5.7 Conflict

This is part of an autobiographical series. For more information, see right.

It took me a few weeks to relax. I thought Pat was going to diagnose me, stick a label on me, pack me up and send me off home with a treatment plan, like doctors did. It was the label I dreaded most. My ailments were mine. They were particular to me. No one else suffered in the way I did. I wanted to be treated like an individual.
    And that was exactly what Pat did. She asked question after question, probing ever deeper. She listened without comment. To both of us, both Frog and me, and to each of us in turn. And when one of us was speaking, the other wasn’t allowed to interrupt.
    It was the first time in my life I’d ever been able to speak about myself freely. Indeed, it was the first time in my life I’d ever been allowed to have thoughts and feelings. And I think it was the same for Frog.

I learnt a lot about him. I knew the facts but he’d never properly talked to me about the attached feelings. Perhaps he thought I’d understand automatically.
    I learnt that when he was a young child (six years old?) and fell off the desk and broke his nose and was sent to hospital for plastic surgery – which I already knew about - he only saw his parents once a week. The rest of the time they waved at him through a glass door. This was terrifying and devastating for him.
    I learnt that when Fran left it was a complete shock. They’d been together for nearly five years – since she was sixteen and he was twenty-one – and she was his first serious girlfriend. They’d met at a folk club and he’d followed her down to Exeter when she started at the university. He’d had no idea she was carrying on with one of their housemates.
    I began to understand that he feared abandonment. He feared rejection. He didn’t trust his own instincts. He couldn't trust that I really loved him, that I wouldn't suddenly go. He needed from me more reassurance than I could give him, because of course I had my own troubles.
    As a child he’d been traumatised by listening to his parents argue. Then, when he was a teenager and started to help his mother, he had to be strong. He couldn’t burden her with his own problems because she had enough of her own. He had to try and sort his problems out by himself. He still thought this was how he had to behave.
    Not only was it a revelation to me that he had these feelings, but it was a revelation to me that he had feelings at all. I’d always thought of men as creatures from another planet. They didn’t understand very much at all. They didn’t speak the same language as women. In fact, they hated women and did their best to imprison them. I didn’t trust them and I’m not sure I even particularly liked them, except for my two brothers.
    This conclusion was partly as a result of my experience and partly due to the way my mother treated my father – with disdain but from a position of servitude, servitude being the position for women of her generation (but that's another story).

I was surprised about myself too. I was surprised by how much I cried and what I cried about. The tears arrived without warning. They rose from somewhere deep inside and shook my whole body.
    I was surprised by the fact that Pat let me cry. She didn’t offer comfort. She didn’t say anything. She just handed me tissues and waited while the spasm passed.

The sessions exhausted us both and we went home raw, wondering if we could survive another week, just the two of us together. Pat must have known this as she always sent us off with a hug and something positive to take away, some new way to behave, some new idea, and she always rang halfway through the week to check on us.

Then the sessions moved on and we began to talk about our feelings for each other – our grievances – and again we weren’t allowed to interrupt each other. These too were a revelation. Why had Frog never told me all this before? Why had he flown into a rage instead and punched the wall? Why had I never taken my own grievances seriously? Why had I always dismissed them and blamed myself?
    Pat was the referee we so desperately needed, but sometimes she lost control too and Frog and I began hurling complaints at each other as we had at home, without the violence but worse in other ways as we didn’t hold back.
    Slowly, slowly though, we began to understand the fundamental principle of conflict. It was OK. In fact it was inevitable. Grievances mattered but you had to be constructive otherwise you made the situation worse. And to be constructive you restricted yourself to talking about your own feelings rather than blaming the other person. You had to confess. You had to be vulnerable. ‘I’ not ‘you’.
    For instance, when Frog began laying into me about refusing his sexual advances, saying ‘We’re married. I’m allowed to touch you whenever I want,’ Pat would stop him and say, ‘But how did you feel when Belinda refused you?’
    And Frog would start crying and it would all come out all over again about being separated from his parents, about Fran leaving without warning. He couldn’t read me – or at least he didn’t trust what he read. He was afraid of losing me.
    And then she would turn to me and say, ‘And how did you feel when Frog reacted to you like this?’
    ‘I felt angry.’ I said. ‘But I didn’t feel I had a right to be angry. I felt upset that Frog didn’t understand my point of view. I didn’t know how to express my point of view. It was so outlandish, so unlike what other people said that I wondered if there was something wrong with me. I felt like I didn’t matter. I was just a piece of meat. A possession. I was disgusted.’
    And then I would start crying too.

What a quagmire. No wonder we’d struggled. And loving each other as much as we did made it worse. We loved each other with our souls as well as every other part of ourselves. To lose each other, we would lose everything.

To be continued . . . 

5.6 Pat

This is an instalment of an autobiographical series. See right for more information.

