In no man’s land

I’ve been married twice. My first marriage lasted ten years before it ended in divorce and my second marriage lasted seven years before we separated.

That’s where I’m at; in separation no man’s land. I’m in that lovely stage when my “ex” still calls, e-mails and SMSes me professing his undying love to me. I find myself wondering why he couldn’t do this while I was still interested, while I still had hope that it was going to be a lifelong union, that he was “the one”. When I asked him about this he told me that it’s because he had given up on us before. Apparently my need for sleeping seven to eight hours a day was completely annoying and left him without hope; it made him feel neglected. It’s completely beside the point apparently that he could only sleep about four hours a night because of this post traumatic stress disorder. It’s also completely beside the point that he wasn’t working and that I not only spent eight hours five days a week at work but I also spent three hours a day traveling to and from work.

To be honest, I was exhausted which is simply no excuse for not being all perky and ready to party at the end of the day I gather. Do I sound bitter? I guess I am. I never came home to a cooked meal or to see my house properly cleaned but who am I to judge even though he wasn’t working. How dare I ask that he sit down with my daughter to do homework when she needs help because of her learning difficulties? I expected too much of this other human being and that's the sole reason my second marriage failed.

However, I blame no one here but myself because the only person who sold me short was me. In both my marriages I have “settled” because I thought I could do no better than that, that I was somehow so despicable and worthless that I had to take what was thrown at me and be content with it. In both my marriages I have ended up with broken men whom I somehow, with some la-la land thinking thoroughly applied, thought that I (Wonder Woman) could help fix. I probably even thought, deep down inside some dark messy corner of my mind, that they would be grateful for the sacrifices I made in my self sacrificing quest to help them. However, they didn’t want my help. At best they wanted me to love them while they would be allowed to be their own self accepted immature selves. That’s the problem. I wanted them to grow up but men seldom do grow up, do they, or did I get that wrong about them too?

It’s interesting to be in this no man’s land of separation in a sense because you realize that humanity are basically divided into two teams: the hopeless romantics who think that you will never be whole without that special someone (and he’s out there desperately seeking me) and the hopeless cynics who advises you to get toy boys (in my case boys, although a lesbian friend or two would possibly advise me to switch camps) if you feel a strong need for human intimacy and to make sure you swap them out often so that you don’t run the risk of getting attached to them. It’s also surprising to see who falls into what category. People who are in happy relationships don’t always promote the idea of there being such a thing as a happy relationship.