Interview Transcription: Session 3, arguing against marriage

Transcription of session 3 – Love and marriage (opposition), research interview conducted by Miss Sleeping Beauty. Interviewee: Lime Green.

Sleeping Beauty (SB): “Hi Lime Green, once again, please can we confirm that you are aware your session is being recorded for research purposes?”

Lime Green (LG): “Yes, Miss Beauty, we can.”

SB: “Great. We got a little side-tracked with feminism in the last session, so let’s get back to the rooms of a house that you were taking me through in your opinions of why not to get married.”

LG: “Sure thing. I think I covered bedroom and bathroom before I got ill at the thought of an unhygienic guy… So from my experience of living with guys at school I can add that I LOVE the smell of a freshly showered guy. That was super cool. Yay, so there’s one thumbs up for guys, when they shower and put on an intoxicatingly gorgeous smell. I love love love that :-)

 I was actually thinking over all my ranting from the other session, I sound like quite a nasty, difficult to please piece of work, and I guess I am. Yet another reason not to hook up with someone and have them have to live with me. I battle to live with me and my neuroses, I can’t really expect someone else to do something I don’t enjoy myself.

Ok, back to the point, hmm what else? Night time, I think I may be a duvet stealer, so that wouldn’t be great either. I feel the cold intensely, so it would have to be separate beds and or separate duvets. A colleague once told me that the best advice her mother-in-law ever gave her was that the two of them should have separate beds. I was fascinated as no-one had ever told me that that was an option before, but, honestly, it sounds like a great option, especially as I have a weak bladder and can’t be waking someone up all the time; and I like to keep windows closed so no wolves can get in whilst I sleep, he might want the windows open; I have no idea how that would work. Oh, and then there’s snoring! I was cleaning in the physio ward last week and a patient was trying out yet another new pillow because her snoring was bothering her husband. She had such a long moan with the receptionist because she reckons her husband snores worse than anyone she’s ever heard, but she’s the only one trying out new pillows, he doesn’t believe that he snores and if he does then she said that he said that she must live with it! Seriously? How is that a marriage? You give and I take? Nonsense.

I tell you, working in this hospital has opened my eyes to so much. People just talk, talk, talk around here. Personally, I need my sleep as I get so little because of my nightmares. Everything triggers them. Remember Little Red Riding Hood’s interaction with that wolf? Cleaning up the morgue after that story scarred me for life I tell you. If I were married, then my husband would have to help me through all that. Then if he has a bad night, I’m going to have to help him too, so when would we actually sleep between the two of us and all this real life stuff? I’m a horrid piece of work when I haven’t had sleep, it’s embarrassing really.

Oh, and then there’s when men are sick. Oh my greatness! The women who come in here are so together and getting on with it, and out as quickly as they can to get on with whatever, but the men? Man, it’s like every one of them is dying and needs someone to help them walk and talk and write, but when they’re healthy they are totally not helpful with others, it’s like hypocrisy in blatant practice. Surreal to observe. The same guy who was dying marches in here to “let rip” at the poor finance person or receptionist for something he wasn’t happy with, what happened to the humility? What happened to ‘I’m dying and I can’t cope or breathe’? Completely surreal.

