Honesty And Relationships

Myself and the Baker were sitting in the pub a week before my niece was due. He was relating how stressed he was by the whole situation, indeed he was already negotiating with D for the two of us to have a weekend away a couple of months after the birth to give him a break.

And then it came out 'Sometimes, Crushed, it's all just too much. The amount of time you have to devote to all this. Sometimes I just wish I had more time to spend with you, the way it used to be, when you I and could just take the Monday off every month or so and have a good session. Now I feel I don't have a life. It's all work- and relationship. No time for the good things'.

I smiled. 'That's kind of why I avoid committed relationships. Though I think, to be fair, it's kind of the wrong time for you to be thinking like this'.

He winced. 'I know'.

I carried on watching the football and slurping my pint. And it had me a little perplexed. If this is how the Baker was feeling, what hope was there for anyone?

I've generally put down the fact that most of my relationships have been hell to the fact that I was with the wrong people. I suppose I always thought that in THEORY it might conceivably possible, even for me, to actually be able to live with someone, if I loved them enough, in a committed relationship- without me being miserable.
I know now, that almost certainly isn't true.

It's interesting to watch the Baker and D finding ways to make this work. And they are. And how they do make it work, is interesting.
D, of course, is the model girlfriend in so many ways. The Baker is lucky. A man couldn't ask for more.

My parents, when they ask about how they're getting on, find the whole set up bizarre. The Baker lives in North Wales, where his factory is. She lives a few streets away from me.
The Baker can work from home two days a week, so he comes down here every fortnight. He'll spend Saturdays and the Monday evening with me, Sundays with D and the baby, and work from my PC in my flat Mondays and Tuesday daytimes.

My parents don't see this as the way it's 'supposed' to be.

To them, the two should marry and live together in the same place. I point out to them, why that it isn't the best solution, and that things as they are really are the best way, for so many, many reasons.

Firstly, with the career the Baker has, he's working fifteen hour days many days. It's not necessarily a bad thing that whilst actually at the factory, he doesn't have a 'family' to worry about. What he now has, is a little holiday every two weeks, where he stops off at Shrewsbury on the way down to see his Mum and brother, then drives on down here. So it all adds up really. It fits in. And he gets to spend time with me as well, plus the Chimney Sweep lives not far away, so in terms of organising social events, etc, keeping the Midlands as a base for his life, with his factory being the place he works at, works well. When he's at work, he's like a soldier off at the trenches in that respect. And D doesn't want to move up there. Her Mum lives a few streets away, she sees her Mum every day. Plus, I can go visit my niece whenever I want, so I don't want her to move either.

The Baker could move down here, my parents say. No, I say, because the group don't have any factories down here. He'd have to seek an identical position down here, and that might involve a pay cut.
The fact is, looking at the bigger picture, things being the way they are, is best.

But deeper than that, I really don't think that people of my parents generation see just how differently we view things in our generation. My Dad always points out he was married at my age and I was already born. My parents still believe- as I think most parents do, that our generation are kind of late developers, flawed in some way, that really we're just fighting against what is NORMAL; settling down and marrying to raise children.

I have said before we are no longer divided into nations, but generations. It really is true that the dynamics affecting our generation are so very, very different.



Our parents grew up having family values instilled in them by people who believed in them.
We didn't. Not really. My parents were married, yes, but you were still aware that they had kind of sold out on ideals they'd once had, when they wondered round the Isle of Wight starkers singing about Peace And Love. Your parents told you that all this stuff sounded great, but they'd tried it, it didn't work, settling down into monogamous relationships was the thing to do. As they played John Lennon and Joe Cocker in the background.

I think most of our generation growing up in the Thatcher years asked the same questions.
The message society gave us was; principles are crap. The sixties proved that. The Hippies became Yuppies. That's what the eighties was all about. It was when society shamelessly said 'No, we don't really have any underlying principles, we sold our principles to get five bedroomed homes with en suite bathrooms'.

