Maybe I felt something for him because he insisted, while we walked on a bloody cold windswept beach in December, that I wear his god-awful woolly hat that he had removed because I was shivering, even though I protested bitterly that it didn’t accessorize well with my coat. Maybe I felt something for him because, through him, I lived a bit of a life that I was not a part of – expensive restaurants and hotels, days out on his boat, weekends away; for  Simon was unbelievably lavish and generous. But maybe I felt something for Simon because, during the first time we slept together, he paused, looked at me, seeing my cellulite, my stretch marks, my less than taut stomach and told me that I was beautiful. After twenty two years of having a man tell me that he needed porn in order to have sex because there was nothing remotely attractive about me, it felt good to be told something different, to be told that I was beautiful.

I have a problem with the term ‘making love’, I always have. It seems out of kilter with what it describes, somehow. It’s too wishy-washy. I imagine the couple who make love have a violinist in the corner of the room who faces the wall as he plays something like Saint-Saëns’ The Swan as the man, on top and in the missionary position of course, tries to keep rhythm with the notes. At various times during the act, the word ‘love’ has to be mentioned, ideally with meaning. The term ‘sex’ is okay in the abstract but seems too clinical to be used as a term between a couple.  For instance, if I was sexually involved with a bloke who asked me if I would like sex that night I would feel compelled to reply, “And do we get to use words like ‘penis’ and ‘breasts’ and ‘vagina’? How delightfully quaint!” Being in bed with another human being, getting physically intimate, is not a medical procedure. Don’t like ‘shag’ much, and I hate the term ‘bonking’. Hate it, hate it hate it!

In the first year of my degree I wrote an essay on D. H. Lawrence’s ‘Snake’ poem (okay, you don’t need to be a student of literature to work out the symbolism in Lawrence’s poem, though I like his ‘Figs’ a lot more) and, during my research I came across a claim that Lawrence tried for many years to have the word ‘fuck’ included in the dictionary. He felt that there was nothing profane with the word. In 1960 Lady Chatterley’s Lover was the first book in the UK to be allowed to be published, after years of censure, with the word ‘fuck’ in it. It had been written in 1928, two years before Lawrence’s premature death. ‘Fuck’ is a good word for sex, I think. Sex is not clinical, or sophisticated; great sex is exciting, earthy, sweaty, messy, at times funny at other times serious, it can soothe, it can hurt, but ultimately it is an act that requires us to be completely stripped down – not of clothes but of inhibitions. For hands and mouths (and other bits) to feel free to venture everywhere on our lover there needs, I think, to be a sense of acceptance of ourselves, our lover and of whatever may happen between the two. Great sex, or fucking, is an acknowledgement that, for all of our supposed culture, our trappings of civilization, our artifice, we are still animals who still need something so base, so innate, as physically joining with another in order to feel completely human, alive, whole and that, rather than this being something to feel ashamed about, it should be celebrated, heartily.

What I have learned in the last year, and through the dating site, is that sex means too much to me for me to settle for casual sex with relative strangers. I would rather be single and abstain for longer than have cheap, unsatisfying sex with someone who really doesn’t care or understand just how great sex should be.  Because sex with no emotional connection is far more harmful and negative than abstinence could ever be.

If lemon cake be the food of love, bake on

I read a statement in a book the other night that was both obvious but also a revelation. This book stated that women are far more likely to experience orgasms during sex in established long-term relationships than in casual flings. The reasons for this are simple but basically revolve around the clitoris; men in committed, long term relationships are far more likely to care enough about their lover to bother to a) find out where the clitoris is, and b) take the trouble to stimulate said clitoris to the required state of orgasmic bliss. The clitoris by the way, just in case you are interested, has twice as many nerve endings in it than the head of a penis – it’s kind of predisposed, having absolutely no other function, to having fun.

Of course, there are exceptions to this book’s statement. Having been in a twenty-two year relationship with a porn junkie, I know that sex in long term relationships can also be crappy, and soul destroying if one partner’s idea of great sex is gauged by frequency, shaved vulvas that resemble a child’s, pneumatic mammaries that resemble udders and a script which invariably includes phrases along the lines of ‘ooh fuck me hard, you stallion’ etc., etc.

