MARRIAGE AND (IN)FIDELITY

A friend and I recently spotted a familiar face with a sweet young thing in tow. This was naturally very disturbing as we haven’t heard of his wife having passed on to the hereafter recently. Mind you, we were not just two nosy ladies putting one and one together and coming up with eleven. That sweet young thing with her nubile body kept resting her head on his shoulders. Now tell me, what were we supposed to think about that? Of course, they could be father and daughter bonding together. But at past 11pm in the company of drinking buddies? Right!

It was none of our business of course. But I am making mention of that incident because it led up to this topic and my admission that what I saw is forcing me to confront my own insecurities as a wife and has left me obsessing on thoughts of marriage and infidelity.

These “demons” – as I call them – are never far away from me. They are always present in the fringes of my mind. But I had always been able to keep them at a safe distance until this forced confrontation brought about by what I saw.

I would suppose that this is also the case with every woman of every status, age, color or creed the world over. Any woman reading this would probably understand when I say that no matter how happy and secure our marriages or relationships are, no matter how loving and caring our husbands or partners may be, and this is very important ... no matter how young and beautiful, or sexy and desirable, or intelligent and accomplished we may be ... those demons still come from time to time to tease and taunt us, to cast a dark shadow over our lives and upset that delicate balance we call marital happiness and contentment.

These taunting could come in different forms. It could be in the news about movie stars breaking up because of “third parties” or it could be what’s happening to people close to us – friends, relatives, or simply people we know from a distance. But in whatever form the taunting may come, it always gives us pause and makes us contemplate our own marriage or relationship ... because whether we are watching as a wife, a girlfriend, or a partner, and no matter how vehemently we may deny it to ourselves, deep inside, we cower in fear at the thought that what is happening to other women could also happen to us.

I am particularly vulnerable to these demons because my husband is a seaman. Not that he has given me reason to doubt his fidelity, but we are dealing with realities here, not the ideals, and it is a fact that seamen can commit countless acts of infidelity with impunity simply because they are too far away. The normal controls do not apply to them. The risk of getting “caught” is minimal to nil.

Of course, not all men do it. I am certain that we can still find men who take their marital vows to heart. And seamen’s wives, as probably ALL wives do, cling to that hope ... that our husbands are among those few men. Kind of naive, that’s true, but what else is there?

As I mentioned earlier, this prickly subject has been gnawing at my equilibrium lately. It is not only that encounter with that sweet young thing that triggered this. Somebody I know is going through the very same thing that we all fear. She is, like me, a seaman’s wife and she just recently discovered her husband’s infidelities and her life is falling apart right now. My heart goes out to her as I am painfully aware that, sharing parallel lives as we do, it can easily be me in her place right now.

In fairness to the male species though, I have to mention here that it is not only the men who can be unfaithful. We women are just as capable of cheating as men are on their wives. There is no question about that. It is simply a matter of letting go with our conventions and making the decision to do it.

But do all of us do it? Of course not! My personal opinion is that there are more faithful wives than there are husbands. We take our vows more seriously than men do. But then again, this is only my opinion.

So how am I coping now? First of all, I do not go into denial. I am perfectly aware that my husband, by the mere fact that he is a man whether seaman or not, is as capable of cheating on his wife as the man next to him. Again, this bears repeating: we are talking of realities and generalities here.

Has he been doing it? I have no idea and I hope and pray that he never has and never will.

But what if he has been doing it all these years? Let me share something with you. When the question as to whether or not he had been unfaithful to me and continues to be so came up in one of our discussions, I asked him to do three things for me: please do not ever let me know, please do not bring me any form of disease, and please do not ever fall in love.

Come to think of it, don’t we all women want the same things when it comes to our marriage? We dream of a perfect husband and a perfect marriage. But if we can’t have perfection in the area of fidelity, we might as well settle for the next best thing: we ask for ignorance ... for isn’t ignorance bliss?

Do I trust my husband? My heart does. My man is a good and decent person and a wonderful husband and father and I love him and I thank God for him every day. And most of all, my heart trusts him because I completely trust his love for me.

But my mind sometimes disagrees with my heart. Why? Maybe because it sees too much of what is actually happening in many marriages around us? That’s me. I am too realistic for my own good. So realistic in fact, that I can’t give my husband my unquestioning faith because I can’t ignore what I know about men and human nature and what happens in the real world. This is the reason why I am sometimes vulnerable to my demons – as they are always present, chipping ceaselessly at that wall of trust that I carefully built and is continuing to build around my marriage.

I wonder. Is it just me or is this something that I share with every woman out there? Is there a constant battle being waged within you too? Are you also lost in the midst of this silent war that is raging between our hearts and our minds? Have you also been told to just trust? And like me, did you answer: “Yes, I’d like that ... to trust fully ... if only I could stop thinking!” I would really like that. If only it were that simple.

