An Uncomfortable Reality: Secrets, Lies & Hidden Desires Are Everywhere
It happened while waiting for my son’s school performance to begin. I was sitting in a packed school auditorium amongst row after row of seemingly devoted parents.
I watched couples sitting side-by-side, some not talking, some holding hands, and the odd mom or dad sitting solo. Suddenly, the questions began floating through my mind:
Who, here, is truly happily married?
How many people in this room have a great sex life, a lover on the side, or perhaps no sex at all?
Who is carrying secrets, restless desires, and who will pretend to be happy in public, only to return home to a glass house?
Since I got divorced my eyeglasses have changed. Perhaps to a greyer hue. But I think I’m more realistic. Secrets and lies permeated my home for years prior to my divorce, and I wasn’t some exceptional case. I’d wanted normal. I’d wanted simple. I’d believed and worked hard at the family dream.
We’ve all heard the expression, “You never know what goes on behind closed doors.” So I sat in the school auditorium looking closely at people’s faces:
Did he meet a lover earlier in the day? I wondered.
Is she daydreaming of meeting her lover later on?
Was his smile genuine, or a well-practiced ‘super husband/ dad’ smile?
Will she deliberately delay going to bed tonight because the thought of his touch disgusts her?
For I now know that secrets, lies, and hidden desires…are everywhere. Even buried amongst row after row of seemingly devoted parents in an elementary school auditorium.
7 comments
Delaine,
I think you just peered into my own mind and took thoughts that I often have right out of my head.
Since my divorce, I see the world and relationships in a completely different way as well. I go to church, look at the couples, wonder if they are happy. I see husbands glance over at their wives while they are tending to young children and wonder if he’s looking at his wife with admiration or with lack of enthusiasm. I watch faces, look at hands (do they have a ring on?), try to read into it all and guess the situation. I am looking for those similar to me. I’ve been told the divorce rate hovers near 60% of all marriages….is that mom sitting alone with her kids divorced, or is her husband working? When I initially got divorced, and it’s only been final about a year and a half, I felt so alone, so betrayed and part of a “group” whose members I didn’t know. As time has gone on, I’ve found that those I thought were so happy really weren’t, or they were because it was their second marriage. I guess it’s that in a sense I’ve become a member of this group that I never imagined in a million years that I’d personally know anything about. Now, I’m living in it and it’s amazing how it’s changed my view on relationships. Quite a wake up call to say the least.
Even more eye opening is taking my son to counseling. I’ve never felt like I’ve had so much company as in the waiting room. The door opens and closes continually, allowing a stream of people who’s stories I sit and mentally write. Couples, singles, dads with children, moms with teenagers, happy faces, blank faces, nervous faces…all with stories to tell, answers to find. And somehow, slowly, I’m learning to accept my membership in this “new” group of real life, reality, and I don’t feel so alone.
Delaine,
I think you just peered into my own mind and took thoughts that I often have right out of my head.
Since my divorce, I see the world and relationships in a completely different way as well. I go to church, look at the couples, wonder if they are happy. I see husbands glance over at their wives while they are tending to young children and wonder if he’s looking at his wife with admiration or with lack of enthusiasm. I watch faces, look at hands (do they have a ring on?), try to read into it all and guess the situation. I am looking for those similar to me. I’ve been told the divorce rate hovers near 60% of all marriages….is that mom sitting alone with her kids divorced, or is her husband working? When I initially got divorced, and it’s only been final about a year and a half, I felt so alone, so betrayed and part of a “group” whose members I didn’t know. As time has gone on, I’ve found that those I thought were so happy really weren’t, or they were because it was their second marriage. I guess it’s that in a sense I’ve become a member of this group that I never imagined in a million years that I’d personally know anything about. Now, I’m living in it and it’s amazing how it’s changed my view on relationships. Quite a wake up call to say the least.
Even more eye opening is taking my son to counseling. I’ve never felt like I’ve had so much company as in the waiting room. The door opens and closes continually, allowing a stream of people who’s stories I sit and mentally write. Couples, singles, dads with children, moms with teenagers, happy faces, blank faces, nervous faces…all with stories to tell, answers to find. And somehow, slowly, I’m learning to accept my membership in this “new” group of real life, reality, and I don’t feel so alone.
I don’t think it’s an issue of seeing the world in grey…I think it’s called being wiser. You’re wearing glasses with a vast new filter that comes from your own experiences. I find myself wondering things like this too. And I certaintly doubt where before, I never used to question…
I know of two couples that seem all happily married while in public. And yet inside their homes and their marriages and they are very unhappy. Isn’t it sad that we judge ourselves against this sense of false idealism? That we feel compelled to pretend to the world that we have it figured out when in actuality, we feel like we’re dying inside?
Divorce was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. But my God, there is no price tag for the freedom of living without lies and pretense.
Perhaps I’m just deeply cynical or perhaps I just have a different view of what constitutes a good relationship, but even when I was a teenager, I was convinced that the majority of relationships were not healthy or happy.
Even back when everyone was too young to be married and a “long term relationship” was something that lasted more than 6 months, I would still see couples who were together out of force of habit instead of because they wanted to be, couples whose relationships and impressions of each other were dominated by insecurity and jealousy, couples who would withdraw from their social lives because they couldn’t cope with not being each others universe, couples in abusive relationships that they couldn’t bring themselves to leave and on and on with unhealthy, destructive patterns.
I hope I’m wrong and I hope I’m just cynical, but I do have a really hard time believing that most people in relationships are genuinely happy.
Isn’t that a depressing thought – to believe that the majority of people are too insecure or emotionally damaged or socially incompetent to have a meaningful, happy and fulfilling romantic relationship with another human being? Yet I’m not sure anyone has convinced me that that’s not the way it is.
I secretly cringe a little inside when I hear my friends are in a relationship. I can’t help but wonder if they are unhappy or if they soon will be.
Oh yes ……we all start doing that after divorce….especially when you think that your marriage was the perfect one, until you learn all the lies that chatter your life…..and then somehow people start opening up to you and telling you all thier secrets…..yes….there is no perfect marriage. Lies, betrayal and cheating happens everyday in almost every household.
My marriage lasted for 21 years…and divorce was the best thing that ever happened to me! So when I look at the couple, all I think ….oh God…the poor people, they are living the routine, the boredom, the everyday fake smile and love words that come out automatically without real feelings…and thank God I crossed to the other side. Life was in black and white and now it is full of rainbows, flowers and butterflies….divorce is not an end …it is the beginning!
The world has always been shades of grey. It always will be shades of grey.
Unfortunately, grey is ambiguous and disconcerting for many (most?) people, so I believe they try to push toward the edges – black or white. But once you have a polarized position, you subconsciously put all your efforts and thoughts into maintenance of those beliefs. Sometimes life throws a hard curveball to the side of the head and knocks black and what back to grey.