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Men's reflections on the main reason for divorce
Divorce can have many different reasons. But behind this diversity always looms one, the most important and terrible – the hardening of the heart, which has lost the ability to love. For a while it can be camouflaged with all sorts of noble concepts, comforting yourself with thoughts that you are motivated by duty or dedication. But hard heart is a poisoned stitch in the bag. Sooner or later it will sting you and your loved ones, no matter how you hide it.
For many years, I naively believed that this trouble would never reach my family. And it turned out that she did not need to stretch - from the very beginning of our family life, she slowly bit our love like a rat.
When did my stupid heart become hardened? Why didn't I notice it in time? And most importantly, what do you do with all this? There are a lot of questions, but how to answer them - I do not mind. All that is left is to sit and think. Think hard...
Forty-year-old men often leave their wives. Five years ago I found an exhaustive explanation of this fact in the thesis: gray into a beard is a demon into a rib.
Now I’m over forty, and quite differently I look at divorced peers, quite different reasons I see in their attempts to create a new family on the rubble of the first.
Fascinated by career growth, creativity, business, giving it all the strength and energy, men for some reason tend to believe that their family is something static and unshakable, created by them once and then existing regardless of the efforts made.
But this is a terrible delusion that can eventually destroy any family, no matter how prosperous it may seem from the outside.
In the famous Soviet film, the hero of Oleg Yankovsky said that love is a theorem that must be proved every day. And if in the family this theorem suddenly remains without daily proof - woe to such a family, if a man does not constantly work on the creation of his own house - woe to such a man and his house. Crawling on the walls first small cracks, then more... For some time you can still console yourself that, they say, this is not the foundation cracking, but only the plaster peeled: grease, whitewash - and everything will be fine again. But there will come a moment when the true picture of your family life suddenly falls upon you in all its unsightlyness. And you see that family affairs and cares, which for many years put off "for later" because of his eternal employment and fatigue, can no longer be postponed. And you will never begin to read children books before bedtime, you will not be able to do exercises with them in the morning, you will not go with them on forest hikes and many other things you will never be able to do. Because they've grown. And all the works of love not done for them will remain unmade forever.
And next to you is a tired, nervous, scandal-prone woman for every trifle. You married her a cheerful, cheerful girl whose eyes glowed with happiness just by looking at you. But where did it go now, into what hole did it wake up? Love passed, tomatoes withered...
And here you clearly understand that all this is your work, the result of twenty years of your family life. And no success in business or creativity, this gap can not be patched, because it is not a hole at all - a hole in the board of a sinking ship.
When a ship sinks, they usually run away. The book says the captain is the last to leave. Well, that's in the books...
This is what I see when I look at my family life. And I am no longer in a hurry to judge those who tried to run away from this terrible spectacle - a family brought to ruin by them. By the way, Orthodox men in this sense have even harder than non-believers: it seems he lived correctly, for twenty years boasted that he never cheated on his wife, bent his fingers, reasoned about God, went to church properly, and in the end – what happened.
And more and more often it comes to my mind: why not try again to start over? Shall I make another attempt, since the first failed and my ship sinks? When I tell my friends about it, they round their eyes and say, “You’re crazy, you’re doing so well!”
Oh, my friends, you are my dear ones. From the outside, it may actually look good. But I know exactly what is hidden behind this plastered facade: poke properly and everything will collapse overnight.
And it looks -- yes, it's beautiful. Moreover, if I undertake to talk about these twenty years, it may turn out not even beautifully, but heroically. I’ll never lie about it, that’s interesting! But you can't fool yourself... Now I understand that in the very early stages of our life together, I laid mines under it that were activated today and are about to explode. It all started out so well...
At my very first confession in Optina Desert, the priest asked me if I sinned with fornication. I’m proud to say I’ve only been dating one girl for a year. I keep, so to speak, loyalty to the chosen one. My father looked at me with confusion and said:
- So it's still fornication. I'm sorry, but I can't give you communion.
- What should I do now? he asked.
- Don't know. Either get married or break up. It's your call.