The room, on the top floor of a three-storey terraced house, was cosy – more like a bedroom than a consulting room. A blue carpet and colourful rugs covered the floor. Books and knick-knacks filled shelves either side of a small grated fireplace. Out of the window I could see the roofs of Exeter. We sat in armchairs.
    Pat herself was of indeterminate age – older than us perhaps but only by ten years or so. She had fluffy brown hair and wore a light-pink cardigan, both offset by strong black-framed glasses.
    ‘So tell me why you’re here to see me,’ she said.
    Frog and I looked at each other.
    ‘Come on, come on,’ she said gently.

The previous year was a blur. Frog had been in mourning for Sam and, while I’d occasionally tried to comfort him, I hadn’t felt that that was really my role. It stuck in my throat (as my mother would say) to have to do it. It was a step too far.
    Whether we’d argued and fought as we had before Sam and what had eventually brought us to see Pat - a counsellor trained by the marriage-guidance charity Relate, now working independently in a complementary health centre - I can’t remember.
    It was my idea, I know, and me who’d done the research, but Frog hadn’t demurred. He’d come along with me in everything without saying a word.
    I’d spoken to Pat on the phone and she’d offered us a free fifteen-minute try-out session.
    As we climbed the second flight of steep wooden stairs however, I wondered whether we really needed this. Surely we could manage on our own. I felt OK now. Completely calm.

I told Pat this and she laughed.
    ‘Let’s see, shall we,’ she said.
    So I began trying to explain – about Brian in London, my parents, Sam – and the more I spoke, the more spilled out.
    Pat held up her hand. ‘Stop, stop. You don’t need to say any more. I can see now that this is going to take some time. Are you all right with that?’
    I nodded vehemently.

    I already trusted her. I already liked her. I knew she could help us.

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5.5 Waiting

This is an instalment of an autobiographical series. See right for more information.

Wait. That was all I could do. Wait.
    I had an idea that a year was all it would take, that at the end of the year Sam would move on. After all, what was in it for her?
    But as the year wore on, I started to lose hope. The situation was almost more than I could bear. Not only did I have to share Frog with Sam one night a week, but the three of us went out together – to concerts, parties, pubs, on day trips - and Sam came on holiday with us for a week.

I found Sam difficult to get on with, not because she was a difficult person but because we were so different. We had no crossover points except for Frog. And I was wary of her too because of what I saw as my frivolity and lack of intelligence compared with her. I was always trying not to say something stupid.
    She was thoughtful though.

    I knew she'd had an AIDS test before taking up with Frog, which was not an easy thing to do, and I greatly appreciated it.  
    One Thursday night as Frog made ready to leave, wind began to shake the house. Sam rang and told Frog that because of the weather he ought to stay with me and make sure I was OK. So he did.
    Another time the three of us went to a concert and I was in the bar talking to a friend when Frog came out of the concert hall and dragged me off by the arm saying that the music was about to begin. Sam restrained him.
    ‘Oy,’ she said. ‘She was talking.’
    Frog looked slightly shamefaced.
    Sometimes I went over to Sam’s house on my own but that was uncomfortable because I presumed her housemates knew about Frog and her and me and I didn’t want their pity.

Frog and I smoked cannabis in the evenings – with Sam and her connections we had plenty of access to the stuff. We thought it would calm us down, lift some of my inhibitions. Which it did up to a point.
    But one night, when Frog was with Sam and I was in bed on my own, I woke to a vision of two men in the corner of the bedroom. They were plotting something very evil.

    I imagined it was some sort of crossed line (like you used to get with landlines and found you were listening in to a conversation that was nothing to do with you) and knew I had to stay very still and not be afraid because if they sensed my presence I would be in grave danger.

    So that’s what I did and they went away.

I was proud of myself.

Often I couldn’t eat, and weight fell off me.
    Even the postman noticed. He stopped as he passed me in his van one day when I was out walking in the lane and asked me if I was all right.
    ‘You look ghastly,’ said my mother. ‘You really ought to wear more makeup.’
    Frog brought me regular packets of Cadbury’s chocolate eggs to keep my strength up.

I fell in love with someone else and had feverish daydreams about our possible relationship - which of course came to nothing as I didn’t actually want it to.

Frog didn’t tell anyone what was going on, as far as I was aware, and the only people I told were my two sisters and a friend whom I used to meet for lunch once a week in Exeter. She listened to my outpourings with sympathy and kept them to herself. I don’t think she even told her husband.
    The story was complicated and people were so quick to lay blame. They thought in stereotypes, in tabloid headlines: one was the guilty party and one was the victim. But it wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t want people to think badly of Frog and I was ashamed of my failings which, in my opinion, had led to the situation. That was why I kept quiet.

