Furious

I'm very angry right now, with a cousin. She's in her second marriage with 2 children, knew the guy months before she got pregnant with the first child. They're in the middle of their second separation and she just sent him a long mail about what she wants/needs and how she doesn't think she's going to get it from him, and if so maybe they should see a lawyer. I'm BCC'd on this mail because of the 'lawyer' bit I think, to let me know that we might need to call on the lawyer again. I went with her the first time.

That's not why I'm furious, I'm sad that it seems like the marriage has no hope. I'm furious because she chose to copy my on this mail, presumably to let me know where things stand and incidentally to let me hear 'her side'. I'm not in the least bit interested in 'her side' or indeed 'his side'. I've reached the stage where I know that marriages have a lot of 'he said, she said' and the only real issues are violence, cruelty, insane jealousy etc.

How do I know this? Because I've been in a relationship for nearly 10 years and know that we have enough 'he said she said' of our own. Each of us could claim that the other has been violent, dismissive, horrible, vicious, etc., and it would all be true. I have lost my temper, SO has lost his temper, I've been lazy, he's been bored, whatever! These are not reasons to call it quits on a marriage! If your friend was like this, would you immediately stop talking to them? Your parents? Your colleagues?

Then why do we expect more from a marriage when we put in less? If we're consistently more courteous, gentle, punctual, responsible, cheerful, etc. to people we work with than our spouse, why would we expect our marriage to be better than our relationship with our colleagues? Because we have sex with our spouse?

Added to this strange expectation, is a list that she has of what she expects and what she will do. She expects unconditional love and devotion and will apparently give the same. Clearly she's not willing to give unconditional love and devotion as she expects it first, and who's to say that her husband isn't waiting for exactly the same? So now is it a case of chicken? Who blink first?

Maybe I'm most furious because the past few months with SO haven't been the bestest. We're great companions, we enjoy food, we enjoy a certain type of comedy but of late there have been stresses. Anyway, I've been contemplating the future myself, and not in a very happy way. There have been days when I've been very close to calling it quits but 10 years of being together, building bonds with each other and each other's families etc., means that it's not a simple up and leave scenario. Even though I think I could be well justified. Suffice it to say, it's not something that I'm going to do, and maybe what's upsetting me the most is that she can up and leave so easily with children.

Is it a systematic severing of ties? Slowly you cut yourself off from his friends and family, and then from him, so there's no strings left attaching you to him or his, except the children that you share?

Why am I compelled to write about it? Because the tone of her mail is that she's making a reasonable request that it's totally within his power to grant, and if he chooses not to grant it, then nobody can blame her for not having tried. And as a viewer of this email, I want to point out to her that there's nothing reasonable about her request and that he would never be able to grant it, even if he wanted. Which means, she's writing the death warrant for this relationship, but she's forcing him to sign it.