DEAR EMILY,
I’m in my early 50s, married to a foreigner, and we live in a country both not our own. We’re into our second marriages. He has his own kids but is totally disconnected from them. I have my own two, but he refuses to have them live with us.
He is completely different from the first time we met. He has turned into this argumentative, highly secretive, difficult person, who can’t even stand people who accidentally look at him when we’re in a public place. He gets angry at noisy children in the mall, and embarrasses me when he makes loud comments about anything.
This time, my problem is the text messages I see in his mobile phone. They are intimate exchanges he makes with a woman or women, as the numbers keep on changing. They can only be sent by someone already intimate with him. When asked, he’ll say they are from colleagues at work. There is a woman who constantly texts him. She sounded Filipino when I checked the number once. At my age, it will be difficult to compete with younger women for his emotions.
I feel depressed not only because we hardly talk, but also because we haven’t had sex in three years. I asked him to go to a doctor for a check-up, but that only made him scream at me. Where we live, hardly anybody speaks English, so there’s nobody I can open up to. He is not difficult with money, though, but still…
He is going to retire next year, but I wish it were now because I don’t know how involved he is in his relationships. I have no proof of it. I just know what I feel. Nobody in my family would believe what I am telling you now because they all think he is a wonderful man who gave me a second chance, after being a battered wife in my first marriage.
MARIE
Second chances are just too overrated oftentimes, promising changes that turn out to be more of the same! The solace you wanted turned out to be going from the frying pan into the fire. You may have been battered then, but isn’t this emotional upheaval battering, as well?
Looks like he is not quite in harmony with a few essential things around him, is he—his disconnection from his children, the way he forbids your own from living with you, the disconcerting attitude he has toward strangers he meets accidentally and fleetingly? What exactly goes on inside the mind of such a joyless person? And you’re wondering where conversations with him have gone? Why there’s no sex happening? Guess!
It doesn’t take rocket science to explain his bizarre personality. He is trouble, as he is troubled. He needs some catharsis to happen to spew out all the bad elements he has harbored and ingested all his life. The mysterious text messages you’re able to uncover are just the tip of his problem. They may prove to be just coping mechanisms, allowing him to escape and obliterate the troubles he’s had in the past, and the troubles he is having with you now.
At 50-something, you’ve been through this drill. In a little while you’ll be older. What if you get sick and debilitated? Will this bone in your throat care for you and give you comfort and security when you most need it?
Either you take this bull by the horns and make it work, or think pleasant thoughts of having your freedom from the never-ending shackles that have plagued you—called men. You’re not getting any younger to keep on hoping for an encore of another second chance.
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