EPISODE 92; NO LOVE ON THE BOATS

Welcome,

Thursday 10th October

So winter has begun. I can’t think of a previous year in which the beginning has been so delayed and therefore so noticeable. It hasn’t even arrived with a bang, just with a breezy North Wind with only a touch of bracing to it but that touch is enough to unwardrobe the winter jumper and to slip it on. A woolly hat is also required but not yet the heavier coats or gloves.

…

People would never fall in love

if they had not heard love talked about. —La Rochefoucauld

For some, a different sort of winter has begun. Last night I spoke to a good friend of mine, Paul. He was in a mess because he’d just discovered that his Mrs was shagging the bloke in the boat next door. They have been together for five years and seemed well-suited. His pain was palpable. What can one do? ‘Don’t beat the guy up,’ I urged, ‘you’ll only get yourself into trouble.’ And then, ‘Well she sounds ill, Paul. Anti-depressants, lashings of alcohol and an out-of-control bi-polar disorder…the mind is confused, feelings impossible to read, self-sabotage evident…an (im)perfect storm.’

Paul is in his 40s. As is Will. I have mentioned Will before because it was he who irritated (sic) me by announcing his attempted suicide on facebook. Since then Will has mostly had a dreadful time with the ‘authorities’, the various social workers, housing officers, mental health workers and council officials who were meant to help him and ease his material existence. In all this I have been almost entirely unhelpful (though I do provide his most crucial medication) and unwilling to engage in following the details. I have no doubt that Will is a little paranoid and that he responds with fury to some off the casual obstacles threwn randomly into his path, nevertheless those responsible for aiding him seem to be failing miserably and he has been yo-yoing from a lonely boat to a flat where he can’t sleep because it has no sound-proofing.

Last week Will’s girlfriend - (for want of a better word; girlfriend doesn’t seem to adequately apply to women who haven’t been girls for a long time) - who lives mainly in London, came down to Glastonbury to tell him that she was now polygamic and had moved into a house with two other women and a man who each night would select one of the three women to share his bed with. If Will couldn’t handle this, she told him, then a) he didn’t love her, b) he didn’t understand the way of the goddess and c) he could say goodbye to their relationship.

Will is not a happy bunny, that’s for sure and I was tempted to tell him what John Ryan once said to me, ‘But John,’ he’d said, ‘look at yourself. Are you being attractive? What about you would make someone want to be with you?’  Luckily I didn’t say that and nor did I say, ‘Actually Will, she’s one of the most unattractive women I have ever met so you should be glad to be rid of her,’ which is what I was thinking. Instead, I did what I do. I oozed sympathy, agreed that abused people often bring more abuse into their lives, counselled non-violence, mentioned unconditional love and got him to promise not to kill himself until he’d finished and paid for the weed that I had got for him.

I suppose I get embarrassed in this situations although I recognize every emotion and feel them myself when the hurt comes. Will expresses his loneliness, bitterness and desire for cuddles very forcibly on facebook and I guess I think this is undignified and borders on the pathetic. Actually having written that I realize that when I’m feeling those feelings I feel so unmanned that I don’t want to show my humiliation and it is this projection that is making me want to stop them displaying their vulnerability so publicly.

It is one thing - I hear myself saying - to be a twenty-something Heathcliffe emoting on the moors but when you’re approaching fifty or more, and in fact have far more to lose and far less to gain, it seems unromantic. (I’ve just thought that neither Will nor Paul have children and maybe their emotional latitude is different.)

As I write Will facebooks ’so much pain’. Is he right to tell us? Why do we want to tell people things? Look at me, I can’t stop it.

….

I have been reading an article (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201104/the-neuroscience-relationship-breakups) on the neuroscience of break-ups. The most interesting thing to me was that it seems that the brain activity that follows a break-up tells us that we are in pain. Of course I’ve experienced this feeling but I’ve always thought the pain to be illusionary or metaphorical rather than actual. Yesterday I visited one of my lovesick and I told him that the research suggests that the addiction to and the craving for his ex-partner will begin to ease after ten weeks. I doubt this is actually true but for the time being it will have to do.