How to make old friends...

Try a divorce.

To my old friends "old friends"

Farewell

... (030)

To my kids

I started writing this early 2008 and decided I would have it automatically published in my blog years later.

Yes I have always loved your mother. But the way I love her has changed over time.

Sexual matters between parents are not easy to explain to your own children for several reasons. One of the reasons is that children do not wish to see their parents as sexual active creatures. The second reason is that you are of an age that you cannot yet judge the importance of sexuality in a relationship. And the third reason is that I do not want to come out with personal details of things what happened, or not, between your mother and me.

Let me put it this way, your mother who really is a sweet caring woman and a terrific mother rather had me hug her and lie passively next to her then loving each other in a physical way. We consumed our marriage for the first time only several months after our wedding. Our physical contact remained mainly non-sexual. At a certain moment I got the impression that she rather saw me and loved me as a sort of brother. The fact that she kisses her youngest brother (that she likes the most) on the mouth in the same manner as she kisses me, made me stronger in this idea.

Your mother always considered sex as something dirty, abject and not to discuss or to speak about at other moments. Although this attitude towards me, she somehow knew that she had to keep up appearances to others. Making public remarks, giving you and others the impression we had a blooming sex-life. She just couldn't even enjoy giving me the simplest form of pleasure: when I asked her to scratch my back, she complained that it would make her nails dirty and bought me a back scratcher.

I never could discuss this with her as she did not consider it her problem but mine and that I should solve it for myself. Whenever I tried to discuss it with her she use to get angry and more then one time she screamed at me that if I "needed to do my thing" so much that I should "go to the whores". I remember the first time this happened was when we were still living in Holland around 1990.

Then, it must have been 2000 or 2001, when we were making love one night, she ran to the bathroom to throw up. Not that we were kinky or abnormal in any way but she felt disgusted about it. A more pronounced statement of physical abjection is hardly thinkable. This made me feel dirty and sad for a very long time. I decided that since sex was not for her and that she considered it to be my problem that I at least should try and solve it for me. Because I loved your mother and I did not want to leave her, or at least not as long as you kids were in the house, I solved it in a manner that I do not want to talk about. Yet.

As I told you, I love her. But not as my wife anymore but more as a sister. I didn't want this to happen but for a good marriage you need two. What good is a marriage if the happiness of one is based upon the unhappiness of the other; and that is the situation now.

I want to be, need to be, wanted in more then just being there. I want to, need to, enjoy the happiness, experience my partner's pleasure of pleasing me. I need my partner to be interested in me in and in what I do. Just as much as it would give me joy to see my partner pleased by me and that I want to be interested in what she does or thinks. I am not only talking about sex here. It is much wider or deeper what I need, it is the communication I miss in all ways. I yearn for an intellectual connection and interest and involvement in what I do. This is something your mother cannot or want to give me. Really I tried, I think to stay in such a marriage for over 20 years proves my efforts.

Again, I really respect your mother but you must have noticed that she is not really interested in what I do nor do we share the same interests anymore. To me marriage should be more then living in the same house, raising children together and having a nice time with mutual friends and family. To me marriage also should be the bond of two people communicating in the same manner in all possible ways about mutual interests; work, philosophy and, yes, sex being a normal part of that.

In the end of 2007 I told your mother that I do not want to continue this way anymore and that in a year, if nothing would change, I would reconsider our marriage. Because I put it down to her so clearly she realized that now it had become her problem too. We went together to an expert in relation-matters where soon was decided that your mother would go alone to work on herself and that I would join the sessions if your mother wants me to. I have strong doubts that it will be enough.

What and when I decide, I do not know yet. I do know however that I do not want to grow old like this. Noone is to blame for this situation, and yet we both are. Perhaps I should have tried to correct this much sooner, but perhaps I wasn't mature enough yet to do so. I never realized that this would become such a big issue. And now, perhaps, it is too late.

Perhaps you do not understand it now, perhaps you will one day or perhaps you never will. But know that both your mother and father love you immensely, now and forever.

papa



December 3, 2008.

