Mother

My dear mother has her heart set on going to the family gathering, after she was in intensive care when my cousin got married. She knows she's getting old, and she has found a new lease of life since she got a computer and an internet connection. Her small world of telephone calls and coping with my father opened up. She still doesn't lead the sort of sociable life that most people do, but the gregarious woman was no longer so alone.
My sister visits her regularly, driving up from London for a flying weekend visit, although my sister does let her frustrations with visiting show in the form of stroppiness and unco-operativeness, and also by spending much of her visits on her laptop.
My mother means the world to me, and I visit her much less. I know foreigners who fly home more often that I get the coach, so travel clearly isn't enough of an excuse, despite the coach having the nickname 'Vomit Comet'. It's a sickening 4-hour drive each way, with no reading to do (unless I want to feel even more ill), and no laptop or podcasts (I own neither laptop nor mp3 player).
When I get home there's always washing up and cleaning to do, even before I start cooking proper meals and making more mess. It's one of the rare occasions my mother gets to eat properly cooked food, so it's not something I could omit in the name of rest. Cooking and cleaning for 3 is tiresome, though. As is my father's smoke, even before we get on to the stress of simply having him around, never knowing what interruption he's going to dream up next. I think I put it best when I explained that although he's no violent, and too incompetent to be manipulative, he's stressful because of his timing. Half-way through a television programme, or an interesting conversation, we'll hear his tramp on the stairs and I can feel the stress response starting. In he'll walk, oblivious (or unaware) of the climactic moment he's interrupting, and ask something inane like "How's it going?" Then he'll dump himself down, mostly in his armchair, but sometimes moving things you've left for a reason, and say something stupid about whatever is occurring. "Who is thta and why is he running?"
"Well, if you were really watching, you'd have just heard his name, and if you bothered to watch for another 40 seconds you'd notice the police behind him and the smoking gun in his hand!"
Or maybe he picks up my glass of water, from which I'm drinking, getting a nice layer of tar around the rim from his fingers, and then step in front of my mother to get her collection of empty tea mugs. Not to wash up, of course: just to get in the way and take them through to the kitchen so that I can wash them up later.
This leads me onto why he's so annoying: it's when he tries to be helpful or sociable that is worst. A dead weight on the household is bad enough, but he gets these things wrong. His conversations range from the racist to the misogynist, are always provocative (stupidly, such as "If I can't see it it's not there" when arguing over whether a refrigerator drawer that had just been emptied of putrescent vegetables needed cleaning to remove the mould) and never get anywhere, since he repeats arguments that have just been demolished like a broken record. So socialising is out because he's either offensive, a waste of time, or usually both. His cleaning is worse. Glasses that he 'cleans' he rinses, leaving them dirtier (c.f tar stains) than they were. When he hoovers, he can never work the machine. When he tidies, he puts things in the wrong place or presents them to the owner for immediate disposal, rather than piling them up for the owner to deal with at the right time.
This is frustrating because you never get to choose what to do. You might think that you're settled down for a film, but if Papa wants to hoover then either you do it yourself in 5 minutes, or you put up with an ostentatious racket for 15 minutes before he bursts in demanding that we summon the repair men (late in the evening) because the blasted thing is bust. So you get up, throw out the old hoover bag, put a new one in, sweep up the mess whilst choking on the dust from the breaking of the old one and go back to your film ten minutes later.
You might think that you're relaxing with a book, but if you hear that tread on the stairs, you might find someone snatching your drink, peering at your book ("Can I have a look at that?" Yoink) and then peppering you with questions such as "Why do you read this tripe? You should read only Dickens or Trollope." or "Why have there been no black symphonies?" If you're lucky, you might merely be presented with a book you finished earlier and hadn't yet put away. Putting it away himself is not an option, and nor is waiting for you to do it, although it's sometimes possible to have him agree to put things off until later. You've still been interrupted.

I sleep on the dining room floor becase my father's lair is next to my bedroom, and the smoke stops me breathing. It's not quite as relaxing as a bed. My bed's broken anyway: the removal men broke it when my parents shifted down a size and my father never got round to claiming any of the insurance.