And we rebelled. Our rebellion was the rave scene.

And the male of my generation has grown up seeing things very differently to our parents.
Because we actually did try, in a way they didn't, communal living.
We were students for three years, and in that time, you do pretty much practice communal living. We actually did run our house at Uni pretty much as a commune. And it did work.

And like many people in my generation, I look back on those years as the best years of my life. And like many of my friends, keeping as much of the way we lived then alive, has been important for me.

And as you go through your twenties, you find yourself confronted with all the pressures of life. To conform, to fit in, with social expectations.
The way it's always been done.
But you're far less inclined to fit in with the norms than your parents were. Because you are the children of Hippies. And you actually believe you CAN make it work without compromising your freedom.

I've tried living in monogamous committed relationships. Hated it. I actually found it just too much stress.
Because I guess I'm finding like so many do, that having experienced through University days that a great quality of life can be achieved without it, having experienced through life in my twenties, that in many ways you ARE happier being single, there's far less reason to 'settle down'.

Now this wasn't true in my parents days. Being single at thirty, had little to offer.For one, you are going home alone to an empty house, devoid of company apart from the TV, with only three channels. You probably won't get much sex- some, but to get regular sex and affection, you needed a committed relationship.

Well- it's not like that now.

It's perfectly possible for me to get everything I need, emotionally and physically, without ever committing. Ever.

So- why would I want to?

The problem is this. You meet a girl, you get to like her, you want to carry on seeing her, you enjoy her company. It's great at first, the wining and dining, the talking.
Problem is when you get to talking about the future.
And this, I think, is where me, like so many men get caught out. Because I guess we do sometimes convey we want something different to what they want. Ultimately, I think there are things we do want in common with what they want. But we're not honest about it.

Or I'm not. Or not always that I'm dishonest- just I allow them to draw the wrong conclusions. And things go pear shaped.

You see, I DO want someone to be the mother to my children one day. I do. Not just little cuckoos that I seed about the place and then abandon, not having a clue what their names turned out to be or even what sex they are. Children who I have regular contact with. Children who bear names I gave them. Children who grow up to be Birmingham City fans, children who are baptised in the Catholic faith.

And I want the mother to be a regular feature of my life, someone I'd count as one of my closest friends, someone who was always there for me, someone who would always be a part of my life.
Part being the operative word.

I think I really do just want to find a woman I can actually be honest and have that with. Where we never marry, never even move in together, always retain separate living space, but spend perhaps two or three nights a week together, and maybe alternate weekends. Without any commitment of exclusivity. And we keep our lives totally separate. I keep my finances, she keeps hers. It would only be the finances of any children we had, that we'd manage together.

An I'd still have my friends, she'd have hers, we'd have separate social lives, but sometimes I might bring her along to social functions, other times I wouldn't. And the same for her. We'd be the lasting, stable features in eachother's lives, but we'd each be able to have short term flings for both emotional and physical reasons with the latest fancies of the moment. Or longer term. And we'd actually be able to talk to eachother comfortably about these things.
And I'd still be able to keep all my relationships with mates, with blogging friends etc, totally unaltered. I'd still probably spend more time with my mates overall, than I did with her. She'd understand that whilst she was important to me and PART of my life, so were these other things and other people.



And if I said to her 'I'm not going to be able to come round for a few weeks' that would be Ok. No big deal.

That's actually what I want. And it really would be great to find someone you could be that honest with and say 'Yes. I want to spend my life with you. Kind of. For you to be ultimate love and affection in my life, the eyes I look into on my death bed. But please, do you mind if we do it a different way to the way it's expected? Can it not be an all or nothing deal? I want you to be the mother of my children and I commit to putting an equal share towards raising those children, but can we do that as people living separate lives? Without either of us being beholden to the other? Can we love eachother and still both stay single?'

That's what I want.

And I just want to be able to be honest about it.