A World in Us Page 16

  “Do you think it is balanced out by your relationship with Morten?” asked the therapist, already knowing the answer.

  I “pah!”-ed in disgust. Much to the surprise of my former self, it had turned out that better sex…did not a marriage make. Marriage was about commitment. And caring. Neither of which I felt I had.

  “Not even close. Elena is definitely his wife, even though their sex life is basically kaput. And whenever she wants him, he drops everything to be with her. And he doesn’t even seem to recognise that he is being taken for a ride. She spends all his money and then goes off and spends all her time with my husband.”

  “It seems like you mind that Elena and Morten don’t have sex,” the therapist observed.

  “Yes, I do mind. I mind that she only has sex with Gilles. She’s turned him into her primary partner. But he’s my primary partner.”

  Was. He was my primary partner. But for some months that was no longer the case.

  “So she has two primary partners, then?”

  “Yes,” I said, the realisation hitting home, “that’s what it feels like. And I have none. I have to be satisfied with sloppy seconds.”

  “So what good is this relationship doing you?”

  “It brought me happiness for a while. It brought me freedom. It brought me the hope that Gilles and I could stay together despite our dwindling desire.”

  “But what good is this relationship doing you now?” he asked.

  “It’s making me learn things?” I said, hopefully stabbing about in the dark for the right answer, as if I were answering a teacher’s question.

  “Sure,” he agreed, “life is of course about learning, but it’s also about taking care of yourself. Making yourself happy. Are you happy?”

  “No. My chest feels tight all the time. Like I am waiting for the next conflict. It’s just another situation where I never get to do what I want because we do what Elena and her two partners want to do. And I seem to be the only one who doesn’t want to do that. And when I don’t go along with what she wants, with what they want, they tell me I am causing trouble. They would actually be fine together without me. I feel like a worthless spare part.”

  The angrier I became about the situation, the more possessive and insecure I became about my life and my home. And my eggplant. And what the eggplant represented. Which was, of course, my husband.

  26

  My relationship with Elena had started off uneasy, but for a multitude of reasons had turned sour. And the worse it got, the less I was able to hide my true feelings. And the worse my relationship with Morten became. He loved his wife, and my negativity towards her caused him pain. As much as I understood his position, I was slowly coming to believe that he was being taken for granted too — and that his love for her blinded him to it. Our conversation the next morning escalated into a fight in ten seconds flat. A phenomenon that was becoming all too common.

  “Hey sweetheart. Nice shoes. But I thought you wanted them in maroon?”

  “I did, but Elena vetoed that. She told me to get them in antique brown, since it goes better with everything. Feel free to tell me I am squashed,” he added unnecessarily and spitefully at the end.

  “Well, if you’re happy with them it’s the main thing. It just makes me disappointed that you didn’t actually get the shoes you wanted.”

  “But she was right. They do go better with everything.”

  “So what? Is that a criterion for purchase? If you wanted them in maroon, you should have got them in maroon and just worn them anyway. You’re not her doll. She doesn’t get to dress you as Ken to her Barbie.”

  “It was easier to get brown when she preferred them instead of getting into an argument, and now we are both happy. It’s called compromise.”

  “That’s not called compromise. It’s called bullying. You’re under her thumb.”

  “She’s not a bully. You think so just because you’re so sensi­tive and fucked up that you hear criticism where there is none and overreact to the tiniest thing.”

  “I am proud to be sensitive if that’s what I am, because it means that I respect other people’s sensitivities.”

  “Well, I mind you being sensitive,” said Morten. “It sucks.”

  “I suppose you would prefer that I was oblivious to the consequences of my actions,” I retorted. “I suppose you think it’s great that Elena spends your money like water and is oblivious to the enormous stress that this causes in your life.”

  “Elena knows she has a problem with money. She is trying to cope with it. She gave me her credit card again the other day. By herself,” said Morten.

  I no longer had any self-control or emotional intelligence. I said exactly what I thought from where I stood. And where I was standing was in a bucket full of pain. All the time.

  “She treats you like a parent,” I said nastily. “‘Daddy, take my credit card, I’ve been a naughty girl.’ You’ll only give it back later, like you’ve done a thousand times.”

  “You must know that insulting her doesn’t do you any favours with me. I think you’re pitiful. Pitiful and fucked up.”

  “You’re right. I am fucked up, especially in this relationship,” I said. “It’s driving me nuts that I’m going out with someone who is blind to reality. You think it’s normal to have Elena direct and control events around her and in others’ lives, instead of letting people be who they are and do what they want. And you know what? That’s OK if you are happy with it. But I’m not happy with it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

  I’d fought enough. I’d fought with Gilles. I’d fought with Elena. And now I was fighting with Morten. And not only about our relationship. Because being in a quad apparently meant you fought other people’s battles too. Gilles and Elena fought hard. Lots and lots of fights. They broke up every few months.

  Yet in the early days, I had encouraged Gilles to get back with her.