My sweet children. It has begun and it has ended, your mother and me are in a pivoting point in our relationship. After 10 months with a relation-therapist your mother made me another vow that she would change. But I do not need vows anymore now, I have had enough of them. I need the change itself. There is a Dutch saying: "veel beloven en weinig geven doet een zot in vreugde leven". Our marital life has been full of vows that "tomorrow it's your turn that I'll please you". The way I led my life is not as I want it to be for the years to come.

The time has come that I tell you how I solved "my problem". I have an extramarital relation with another woman for five years now and I do not want to live this clandestine life anymore because your mother cannot see she has a problem. So I told your mother about the relationship I have with my paramour.

I accept the way your mother is and I realize that I cannot ask what is not there. This leaves me only two options that I told your mother: either your mother and I stay together but then she has to accept my needs too and how I solve them or we separate.

Your mother has a lot of pain because of this, and it hurts me to see her like that. I do not have any feelings of guilt or shame, but feelings of doubt I do have. Could I have avoided this? Perhaps I could and perhaps I couldn't. Again, it's hard to explain to you the problems of intimacy your mother and I encountered.It seems like your mother is working hard on accepting the situation and I admire her for that. But her feelings go up and down like a roller coaster. I hope both your mother and I find enough strength to overcome this situation.

Loving you with all my heart papa

September 10, 2009

A lot has happened in the past year. Your mother and I went to two ladies who tried to help us in this situation. In the beginning of the year I stopped the extramarital relationship I had to give our marriage a honest chance. Your mother and I came closer to each other but there is no depth. We had a nice family vacation with all four of you but when we came back home there was still this shallowness that can be nice in a vacation but not in daily life.

So as I understood that your mother will never end our relationship and that she rather is unhappy together then the uncertain future we both have now when splitting up, I decided that it's been enough. We are going to split up and told you last Tuesday morning. I hope both your mother and I will be able to go our seperate ways in a peaceful manner.

With love, Papa

September 24, 2009

Last night we went to the notary. Your mother was assisted by her brother and I made your mother a proposal that I think is more then fair. But I have a very uneasy feeling on her reaction and her demands. I hope reason will prevail over her emotions but I fear for the worst.

love, Papa

October 5, 2009

Yesterday we had an appointment at the notary again, your mother, her brother and I. I didn't stay there longer then 5 minutes. I left, seething about the level of indecency in the "proposal" I was given. This is going the wrong way. Apparently your mother wants to solve this in anger. There is no need for anger here, the whole situation is sad for everybody and nobody will win here. She won't, I won't and you won't either. I refuse to go that way. Her brother called me in the evening and I told him that I am lowering my initial offer. I will lower it till she sees that we do not have anything but debts and that there is nothing to claim from me. I do realize that your mother needs money for a new start and I will enlarge the debts that I have to give her a serious sum of money. She and her brother are making a huge mistake confusing benignity with foolishness. I refuse to be taken advantage of. If I stop working nobody has anything. Let's hope for reason to come.

Love Papa

October 7, 2009




Some things have changed for the better since last time I wrote. Your mother's brother called me last night and I told him how I feel misused and that I think they should be very ashamed of themselves. I also told him that I offered your mother way more then what we have together because I do not want to mistreat her and that I understand it is more difficult for her then for me to restart. If we had to pay for all the debts we have we still have a huge gap of money. I also told him that because of their greediness I lowered my initial offer and that it was either that or lower again next time. I hang up angry. He called me back a second time trying to explain to me that "it was just a start for negotiation what they proposed and that I should not misinterpret the whole thing". I replied something that he knew what I was thinking of it and they could call me with their answer.

