To M-----

To begin with: this letter is meant to be neither a complaint nor an accusation; it is just my problem, and all I hope is that you will be able to read it without turning a deaf ear to what I'm trying to say, without telling me as you are wont to do that 'we'd better get a divorce then as that's what I want.' It isn't what I want. I wouldn't have hung on for almost forty years if it were. I simply wanted you; I never got you.

And before you think I don't appreciate everything you always do for everyone, let me assure you that I do. I couldn't do as much, ever.

And yet I feel stuck. I am afraid that before long I will either have to make a run for it or break down completely. Despair is not a constant; neither is loneliness. They wax and wane like the tide, and there are long periods that the sea lies calm and unruffled in the midday sun like a big pond to play in. Besides, I've got adept at telling myself that everything is alright. When I repeat it often enough I almost believe it at times.

I have done my best to make something of our being together. I am still trying, but oh dear, it is hard. We'd make quite a good educational team; but that could be done by anyone: brother and sister, or even strangers, and that is not why I married you at all...

The obvious thing, I once thought, would be to talk together and find a way out. But for over twenty years that door has been completely shut; and even before that I never found it possible to speak my mind.

When we had been together for about three months we had sex for the first time. I thought it was wonderful; I even wrote a poem about it. Decades later you told me you thought it had been horrible.

We never really had any sex life to talk about. You often told me I had to get you into the mood - but if I tried to touch you, you'd tell me you weren't a whore, and when I looked at you undress you said I was a dirty old man. I'm almost sixty now; I know what a vagina looks like from changing our daughters' nappies.

I thought you were beautiful, but you said you weren't; you refused to believe I found you so.

Then you wanted children - and we never got any. We went through the whole rigmarole of hospitals and examinations and attempts through insemination and what not... You were given lots of hormones and we had to have intercourse at fixed dates. Slim chance of it ever working out... You just lay back, spread your legs, and told me to shut up and do my duty. You'd been given the hormones, after all... Did you really think that I could perform well that way? I would have made love to you any time. But I am no robot you can turn on at the desired moment.

It all came to nothing, and we adopted children; and that meant that our physical relationship almost stopped altogether. I tried to talk to you about it, but you got incredibly angry; you even slapped my face, hard, twice. I had no answer to that; I don't hit women.

When we eventually were at speaking terms again I tried to talk about our sex life again; but you said that when things are ok you don't need to talk. Too true. But the point is, of course, that though they weren't, I had no way of saying so any more without soliciting another outburst and another period of disgrace - and that was even worse that the status quo.

I sometimes feel like leaving you; but then when you are doing things with a group of people, teaching, talking, I recognise the woman I'd hoped to get... Besides, I don't want to make my daughters feel rejected again. Being rejected once seems more than enough.

Still, life is really a slow and long disappointment in most respects - apart from the occasional spark. Apparently all you told me at first was untrue. You told me you liked books and music, but now you always complain about them; and you simply cannot listen. You will tell me exactly what you think, and I sometimes simply want to tell my story without being told what to do, how to act, how to feel... I can never unburden my mind to you.

I think you see any attempts to tell you something like this as implied criticism, and you find that impossible to take - but I'll go mad if we don't talk.

After all the misery of your illness we have never touched any more. I think - correct me if I'm wrong - that you don't really care. But for me those eleven years of lying awake at night and wondering where my life went, when I missed out on it, are a bloody long time.

That, too, is why some books, songs or poems make me sigh... they show so large a contrast with our life that I find it hard to stomach them. No, I won't throw them away, as you suggest, and it wouldn't make any difference if I did. I am no ostrich.

I think it is a basic human need to feel wanted by someone you feel everything for, to feel your need reciprocated and, well, to feel loved.

When we were on holiday you had another outburst; you told me again you were no whore. Up to now I usually took that to mean you felt I'd behaved unreasonably, but now it hit me in rather a different way: apparently you feel so little attracted to me that having physical contact together makes you feel like one. That does hurt, M---, and not a little. I thought you loved me - but if you never wanted me, desired me, then what does love mean in your vocabulary?

I'm not sure what to do with this letter. It might not be a good thing to send it - past experience has not indicated it might be of any help. I wish it were.

Taking everything into consideration I suppose I'd better not. One question haunts my days, though: why oh why did you ever want me, and what did you want me for? I think I'll never know.

D----