…

Ah, yes, then there’s morning time. What a mission when I used to stay in residence, before they had built separate facilities for girls. Guys take FOREVER in the bathroom! What happened to the old-fashioned, shower, brush teeth, go? The four of us in the cottage finished all of our morning cleaning rituals in the same amount of time one of those guys took to do theirs. I couldn’t believe it. Thank the Lord that after my first month of living through it my facilities were built. No more idiots using my toothbrush because they couldn’t find theirs. Ugh. Speaking of ‘Lord’: Prayers. Like God is central to everything for me, so morning and evening prayers are vital. What if a hubby doesn’t think so? What if he laughs it off? Rips me off like my Mother used to? Constantly interrupts me? What if he doesn’t believe in God at all? How would that work? I told you before that I don’t believe one should let another dictate their emotions and actions, that you have to find a real unmovable centre and mine is God. What if hubby’s centre was me? Then what? Talk about unstoppable pressure! When I’m having my occasional nasty release or monthly emotional mayhem, will he crumble and sulk and moan that I don’t love him? Will he give me ultimatums, go into depressions, give me the silent treatment because I’m human and totally flawed? Then make me being me a problem and the cause of the difficulties in his life? I just couldn’t handle that. So couldn’t handle. My cousin’s husband is terrible like that, she takes one step out of what he wants the line to be and he turns into a five year old! It’s so pathetic. I can’t end up with some guy who can’t keep God as his strength and focus and locus of control. It is a huge challenge, I know, but if that isn’t what is happening, then both of us will be a mess and the marriage won’t work. You have to say Grace before you eat. You have to pray together. You have to have love as the centre and not your egos and childish fancies. It doesn’t work if selfishness is heading up the marriage. Then it’s not a marriage.

But you try telling this to anyone in this century, the children of the “Now” Generation who want their own way, who don’t wait for anything, who throw temper tantrums and want instantaneous gratification. People will not listen. People don’t believe they are selfish. They have created all this warped nonsense in their heads about how important and independent they are and must be. Marriage by definition is not independence! It makes me mad. It also makes me mad that it turns me into a hypocrite because all I’m spouting here is my opinion, my view, the way I’m living and what I’m believing independently. It’s a vicious circle all round. We are given all these faulty perceptions of how important and in control and powerful we must be on our own, and then we are told that we must go into marriage too? How on God’s incredible earth can those two concepts exist next to each other? “Yes my baby, you can have whatever you want all to yourself the way you like; yes my baby you will grow up to live in  union with someone else and compromise”? No, people are nuts. I can’t end up with someone who thinks that his way is the only way and then he sulks if he doesn’t get it… No thank-you… Nor can I be marriage material until I don’t think my way is the only way… Marriage is all about two ways trying to go the same way and that is difficult. I’m lazy at heart and I don’t want difficult. I also don’t want to be a hypocrite…

…

Then there’s, if it gets that far, which I guess it has to, the challenge of children and the generational curse. I know the crazy history in my family, and my cousin Snow White and her mad mirror-grandmother, who is my Mother’s aunt. Then Little Red Riding Hood was my Mother’s cousin and she was a forest short for her tree for sure. The psycho bloodline in my family leaves a lot to be desired. Then what’s going to be in his blood line? Then we pass that rubbish on to another human being? Is that fair? Is that right? On top of that I’ll end up leaving that child open to pick up my bad habits and my hubby will have his and then this child will have to deal with ways of trying to get around what we’ve given him/her. It doesn’t seem right to me. On the flip side, maybe there will be good genes being passed down and then the child ends up more blessed and luckier than the two of us. How would I stop my jealousy at that? How would I work around anger at God for giving me a child who had way more talents and blessings than I did? My young life sucked, so this is not a far off concept. . . I can’t believe I just said that out loud… bugger… anyway, it’s true, I end up having a child as beautiful as my sisters, and the poor kid has an old bag of a mother? Nah, that’s not cool. I’m not going to go further into the having children part, the responsibility of it mentally, emotionally, financially, socially, physically and religiously just scares me witless, and that alone is another reason to stay away from marriage. To have a child and feel all that love, or be unable to feel that love, is one giant, nerve-wrecking thing. I can’t even say good-bye to my sisters without crying, how on earth am I going to have a child and not spend every day crying at something miraculous? Crying at something I can’t get right, or I can’t help with? Crying at something that’s not working, that’s sapping me of my faith or my patience? And would the husband even be involved? Would he feel that love too? That responsibility? Or would he just be like: ‘the children are your job’? That thought devastates me. You should see how many doctors hang around this place at all hours and never see their children. It’s terrible. Once upon a time, one wife brought the kids in and boy did their dad freak-out at them being in his office! Those kids were heartbroken and they never got to tell their dad that they’d wanted to come and see him to tell him that they’d received trophies. I was heartbroken for them. It sucked. Why would I want to be with a man like that? Someone more concerned with how he looks in his Ferrari, than how much time he spends with his kids? No. I can’t see that happening.

