I was roaming again

I was roaming the Net and came across the dads 'N' kids blog. Their homepage is a series of links to lists of links to help people deal with separation and divorce, then single or step-parenting issues.
Relationships Australia takes a lot of maligning on the fathers4equality list, and I have to admit I was cautiously curious when one of the links turned to their website. Considering the prejudiced attitude I’ve experienced myself, I have to give the scepticism a fair judgment. The members of fathers4equality consider Relationships Australia to be a trap. Yet I find their website to be the most professional and informative I’ve found.

Under ..

How can I improve my relationships
(1) Successful Adult Relationships
A 'good adult relationship' means different things to different people. And there are many different kinds of relationships. The couple relationship may be the most important one in our society . It is often the main relationship in people's lives; it is the basis of a family (and this is the place where most of us learn about adult love, about negotiation, about how to change and how to compromise), and it is often an economic unit.

..triggered some memories and thoughts.

It’s interesting to see. Most of the advice on that page about “How can I improve my relationship?” are things I tried to discuss with Ob repeatedly over the course of our relationship. One way or the other, finally turning to bitter sarcasm if nothing else, Ob never worked through any of these issues.

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I could see that there was going to be some predictable difficulty with Lob, Ob’s daughter, living with us after her marriage broke up. After all, I was her new step father. There was bound to be some conflict.

When, in the first year I was in Australia, I visited and signed up for the Victoria Library, I also joined a Vicnet Step-Parenting email list online.

I followed the discussion group religiously for about a year, and talked over some of the suggestions with Ob (or, more correctly, tried to. She usually barely listened.) One of the suggestions from the group was to institute a Family Dinner night. I talked it over with Ob, saying that it would allow us all to learn more about each other and develop more communication -- and strangely she didn’t seem very taken by the idea. I felt I had to take some sort of pro-active, positive step, and pressed the idea.

It only happened once. Ob encouraged Lob not to attend and shunned the idea until I gave up on it.

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If you had asked Ob what sort of relationship she wanted, she would have said, “A loving relationship, with lots of affection. I want someone who can communicate, not like (my ex-husband).” (Those are her words from a saved chat online long before I came to Australia.)

When I first came to Australia, I was very affectionate. I used to joke that “I'm Californian. I hug everything.”
In only a few months, Ob had changed that with her criticism and actions.
In private, Ob was never affectionate. Sexual, yes, but never affectionate. It took me a long time to see that she was only affectionate when others were looking.
Simple gestures like smiling, hugging, a greeting kiss, .. were just never done. If I pressed for something like that, she turned from me as if I had some strange odor. If asked, she would tell me some obviously made up distraction, or remember some point of disagreement – even if it had not been discussed before.
More intimate moments, like pillow talk or just holding one another, were rare at best. Never do I remember affectionate pillow talk. And we only held one another as a prelude to sex in the first year or so.
Ob’s actions taught me that our relationship would not be defined by regular affection. Her biting sarcasm made it easier, I have to admit. I found that attempts at affection could lead to an argument, or being shunned for days.
(Later I learned that even sex was seen as a license to an argument.)
Ob could be mind-bendingly two-faced about affection in public.
At one family gathering, we were approaching the group and I moved to place an arm around her. She pulled back with an ugly look, and moved ahead to join the rest of the family.. I just shook it off.
Then, only a few minutes later, she came bounding towards me beaming a wide smile and wrapped me in her arms. My expression must have been of confused surprise. Then she went dancing back to the group. – I just stood there bewildered.
I will never know what she meant to say to anyone – in the family group or to me.

I shrugged off her confusing attitude towards affection by telling myself she was a 45+ year old woman who was only a year or so out of a long, painful marriage. She had a right to be a little confused about her feelings and how to express them.
What I came to realize was that this was how Ob intended to define our relationship.
I disagreed, and all it got me was attacked.

A few times in private, I confronted Ob with her actions, hoping she would tell me – or herself – something that would help us change and grow closer. Her reaction was to look at me like I was an idiot. She felt attacked, and attacked me in return. Her ugliest comments in the first year came from this sort of effort.
Ob’s answer to any conflict or disagreement was to segregate and separate. She tried constantly to build walls between us, her daughter and myself, and me and her family. I would point out that building walls only put her in the middle; how she was building those walls; and refuse to allow them.
This was in the first year or so. Later when I was sick, I would not have the energy to prevent her segregations.