  I had even mediated between the two of them. Everyone but Gilles could see how well he and Elena worked together when they got along. It wasn’t that they didn’t row — their relationship was explosive and passionate. It was that Gilles came out of his shell when he had someone to push against. Someone who didn’t cosset him like I did. Someone who pushed his buttons and forced him to take a stance. Gilles was becoming a man.

  After the third breakup, during which Elena had tried —and failed — to harm herself (although the flower vase had not been so lucky), Morten and I had taken a stand. Their breakups were becoming more protracted each and every time. At first it was a few days, then it extended to a week and then several weeks.

  During the first three breakups, Morten and I barely saw each other. We were too busy supporting our primary partners. It followed a prescribed routine. My primary partner would be angry and in denial. He growled and banged a lot of cupboard doors in a nicely “Frenchified” way — “Eh merde!”

  Morten was at the very edges of sanity and trying to cope with Elena’s Latin despair. I would also try and support Elena by going over and reporting back as to how Gilles was doing and where his thoughts were. She was desperate for any crumb of news that might bring hope. But more often than not, our conversations didn’t lead anywhere good. She didn’t understand why he was angry, and I understood all too well. Quite simply, Gilles refused to put up with what he saw as ever-increasing and unreasonable demands. And having witnessed their relationship first-hand, I was very much on his side.

  But their dynamic fed off itself, and despite the drama, they had been good for each other. He was forced to develop active points of view, and she acted her insecurities out less. But as the breakups became more severe, the harm manifested itself in all of us. Morten had to take time off work to look after Elena, and I lived with a stubborn anger that pervaded the entire household and every conversation.

  After the fourth breakup Morten phoned me. �
��I have told Elena that I don’t support her getting back with Gilles. I just wanted you to know.”

  “I agree,” I said. “It’s happened too many times. But you know we can’t stop them from getting back together.”

  “Well, we can stop encouraging it.”

  “Don’t you understand? Just by you and me being together there is some kind of latent pressure. Normally when people break up they don’t see each other all the time and aren’t reminded of what they lost. Elena and Gilles see us together,” I said. “It must be hell.”

  “So what are you saying? Should we see each other less? Or outside the home?”

  “I don’t know. I guess,” I said. I really didn’t know what to do. Where are the guidebooks for a situation like this? “But I feel that it’s just best to play it low-key right now. I hate this as much as you do.”

  Morten lost his cool in his frustration.

  “What’s wrong with Gilles? Why does he have to break up with her every time? Why can’t he just have the argument and then sort it out?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Not feeling sorry at all. “Do you think that this is Gilles’s fault? Why does your wife have to be so unreasonably demanding? She can never let anything lie. It always has to be her own way.”

  “But she’s right in her reasoning so much of the time. Why can’t Gilles wait for twenty minutes before going to the gym so that they can go together? It’s only twenty minutes for someone he loves!”

  Morten spoke sarcastically in italics. And with every italic, my protective instinct rose up to fight in Gilles’s corner.

  “But Morten! It’s every time and it’s not twenty minutes. She is never ready to leave when he asks her to be. She has no concept of time! Why should he have to have his schedule disrupted because she can’t get out of bed earlier? Why does she think she has to put makeup on to go to the gym?”

  “If he puts the gym training before her, then he obviously doesn’t care for her. It gives rhythm and structure to her day and gets her out of that depressive cycle. It’s also just plain symbolic — it shows that he cares.”

  He did care, of course. But Gilles had started to care for someone else more. Himself. Happy as I was about that, it also meant that Gilles was a vastly different man from the one I’d met and married.

  27

  My work represented an increasingly false reality. I was supposed to be a financial controller, manager of a team. But I was out of control, in free fall, in my life. And yet for several months pretending to be someone I was not kept me somewhat sane. Until my personal life started intruding even there. The round robin emails with ferocious discussion and ever- slanted misinterpretations drove me mad. Pop-up notifications from my three partners pinged relentlessly at the bottom of my screen. I turned them off, but it was no good. The sword of Damocles was waiting to drop, and that day I preferred to cut the cord myself than to wait endlessly in uncertainty. So I opened up the messages. And like Pandora’s box, all the hell of the world flew out. I was powerless, at my screen, in front of my colleagues. My anger and despair had nowhere to go in my sedate environment, even whilst I realised for the first time that this relationship, my beautiful utopia… was doomed.

  “Sanders is trying to cut Opex. Heads are going to roll — inflate the forecast by twenty percent and maybe we’ll escape the brunt of it.”

  The next week Sanders did cut our budget. And I already knew that I would be going. My career was in tatters. Because over the last months it had been impossible to pretend that I was in any way effective at a job I had once been so good at.

  That evening, I watched Fight Club on my laptop in bed and the tears poured down my face. I knew what it felt like trying to kill a part of my personality. Living according to my truth had proved harder than I thought.