I wonder. Is there any woman out there who can truly and honestly say that she completely trusts her husband without any shred of doubt whatsoever? I envy her. I wish I could be that kind of wife.

So going back to that question I asked earlier: how do I cope? I hold on tightly to that trust and I pray and pray and pray ...

MISSING SOMETHING AND NOT EVEN KNOWING IT

Have you ever left something behind and never looked back? You move on convinced there was nothing to look back to. You live your life … past memories consigned to the farthermost parts of your mind … life is good now … it’s all that matters.

Then one day your past waves a hand at you. You stop in mid-stride … it looks familiar and it is beautiful! Your memories, long suppressed and denied, come back to you in trickles … then the tears come … the very ones you didn’t shed before, back at that time when you have convinced yourself that there was no reason to.

You catch a drop in your finger and you ask yourself what this is for? But you already know … deep inside you know what your tears are for … you are crying for that that is lost and you are crying for those that are missed.

My tears were for the childhood that I lost, for the young life that I missed out. I cried for my lost family, my lost home, my lost friends … and for the joys of childhood that I never again experienced.

This is what happens to children when parents decide that they have had enough. They become collateral damage, bemused onlookers to an event too incomprehensible for their young minds to grasp and beyond their power to stop. That’s when childhood ends. A child went to bed. A weary old man woke up.

But I survived. Oh yes! I survived and I did well. I didn’t travel that road where so many like myself have gotten lost in. People commended for me my strength, praised me for not letting my sorry past affect my present. “Of course!” answered confident me. “I couldn’t be affected by something that isn’t of my own doing!”

But did I really manage to escape unscathed? Could it be possible that the shards left by my broken family missed wounding me in any way?

I realize now that it couldn’t be possible. A blow like that couldn’t miss leaving a wound. I didn’t even know that the wound was there. The discovery of a scab was met by amazement. Like a child mesmerized by the newness of its discovery, I couldn’t stop looking and just like any child, I couldn’t stop peeling off a bit, just to see what wonders it might hide.

But I didn’t discover wonderful things. Instead I found a wound as raw and as fresh as the day when it was inflicted. Then the pain hit me. And I cried as I should have cried 28 years ago.

No. We can’t ever escape unscathed. We will always carry that baggage with us wherever we’d go. Some may be painfully aware of its burden, others carry on like I did, blissfully unaware of that extra weight.

Opening that wound left me wondering … has it belatedly crippled me? I hope not. Rather, I would like to believe that the pain that I have denied for so long is going to make me a better wife and mother. Pain at its most raw for the first time in 28 years strengthened my resolve to spare my own child from the same fate. I could do it. It’s within my own power this time. With God’s help I’ll spare her.

Life is good now. Happy with my present and surrounded by the warmth of my family’s love, I should stop looking back to that life of long ago. But there are times when I couldn’t help myself … I had to go back and remember that beautiful childhood that I so suddenly lost. My heart would then feel heavy with regret … and the tears would begin flowing again.

SINGLE PARENT: The OFW Wife

Last time, I rejoiced over my daughter’s recovery from her bout with flu. But it was to be short lived. Barely two days passed before it returned with a vengeance. This time, I succumbed to panic because her fever still came despite the antibiotics she was taking at that time. I rushed Abby to SUMC.

But before leaving our home, I hurriedly keyed in the words “taking abby hospital admit said nuico” into the computer and sent the message via email to my husband’s ship.

I mentioned having sent that message because it sets the tone of my topic today: of me being an “OFW Wife” - a figurative single parent. My husband is a seafarer, and he is away from us ten months out of each year. Although he frequently calls us, and we keep in touch almost daily by email and SMS, his participation as father virtually boils down to one thing most of the time: getting informed of what has happened, what is happening, or what is about to happen.

Therefore, as both papa and mama to Abby, I am practically alone as I celebrate the joys of watching her grow and develop. Similarly, I am equally alone in my daily struggles of raising her, with all its accompanying pains, worries and difficulties. I am both mother and father in one package! The single parent.

At the hospital, while I waited for the doctors to attend to my sick child, a feeling of déjà vu came over me. Me, sick Abby, yaya …… Why! We’ve been in this exact same situation countless times before!! Just the three of us and always late at night.

I remembered those times when I used to watch with envy as other sick children came in lovingly attended to by both mother and father …

In moments such as those an intense yearning would come over me, a longing so fierce it would actually manifest itself as a physical pain on my chest, and I would find myself thinking, “how I wish Nonoy was here.”

If only I could find the words to convey my sense of utter helplessness and exhaustion then, when I longed for my husband’s presence, to have his shoulder to lean on … just to be able to worry only of what mamas usually worry about when their babies become sick … when I could just be the mama and not mama and papa rolled into one … when I could stop being the boss, manager, planner, organizer, CEO – and just let go of the rein and have my husband take control……

In the difficult days that followed, I mulled over my life as an “OFW wife”. I must admit that it has its benefits. My husband being a dollar earner, we are blessed in the sense that we do not have to worry over our daily financial needs. It has its rewards as well. I used to travel with Nonoy before our daughter came. Then, at the age of two, Abby became a seasoned world traveler and “seagirl”. There were summers when we joined her father on his ship and sailed with him for months, visiting various countries and having adventures that would not have been available to us, had our lives been different.