For the first time in my life, I was seriously thinking about starting a family. “Live fast, die young” are not empty words. For the rock party of the early nineties, they were quite adequate description of the life route: some of my then friends did not live to thirty. I too, for a number of reasons, was sure that I would not live, so I did not even think about any family. Thanks to the Church, I had to make such an unexpected choice. And I suddenly realized that I do not want to break up with my girlfriend at all, that if there is a person in the world with whom I am ready to forever connect my life, it is she.
For another scholarship, I bought a bouquet of gladiolus, two rings of samovar gold in the jewelry department - and went to get married. Without any prior agreement, for the first time in a year of our acquaintance, I came to the house of my future wife's parents and proposed. And the next day, early in the morning, we ran with her on the train to go to the neighboring district center, where my friends served in the temple. Father looked at our passports and agreed to marry us. Today it is hard to imagine, but we really got married first and only four months later registered our marriage.
I had no money at all, there was nothing to arrange the wedding. I came to get married in shabby jeans and a torn sweater, and our wedding rings cost, as I remember now, 84 kopecks. But what does money and gold mean when you are twenty-four years old, near your beloved, and in your heart the ardent neophytic conviction that God will arrange everything, the main thing is not to sin.
Actually, God arranged everything. The mother of my friend, seeing what I was going to wear to the crown, sighed and pulled out of the closet an unfit suit:
Here you go. Leschke bought it for the wedding, but if you're the first one to go, don't be embarrassed.
And after the wedding, friends gave us a surprise: a real wedding feast! You need to understand what this meant in '92, when the shelves were empty, and wages were already issued intermittently. Of course, everything went without much chic, just everyone brought their modest supplies, and it turned out quite a decent wedding table. Nina and I were seated at the head, the regent Sergey lit two candles in front of us, and put a piece of Athos incense on them. As soon as the first toast was raised, the traditional "Bitter!" sounded, someone shouted:
- Look what's going on!
And there was something to see. The candles in front of us suddenly flashed a bright flame, the wax began to melt rapidly, the burning wicks bizarrely knitted together, and for a few seconds everyone watched an amazing sight: two flaming rings - large and smaller - shone in front of the groom and bride at the ends of the wedding candles.
- Well, the Lord blessed you," said Seryozha, "and you were worried that there was no money for the ring.
So we became husband and wife.
From the very beginning of our family life, I have clearly defined for myself that the main task of a man in a family is to make decisions. I am the breadwinner of the family, I am the protection of it from all adversity, I bear all responsibility for it. It was frightening to realize this, especially at a time when the country was teetering on the brink of civil war, famine and chaos. More than once or twice I wanted to howl like a dog in despair and complete hopelessness. Factories and factories stopped, money became cheaper rapidly, products were issued on cards once a month. And I have a pregnant wife, a diploma of the head of the orchestra of Russian folk instruments and no idea how to behave in the confusion. But I stubbornly continued to believe that God would arrange everything, the main thing is to live rightly. And this faith saved in the most difficult times.
I got a job as a mason's apprentice. In practice, such "apprenticeship" was reduced to a tray of brick and mortar experienced workers. We had to get up at six o'clock in the morning, because we could only find a job in a nearby town. I got up, ran on the train, drove for an hour in a frozen car, then transferred to a frozen bus and was still fifteen minutes late, for which I invariably received a stick from a harsh foreman. Then - eight hours laid on pallets icing brick, carried buckets of solution to the fifth floor and continued to receive colorful remarks from the foreman, now about my slowness. He returned home after eight in the evening, barely alive from fatigue, and the next day again neither light nor dawn ran to the train. And one thing only warmed my soul in the midst of this checharade: I feed my family. Then she was still very young (wife and son, whom she carried under her heart), but - her own, dear, beloved. If I don't, they'll just disappear.
A year later, I was already quite famously laying brickwork myself, and began to earn quite decent money at that time. We had enough food and clothing, but we didn’t have our own. But I still lived with the unshakable conviction that God was sending us everything we needed, and that there would come a time when he would send us shelter. That's how it happened. In the beginning, life forced me to make another important decision.