I’ve got talking to a chap through the dating site. He’d been married for about twenty years when he lost his wife in a car accident. Compared to other men who have contacted me, this man is like a breath of fresh air. Because he has no failed marriage behind him he doesn’t have the baggage that I’ve come across with other blokes off the site. It is clear, from the way he talks about his wife, that there was a huge amount of love, friendship and affection between them. I have not heard this man utter one word of bitterness, no snide remark, about anyone or about his situation. He’s a schoolteacher, passionate about his job, the students he teaches, his children and his friends. About the time I was reading the book that I mentioned earlier, I talked about sex with this chap. What he said backed up the book’s assertion. He and his wife had a great sex life and, for him, it was a matter of pride that he made sure his wife was satisfied before he was. Sex, for them, was as much about laughter and intimacy as it was about passion and excitement. This intelligent, caring, funny, sexually astute man should have women lining up outside his front door.

Of course, what the book hasn’t taken into account is character. My ex-husband’s emotional make-up is not equipped to consider, nor care about, a woman’s needs during sex.   His obsession with porn is ongoing, even in his new sparkly relationship with Jabba (as my son found out on Saturday when he used the Internet on his father’s iPhone) and his inability to feel empathy or passion can’t help but be obvious during any sexual activity. Contrastingly, it seems pretty apparent to me that a man who is loving, positive, affectionate, passionate and fully engaged with life is going to view any sexual activity through the filter of these qualities.

Another thing this book talks about is the main difference between how men and women view sex. There’s the age old evolutionary argument that men have the overwhelming urge to mate with everything that ovulates in order to spread their seed and have lots of ‘mini-me’s running around, whilst women have the overwhelming urge to chain their sperm donor to the floor so that he has no choice but to share the drudgery of child rearing that sex has a habit of creating. Monogamous men, some would argue, face a continual battle between their enlightened intellect and their un-evolved sex drive. By the way, another snippet of useless information – only 3%, yes 3% of the Earth’s species of mammals are monogamous but monogamy can be found in non-mammalian species; blackbirds and swans, for instance, are monogamous for life as are lobsters who have actually been observed shuffling along the sea bed holding claws with their other half. Just remember that the next time you’re enjoying your lobster thermidor.

I think the evolutionary argument above is a disservice to men, but I do think some men like to use it as an excuse to justify their shitty behaviour and attitude towards women.  Another argument that the book raised, that I am more inclined to agree with, is centred on the hormones that are released during sex. My friends and I have talked about this before, how, straight after sex, women like to be held and kissed, maybe even to fall asleep wrapped up inside their partner’s arms, whereas their men are more inclined to want to get up and do other things such as, if the (male) author of my book is right, look at porn on the Internet. Unfortunately, for women, the hormones produced during sex have the function of making her feel warm and fuzzy inside and in love. It is because of this hormone release that a woman finds it difficult to have sex like a man. Women can’t help but become emotionally attached to whomever they are sleeping with, however much they would like it to be otherwise. Women know this and men know this but it doesn’t stop men and women sleeping around with the subsequent moans by men that they have this bore of a woman who doesn’t understand that he just wants to have fun but no relationship, and it doesn’t stop the woman from bawling into her sodden handkerchief as she sobs (snot and tears spraying everywhere) that she just can’t understand how she and this man had shared something so special only for him to dump her for the next shag.  It is only later, when hormones have dissipated and she calms down enough to think rationally that she realizes that the ‘something so special’ was actually a really rather lame lay with a bloke with hygiene issues who she wouldn’t want to introduce to even her most vague of acquaintances.

I don’t think women want commitment off a guy (any guy) any more than men need to shag everything with a pulse. I can only speak as a woman but all that I request, when being involved with someone, is that their focus is as much on me as they expect my focus to be on them. In the last couple of months I have realized that Internet dating is not conducive to this. It seems to me for a start that value for money, on dating sites, is viewed differently between the sexes. For men value is quantitative, for women, qualitative; women would be well chuffed if they met one great chap within the first week of joining the dating site. For some men, though, who might have paid for three (or even six) months membership up front, this would be a disaster. For a start, straight away they’ve wasted two (or five) months money if they focus on the first woman whom they meet, no matter how great/beautiful/funny/sexy/pervy she might be. She may be the bird in the hand but this guy knows there are a hell of a lot more than just two waiting in the bush. In fact, he knows there are several women not only waiting but impatiently sending him their details and advertising their eagerness to compete with the other birds who’ve also paid their subscriptions to meet a ‘quality’ man. But Internet dating sites, like other forms of dating companies, have turned relationships into another form of consumerism and I find this depressing – especially after having a date with a self-declared Communist who insists that his obsessive involvement with the dating site is justifiable as he needs to get value for money from his subscription. Viva la revolucion!