My mother doesn't get out much, so she's always excited when I visit. Finally she can have nice conversations, go out with someone and do interesting things. She wants to go shopping (bright and early to avoid the rush, which I wouldn't normally bother with, although I will admit that crowds and wheelchairs don't mix, since people assume that we're as agile as a cat, not the ponderous mass of mother and metal that we are), go out to eat, get things she hasn't managed to get for a while and see the big wide world. She wants little jobs done around the house that have built up: get this from the garage, shift that, put this picture up, re-arrange that, re-pot some house plants and so on. It's all very understandable, very sweet and I can't possibly refuse.
All the to-ing and fro-ing, dealing with my father and helping my mother (even heaving myself up to make cups of tea when we're all settled is annoying) makes a visit a stressfulm tiring and busy event. And that's my weekend! I have to go back to work afterwards, not recover.

Meanwhile I've not had any contact with my friends, not done any exercise (I love running, and I go to the gym a lot), probably not eaten enough because my mother (innocently) and my father (belligerently) don't understand how much I eat, and not done any extra work, nor any of my housework. So the following week I have to work hard to catch up: I must keep up with work, do the washing and cleaning in my own home and see friends who I missed in the evenings I was away.

It's hard to summon enthusiasm to see the person I love most, and that hurts. The hurdles are so high. I can 'waste' a week when I'm here doing nothing much, by sleeping in, working late, having quick meals and going out or cooking properly, perhaps with friends, and still not only relax and have a good time but also get more work done than a week when I go to my parents.

I know that some people who visit their parents are pampered at each visit. They might be picked up from a train station (there's no train to my parents, unless I want to take as long as the coach and pay over three times as much), fed and watered, contribute only mildly to housework and sleep soundly. But I still feel guilty for not emulating the frequency of their visits. My mother means at least as much to me as theirs to them.

But can I let any of this show with her? Of course I can't! It would hurt her to think that visiting her was a chore as well as a joy. I have enough self-control not to snap as my sister does, and I'm aided in paying attention to my mother by not owning a laptop to distract me when I visit. The whole house is enervating in a way that is hard to describe. I can make a drink for a friend visiting me here, but when I'm slobbing with my mother in the evening of a visit just hauling myself out of the seat again seems burdensome. It's partly the smell; I remember when my father was away for 6 months when I was a boy and he had a job the old house suddenly became light and airy, and all seemed good in the world. My mother and I had a great time. I'm not sure I can describe the atmosphere my father creates other than as a 'pall of gloom'. It affects everything in the house, all the time, niggling at your nose, throat and mind. Always stuffy, always worrying about what will happen next.

And she wants to go to the family picnic. My sister can't make it, despite us both being told months and months ago to keep the day free. I think she forgot and agreed to go on Scout camp (she's a leader). So my mother didn't lose all hope, after missing the wedding and shifting all her hopes of seeing her family this year onto the picnic. I can rent a car and drive her there. Only I've got to let her down.

My job, which I need not to go bankrupt, starts soon. And I need to be there at lunchtime on the next day after the family picnic, with an 8-hour train journey from St. Pancras. Do the trains go overnight? Will I have time to drive a car from here to my mother, to the picnic and back round the circuit again before going to London? If both answers are 'yes' then I won't sleep that night, which will make my first day or two in my job difficult.

Oh dear

In conversation today I was told something like 'You haven't taken every opportunity to hook up with every sleazy girl you could have, and that's why I like you'.
It scares me for a number of reasons.
Firstly, I already knew that this girl is too enamoured of me. This takes it a step further, interpreting my life and actions as supportive of her own personal biases, despite my avowed opinions.
Secondly, it suggests that there have been opportunities that I have missed.

