The Inquisitions

As many of our men are not engaged fully in the dynamics and workings of family life, they also rely on us as fountains of information which they will endeavour to suck from us whenever the feeling suddenly takes them.

They also seem to think that by asking us streams of questions, they are showing to be "taking an interest" and then, when we complain about the onslaught of questions, we're told defeatedly "I can't win."

This morning, I was running late, having been awake with a poorly child for much of the night and we overslept. He arrived to walk the dog (we still live separately thankfully) and he decided to help me pack the children's school bags. I was rushing around and trying to think all at the same time, which is tough as I seem to be the only adult who appears to really know what's going on. 

Perhaps, out of his own guilt, I was met by:

"How did you sleep?"

"How did she sleep?"

"What was her temperature during the night?"

"Are you sending her to school?"

"What is her temperature now?"

"What time are you working until today?" 

All of these things, he would know if he was engaged with family life in the first place. Maybe if he hadn't have had to move out of the family home because his loyalties and priorities remained with his family of origin rather than with us. Although, recollections tell me that he was never really very mentally and emotionally engaged before he left and even less so now. I'm already mentally exhausted as a result and so having to explain all of this to him on top of doing all the things is yet another chore.

I remember as a child, my mother becoming frustrated at my Dad's onslaught of mundane questions. One after the other in a monotone voice, him cornering her with his eyes as he demanded immediate responses. I remember her anxiety, her looking away from him trying not to catch his eyes as he worked to pin her down. It was his way of taking charge: his tone, his defiance, the grilling he was giving her all a rouse to cover up that actually, he didn't have a clue what was going on. She was managing everything whilst he ironically tried to assert his authority over her with his endless interrogations. 

Peter's questioning makes me whince. 

He's not aggressive like my father was, but he's there, extracting all of this information from me because he can't engage in the first place. And by the time I've finished answering his verbal questionnaire, I just know that I'll be met with an opinion or judgement, a demeaning sentence to demonstrate that he would have responded to or dealt with something differently- better. And I'll tense up because he doesn't have the right to judge, complain or criticise when he's so far removed from family life in the first place. And when I'm tired, I might snap at him and he'll wonder why I'm so horrible to him.

I find myself wishing that he is either involved or he isn't and thinking about how much I'd prefer him not to expect me to educate him on the ins and outs of our lives, because there's always a hope that he'll be interested, that he'll suddenly engage and care, but he doesn't. He takes his information, gives an opinion and makes his mental exit again, taking a bit of my hope with him every time. 

Beans On Toast Men

In England, we have a staple meal that is baked beans, out of a tin, on toast. Sometimes we might spruce it up with a bit of grated cheese, some barbeque sauce perhaps, or even a bit of bacon. It's a pretty bland meal, yet it's a dependable one. It offers the basics of what the body needs to survive: protein, carbohydrate, a little fat from the butter, fibre, a few vitamins and minerals, but you couldn't live on it because the body would likely be lacking in calcium (if you left out the cheese), vitamin B12, omega 3, potentially iron too amongst other nutrients. 

One evening a week, I make beans on toast for dinner. It's one of my favourite meals of the week because it' easy: it takes little time, little prep and leaves few dishes to wash up afterwards. But I wouldn't want beans on toast every night. 

Emotionally unavailable men are often beans on toast. They offer the very basics of a relationship, the nutrients that we require purely for survival, yet for most of us, the body and our minds can not thrive on beans on toast. 

There will be women out there who prefer only beans on toast, who shy away from anything spicy, adventurous, sweet or rich. Many of us are not these women. 

Unfortunately, we were served fillet steak with all the trimmings at the beginning of our relationships which has created confusion and dependency, only to be fed toast and baked beans once we committed to our men. Then they accuse us of having high expectations, of expecting too much. The irony of course is that we would have been quite satisfied with something less luxurious in the first place, like lasagne or perhaps thai curry. 

Nobody can be lasagne and thai curry everyday, we all need a baked beans on toast meal once in a while and we would of course have accepted this. Steak with all the trimmings would have been perfectly acceptable for special occasions only, but even on these occasions, we are now served the same old bland meal of beans on toast. So we are left craving more nourishment, because in the long term, baked beans and bread just isn't enough for our bodies to thrive. 

We continue adding our own pepper, frying off a bit of bacon now and then, sprinkling the same meal with cheese, in a bid to provide ourselves with the nourishment that we deserve. Yet when you strip it all back, the meal is essentially the same: baked beans on toast. 

And our men all say the same things:

"But I've always been beans on toast!"

"I like beans on toast!"

"You once liked beans on toast!" 

And they can not fathom that we have had more beans on toast than we can stomach. So now and then, when we turn our noses at beans on toast for long enough, they give us something fancier: spaghetti bolognese or maybe spicy paella. Our bodies devour the nutrients that we have so missed and plates empty, we hungrily return for more the following day and the meal we are given? 

Yes, beans on toast. 

Eventually, many of us become intolerant to baked beans on toast. We begin making our own meals from scratch, adding our own spice and nourishment in a bid to stay healthy and alive. We find ways and means of colouring our lives in other ways, whilst they continue to sit with their baked beans, wondering why they aren't being served fillet steak. So in our healing, we begin to keep the best ingredients for ourselves because they never appreciated them anyway. He perhaps now sees us as a selfish. 

In protest, our men may say:

"I don't have time for more than beans on toast!" 

"I'm too tired to give you anything more than baked beans." 

But together, as a team, creating lamb tagine or spaghetti bolognese isn't much extra work. Yet, he's frustrated because he can't be bothered to chop the vegetables and he doesn't see why he should have to because afterall, he quite likes beans on toast (unless you're eating something nicer of course!)

We are left wishing that we had never settled for beans on toast in the first place, perplexed as to how we accepted such a basic offering. We know that our bodies deserve more nourishment. So we have to nourish it ourselves whilst he continues to routinely load up his own toaster, as he looks over at our plates, resentfully, wondering why his meal still tastes the same as it always has.