We lived at my mom's. In the crowd, but not in offense, as they say. One summer evening, the wife gathered the children for a walk in the yard. I went to the balcony and suddenly saw... No, nothing special happened there - the courtyard is like a courtyard, as I remember it from childhood. Imagine: a square of 60 by 60 meters, formed by four typical five-story buildings. Cultural life is centered around three tables. Central, under the apple tree - the most boiling and crowded. He was chosen by local drunks. Twenty-five people spend the whole evening in a goat for a flight. The game is accompanied by a stormy vocabulary and consumption of cheap port wine. Here, under the apple tree, a small need is coped with. Immediately the most unstable are laid to sleep on the grass, and the most active beat each other's faces.
At the next table there is a young man, a multi-age punk, sluggishly picking up the girls passing by to the accompaniment of a trashed cassette tape.
But the most deafening is the third table at which grandmothers gather. There is also a card game, only the old women are cut not into a “goat”, but into a “fool”. And they swear at the same time with such a genuine feeling that even drunkards are afraid to pass by them again.
Throughout the yard there are a dozen and a half different dogs, released by the owners for an evening walk. Dogs chase cats and cheerfully shit in the sandbox. On the sports ground, colorful carpets are hung on the bars, from which the nuclear hostess in the same colorful robes knock out the dust with cannon blows. Everything is as usual, with one difference: now in the middle of this "magnificence" are my children. Very small. With a bucket and a spatula. And they look around confusedly, trying to find a corner for their childhood activities. I looked at them and felt like such a bastard.
It's me, not someone, who lets them out every night to take a walk in this whole business, and they should thank me for growing up in the same dumpster I grew up on.
And if I don't get them out of here, no one will.
After a while, I moved my family to Gizdra, a small one-storey town where I was building the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God. For the first four years we rented a house, then we bought a house. And instead of spitting out a spoiled yard, my children were now playing the weed under the linden, and they only heard the maternity at school.
When the temple was built, I went to work in the suburbs. It was year 98, another crisis. Again - the depreciation of the ruble, again - empty counters. Again, I was afraid to tears for my wife and children. And when I had to spend weeks sleeping in some smoky construction car, where besides me in three tiers there were a dozen Moldovans, I still strengthened myself with the idea that God would give everything and that if I now broke down and escaped, my wife and children would have nothing to eat. It's been seven years. Then the history of cooperation with Thomas began, thanks to which I, from the proletarians, began to drift slowly towards the creative intelligentsia.
That's the outside of my life. And looking at her, who would blame me for not living for my family all these years?
No one's taking it?
Then I will try to do it myself to make the picture larger.
At first, my wife and I were arguing about who was in charge. And when she once again indignantly asked, "Well, why is it always you who decides how and what to do?", I always answered her, "Because I am a man." This recipe from the cool macho Goshi from the movie “Moscow does not believe in tears” became for me the main argument in family quarrels. Very convenient argument, by the way. Nothing explanatory, but final and indisputable. And then it seemed to me, stupid, that this - oh how right! Now I see that Batalov’s hero is just an unhappy person, vulnerable and proud, who failed to realize himself normally in society and is suffering. What is the level of decision he made? Fill the muzzle of gopniks in the alleyway, organize outdoor drinking in nature, teach the girl to cut onions. And then – to arrange a quiet hysteria and for two weeks to go into a binge because of the aggravated complex of social inferiority. This is indeed a worthy example to follow! However, it was his paradoxical logic that became the basis for self-affirmation in the family: “Because he is a man.”
My poor wife tried to resist this for three years. Then she accepted. And I proudly explained to my friends that here, they say, as with wives it is necessary - strictly, in a manly way. And if later the wife did make some timid attempts to clarify the relationship, I told her with "male intransigence":
- You don't like a husband like that. No one's holding you.
And I knew for sure that she was not going anywhere. Because the kids are small. Because she has nowhere to go. And most importantly, because she loves me, a fool. Then - still loved... And so, well aware of all this, I told her what I was saying. And the heart froze in sweet languor from the consciousness of his own invulnerability in such clashes.
“My beauty and joy are short-lived,” the little prince said to himself, “and she has nothing to defend herself against the world: she has only four thorns.” Oh, I knew, I knew what Exupery was writing about! How many generations of self-confident men have rushed to break off these wretched thorns on their roses with such enthusiasm as if before them not a beloved woman, but a samurai with a naked sword. However, the samurai probably would not jump so famously, they were afraid.