I'm not the sort of person who is looking to settle down with one partner. I'm not 'into' lovey nesting, nor do I understand the attitude that makes faithfulness a virtue and lifelong commitment desirable.
It's not that I recognise these as ideals and give into temptation, but that I really don't see why these are ideals, or the alternative is pejoratively labelled temptation. I have for some time now thought of myself as 'miswired'; I have a screw loose or am missing a marble. I like to think that I can understand things easily, but when it comes to this particular desire that is manifest in the vast majority of the human population (that I have met or heard about) I can only understand that it exists, not why.
It would be nice to tell myself that it's a basic emotional response that has no rational explanation, but that's not certain to me. Is it culturally ingrained in people, rather than being natural?
Our whole culture is arranged around the concept of the two-parent family, marriage and one-on-one relationships. Most women I meet who have considered the issue tell me that this is because of patriarchal oppression, a line thought up, I guess, by radical 'counter-culture' feminists. But I can't understand why this would be true. Men fight: they're born competitive (yes, I'm talking about statistical tendencies, not individuals) and aggressive. They don't share naturally.
If society were organised a man's way there would be one man who ruled, and he'd have as many women as he could. Others with power would also have women, and a great many men would have nothing. Men, as I understand their biological desires, would never arrange only to have one women, so that (roughly) every man could have one. That's a sharing system, and it appears very feminine to me.
Of course, some people will be angry at the use of the word feminine, or about the acknowledgement of intrinsic biological sex differences in character and attitude. These people can take their attempts to deny the truth, or to rewrite the dictionaries, elsewhere.
The explanation is that marriage makes women property, and ties a woman to a man so that she can't escape: it relies on the assumption of man's insecurity. But a chieftan can own many women just as easily as he can own one. If he were insecure and wanted to bind a woman to himself, if he were designing our cultural institutions from scratch (or many chieftans all contributed a little over the generations) he could easily make marriage something that one could have with many women, but retain the features of ownership and male domination that feminists rightly dislike.

In my experience of the human population it is the women who, like my interlocutor earlier today, seem particularly keen to devote themselves to one person. In fact, we have a stereotype of the man fooling around and the woman becoming over-committed. I have phrased this carefully, because it is not men who fool around: again, in my experience, most men agree with women on this: that settling down with one fine women would be a wonderful thing. It is the man with whom women become overcommitted who fools around.
There are some women who, like me, and like this mythical man (who is fortunate enough to have this stream of relationships: he and I only share an attitude, not a life history) are not hunting for marriage, but I would contend that the vast majority of women are, whereas a significant number of men are not. I have met women who say that they are not looking for long-term relationships, but when I get to know them better negate such assertions by their actions and even in direct speech.

There's a myth that I hear all the time of people getting jilted: of callous lovers who show no respect of decency. It's a jungle out there. I agree that the world of relationships is a dangerous one in which one is likely to be distressed, but from my point of view it's even worse.
I'm not looking for the perfect relationship, and mostly having to dump uninspiring boys because I don't love them enough. I'm looking for lots of wonderful relationships (and I have been fortunate enough to know inspiring girls in those relationships that I have had) of a different sort. But people assume that I want to be faithful, and want them to be faithful; they assume that a relationship is a precursor to marriage, even if they have the wisdom to recognise that it might well not go that far because of unforseen problems. This is the best that I have coaxed out of a girl apon explaining my desires and hopes: a recognition that things might not go as far. Another girl, I am told, secretly thinks that one day I will 'see the light' and realise that my attitude is just young and foolish. I will be converted by the 'right woman'.

This is scary too. It's one thing to have personal talks with women explaining that commitment is not an option, and sharing the disappointment when our desires do not mesh, but it's another to have someone decide to act as though she likes my way of life, but actually be infiltrating it in the hopes of changing it. That's as dishonest and deceptive as a man declaring love that he does not feel, although in my case much less painful. It's the poor girl who will suffer if in such a situation she eventually realises that I like my life, that my attitude is what makes me me, and that it cannot be changed by her work.
I am not a lost soul to be saved in the name of marriage and devotion, just as atheists do not regard themselves as lost souls to be saved in the name of God. Most atheists, I think, do not mind others having religion as long as it does not interfere with important decisions or with the atheists themselves. They do object to constant intrusion in their lives, as anyone does, and as part of this they also detest the idea of a theocracy. Many God(s)-fearing people agree that a theocracy is undesirable: they agree that professing a religion when not given the choice is meaningless, and that therefore openness is desirable.

Yet when it comes to relationships our society and culture, and those of most places in the world, operate on the unquestioned assumption of faithfulness: of searching for one partner and marrying that partner.