Me First

Sometimes I feel a bit disgusted. It feels like the modern Western world has become all about Me First.

Now, I could rant about consumerism here. I could rant about the decline of morality, responsibility and even basic civility. But actually, I mostly hate this Me First attitude in relationships and especially among parents.

I see, all around me, people leaving their partners and the fathers or mothers of their children. And if you talk to those people, really talk to them, you can see why. A marriage that looks okay to other people can be full of a lot of silent suffering, invisible to outsiders. There can be a lot going on that no one would ever guess. Terrible things can happen - disabilities, infertility, mental illness, addictions, violence and so many other things - things that descend on us like a meteorite, leaving a burned out crater in the centre of our lives and our relationships. I get it. After all, I kind of live in one of those relationships myself.

But a lot, and I mean a lot, of relationships seem to break up for no really good reason. Because someone wanted to be free. Because someone feels they missed their chance to be young and cool and careless. Because someone wanted the romance and the passion and the being the centre of attention of the first years to go on and on. Or because someone wanted to just be a mum for a while and forget they had a husband as well. Or because someone, perversely, decided that they wanted to be a rude, bad-tempered, bitter old bastard or shrew who no one in their right mind would ever want to live with. Or because of some other combination of human laziness or apathy or selfishness or pig-headedness or wishful thinking that left the other person alone, abandoned and trying to do the impossible: fixing a relationship by themselves.

Because when it all became too difficult, for whatever reason, one or both people involved tried for a while - they tried everything except brutal self-reflection, honest confrontation, the pain and effort of long-term personal change and the embarrassment and expense of professional help. And then they decided Me First, and bailed.

There always seems to be a lot of people available to cheer this person on. After all, the world is full of frustrated adults, frustrated parents. We want more sex. We want more love. We want more attention. We want more intimacy. Or maybe we just want to be left alone and not have any of those things demanded of us. And it's not wrong to want any of these things. A lot of adult life sucks and is tedious and boring and romance and intimacy and sex, or even the right to neglect our partners and treat them like shit, are the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. Wife or husband or partner not giving us those things we want? We've been cheated. We are entitled. We should find someone else. Me First.

And in a way, I agree. People are free to pursue happiness. People are free to look for their perfect mate, the one who they believe will complement them in every way. People are free to marry and divorce and remarry or any number of permutations of those choices. And there is a lot of it about. We seem, in Australia, to be heading for about a 30% divorce rate. And that doesn't count all the people who don't get married in the first place: O brave new world, that has such people in it!

But I wonder about it when kids are involved. I really wonder. Because the truth is that this brave new world has a cost and only some of the cost is paid by the parents. Most of the tab is picked up by the kids.

I know. I am a judgemental asshole who doesn't understand and I am giving you all the shits.

But I say this because I was one of those kids. One of those kids who gets to overhear those conversations about how he or she is unhappy. How he or she feels they married too young or married the wrong person. How he or she doesn't want to be married any more, at least not with this person. How the price is too high, the sacrifices too great. How they just want to be happy.

One of those kids whose father or mother leaves in the middle of the night - a hug, a blur of tears and he or she is gone. Gone for good. Or maybe not gone for good, but it's never the same. Maybe one of those kids who gets to tramp around between houses, carrying little suitcases. Who gets to see daddy or mummy at weekends. Who gets to become a little diplomat who learns to make awkward conversation with daddy's new girlfriend or mummy's new boyfriend. Who gets to smile politely, or even to burst into tears, as the stranger we wake up to find in bed with mummy or daddy fumbles around, unable to decide whether to try being a friend or a substitute parent. Who gets to understand that we can't have that simplest of childhood pleasures: to take our boring, irrelevant parents for granted.

I know how it feels to be left. To feel like the fact that he or she left must be our fault, however many times you are told it wasn't, because we believe that if we had only been more beautiful, more interesting, better behaved, we would have been a more compelling reason to stay. To have that belief so deeply ingrained that it, in turn, influences our own choice of partner, our own relationships.

And yes, I know that there comes a point in life where we have to stop blaming our parents for everything. Where we see our parents more realistically, with more compassion, and realize that they did their best, even if their best wasn't very good. But there also comes a point in life where we see, we really see, certain things about ourselves, including about our childhoods and why we are the way we are.

I know what it is like to be one of those kids whose parents were free to put their own happiness at the top of the priority list. Who were free to fuck up, fuck around and, finally, to fuck off. Who were free to look their children in the eye, harden their hearts and decide Me First.

And that's why I'm disgusted.

Not really with the parents who are breaking up around me. My disgust with what other people are doing is just a cover. Just a moment of frenzied self-righteousness that makes me feel a little better. Because I'm really disgusted with myself. With my own treacherous heart that looks at my life, my partner and my child and whispers Me First.