  But I knew I had been led to this point for a reason. It was the same reason for everything else that had happened in my life and indeed perhaps in everyone’s life. A desire to unravel and challenge the rules ingrained within my nature. The passion to learn and know myself. My quest was to free myself from those forces that impaired my rationality, wherever possible. I needed to let go of something. But just as our question had been How far can we open our relationship without losing it? My question was now How long can I stay in a relationship with someone I hate for two people I love?

  That evening they were all very kind to me. None of them understood why I was going through a crisis or how this would affect us all. As I lay in my bed, I was finally the centre of attention. But not the way I had ever wanted it. I heard worried whispers in the living room. Some whispers were quieter than others, and unfortunately the louder lines were mainly Elena’s.

  “She’s going through a nervous breakdown and should be on medication.”

  My mouth curled in spite of myself. Not satisfied with taking my sanity, she wanted to take my freedom too. I felt like McMurphy in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  “Well, we should take her to the hospital, then,” said Gilles.

  The threat of hospitalisation worked better than anything else. I wanted to scream and cry. But if I did so, they might have committed me to a mental asylum. In an effort to prove everyone wrong and preserve my freedom, I got up and started to make dinner like a normal person would. And as I usually did. My kitchen, my haven.

  But the crisis was only temporarily averted that evening and came raging back ten times stronger a few days later. I couldn’t pretend anymore.

  We often spent time together on the sofa. That Sunday we were all in a row watching TV, holding each other’s hands like the equals we weren’t. Elena, then Gilles, then me, then Morten. I wondered whether Morten felt left out. On the edge like he was with only my hand for company, when my other hand was holding Gilles’s. Far from having two women, he had half a woman.

  I didn’t want to favour one over the other, so instead I stayed rigidly in the middle, dividing my body and my balance equally between them. Meanwhile, Elena got playful and, fully clothed, rolled on top of Gilles.

  “Get a room!” laughed Morten, quoting Friends. Happy. And not insecure or left out.

  If possible, I went even stiffer. A challenge of overt ownership. Did she not spend enough time with him already? Could she not share when I was around?

  Your husband is mine! Elena’s body language screamed at me.

  And I am happy to be so! returned Gilles’s body language, his hand slipping out of mine like a forgetful and unregretted whisper. I could still feel the warmth of it fading.

  They jumped off the sofa and scurried into the bedroom to perform a great Sunday afternoon sexual con­certo, which we could hear very clearly, albeit it from behind closed doors.

  I was not even an afterthought.

  Two choices presented themselves to me.

  1. Make a fuss, state your needs, be selfish and say you’re uncomfortable. Risk ridicule and misunderstanding, and destroy three other people’s perfectly good Sunday. Aren’t you worth it?

  2. Keep quiet, rationalise with yourself about your own issues, which are presumably creating this panic inside you, be the bigger person. Live with it.

  Live with it. Of course I would live with it. This was my way. Because I didn’t think I was worth it.

  In a flash, I saw my life ahead. Elena had two primary partners. Her husband and my husband. She monopolised the attention of my husband whenever she wanted it. I was the doormat waiting to be used when they had had their fill. I was given the leftovers and had to be grateful for it.

  My role of the future was financial support and safety net for rejected husbands. And sometime bed partner — but only when it suited Elena.

  In was my nature to act as if other people had the same insecurities that I did. I wanted to share, but only with someone who felt like I did, someone whom I could trust to act according to my boundaries as I did according to theirs. My Engl
ish passive communication was full of assumptions and social etiquette. All of which were being trampled on.

  But Elena was not insecure about her husband being with me — she knew she was number one. Sixteen years of hardship had proved that. Their love had been tested again and again. He stayed with her despite the depression, the screaming argu­ments and even the lack of sex. Morten had remained the loyal rock he had always been.

  But my husband had changed as a direct result of Elena. She had changed him and his love for me. And the more I felt him change, the more I perpetuated the cycle and withdrew from this stranger. The relationship they had was destroying the relationship that we had. As Gilles and Elena cleaved to each other, I was usurped. Redundant. Unimportant. And because I felt the pain of loss and rejection so keenly, I had to do it before it was done to me.

  Coming from a fragmented family, my security and self-esteem were as damaged as any child who had been subject to arguing parents and consequent divorce. And probably just as damaged as some children who hadn’t. Growing up, after all, was a messy business.

  But whilst my insecurities were protected within the confines of monogamy, in polyamory they were exposed. My insecurity was destroying me. Polyamory was impossible with people who had no idea, desire or understanding of how to tread around my insecurities. Perhaps it was true for all polyamorists. All partners had to be able to communicate, even the non-sexual ones, because otherwise it wouldn’t work.

  Either I got rid of my insecurities, or I got rid of the catalysts that caused me so much pain. My insecurities had been with me from childhood. They were part of me, and I had no idea where to begin. More than that, it didn’t guarantee an end to the pain. If I were to work on myself, then pain was going to be a necessary part of my life for the foreseeable future.

  And so the third course of action presented itself. The choice to leave. Because I felt that I was not good enough for either of them. And I couldn’t envisage building up my own self-esteem after a year of being in self-destruct mode to make a new reality for myself.