Why everyone should get married!
Over five years ago I married the man I had loved for over ten years, and lived with for
almost eight. It was a wonderful wedding, one of the happiest and most beautiful days of
my life; but like many days in my life …. it was fake.
The first time, Graham proposed to me whilst I was on the toilet, naked. He proposed
mainly because to all intents and purposes I forced him to; I nagged him about it a lot and
then one day, when I saw loads of shooting stars in the sky, I told him and a friend that I
wanted, more than anything, for us to get married. He turned to me and said; ‘If England
win the Ashes, I’ll marry you’.
Well, against all the odds England did win the Ashes! We had been together for many years
and I guess I wanted evidence of a stronger commitment, and more importantly, at the
time, I believed that if we were married then he would be less afraid of me leaving him, like
his mother had at birth.
During this engagement, Graham started to search for his birth mother, (apparently it is
often at key moments in a persons’ life that they search for birth parents; a need to check
medical history etc) anyway, he found her surprisingly quickly and things became somewhat
crazy. The final straw came when he threw a chair at me (!), at which point I fled with the
dog to the safety of my parent’s house in France in my rover metro.
Several months and some counseling (on his part) later, we lived together once again
and things seemed to have improved. About another year after that, Valentine’s day was
approaching and seeing that it was a leap year, and it had been he who had proposed the
previous time, (and I had cancelled the wedding when I left!), I thought it sensible that it be
my turn.
I walked to a spot we often passed on dog walks and tied a heart to a tree with a note on it
asking ‘Will you Marry me?’. Sadly later that day when we walked past it, he didn’t actually
see it, so I had to point it out and then argued with him about how he should be the one
to go and see what it was – how very romantic! However, he said yes and once again we
planned a small but beautiful wedding at my parent’s home in France.
We had agreed not to see each other the night before the wedding and so slept in separate
houses. However, on the morning of the wedding, Graham stuck his head though my door
and said ‘Sorry! I’ve run out of weed.’ I couldn’t believe it! Couldn’t he have sent someone
else? I was really angry but calmed myself (probably, though I can’t remember by smoking
a joint myself) and tried not to think about it. The day progressed beautifully and we
consummated our marriage in style.
Two days later I was driving people to the airport to fly home, when I received a text from
his birth mother, Sarah, asking to see me. ‘How lovely’, I thought and text back ‘Yes of
course’.
When I arrived at the gite where she was staying, the first thing she said to me was ‘I’ve
always liked you…’. How nice I thought, smiling, ‘…or thought I liked you…’ hang on, what?
‘Or liked what I thought I knew about you.’ What the hell?
She went on to detail how I had let her down. How it was my fault that she had such a bad
relationship with her son and how I clearly did everything I could to keep him away from
her. How could I tell her that Graham never wanted to speak to her? That I had to force him
by always saying that yes, he was home when he would be desperately shaking his head
and that it was always me that encouraged/forced getting together. I had so much respect
for the woman for not having had an abortion (as I had done at her age) and I felt that the
only way Graham would get over his ‘issues’ was by improving his relationship with his birth
mother.
Driving away from her that day my whole life seemed to change shape. I relived so many of
my experiences again but saw them through other people’s eyes. Since the age of 15, when
I was raped, I had been doing everything I could to ignore myself. I hated myself and so
put everyone else ahead of me. I felt they were much more important.
Realising that I had not only failed but I had clearly done more harm than good hit me hard.
If this was how Sarah saw me, what might other’s think? Why keep living a lie? I promised
myself to keep my head clear and to try to understand what I really wanted. To live for me.
The alternative had so completely backfired.
I got back to my parent’s house and explained what had happened to my husband, who
said something along the lines of ‘oh well she’s a stupid cow anyway.’ ‘What? So you’re
not going to explain to her how wrong she is and that it was your fault that she feels
completely shut out by you? Even now you won’t explain that you put her birth family in the
background because you wanted the parents who had bought you up all your life to be the
centre of attention? – totally understandable but she just needs you to tell her’. ‘Nah’. Oh
my god, I was so angry but what could I do?
When we returned home, I threw myself into my new job. Driving the five hour commute
twice a week. This commute gave me a lot of time to consider my colossal mistake. Was I
really accepting this treatment and lack of care for the rest of my life? Seriously?
They say love makes you blind and marriage opens your eyes. Well that was certainly the
case for me. Everyone should marry, if, for nothing else, simply to check that love has not
made them blind.
I left him three weeks after marrying him and nearly four years later, can say with total
conviction that it was the best thing I ever did.
Going forwards I fell in love with Claire and lived happily as a lesbian. It is thanks to her
that I now know what I want. That I have stopped long enough to ask myself that question.
That I have given myself the time necessary to heal from my past.
Going backwards, I was once videotaped having sex against my knowledge which was
subsequently shown to many of my friends at the time. The guy in question then used the
tape to blackmail me when I got pregnant with his baby.
Further back, I was sleeping with someone ten years older than me at 13, who
then ‘cheated on me’ with two of my ‘best friends’ in a threesome.
It is only recently that the word Pedophile has entered the equation for me. It wasn’t only
the rape that negatively affected my life but sex with men that had a detrimental impact.
Now sex is about what we want and how we like it. Certainly for me, I needed a woman to
teach me how to do this. I am no longer a sexual object but a sexual subject.
Life has had its ups and downs, however as Frank Zappa once said: ‘Better to have
something to remember, than nothing to forget’.