A few weeks ago I was in the process of arranging date number three with a bloke whom I knew, from date number one, was not the quality man I was looking for. My fault I know for I had already realized that, his selfishness, lack of height and self-grandiosity aside, he was more interested in quantity over quality or, if we’re opting for talking in code, fun instead of a relationship. This pursuit of his, for fun, ensured his being virtually intravenously joined to the dating site. If I called him and he didn’t answer, guess what? He was on the dating site. If we were texting and the texts suddenly dried up, guess what? Yep, you got it, he was on the dating site! But, you need to understand, he was only on the dating site as he needed, as an act of politeness, to read and answer messages that he had received from the hordes of adoring female fans that he had acquired from the height and breadth of the country, who had fallen for him on the basis of one grainy photograph (head only, not full height) and a paragraph of info that said he liked some music, some books and some coastal paths.

It was during one of our texting conversations, when I was in my full domestic goddess groove, that  I suggested I would bake him my Nigella Lawson lemon drizzle cake for his next visit over because he had  earlier stated lemon drizzle cake was his favourite. I waited half an hour for his answer whilst he checked on the dating site, presumably to see if there were any better, more tempting, orally centred offers on there before he committed his taste buds to me. It was at this point that I realized, completely and utterly, that my cake was best baked for others who appreciated quality over quantity – those whose tastes were more Nigella Lawson and less Kerry Katona.

Yesterday I baked said cake and took it into uni for my very grateful and greedy discerning friends. My Internet teacher friend came up to visit me last week and was lovely, and he’d even bought me a book that he thought would come in useful for my dissertation. And of course there’s still Bus Guy, who I glimpse on a Wednesday when he pops into the canteen for his coffee and whom I nearly approached armed with my phone number on a piece of paper until my friend declared this act to be a bit psychotic. Maybe I should try smiling and saying hello first, but I’ll get there in the end.

Internet dating does have its pitfalls; I have found that there are a fair few stalkers, vultures and emotionally stunted men on there but there are good, interesting, lovely people on there too. My only advice if I was to give any to a woman would-be Internet dater is this: you are as spoiled for choice as the men are on the dating sites, so don’t settle for mediocre. If your gut is telling you that the man messaging you, or who is sat in front of you, is a loser then listen to it – gut reactions are seldom wrong. And also, don’t focus on the supposedly ‘good looking’ blokes on there, especially the ones with few or no other qualities. Whilst you could be having a great time and, hopefully at some point, great sex  with someone who isn’t endlessly bragging that they look like George Clooney, the Clooney lookalike will still no doubt be having plenty of fun with his palm and his reflection. Oh, and his Calvin Klein Obsession aftershave.  

Curiosity

On Monday night a text came through on my phone. It read, “Hello ‘Blossom’ how are you keeping? X” Unfortunately my phone just listed the sender’s number not their name so I did not know who the sender could be. Not long before I received this message I had had a clear-out on my phone, deleting contacts whom I hadn’t heard from in some time and also some ‘Soulmates’ daters who I didn’t wish to contact again. (By the way, I feel compelled to state at this time that I hate the name ‘Soulmates’ for an Internet dating site. Somebody who contacted me through there refers to the site as Shagmates; I think he is probably very close to the mark. His strap line was ‘Shagmates – for those who are sad, lonely and desperately in need of a good seeing to, no matter how exciting they try to sound in their profiles.’ Okay, as marketing slogans go it is somewhat cumbersome and perhaps not universally true for all its members but at least it’s more realistic than ‘Soulmates’). But I have digressed. So, I had a bit of a quandary. If the text message was off an old friend I could potentially offend them by sending back a text saying, “Who is this?” On the other hand, I did not wish to rekindle any dialogue with any ‘dater’ I had deleted out of my phone by sending any message at all. After all, they all get deleted for a reason!

I managed to hold out until Wednesday before curiosity had gotten the better of me. As I rode on the Uni bus back home that evening I sent a text asking who the sender was. Almost instantly my phone started to ring. Bugger, they weren’t just going to send a text message back. I answered the phone and as soon as I heard the broad Welsh accent my heart sank – it was Hot Water Bottle Guy, the twit who thought my reason for joining the dating site was to provide horrible little men (figuratively speaking, for he looked like a gigantic rock ape in his profile pic) with a free sex line service. And what did he say? He had the audacity to ask who I was! He’d bloody contacted me first! I decided to take advantage of his supposed memory loss and quickly blurted out that I must have called a wrong number and I disconnected the call. But this wasn’t the first call in recent weeks that was not listed in my contacts.