We do not have money in abundance, but we have enough to give us a very comfortable life. With the money that my husband is sending home, I can send my daughter to any school I deem best for her or allow her to travel around Dumaguete in ease and comfort, spared from the sun’s heat or the rain’s chill. With his earning capacity, we now have a home we can proudly call our own and within its walls, we enjoy all the physical comforts that his income brings.

Personally, I am enjoying all the benefits as well. For instance, I can have as many household helps as I want. I do not have to lift a finger when it comes to doing the daily chores. I can watch TV until dawn if I want to! That’s because I do not have to worry about getting up early for work! I love to bake and experiment with cooking. Thankfully, I have the means to pursue this hobby.

Basically, part of the benefits of the “OFW Wife” is to HAVE CHOICES. For instance, my being a HOUSEWIFE is a choice. My husband’s income being sufficient for our needs, I have the option whether to work or not. I can choose to pursue a career in law and live a life outside my home or just be a simple housewife and devote my time and attention to caring for my child. I can choose to be my child’s primary caregiver or entrust her to the care of some other woman. I can choose to have her driven around by other men whose physical, mental and psychological condition may be questionable, or drive her myself and thus maximize her safety. I can choose to have her eating cold lunch at school, or bring hot meals to her every time.

I am always thankful to God for giving me the luxury of choice. No day ever passes when I do not appreciate the life that has been given to me by the Lord Almighty. But the life of the “OFW wife” is not rosy at all. It has its downside, and the depth and magnitude of the emotional, psychological, mental and physical difficulties brought about by this “other side” far outweighs all the benefits, which at best, are merely material in character.

There is a flip side to every coin. In the same manner, the benefits that I am enjoying come with its particular brand of “curse”, if I may call it one. The fact that I am able to enjoy all these means that I have to enjoy them alone. Yes, I am literally alone as I live my life day after day.

There is this emptiness in our family that no amount of material benefits could ever fill in. Only women who are similarly situated as I am can empathize when I write about this enveloping sense of loneliness that follows me everywhere, perpetually present behind my smiles and laughter as I go about living my life. Way beyond the physical aspect of a married couple’s life, this aloneness manifests itself in ways as simple as not having Nonoy to talk with about everyday trivial matters, or share jokes and laugh with, or even quarrel with, or not having this loving father to share my amazement with, when our child would do an “Ahhh” moment.

There are so many things that married couples take for granted in each other, and more often than not, they get to realize this and appreciate its significance in their lives, only when one is absent. The fact alone that one has somebody to share life’s daily burdens with is a blessing that should be acknowledged by every husband and wife in each other.

But one learns to cope, as I learned to cope with my life as a “husbandless wife and mother”. I tried to be strong in my chosen role as “ma-pa”, and most times, I do rather well. But there would come times when my heart would crave for my husband’s strong and cheerful presence, when what I wanted more than anything else was to depend on someone else for a change, where I do not have to be the boss anymore.

This desire becomes more evident during difficult times, like when our daughter would become ill, when I have to be strong despite my inner turmoil, when I have nobody to share my fears and anxieties with, when I become exhausted and I do not even have a shoulder to lean my weary head on.

When people talk of one’s spouse being a partner, I would agree wholeheartedly. A husband is truly a partner in every sense of the word, to share everything with, in good times and in bad ……

One can’t help but ask: is all that money worth this lonely struggle? For myself, it is not. I know how to enjoy the benefits that money brings. I will not deny that. But honestly, I can do away with that and will happily choose to enter another struggle arena, but with my husband by my side.

But then, I would look at Abby and ask what about her? We owe her the best life possible. We owe her all the opportunities that we could make available to her. After all, she did not come to us by accident. We asked God for her and we solicited the aid of modern science to be able to have her. Without the dollars her father is earning, she will not be able to enjoy the same privileged life she is having now.

So this takes us back to where we started. About making choices. This time, Nonoy and I choose to go on with our lives as it is now, because we deal with the hard realities of life today, and we have Abby’s best interests in our hearts. In the meantime, we make sacrifices and try to be strong during difficult times.

And this is something that we share in common with all other OFW families – deal with the hard fact that a better life can be had only if one parent will leave for abroad, and for all the rest to make sacrifices, and accept that separation and loneliness are the price that have to be paid for the chance to have a better life and a better future.

We also share common goals, hopes and aspirations – finish constructing our homes, buy a car, save up enough to send the children to college, save up enough to start a business that can hopefully sustain us in the future, and then look forward to that time when Papa, or Mama for that matter, will not have to leave, and the family will be whole again.

The loves of my life.

Papa and Abby