‘Marko, I fell in love. Sorry. I am leaving you.’
Maria and I were together for more than seven years. She was a beautiful, fierce woman from Teruel, the capital of a Spanish province. Actually, ‘capital’ is a bit misleading. A charming town, proud of its intellectual and cultural life, but not much larger than a big village sitting in the middle of a desert.
Maria came to the UK to learn English when she was nineteen, and fell in love (even if she hadn’t learned English yet). The swell of her belly was already visible on her wedding day. When I met her she was divorcing and with twin daughters, aged four. I was not that keen on kids of any kind. But sex with Maria was great and her stories even better. She had a psychology degree and was working on her PhD thesis in philosophy (for once, ‘philosophy doctorate’, which is what PhD stands for, made sense). She sucked me into the world of existentialism, social-constructivism, neo-feminism, post-modernism. I am in the IT business and didn’t know anything about these things, but somehow life started to look more meaningful. She gave me books to read. Those I read: Frankl, Buber, Camus, Zeldin. Those I skipped: A History of Feminism, Fuscous, Sartre, Marx.
Maria also had parents, as people sometimes do. A typical couple from that part of the world (or possibly any part of the world). They struggled at first, and in the process had two children. Then the father made some money and took to womanising and drinking. The mother, a Catholic in her heart, not just in appearance, threatened to leave him but somehow never got around to do it. Then he got ill. When he recovered, he gave up his vices and his work too. The mother was now in charge and that seemed to work for them. The children grew up as well-functioning people. The son got a job in Singapore and Maria married a fireman with a literature degree in England. The two of them, now on their own, had nothing to do. So, when Maria divorced, her parents seized the opportunity. They rented out their house in Teruel and a little shack on the seaside, and came to England to help. After all, their daughter was working on her PhD thesis and somebody had to take care of the kids. We didn’t get along well. They reminded me too much of people I’d left behind when I got here from the former Yugoslavia, and they were always suspicious of me. Or thought that I was simply not necessary.
Maria and I talked a lot and did a lot. We analysed, we discussed, we were open with our feelings, we drank, we were pushing all the boundaries. We were relationship explorers. Love should not limit freedom, right? We had an open relationship, we had sex with other people. We always discussed our experiences and made love afterwards (in that order). We went swinging (they really do have swings of a sort in some of those places). Only, after a while the heated swimming pool, Jacuzzi and a whole pig roasted on a spike that the hosts provided became more appealing then sexual encounters. We went to various polyamory meetings and debated how you can love more than one person at the same time. We concluded that honesty and inclusion were what mattered.
We tried the intimate friendship (that is, mutual friends with whom you have sex too) but it never worked for long – either for us, or for them. We still believed in this concept though. We were committed to an open relationship, and the more open the better. ‘What if one of us falls in love?’ I asked. Maria said it was not likely, but if it happened our relationship would expand! We hoped that one day we would live in a commune of freely chosen, likeminded people.
I was pleased that the parents were around to take care of the kids when we were out. But Maria was not happy. She thought they were a bad influence.
‘They are bringing up my daughters like princesses! What sort of women will they become! Marko, let’s move in together before it is too late…’
I delayed the inevitable, but after she finished her studying and got a job in London, we bought a house. It was magical. Secluded. Flower pots in the front. Open the garden gate and you are inside the park! Only two bedrooms but with a loft that could be easily converted in another spacious room. Good schools around. And yet, just five stops from Westminster. I was grateful. It was a good sign, even if I don’t believe in signs.
The parents had a little house in Reading where Maria lived while she was married, and stayed there. They took the kids every other weekend and kept doing with them exactly the opposite of what we tried to do (a white bread sandwich with the crust cut off served in front of the TV, versus a wholemeal bread sandwich that you make yourself and eat at the kitchen table). The children’s father emigrated to New Zealand, remarried, had a son and lived happily ever after. His daughters would visit him once a year but he never phoned or contacted them in the meantime.
Before we moved in together, I feared living with the kids, but was looking forward to living with Maria. Life doesn’t give a damn for our expectations. I quickly warmed to the kids, but with Maria it was a hard work. We argued a lot. Not so much fights, but long and frequent arguments, usually starting with small, almost irrelevant things. I thought this was good. We resolved all the major issues and now fine tuning remained. We discussed every single word or move. No compromises. Equality should never be taken for granted. It has to be perfect, as that song says.