A couple of Fridays ago, another text message came through to my phone which, again, referred to me by name. I quote, “Hi ‘Blossom’, just sitting in practice thinking re u, u ok? X’ The sender’s number looked vaguely familiar. I tried to think who would be at ‘practice’? I looked at the number again. Then it clicked. I sent him a message back, asking if he still worked late. It was Errant Vet. I had not seen or heard anything from EV since New Year’s Eve 2010, when Bloss my goldie was really ill,  and it still hadn’t been long enough. His next text told me that he had had a difficult few months and he would really like me to drop in to the surgery to have a coffee with him sometime. I figured there was no time like the present so, after texting him to say that he was getting coffee and nothing else, off I went.

I went to ring the doorbell of his practice but he was already hovering in the shadows waiting for my approach. He opened the door and, as I walked past him, tried to hug and kiss me but I was too fast for him and strode off towards the staircase, asking if he’d put the kettle on. Once in the kitchen I sat on the table that he kept pushed against the kitchen wall; I told him that Bloss had recently died. His sadness for my loss was vocalized by a brief sentence of condolence followed by an oft-practiced pause before he asked me if I still had sugar in my coffee. Handing me my drink and sitting next to me on the table, he proceeded to tell me about his difficult few months. His head nurse, the constantly pinched looking M, had apparently walked out of his practice in August after having her demands for a pay rise refused. For some strange reason, the head of the chain of vets that EV had sold his practice to (think televised exposé on dodgy vets, in 2010) thought it best to still pay M her salary whilst she was suspended until further notice. But M had other ideas - she had decided to take EV to court for sexual harassment.  From what EV has told me at various times himself, this is the third employee to accuse him of this. His boss made it clear to him that he would have to fund his own lawyer for the case, rather than be represented by the vet chain’s over-worked legal team. Even though the evidence was apparently overwhelming to prove that M was lying, EV still settled with her out of court, paying her £25,000, on the understanding that she was not to discuss the case with anyone. My heart, naturally, went out to him – there can’t be many people who have been accused of sexually harassing at least three members of their staff, resulting in hefty private settlements together with the lack of support from a boss whose extensive cannabis factory in his sprawling back garden demonstrates his own strict adherence to the law. But then maybe his boss was still pissed off with EV for trying to snog his secretary at the Head Office Christmas do.

After the coffee had been drunk EV took my cup off me to wash in the sink. On his return to the table where I sat EV stood in front of me, placing a hand on each of my knees, and lunged at my face with his mouth open, tongue protruding. He was a little too fast for me - I was so busy talking (really? Yes, I know, hard to believe) that he managed to time his tongue assault on my mouth when it was open. Perhaps he felt that his tale of woe had somehow turned me on or my anticipated sympathy for his wretched situation would guarantee him access to my tonsils. Either way he was propelled backwards as I barked “No!” as I would to my children if I caught them circling my minty Matchmakers. He smiled, rubbed my knee in an ‘Aw shucks’ kind of way, but then lunged at me again with his tongue out. This time I was ready for him and clamped my hand firmly over my mouth whilst I glared at him. ‘The trouble with you,’ he stated, ‘is you’re just too moral. Come on, I’d better let you go home. By the way, I’m going to my villa in Spain on Monday for the week, would you like to come with me?’  I declined his generous offer, graciously, imagining that I had just turned down a week of Benny Hill inspired chases around Malaga.

As I left the surgery, with his calling after me to visit his practice for a coffee any time I wanted, I found it hard to believe that this hopeless man (albeit a man who looks like Daniel Craig’s more athletic brother, with buttocks like medicine balls) had once been the cause of so much heartache, disappointment and turmoil. The scales had well and truly fallen from my eyes.

   

Admission

In the summer I was having a conversation with one of our lecturers, over tea and flapjacks. We were discussing our uni’s policy of admitting students that other universities might not otherwise consider. My lecturer was talking about his agreeing with this policy but I was saying that, as a student, I had a problem with certain people getting places, who were more interested in texting and chatting in class, than actually working or contributing on any meaningful level.

The Internet dating thing is trundling along. In the past week I have had virtual conversations with a very jolly chap who shares my love of Attingham but, unfortunately, looks like Vic Reeves and is closer in age to my mother than me; a chap from Wolverhampton way who is not a very good speller and smokes; a local chap who has OCD but assures me that his friends really are jealous of his very tidy house and alphabetically stored CD collection; a photographer from Up North who used to look after orangutans; a weirdo who demanded that I should see him that night and that  I should drive to his house so he could cook me dinner, then harass me ever since for refusing;  a schoolteacher from Wiltshire who has just started doing stand-up comedy routines, and a Welsh journalist who has a degree in English Literature.

