Bad relationships. Forbidden to feel sorry for yourself -iO Woman

Synthesis is not my gift, but I will try to do everything possible.

My name is R., like C. I have just passed 40I am married 15 years to a PAQ, from a good family, a good “boy” 10 years older than me. I’m a freelancer like you, but I’m in professional identity crisis and for a few years I work very little.

We were unable to have children, he doesn’t want to adopt, and our history has cracked on this point. When at the end of a long journey, I realized that I would never become a mother, more than a year ago, I went into depression.

In July 2022 I was leaving the mists of depression thanks to a good psychologist and after a couple of weeks i met him. 21 years older than me, married, with a 31-year-old daughter. His problem, or maybe more mine, is being nice.

In the following months I have completely lost my head for him, even asking him to leave his wife and spend the rest of his life with me. He gave me his total availability for an extramarital affair. But I let you imagine how poor the offerings of an average man from a small provincial town are. Painful to write and read it.

I’ll spare you the very small psychological interpretations that want to see me as fragile and dependent on a self-centered narcissist. No, it didn’t go like this, not only that, at least.

I have read myself in many of the cases that have been submitted to you.

For a moment I thought I was eager, like C., to take everything, the PAQ and the GAS (I came across it when I was 42, well yes, my mum didn’t leave me out long enough on Saturday nights, for raids).

I saw myself again in the “lifelong companion”, the one who sought something outside the couple and lived her desired tormented love with a “nice rogue”, in which, after rivers of tears and the unavailability of the “nice rogue” , weariness and reason prevailed.

For a moment I even thought “I love them both”, like the 30-year-old girl in New York who, concentrated on the love doubts between her roommate and her boyfriend in Italy, loses sight of her master’s degree and the importance of doing something for herself.

I also saw myself in the unaware “narcissist” who, behind the guise of the betrayed and abandoned PAQ, actually “wallows” in the bliss of being desired by many.

Finally I saw you and me, Rossella and Melania. And I finally realized that there is no competition.

All this to tell you that I’m getting out, in my own way, from this mess that I wanted in my life. Which is making me suffer a lot, even though I’m on the side of the bad guys.

I wanted it, I wanted it with all my heart and I finally saw who I am and I’m accepting it, I had hidden under layers and layers of hypocrisy and respectability (because at 20 they don’t tell you that to have a PAQ you don’t necessarily have to become that stuff, but is it preferable to be so uncomfortable but to be yourself? And accepting and wanting yourself as uncomfortable, above all) and I’m finding myself, now I have just a very big fear of getting lost again with the PAQ, I want at least this mess to have served some purpose.

All this awareness comes in retrospect, after months of blessed therapy. There was in between the chaos of the struggle between instinct and reason and now I’m coming out exhausted.

In certain moments it seems to me that I was 21 again, when I said goodbye to myself, I decided to abandon myself and “straighten myself up”. I’m picking up the thread from there. Post-adolescence at 42… you have to read this too.

It is never too late to be aware that we come before any category of love.

Our time is too little and too important to give it to someone for whom it really means nothing.

I’m still there, extricating myself from this painful situation, as you will have understood.

But thank you, because your column, these days, has helped me on my way back to lucidity.

Thank you

R.

Esther Viola’s answer

Dear R,

But which part of the bad guys, come on.

I like him, who, textually “gave his total availability for an extramarital affair”. What a bounty to take.

But first I welcome you. What lofty heights our talk is taking in this column. Here once it was all a: he comments on my stories but he doesn’t ask me out, what does that mean?

But look at us now. Barthes would be proud of us.

I see that the discussion on PAQ and GAS now travels by itself, in fact you arrive here, R., without

chirping or begging to do the miraculous catch of misunderstandings for your benefit. You introduce yourself like polite people: with self-diagnosis in hand.

It is normal that you hoped for the ending – without admitting it – but I love you! what am I doing with her, come we will be happy, let’s run away to America. Instead America is you.

How nice, I speak for him, when someone makes your family life less limp. How lucky these men are, how beautiful gratuitous devotion one encounters in the world. How I admire that entrepreneurial ability to settle their affairs against us.

In the meantime, you already have everything very clear for next time, whoever Peppe you choose. Has your husband stayed in the meantime? Is he patient?

I would avoid paterfamiliasyou understand so much: the wife gets one part, the lover the other, both sigh to have what they don’t have.

Peppe you know who it is, right? L’entelechy male. One for all, all equal to one.

We have already said that it is useless to get too agitated. The next Peppe is as good as the previous Peppe: every falling in love declines towards tepid water, there’s no point in starting over for life, and if one is as good as the other, you might as well keep a Peppe you already know – yes, it’s one look at the retrograde and dull world. It’s the country. Yet, yet. How difficult it is to find the right objection to these blessed old women.

Strange things happen in people’s heads. After a while the lover is the one who makes the wife bearable, and then we also end up in a strange vice versa. Peppe will discover that his wife isn’t so bad, thanks to her lover (you). In short, with this unexpected relief (you again), the marriage will have what it takes to hold up. And then the benefactress (always you) will start having bad weekends and ultra-legitimate demands, so the poor Christ will find himself at some point with two wives. All unhappy.

You write to me now “I’m just very scared of getting lost again with the PAQ, I want at least this mess to have served something”. Depends. It depends on how important love will be next time too. Or sleepy all or nothing? You have nothing to lose. Time aside.

But R., please no cheap self-pity. Feel sorry for yourself while staying above certain abyss of bad luck, I’m sorry to say, it’s a bit of an asshole practice.

You strike me as a little overqualified to still be at “why is it always bad?”.

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