I thought about leaving Frog, but again it was only a dream. Where would I go? What would I do? This was my life. I couldn’t envisage any other. And what about the blue-sky voice – the one that said Frog would interest me for the rest of my life?

One evening after Christmas, Frog arrived home in a whirl. Sam had taken up with one of her housemates and wanted to end her relationship with Frog. Without saying much to me he raced over to her house to persuade her differently.
    I knew I was in trouble. Was Sam laying down a challenge? Could I end up losing Frog completely?
    I abandoned all my scruples and rang Sam’s house at frequent intervals throughout the evening. Sometimes I managed to speak to Frog, sometimes I didn’t.
    I needed to make my feelings absolutely clear. I mattered. I didn’t want to lose him.
    He crawled back in the early hours of the morning.

    He’d lost. Sam was gone.

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5.4 Vengeance

This is an instalment of an autobiographical series. See right for more information about it.

‘I can’t give her up,’ Frog said.
    He was very firm about that. Somehow, he’d taken the upper hand. Did it not occur to him that he might lose me?
    Well, actually, he wouldn’t. Like Mollie, I’d made my vows and wouldn’t go back on them. In any case, I was used to putting up with things. And now that everything was out in the open, the situation didn’t feel as bad as it had before.
    Except for the possibility of losing Frog.
    I was back on the precipice where I’d found myself when I first met him – albeit for a different reason.
    So I took control.
    ‘How about you spend one night a week with Sam?’
    To ask him to give Sam up would mean losing him as, even if he did so, he would never forgive me. And didn’t they say that if you loved someone you set them free?
    Well, I was setting Frog free. I deliberately stepped off the edge of the precipice.
    He looked surprised.
    ‘OK.’

So it began.
    Every Thursday morning I waved him off to work, knowing I wouldn’t see him again till Friday. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure if I would see him again at all. Every Thursday morning, I had to give him up. It took every ounce of my determination, but I knew it was the right thing to do.
    I busied myself during the day with work and walking – we had a dog now – and on the nights when I was alone I wrote in a notebook I’d started. It was my best friend.
    I started a new yoga class in Exeter on Friday mornings so that I had something to look forward to, something to help me stay strong. And after the class, if things were OK between us, I would drop in to see Frog in his workshop at the university, and hug him as if we’d been parted for weeks. He would hug me too as if relieved himself to be back.
    ‘I don’t fancy her half as much as I do you,’ he admitted to me slightly shamefully one night in bed. ‘Sometimes it’s difficult, you know.’
    I hugged that knowledge to myself.

‘ “Vengeance is mine,” sayeth the Lord’ was a phrase I remembered from my religious education at school.
    It echoed round my head as I tramped the woods and fields with our beloved Brindle, the accidental offspring of one neighbour’s Springer spaniel and another’s black Labrador. She was striped brown, strong-willed and inclined to plumpness. When we went to see the litter, she sprawled on her back with her pink stomach sticking up, obviously the boss but looking like a piglet compared to the other puppies who were sleek and black. We’d had no choice however as all the others were spoken for.
    I’d hated being in charge of a young creature – which confirmed my decision not to have children - and bitterly regretted taking her on for a good year and a half, until she suddenly grew up and became bearable.
    Now, I enjoyed her company.
    I knew the phrase came from the Old Testament and that Jesus had come to free us from all that – as our teachers were, thankfully, at pains to point out. But I didn’t see it as meaning that God was cruel. I saw it as meaning that we didn’t have to take our own vengeance, that God would deal with it.
    Like Karma, part of yoga philosophy.
    So I didn’t have worry about getting my own back on either Sam or Frog. The universe would take care of it. In any case, wasn’t it my reward for my adultery with Brian?
    Sometimes, though, my anger did break out. Like one night when the three of us were in the sitting-room of Sam’s shared house.
    ‘I can’t understand how someone as intelligent as you, could do something so stupid,’ I blurted out (meaning something as stupid as stealing someone else’s husband).
    Goodness knows why I said that. It surprised me.
    Sam was intelligent. She’d done her degree at Oxford and was now working towards a doctorate. She lived with serious, political people, and I felt superficial and frivolous compared to her. Maybe that was why I said what I did.
    Sam shot off in her car and disappeared into the night. Frog was angrier that I’d ever seen him before and lay on the sofa without speaking to me. I sat uncomfortably on the edge of an armchair. We waited for several hours until Sam returned safely.
    That, I think, was when I came closest to losing him, so I never said anything like that again even though it didn’t seem quite fair that I couldn’t.
    I apologised to Sam but I couldn’t escape the thought that it was a valid question, even though I’d put it badly.