I knew from the outset that the journalist chap was a no-go. Although nearly forty, he looks very boyish, still, and he writes messages to me that are more accurately described as essays. I answered the first two off him but the last one is so incredibly huge I can’t be bothered to answer all the questions he has peppered through it.  One of his questions is whether I have used a certain book by a certain author when I have studied works by Shakespeare, because this author taught him when he studied English Lit at Cambridge. Now, I know a pissing contest when I see it, and I see one right here.

I did not let on that I had never heard of this author because that would have been impolite. But I know if I had been taught at Cambridge I would not be doing the old name-dropping thing. I would like to think that I am better mannered than that.

Just over a week ago I sat in a lecture for a module on the 1960s. It’s a module I’ve been looking forward to immensely and in this first week we were shown a documentary about some of the major changes that the ‘60s saw. It was a time of student demonstrations, a time when authority was finally being challenged rather than just being accepted. There was an air of optimism that the man on the street could effect change. During the course of this documentary a chap, who was now a university lecturer, said that he was the first generation of his family to go to university, courtesy of some of the changes wrought by that decade. I think that most of what was said in the ten minutes after that sailed over my head as I realised that I, in 2012, am the first person in my family to go to university, too. I think it was in this moment that I fully understood my lecturer’s support for my university’s admission policy.

Because my university admits students that, say, might not be considered for Oxford/Cambridge, it is maybe sniffed at in the world of academia. I’m sure that not everybody in my class will graduate with a first or a 2:1. Some will not graduate with a class of degree that will set off sparklers, let alone fireworks. But that is not the aim of my uni. The aim of my uni, as I understand it, is to give people a chance to study who might not otherwise have this opportunity elsewhere. There are some in my class who mess around and don’t seem to fully understand that they are there to learn, but I think most universities will have their share of those. What I know for sure is that my university, because of its admission policy, has enabled more students to say, “I am the first generation of my family to go to university.”

My admission into university was supposed to be gained on successful completion of an Access to Higher Education course at my local college.  When my marriage broke down, my domestic situation was so untenable that the boys and I left the area and moved in with my sister for a while.  One of the consequences of this was that I did not get the chance to complete my Access course.  Some universities would not have honoured my conditional offer of a place in their institution but Wolverhampton did. I know that I would have worked hard at whichever university I happened to study at but I know that I have a great deal of appreciation, a huge amount of loyalty and more than a dollop of pride for my place of study. Compared to my would-be Cambridge dater, I’m more of a St. Trinian and I kind of like that.

In the week I was looking at job vacancies for graduates on the Internet. One looked promising until I noticed that the recruiters were only interested in graduates from ‘top’ universities. Their loss. I know that the level and quality of my education is as credible as that offered from any other university in this country. And any would-be employer who is more interested in where my (bona fide) degree came from and less in my qualities and suitability for a post will be of no interest to me.

Ultimatum

When my marriage finally ended it was not due to my husband’s preoccupation with porn or his constant lying, it was not because of his verbal and emotional abuse or his terrifying ability to rack up huge debts, it was not even down to his complete lack of support while I attempted to educate myself. My marriage ended when it did because my husband saw fit to issue me with an ultimatum, a choice. I was to choose between him and a friend I’d made at college, somebody who offered friendship when I felt completely on my own.

I didn’t choose my friend over my husband, thereby ending my marriage. Rather I chose not to let my husband have the power over me that ultimatums are supposed to wreak. I was aware that if I had chosen my husband, I would most likely be issued with other ultimatums at other times that would serve to give him complete control over me. I left him as I felt I had no other choice.

When I dated Simon (he of the Waitrose shopping bag) he told me that during his second marriage his daughter and wife had a huge argument. It was initially over something trivial (make-up) but it escalated to a point where Simon intervened. At this point, both daughter and wife demanded that he make a choice – he had to pick one over the other. He chose his wife and turned his back on his daughter. She was twelve years old. From this point on, his wife refused to allow the daughter to visit them. Simon’s son was allowed, Simon and his wife would even take his son on holiday to Euro Disney and Greece, but the daughter stayed at home, left out. Eventually Simon’s marriage to this woman disintegrated; it was only at this point that he thought that perhaps he should make amends to repair his relationship with his daughter, three years later.