Well, that's lyrics. And this is what happened in our lives. When I moved the family to Gizdra, in three years we changed seven rented apartments, which were ordinary rural houses without water and gas, with heating and comfort in the yard. They say two moves equal one fire. After three and a half of these fires, I dragged my wife and children through. How frightened and uncomfortable she was in those strange houses. Everything frightened her - the darkness and desertion on the street in the evening, the lack of a phone (mobile phones in the province was not yet), the stove, which could not be melted... There are three small children with no friends or mother. One heroic husband who lays bricks all day, and in the evening collapses on the couch and demands “something to eat”. And this would be fine, but how many times did it happen that the “tired breadwinner”, having had a snack and rested, would go somewhere late to visit, having previously asked in a gentle voice: “Ninochek, will you let me go?” And what else was poor Ninochka left to do, except to smile exhaustedly and say: "Yes, of course, go, relax."
And I saw, I saw, that the smile was tortured. I realized that I was essentially leaving her with the children for this evening, alone in a strange city. That she will sit and shudder at every rustle until I return, because she is afraid for her children and for herself. Well, it's full - because I explained to her that Gizdra is a quiet city, there are no bandits here, all the drunks are quiet, and in general everything here is raspberry. Let him learn to overcome fear!
And what was it like when I was missing for weeks at the Moscow Sabbaths? One day, I needed a carnation at home. I rummaged through all the tools, I can't find them. Suddenly my wife brings it from the bedroom. Turns out, when I was away, she put a nail-driver next to her bed at night. That means there was something to fight off from the raiders, if anything. “Only she has four thorns, she has nothing more to defend herself from the world.” Here we go.
There was also a painting in my memory. The end of winter, underfoot snow porridge, icicles hang from the roof. I come from work, open the gate, and I see my wife standing in the middle of the yard washing clothes in the trough. On the head of the hat-ushanka, on the hands - orange rubber gloves, under which she put mittens so that her hands are not so cold. And laundry. I'll never forget her look then. It's as if she's caught up in something embarrassing. She just felt sorry for me! I knew I was going to worry, so I tried to finish my wild laundry before I came. And there was no time... After a couple of years I managed to earn money for the house, in the first week connected it to the plumbing and immediately bought a washing machine.
But then he did not come near and did not help to wash in the cold, walked past, into the house. What a breadwinner! I came back from work, tired! Everyone has their own occupation... And this kind of brutality on my part for twenty years has been - at least bucket.
Now I am offended, leaving for the session: "Why is it that my wife has not called me for weeks?" But he himself like this - a drop, a thread, a spark - extinguished, tore and splashed everything that connected us. And it seems to have torn...
For many years, deep down, I boasted that my wife was really married, that is, to her husband. Like behind a stone wall! From all the misfortunes of life, I close it with a wide back, I take all the blows of fate on myself!
Why did I leave it behind that stone wall? Traditional kit: Kinder, Küche, Kirche? Well, I would have taken someone simpler. And then he married a talented, bright girl with a broad outlook and an inquisitive mind, took her to the village and put her in the yard at the trough, like a Pushkin old woman. Now is the time to take stock.
When the children were young, she did not have much time for reflection. And now that they have grown up, what does it have in the asset? It is not difficult to calculate: the absence of a profession - one, the lack of education - two, the lack of social status - three. While giving birth and raising children, peers studied, made a career. Now one of her friends is the director of a music school, another is the head of the department of culture, the third is the chief accountant in a serious office.
And she, when she recently tried to get a job, was offered a choice of vacancies: a cleaner in Sberbank, a nurse in a mental hospital or a dispatcher in a taxi. At the age of forty, an intelligent, pretty woman was faced with such a simple choice. Which I gave her with my "male" decisions. I broke the thorns, I protected the world. And now, by chance, I saw her on LiveJournal: "Married." My husband. Like behind a stone wall. Like in prison.
Here are two self-portraits, two pictures of my life. Every one of them is true. Just do not connect them with each other to get a solid image. These two truths fall apart, like a broken mirror, which, as you know, can not be glued together. And my family today is like in a broken mirror: everyone is in his own shard, everyone has his own interest, his own affairs and worries. We live in the same house and have been apart for a long time.
