I have lived with four women in my 68 years. None of them stuck around terribly long.
The longest was the first wife, The Sweet One. She and I were together 7 years, mostly because we were both so busy that we didn’t get on one another’s nerves until the very end. Last year I sent her a Christmas card, a card which was returned to sender with the caption “Deceased.”
This made me sad until I realized that the writing was hers. She was faking her death so that she didn’t have to hear from me. This is a little extreme. But when someone asks me about my first wife, I always say “She’s dead, and I know she’s dead because she told me so and she wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
The second woman I lived with was my son’s mother, who is a good person and an excellent mother. We lived together for about a year but, in the end, realized that we drove one another crazy–and not in a good way–and agreed to live separately.
To give you an idea of the difficulty, she would get angry if I left my shoes in the living room for even 15 minutes after I got home from a long day in the office. My point was that I was supporting the family (she and my baby son) so I should be given a little leeway in the placement of my shoes. Her point was that the shoes did not “belong” in the living room.
We are good friends now, 32 years after separation, as we worked together to raise my boy, who turned out to be a pretty good human being. But I still keep my shoes in the living room in defiance of her.
The third woman I lived with was a six foot tall girlfriend who needed a place to stay “for just a little while.” Four months later, she was still there. While having a live-in sexual partner was pleasant, she had a tendency to tell horrific stories about her children. No matter how many times I begged her to stop, she felt she had to complete the stories anyway. It made me into a crazy man. I finally told her to leave. She now lives in Vegas in a very nice apartment. Alone.
The last woman I lived with was my second wife. We had known one another for 14 years before we got married. The first six months of the marriage were great. The last few were dangerous. I have been asked by this woman not to mention her in my blog, so I will compromise by saying that we both live alone now and are much happier.
Today I live in my little Blue House in Barstow, alone. On one hand, if I lived with a woman, the house would be much cleaner (I need to clean the bathroom this week and sweep the floors, and put new sheets on the bed, and more laundry…) and certainly having a live-in bedmate would help with a lot of my stress, on the other hand the house tends to be quiet most of the time, and I can come and go as I please, wake up when I want to (I am retired), and put anything on the walls I want. I recently bought a “Tank Girl” metal sign from TEMU which I am 100% certain none of my former female housemates would tolerate on the walls.
Every woman I ever lived with had to have the television going constantly. Every single one. I still am not sure why women need to have noise all the time. Me? I like the occasional silence.
I guess I am born to be a lonely cowhand on the Barstow prairie. But you know what? I actually like it.
Mark Bruce, Writer 