The challenges of relationships
A friend told me this morning he’s having difficulties with his wife – “she doesn’t appreciate me” – I told him I had seen a cartoon in the paper of two parrots and one turns to the other and says, “It’s not about the cracker.” I said relations are squeezed when a child arrives and maybe try a little tenderness – that’s all we want – he said that’s all he wants. He left shaking his head as if it was a lost cause.
Later I met a new friend and she told me she was on her way to break up – she couldn’t get what she wanted from him anymore – and it isn’t about the one she has found. She said she hopes they can be kind during this break up. I said kindness goes a long way, but it’s hard. Hard to be kind. Especially when she told me she wants a child and he doesn’t because he thinks a child would mess up them and she says, they’re messed up without the child. Then she cried – she said when she talked to him he cried and said he didn’t want her to go. And then I cried just hearing the whole thing.
I barely left my desk today except for conversation number 1 which took place before 8AM, and then conversation number 2, which took place at 8PM – so my day was bookended by ruminations on relationship challenges. It could make me cynical – I’m just about this close to becoming cynical – but what keeps me from going there is this beautiful woman trying to explain to me who she is – “I’m a sexual person,” she says, smoking her cigarette with her hair back in pigtails, “I’m passionate. I love boys, I can’t help it. And I want children.”
And I think, but don’t say – wow – 18 years younger and you could be my daughter or my identical twin separated at birth.
And yet am I that woman anymore?
Who loves ya, baby?