I once said, “I will make all the decisions in our house because I am a man.” Well, man, look at the results of your decisions now. You're the captain of this ship. You’ve been on it all these years, second only to God. And you ran him aground.
Forty years is a time of taking stock. At twenty you can still live by illusions, and at thirty you can still deceive yourself. But after forty it will not work, the results, as they say, are obvious. And if they turn out to be like me, it remains either to look at this sad spectacle, or to turn as soon as possible and rush away from it wherever your eyes look.
That's why I'm not going to judge forty-year-old men who leave their families. I know now what they're trying to escape from, what pushed them to try again.
I also decided to try to start over again. That’s how – just take, and cross out the lived-acquired, “as if not the former”, since it turned out to be so awkward. And start a new family life. From scratch.
There's no need for me to look for another woman. For all my labors and cares for the good of the family, I did not notice how, instead of love, I began to be guided solely by a sense of duty. And love has lost... Well, now I'm gonna try to collect what's lost. A little bit, a little bit, maybe it will. For without this is the price of all my self-sacrifice, and if I give up all my possessions and give my body to be burned, but I have no love, I have no use in it (1 Corinthians 13:3).
Twenty years ago, God gave me great wealth—a woman who loved me so much that she was ready to follow me to the ends of the world, to endure any adversity, to endure any hardship. I didn't save that gift. I didn’t learn to love even the closest person. Should I ask God for another wife? I'm sorry, Lord, it didn't work out the first time, can I try another? It's funny, right?
So I will try to start all over again with the very girl I once came to with a bouquet of gladiolis and penny rings. True, now instead of a torn sweater - life in holes ... As before, I believe that God sends everything necessary to man, the main thing is not to spit. I was wrong once, and I was wrong. But God can do anything. So maybe my broken mirror can be glued together. So that I and my wife may be reflected in him together again, and that I may say to him, “Be pleased to have mercy on me, and let me grow old with her.” (Tov 8:7). published
Author: Alexander Tkachenko
P.S. And remember, just by changing our consumption, we change the world together! © Join us on Facebook , VKontakte, Odnoklassniki
Source: www.pravmir.ru/kogda-zavyanut-pomidory-muzhskie-razmyshleniya-o-glavnoj-prichine-razvodov/
For many years, I naively believed that this trouble would never reach my family. And it turned out that she did not need to stretch - from the very beginning of our family life, she slowly bit our love like a rat.
When did my stupid heart become hardened? Why didn't I notice it in time? And most importantly, what do you do with all this? There are a lot of questions, but how to answer them - I do not mind. All that is left is to sit and think. Think hard...
Forty-year-old men often leave their wives. Five years ago I found an exhaustive explanation of this fact in the thesis: gray into a beard is a demon into a rib.
Now I’m over forty, and quite differently I look at divorced peers, quite different reasons I see in their attempts to create a new family on the rubble of the first.
Fascinated by career growth, creativity, business, giving it all the strength and energy, men for some reason tend to believe that their family is something static and unshakable, created by them once and then existing regardless of the efforts made.
But this is a terrible delusion that can eventually destroy any family, no matter how prosperous it may seem from the outside.
In the famous Soviet film, the hero of Oleg Yankovsky said that love is a theorem that must be proved every day. And if in the family this theorem suddenly remains without daily proof - woe to such a family, if a man does not constantly work on the creation of his own house - woe to such a man and his house. Crawling on the walls first small cracks, then more... For some time you can still console yourself that, they say, this is not the foundation cracking, but only the plaster peeled: grease, whitewash - and everything will be fine again. But there will come a moment when the true picture of your family life suddenly falls upon you in all its unsightlyness. And you see that family affairs and cares, which for many years put off "for later" because of his eternal employment and fatigue, can no longer be postponed. And you will never begin to read children books before bedtime, you will not be able to do exercises with them in the morning, you will not go with them on forest hikes and many other things you will never be able to do. Because they've grown. And all the works of love not done for them will remain unmade forever.
And next to you is a tired, nervous, scandal-prone woman for every trifle. You married her a cheerful, cheerful girl whose eyes glowed with happiness just by looking at you. But where did it go now, into what hole did it wake up? Love passed, tomatoes withered...