About 9 PM I went home, went straight to bed and didn't speak to your mother at all. I didn't sleep much that night, perhaps just 1 or 2 hours and left at 7 for work again. The sadness I had the day before was gone and changed into a sort of firmness, belief in my own strength that whatever would happen I would survive even if it would mean quiting the business and having the bank confiscating our house. Yesterday in the afternoon your mother called me and really in the sweetest voice and all openly telling me she accepted the offer I made through her brother and that I really was a good father and a good husband and that she always said these things about me. I was really emotional hearing this. I didn't want to show her my emotions too much as I am not sure yet that she might not change her mind. I told her that when I would get home last night we would speak about it. We did and it went all smooth and open. I'm so relieved I cannot tell you.

Tomorrow I am going to the bank to see how to finance the whole thing and then with some luck it should be all over and done with in 4 months or so. Let' s hope for the best and let this be a good start for our lives to come.

Love, a very relieved papa

Aimer Reveras (sic)

Still a raging awareness.

No more self-denying

period

It's been enough

You claimed the 100%, but filled in only half.

Story of my life

February 1982, I was 21 and had already started a little business of my own. My parents were just gone for a 3-week holiday when I fell in love. Too bad my princess to be had already decided to go to Israel for a year and her departure was scheduled within a week.

I brought her to the airport and every day we wrote love letters to each other. Then, while my parents were still on holiday, she wrote me a letter that she missed me so much and asked me if I wanted to join her. Within two days I gave up my business and booked a flight to Israel. When I picked up my parents at the airport from their holiday, I told them I would leave for at least a year. About a week after I received the "please join me" letter I was on my way to the love of my life.

She picked me up from the airport and told me that although she found it hard to say, she had fallen in love with another boy and that now she just wanted to stay good friends with me. Before we would go to her kibbutz we had to stay overnight in a hotel and there we made love. This helped me softening the pain a bit, not the sex but the idea that she wasn’t really the one for me, already cheating on her latest boyfriend. I can’t say I had a nice first week. To be close to her I stayed in a kibbutz near hers in the north and there it took me a week to decide that I might as well make the best out of it. One reason I didn’t turn back home immediately was that among my friends there were bets how soon I would be back and I didn’t want to loose my face (at least not immediately).

In my kibbutz I met two girls and a boy who were planning to go to Eilat (in the south) and try to find a job there. I joined them and we went hitchhiking. My companions had backpacks while I just had a broken suitcase without handle and held together by a belt (after all, the initial plan was to stay for one year at one place). Our first stop was Tel Aviv. It hadn’t rain for years in March but when we arrived it was pouring. So we slept on our bags in the shower cabins at the beach where in the morning the cleaning squad use big water hoses through the opening under the doors to clean the cabins without looking if there is someone in.

Next stop was Jerusalem, where we tried to make some money by singing on the street but there weren’t any culture lovers among the passers-by. We stayed there for a week with the father of one of my companions who was a professor of something and then we hitchhiked to the south. It was evening when we got lucky finding a truck where we could sit in the open back on our journey through the desert. In the middle of the desert the truck stopped and the driver told us that we had to get off because he would go in another direction from there. So there we were in the middle of the night in the middle of the desert. We gathered some burnable stuff and made a little bonfire. It didn't last long enough till we got ourselves another lift to the south.

One of the girls had said that she knew a guy with a boat in Eilat and that we could stay on it. We found the boat but not the owner and we slept there for a few nights. Then the police came and told us that the owner didn’t know about us and that if we wouldn’t leave the boat immediately they would take our luggage and blow it up; not a real difficult choice. In the mean time I only had some $5 left in my pocket as I hadn’t bring any money with me (after all, the initial plan was to stay for one year and to live of love). To celebrate my last money I took one of the girls with me to a bar where I bought us two cups of coffee. I came into a chat with the owner of the bar and he asked me if I ever had worked in a bar before. With a poker face I lied to him that such was just the thing I use to do when I was a student. So he hired me and I worked there for a month. Eating we would do in the bar and sleeping on the beach. After that month I had saved a little money and felt that I should stay in a kibbutz for a few months and then making a trip through Europe.

