Talkabout

13/05/2008 @ 09:32 HippiChic said:

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My father told my mum a few months ago that he was 'in love' with someone else. He desn't want to leave mum because he says he still loves her, but just met another woman (through the school where he teaches music). My mum is being really pragmatic about the whole thing, she hasn;t chucked him out. She was really really shocked and upset at first, but now seems to be really understanding about it all, which I am finding a bit uncomfortable. I wonder if she is just being this way because she thinks at her age she wont find anyone else and that 'men do these things sometimes' - is this acceptable??
I am not very shocked as my dad has always been a bit of a loose canon, although I always felt he was rock solid when it came to mum. Am just a bit confuised by mums reaction... I'd be spitting blood personally.
Anyone been in a similar boat?
13/05/2008 @ 10:24 UMxx said:

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Hey Hippichick,

You've got an interesting family. I think that if your mum is okay with your dad in loving her and another woman then that's her business. Maybe she is comfortable with being loved - but not exclusively. It's not like she has been rejected - and I guess they may not have told you what kind of love he feels for your mum and his new love.
We have a very judeo christian view of love and marriage and I am not convinced that it is founded in the capacity for humans to develop loving and long relationships or if it was just about other matters such as ability to support families financially. The other side of this is some religions allow men to have many wives and I have only ever heard of one matriarchal tribe in Acheh where the women take more men rather than the reverse.

I don't know what we might consider right or wrong in this - if someone was treated in a way that demeaned them (tested by their response and not others), or was harmed, or was made to suffer then that would be wrong.

As long as your mum is okay and comfortable with this, then that looks after the core issue.

Another one is how you see your parents relationship changing the way you relate to them. The wondering about whether your mum is accepting out of a sense of low sense of self esteem and questioning if it okay is probably more about how you want to see their relationship.. i think that it is tough for you to having a strong belief in their relationship as being about a monogamous marriage and now having to confront that it is now different. I think this would present quite a challenge for all of us thinking about our parents but maybe not if we think about our own relationships.
Could this be true? We have one rule for our parents and another for ourselves?
13/05/2008 @ 10:47 SwimUpstream said:

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My cousin is in her 40's with two adorable daughters and a seemingly adoring husband. SHe told me that a few years ago her husband 'fell in love with another woman'. I, like you HChic, was a bit shocked - but mostly by her matter-of-fact behaviour. When I asked her about it she said that she was MErely a realist - that it is naive to think that one or both partners in a relationship wont fall in love with other people at some point in their lives- especially when things are rocky in life or in their long term relationship. He left for a while and when he came back she took him back - and although it was diffcult she says their relationship is now better for it.
So I must say I admire your mum's strength, I personally cannot imagine the situation, but from talking to my cousin i can see how things are not always so simple. She still claims that he never 'not' loved her - its just he fell in love with someone else as well.
I suggest you talk to your mother. As a woman I suspect it is her story you are struggling with most - I think maybe she would appreciate telling you her side of things too?
SU
13/05/2008 @ 11:55 pinpanblue said:

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I think there is a difference between being in love and loving someone. Falling in love can just happen to you, that all consuming out of control,swept off your feet, floating on cloud nine feeling. Loving someone is less exciting and sometimes involves loving them despite......
I think you can fall in love with someone while you love someone else. I guess what you do about the falling in love depends on what you believe about the commitment you have to the one you love. It happened to me once, long, long (very long) ago. I revelled in the euphoria of being in love for a while but quite quickly it all got very painful and stressful as there was nowhere to go with it without hurting my partner and children. The only good thing I can say looking back is that I lost loads of weight!
13/05/2008 @ 12:20 Swon said:

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Without a doubt it is possible to love two people.

At age 14 I met a girl and for two years we were inseperable spending every possible bit of time together, it was almost like being one person; very strange in people so young. Then I cocked it all up and my stupid male pride stopped me from recovering the situation.

35 years later, in 2000, through a bizarre set of circumstances, we met again and after ten minutes in each others company it was like we had never been apart, we both had the same strength and depth of feelings for each other as we had all those years earlier. My wife, who was there when we met, later observed that I'd obviously never gotten over her and looking back I could see how she'd noticed because we had been in a bar full of people at the time but it was like one of those scenes from a film where anything and everything around the central characters is out of focus and it's like they exist outside of the reality in which they live; that's exactly how we'd felt.

What followed was almost six years of torture, we would meet up quite infrequently but we managed to keep our releationship plutonic until it came to the point where I knew I had to either leave my wife or never see my 'first love' again; I stayed with my wife.
If I'm honest I love her far more than I love my wife, but in a different way and of course I've been with my wife now for 42 years (married for 38) with a family and a lifetime spent together and she is a great woman who has done nothing to deserve being deserted.

That said, no-one will ever know or understand the pain that parting from my 'first love' caused me, and continues to cause me and it will hurt me until the day I die. We have not been in contact in almost three years and I have tried time and time again to forget her; but I can't. I know through a mutual friend that she feels the same but both of us are now resigned to the fact that we will probably never be together although we both feel that we should be and indeed would probably have been blissfully happy.
14/05/2008 @ 13:33 HippiChic said:

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Hey guys - and thanks (as always) for replying to me. Yes my family are a bit weird UM! Dont even get me started on the rest of them ;) But I do hear what you say about how I perceive my parents relationship. WHile I have known it is far from perfect shall we say, i have always seen my mother as pretty tough - she always told me not to let boys treat me badly and whenever one did when I was growing up, her solution was usually 'dump him' so I suppose it is weird now that she is not doing the same, but I guess after so many years of marriage (28) thats not quite the same as Johnny C from year 10 going off with my best friend Marilyn!
Dad is seemingly very sheepish about the whole thing, and is doing everything he can to make us all 'respect him again' (his words). I dont know, suddenly they have been pulled down from the podium to join the rest of us mere mortals and I feel a little uncomfortable - especially as I do not know all the ins and outs which they are both being very secretive about - which I guess is their right. ITs just a bit unnerving when parents act like parents, but then dont behave like them..
Swim, PPBlue and S1 - it is reassuring (ish) that these things do happen to other mere mortals!! I am glad that your cousin, Swim, managed to work things through and I guess it does take strength to do so - and S1, I also respect your decision, although I also think it is a little upsetting... you must love your wife, or respect her, a whole bunch of times over to have made such a personal sacrifice - I guess this is all we can ask for from our long term partners?
HChic - still confused, but deciding to just let them get on with it!!

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