Maria’s career blossomed. She became something of a name in her field. TV appearances as well as interviews for radio and magazines followed. She was giving presentations all over the world about how women can be equal without losing their femininity. Maria started earning a lot and travelling a lot. Me? The opposite. Working more and more from home and earning less. But somebody had to be around when the kids come back from school. It wasn’t so hard though. They loved me because I loved them, and I loved them because they loved me. We had an hour of homework every evening before dinner and a chat before sleep. Otherwise, they had a lot of freedom, which, unless they where out, included shouting my name ten times an hour (and even more frequently while I was having a shower). I never asked them to call me dad, they always used my first name. After a few years of ‘Malko’ they eventually got it right. Every Sunday afternoon (if Maria was around) all four of us would watch a carefully chosen movie together. I would make popcorn and smoothies and this became a tradition.
To entertain the youngsters, I pulled out every old trick that I could remember from the time when I was growing up in the Balkans. But one evening nothing worked, so I had to invent something. Maria was away (a conference or something), the girls were in their beds. I tried desperately to make them go to sleep and have my well-deserved glass of wine. Melissa (who I always considered older for no particular reason) was moody:
‘I want mummy!’
‘Mummy is away, she will be back tomorrow.’
‘I want mummy!’
I couldn’t think of anything better, so I joined my left thumb and mid-finger, hovered my hand above her head, and made the sound of a fly:
‘Bzzzzzzzzz! Here is mummy!’
Then my hand started to descend towards her head, she tried unsuccessfully to dodge it, and I gave her a gentle little flick. She giggled.
‘I want daddy!’
So, I did the same with my right hand.
She started again with ‘I want mummy, I want daddy!’. To make it worse, the other girl joined in.
So I was buzzing between the two beds. And again. And again. They were giggling like hell. Until I had enough: ‘Ok, now time to sleep’.
‘Once more!’
‘But then sleep. Promise?’
‘Promise!’
For once they kept the promise, almost as soon as I closed the door.
The girls were born with social intelligence. When Maria and I raised our voices during our arguments, they would come downstairs and teach us a lesson on how to be sensible. At one point though, we slowed down with arguing. Was every crease on the tablecloth of our relationship smoothed out? Or did we just get exhausted or bored with arguing? Whatever was the case – coincidentally or not – our passion in bed slowed down as well. We were often too tired, or drank too much, or had an interesting but too long conversation to have sex afterwards. I thought it was just a phase that would pass. We had so much in common and we worked so hard to get where we were. Maria thought the same. Or at least I thought so, until that day when a few words brought the world, as I knew it, to an end.
He was somebody she vaguely new from her childhood in Teruel. The guy became rich selling air-conditioners and was going through a divorce (I guess he hadn’t got seriously ill or his wife was not a devoted Catholic). He had a house in the centre of the town. He had a big villa with a swimming pool at the seaside and a yacht that he called ‘my little dinghy’. He never used economy class when he flew. They met at the airport: ‘So nice to see you! I could hardly recognise you. You look great! How are you doing?’ (This part I imagined; many times). He wanted to upgrade her economy class ticket to a business class one, ‘just to catch up’. She refused. He made a sacrifice and took a seat next to her, but brought champagne with him. Nothing happened this time, not even a kiss. The train of text messages, Skype sessions and e-mails followed though. It took a day for each year of our seven-year relationship to untangle it. Maria suddenly felt an urge to visit her homeland. We were at that time exercising ‘absolute freedom’. No constraints. So, I stayed with the kids. She never came back. Except physically.
‘What about including the other person rather than breaking the relationship?’
Maria explained: ‘He uncovered a part of me that was suppressed for a long time. I want to be adored. I want a white wedding, in a church, and a monogamous relationship.’ And that was it.
I knew you can’t hold a butterfly if it wants to fly away. Fine. But I wasn’t prepared for the butterfly to shit into my hand in the process.
‘Let’s go through all this together. Let’s sort things out together,’ I suggested.
‘Together.’
Maria took her daughters on holiday ‘to get away from it all, and think things through’. We agreed that it would be good to keep the kids out of the mess until they all returned and then, if things remained the same, talk to the girls together. The guy joined them in the second week of the holiday. I thought she meant us when she said ‘together’.