I stayed for several months in a kibbutz and enjoyed all the things good parents warn you for. Then with a new companion, an English guy, I took the boat to Athens, third class, sleeping on the deck. We stayed some time in Athens, Greece sleeping in the bushes under the Acropolis and made a little money washing dishes in restaurants and then we took the boat to Crete. On Crete, in Chania, I shared a cave with two Danish girls I had met there on the beach while my companion was with a friend of his he knew from before. The sunrises were beautiful, shining a golden light into the cave. We stayed there for a couple of weeks and then the four of us went to the little city Paleachora at the other side of the island where we made little tents on the beach of washed up bamboo and plastics. The farmers there allowed us to pick cucumbers and tomatoes for as much as we wanted to eat. The nights there where beautiful, looking at the many fallen stars that we could see.

We went back to Athens and there we took the Magic Bus to Venice, Italy. When we arrived, it was a Sunday evening in August, there was a huge firework going on. That night we slept at a dry San Marco place. We stayed for some time in Venice and from there we hitchhiked to La Manga in the south of Spain. The parents of my companion had a house there but since they weren’t there yet and because he didn’t have the keys we slept at the place of a girl we met there. She was a Spanish beauty with long auburn hair and big brown eyes and I vividly remember the night when she took me to a shabby local disco bar somewhere in the middle of nowhere filled with long-haired hippy-style locals playing air-guitar to Jimi Hendrix’ music. This disco was close to the beach and after some dancing she asked me for a walk under the moon over the beach. When we were walking the beach it was loaded with couples making out stimulating my visions of the nice time we were going to have. We sat down and I tried to cuddle a bit when she reached for her wallet for what I thought would be a condom but it was a picture instead. She started talking about the guy on the picture, some Guru Maharaja and what a beautiful person that was and that she really thought that I should learn more about him. Although it was not really the fulfillment of the visions I had some moments before, I did see the humor of it as a story to be told later.

Anyway... the parents of my companion arrived and we stayed another couple of weeks. From there we hitchhiked to Frankfurt, Germany where I knew a girl that I had met in the kibbutz. The first night in Frankfurt, it was freezing cold, we slept outside a stadium. We stayed in Frankfurt a few days and then we moved on to Holland to pick up my car that I had stalled with a friend of mine. We stayed with my parents for about a week and then drove with my car to England to visit some more friends we had met during our trip. Then from England I drove home alone and before I started to pick up my business again, I drove back to Frankfurt to visit the same girl. The first night we went to a drive-in movie. We sat really comfortable and I had my usual hormones driven visions again. Then she looked me deep in the eyes, told me that what she felt for me was really special and that I was as the brother to her she never had...

I have worked ever since.

Oubollig rijmpje

Alleen dan kan liefde tronen
Radieus en oh zo zoet
Als men vrij en ongedwongen
Simpel alles voor elkander doet.

Lost!

my lust for you
it just went
it's not what I wanted
it's not what you wanted
you just didn’t care
why to blame
must you
lust me

Gone?

my future with you
it just went
it’s not what I wanted
it’s not what you wanted
but now you do care
why to blame
just you
lost me

The purpose of my life.

I want to matter in the lives of those I love, care for and appreciate.
Nothing more, nothing less.

Joined

I’m skin and bone
and you moan.

Vrij en als vrienden

...²

Pals for life

Such a reassuring aim,
and I ...

buddies for life

(though you have to proceed
in a different direction and speed)

Midlife crisis? (been there, done that)

Don't be afraid to peel your layers and dig for yourself your self.







To the first post in the "Midlife" sequence.

The taste of Friendship (7)

Now that it is established that love is nothing but a chemical reaction, it will be our future that we will find Friendship, Hate and Love next to Viagra at the pharmacy. Hate will taste bitter, Love will taste sweet and Friendship, most probably, will have a disappointing taste.

Friendship (6)

What is its purpose?

My muse

Scending at rescuing affinity.

I am not disappointed in people

... but in my estimate on some
and strengthened by the attitude of others
(both effecting my druthers).



To the next post in the "Accident" sequence.