…

Then there’s cleaning the bathroom and bedroom and whole house. I clean up after everyone else here every day, I don’t want to have to go home and clean up after someone who is supposed to help me. It’s exhausting. I don’t want to end up in a relationship, bound by a contract and stuck being exhausted trying to make someone else happy. I just don’t have the energy. I’m too old and too bad at playing ‘fake’ and doing as I’m told. It just wouldn’t work.

So the kitchen… what meal? What food? How do you decide? How will it work with my strange, repetitive diet and dislike of food? All the men I know eat a ridiculous amount of a variety of everything and I eat the smallest amounts of a few things… how will that work? I’ll feel bad that I can’t eat with him. He might get frustrated that my cooking doesn’t have the variety he likes. If he cooks I’ll most likely hate it and if I cook he’ll totally get completely bored and annoyed. It just doesn’t seem like it would work and be something good. Meals are such an important part of a relationship as they involve sitting and interacting. I don’t like eating, I seldom sit to eat and my ways are in no way helpful to relationship building whatsoever. What if he likes restaurants and going out for coffee, and me with my intolerances just likes staying at home? Then who wins? Or it comes down to compromise, and who compromises more, who creates more guilt to get their way, how will the situation be manipulated?

And, thinking on this some more, who will do the grocery shop? Most of the women I know have to do it because the men aren’t ‘interested’, but whoever said women are interested in it either? Ugh. I also couldn’t handle a guy who doesn’t clean up after himself and leaves the kitchen filthy without a second thought about it. I went to an old school-mate’s bachelor pad a month or so ago. I lasted ten minutes in his mess and then I couldn’t take it anymore and made him take me out to a movie instead of hanging about his mess to watch a DVD. Such a stickler for clean I am.

Then there’s the lounge and TV. I don’t watch TV and most of the guys I know love TV. Most of the humans I know are addicted to TV actually. I see it as a true to goodness waste of time. Seriously. Who cares what some soapie star is doing with another soapie star? Or what another human being is doing in ‘reality’-fake created TV? I’ll tell you who cares, a school full of guys when the football final is on. You can’t even find a spot on the floor that’s safe! 30 men running around a little ball in that TV box and the guys literally go mad about it. It’s phenomenally bizarre. They put millions into these men kicking a ball. Millions! Not only once, but year after year after year after year the exact same thing over and over again. I just don’t get it. If you love it so much, then why aren’t you outside kicking the ball yourself? Being your own soap star, conquering your own island or singing dreams? Huh? Tell me? I don’t get it. TV is all about idolizing other people’s talent so those on their couches have an excuse not to find and develop their own talents that are being squashed into their buttocks. I don’t want to end up with a guy who prefers to be sitting on a chair in front of a box instead of being alive and living his own life and running in the joy of his own talents. But, I’m going against an entire culture that would rather sit in front of a box waiting, wanting, dreaming, instead of getting off their backsides and DOING. It all gets me so frustrated. Can you imagine if I had to be stuck with a zombie wanting food, sex and TV for the whole of my life? No! The hell of it is too much for me to even think of. That is not a life! I can’t walk down an aisle and tell the world I’m happy with settling for less… all the marriages I have seen just seem to show me less… I keep hoping that somehow, in some way, some couple will show me something different, that it doesn’t have to be like my fears have seen and life has confirmed…  …”

SB: “Thanks Lime, I have to cut you off there. There’s a lot to think about in all you’ve said. Some valid points and some things I’m going to have a think over myself, but that’s all we have time for now. So thanks again and I’m interested to hear what you have to say in our last session next week.”

LG: “Thanks Sleeping Beauty. It all makes me feel like an old bag really. Still, you never know, God works in miracles, so maybe someone will find his way to being my compliment and supplement in the years ahead. I’m just not going out and looking for trouble himself!”

Laughter