A few weeks ago my youngest son Niles was having an argument with his dad’s girlfriend’s son. Ni was sick of this boy trying to copy him and told him as much. In front of Niles the girlfriend (Claire, or Jabba the Hut, as I like to call her) warned Richard that if he didn’t sort Niles out soon, worst case scenario, she and her children would be moving out – presumably back to Hollinswood which is not the most salubrious of Telford’s neighbourhoods.

Ultimatums are interesting, especially when they are issued in relationships. It is tempting to believe that the person issuing the ultimatum is the one with power but, interestingly, the opposite is true. Ultimatums are issued precisely because the issuer feels threatened and powerless and is trying to gain some power and control over the other.

So how can ultimatums be dealt with? How do you make a choice that is being demanded of you? The answer is surprisingly simple - you don’t. By refusing to respond to an ultimatum you do two things – firstly, you refuse to be controlled and manipulated and, secondly, you return the problem back to its source. Had I refused to choose between my friend and my husband, it would have been up to my husband to decide what he was prepared to accept and therefore act accordingly. Similarly, if Simon had refused to choose between his wife and daughter, what is the worst that would have happened? Would they both have rejected him, withdrawn their love for him, or would they have had to work out a solution to their argument between them? If Richard refused to favour Claire’s son over his own would Claire really pack her bags and return to Hollinswood, leaving behind a house and lifestyle she wouldn’t have a hope of enjoying again?

In relationships, where there are step-children, it seems that it is not that uncommon for ultimatums to be issued or hinted at. But I think it’s important to realize that an ultimatum issued by a child is very different to one issued by an adult. Children do not choose for their parents to separate and they do not get to choose if, when and with whom their parents embark on another relationship. Having gone through the anguish of seeing their family fracture, it is perhaps understandable when a child demands some proof of their parent’s love. Of course, what the child really needs to see is not that they can control their parent by stamping their foot and making that parent jump through hoops; rather, they need to see that their parent’s love for another partner will never in any way threaten their love for their child. However, it is a whole different ball game when an adult issues any kind of threat or ultimatum to a lover, especially one that is designed to threaten that partner’s relationship with their child.

When an adult knowingly enters a relationship with another who has children from an earlier time they should embark on that situation fully aware and sensitive to the children’s needs, anxieties and fears. They should be fully honest with themselves about whether they can accept that they will have to share their partner with his or her children. Most adults in this situation, I am sure, are emotionally mature enough to accept this but there are those who aren’t. And if such people cannot accept their partner’s relationship with their children they should steer clear from the outset.

I saw, from talking to Simon, that his ex-wife’s insecurities did not cease with his choosing her over his daughter. Instead she became ever more controlling and demanding, issuing even more ultimatums until he fled. Why? Because she repeatedly made her insecurities and neuroses his problem so she would never have to deal with them herself, but these problems do not go away if they are not faced.  And because Simon thought it was his responsibility to make his wife happy he found himself in a situation where nobody won. The wife suffered, he suffered and so did his daughter.

Maybe the biggest problem with ultimatums is this; the person issuing the ultimatum is forcing another to do something against their will. In most cases this is only going to cause an awful lot of pain and resentment. On the surface the person who forces an ultimatum may be getting their own way, if the ultimatum goes in their favour, but the cost will be huge. A parent who has had their relationship with their child damaged because of the jealousies and insecurities of another will forever feel regret. The children involved are painfully aware that their relationship with their parent has been compromised because of someone, whom they have had to accept as a new member of their family, refuses to see them in the same way.  I have my own childhood experience to know that this is the case.

Maybe this is a step too far but I also have to question the depth of love that a person can feel for a partner when they feel they have the right to force an ultimatum. When my husband demanded that I choose between my friend at college and him he also wanted me to give up my place at college and not follow through with attending university. He stated that he wanted me to stay at home, forever as a housewife and mother – lonely, isolated and intellectually frustrated. He felt he had a right to demand this of me. My unhappiness, my regret at not being able to fulfill my potential and realize a dream I had had since I was a teen, was unimportant to him. He wanted me with no compromises on his part. I have no regrets at all that I left. However, had I refused to make a choice I could maybe have left the marriage better emotionally prepared than I was at that particular moment, where I felt forced to make a decision before I was fully ready to make it and deal with it. Similarly, any adult who believes that it is reasonable to declare or intimate that their partner should choose between them and their partner’s children does not have the emotional capacity or maturity to love fully or healthily, because no genuinely loving person would wish to cause their partner, or people whom their partner cared about, so much pain, guilt and regret.