More Meanderings..

Do you remember when the song “Everything I Do I Do it For You” by Bryan Adams {?} was all over the radio? I can’t remember the year but it was some time ago because I was still teaching. All the girls in my class thought the whole song was wonderful but, although I liked the tune, there were parts of the words of this song that really bothered me.

It concerns me when I see a girl buying into the message given by pop music that she is incomplete unless she has a man in her life. Mind you, I am embarrassed to adnit that I once felt this way. And another thought that embarrasses me now is that I also felt that if my husband loved me, he would KNOW what I wanted, needed, and thought.

I remember vividly the day that I first realized how flawed this thinking was. For a long time I was a participant in an Adult Child of Alcoholics {ACOA} group. The group leaned a little more to men than women but on this one particular evening no men had turned up and we got to talking and writing about what we expected from our husbands or significant others. We made lists and as we dicussed these, Bambi {“unfortunate but true” she always said about her name} our facilitator put these on the board. Then she asked, “Now, how do these men know about these things?” We wrote our answers and shared them and a stunned silence fell when we realized that everyone…every single one of us educated articulate women –had written some version of “if he loved me, he would know…” Just how? Had we all married mind readers?

To go back to the Bryan Adams song, I really do NOT want the burden of being everything to a man. Of course, when one has children, there is a time in their lives when it is a parent’s job to be everything, but I have always felt that a mother’s true job was to raise a child who could comfortably live alone and be happy with it. {I admit I have some backsliding here when I call my son and ask, “Why havent you written to me? {Insert rueful grin here}} My partner tells me that one reason he got a divorce many years ago was that he eventually couldn’t take the burden of his wife’s dependency. My younger son was engaged to a girl who built her own life around him and this was the reason he eventually broke the engagement.

Of course, if one is in a relationship that matters, there are times when one does things so that the relationship will be stronger, things that perhaps one is not too excited about but one’s partner wants to do. My sister and her husband who have been married 40 years, still take turns choosing classes and activities. The other person is expected to go along for a reasonable time and then can drop put if he or she chooses. It has worked very well for them. My sister has learned to love WW2 Jeeps and stained gless-cutting classes. Her husband had learned to tolerate computers and to really enjoy machine quilting.

I am just meandering along from thought to thought. I feel my brain shutting down…time for a nap? Yawn…