I got my own back in small ways. I stopped doing Frog’s washing. I stopped cleaning and tidying the house. I didn’t always cook supper.
    I realised that I’d been a bit of a doormat and in some ways it wasn’t surprising that Frog had taken up with Sam – so independent and interesting. I vowed never to be a doormat again.
    I joined the local Friends of the Earth Group and helped them out with stalls in Exeter City Centre. I even drove with them to an anti-road protest (which seemed ironic). We then drove home again having not seen any action except for an encounter with an angry local who wanted the road. I realised that protesting wasn’t for me but I continued to attend FoE meetings.
    I decided to expand my work into writing and through friends who’d started a publishing company wrote a small book about the folklore of Dartmoor.

I went to a party with Sam and a friend of hers, leaving Frog at home with a stomach bug – vomiting and diarrhoea.
    When I returned in the middle of the night Frog looked at me pathetically.
    ‘I passed out on the bathroom floor,’ he said.
    I didn’t feel in the least sympathetic.

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5.3 The Truth at Last

This is an instalment of an autobiographical series. See right for more information. 

Silently, in slow motion, Frog nodded.

    I stopped breathing.
    ‘Have you . . . ?’ I asked, my voice echoing in this strange new place we’d found ourselves.
    Frog nodded again.
    ‘Everything?’
    He nodded again, still with that mixture of pity, guilt and determination.
    Then I started to understand.
    ‘Was it . . . was it . . . Sam?’ I asked.

    He’d been talking about a woman called Sam ever since the summer, when she’d joined the student radio station wanting to present her own blues programme. A woman was a rarity at the station and none of those there were did any music presentation. Frog had trained her in the use of the ‘deck’ – a table-sized array of switches, buttons and levers.
    ‘Yes,’ he said.
    I’d been a fool. I hadn’t suspected anything. But now the whole of the last six months – the way our conversations had so often descended into arguments, Frog’s disappearances, my visions of someone standing beside me - was falling into place.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
    And I knew he was. He wasn’t trying to excuse himself or justify his actions. He was telling me the truth at last.
    A light switched on in my head. Everything was going to be all right. This was our chance – finally – to get things straight.

I quizzed Frog all through the night as we lay in bed. I had to know it all. I had to cancel out the lies. They were worse than the infidelity.
    ‘That time when . . . ?’ ‘When you said . . . ?’ ‘Where did you . . . ?’ ‘How did you . . . ?’
    He answered every question.
    ‘I want to meet her,’ I said.

The next day, after Frog went to work, I found I couldn’t get out of bed. My legs wouldn’t hold me up. I lay under the duvet, trying to adjust to this new reality. Nothing similar had ever happened to me before.

    Frog rang halfway through the morning.
    ‘How are you?’ he asked.
    ‘I’m a bit weak, I said.
    ‘You’re allowed to be weak,’ he said.
    There was a pause and then he spoke again.
    ‘She’ll come over this evening’,’ he said, ‘but she’s very frightened.’
    It was new to me to have someone frightened of me. It was usually me frightened of other people. It gave me a sense of power, but I knew I couldn’t misuse it. I risked losing everything if I did.

She wasn’t particularly pretty, which was a relief. And she was obviously just as shaken, even less sure how to proceed, than I was, which was another relief.
    I can’t remember what we talked about but I do remember that she was kind. She’d been learning about reflexology and gave me a foot massage. I found some vegetable pies in the freezer and made us all a supper of sorts.
    As she and Frog said a loving goodbye to each other out on the drive, I stood to one side feeling utterly desolate. No one cared about me any more. I was all alone in the world.
    Sam got into her car and started driving but as she passed me she wound down her window, reached out and took my hand.
    Instantly, everything changed. I wasn’t on my own after all. I was included. Sam was now my friend too.

‘I just needed someone to talk to,’ said Frog when we were back inside. ‘And then – well – one thing led to another. And I thought, I was telling her all our secrets anyway . . . And maybe she can help us.’
    I’d almost wished for this. Sometimes when we’d had yet another of our fights over my inability to enjoy sex, I’d almost wished for another woman to take over that part of the relationship between Frog and me. We loved each other too much. It was all too intense and we couldn’t help each other. Maybe we did need somebody else.
    ‘You come first,’ he said.
    That was all I needed. How would I survive otherwise?
    But I wasn’t safe yet. One false step and he would be gone.

The next day I went for a walk in a nearby wood. I climbed the footpath, thinking only of survival.
    If men’s sins were of commission, then women’s were of omission and I’d done plenty of that – not dealing with the legacy of Brian in London, not making up my mind as to whether I was on the side of my parents or the side of Frog.
    But I couldn’t afford to waste energy on guilt. What a useless emotion it was. I needed every ounce of my strength to make my way forward.
    I stopped to do some breathing exercises. I’d been going to yoga classes for several years and breathing was an important part of the practice. I closed my eyes and concentrated.
    Breathe in for a count of four, hold for four, breathe out for a count of four, hold for four. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
    When I opened my eyes again the air sparkled. I felt calm and almost happy.
    I could do this.

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