And here you clearly understand that all this is your work, the result of twenty years of your family life. And no success in business or creativity, this gap can not be patched, because it is not a hole at all - a hole in the board of a sinking ship.
When a ship sinks, they usually run away. The book says the captain is the last to leave. Well, that's in the books...
This is what I see when I look at my family life. And I am no longer in a hurry to judge those who tried to run away from this terrible spectacle - a family brought to ruin by them. By the way, Orthodox men in this sense have even harder than non-believers: it seems he lived correctly, for twenty years boasted that he never cheated on his wife, bent his fingers, reasoned about God, went to church properly, and in the end – what happened.
And more and more often it comes to my mind: why not try again to start over? Shall I make another attempt, since the first failed and my ship sinks? When I tell my friends about it, they round their eyes and say, “You’re crazy, you’re doing so well!”
Oh, my friends, you are my dear ones. From the outside, it may actually look good. But I know exactly what is hidden behind this plastered facade: poke properly and everything will collapse overnight.
And it looks -- yes, it's beautiful. Moreover, if I undertake to talk about these twenty years, it may turn out not even beautifully, but heroically. I’ll never lie about it, that’s interesting! But you can't fool yourself... Now I understand that in the very early stages of our life together, I laid mines under it that were activated today and are about to explode. It all started out so well...
At my very first confession in Optina Desert, the priest asked me if I sinned with fornication. I’m proud to say I’ve only been dating one girl for a year. I keep, so to speak, loyalty to the chosen one. My father looked at me with confusion and said:
- So it's still fornication. I'm sorry, but I can't give you communion.
- What should I do now? he asked.
- Don't know. Either get married or break up. It's your call.
For the first time in my life, I was seriously thinking about starting a family. “Live fast, die young” are not empty words. For the rock party of the early nineties, they were quite adequate description of the life route: some of my then friends did not live to thirty. I too, for a number of reasons, was sure that I would not live, so I did not even think about any family. Thanks to the Church, I had to make such an unexpected choice. And I suddenly realized that I do not want to break up with my girlfriend at all, that if there is a person in the world with whom I am ready to forever connect my life, it is she.
For another scholarship, I bought a bouquet of gladiolus, two rings of samovar gold in the jewelry department - and went to get married. Without any prior agreement, for the first time in a year of our acquaintance, I came to the house of my future wife's parents and proposed. And the next day, early in the morning, we ran with her on the train to go to the neighboring district center, where my friends served in the temple. Father looked at our passports and agreed to marry us. Today it is hard to imagine, but we really got married first and only four months later registered our marriage.
I had no money at all, there was nothing to arrange the wedding. I came to get married in shabby jeans and a torn sweater, and our wedding rings cost, as I remember now, 84 kopecks. But what does money and gold mean when you are twenty-four years old, near your beloved, and in your heart the ardent neophytic conviction that God will arrange everything, the main thing is not to sin.
Actually, God arranged everything. The mother of my friend, seeing what I was going to wear to the crown, sighed and pulled out of the closet an unfit suit:
Here you go. Leschke bought it for the wedding, but if you're the first one to go, don't be embarrassed.
And after the wedding, friends gave us a surprise: a real wedding feast! You need to understand what this meant in '92, when the shelves were empty, and wages were already issued intermittently. Of course, everything went without much chic, just everyone brought their modest supplies, and it turned out quite a decent wedding table. Nina and I were seated at the head, the regent Sergey lit two candles in front of us, and put a piece of Athos incense on them. As soon as the first toast was raised, the traditional "Bitter!" sounded, someone shouted:
- Look what's going on!
And there was something to see. The candles in front of us suddenly flashed a bright flame, the wax began to melt rapidly, the burning wicks bizarrely knitted together, and for a few seconds everyone watched an amazing sight: two flaming rings - large and smaller - shone in front of the groom and bride at the ends of the wedding candles.
- Well, the Lord blessed you," said Seryozha, "and you were worried that there was no money for the ring.
So we became husband and wife.
From the very beginning of our family life, I have clearly defined for myself that the main task of a man in a family is to make decisions. I am the breadwinner of the family, I am the protection of it from all adversity, I bear all responsibility for it. It was frightening to realize this, especially at a time when the country was teetering on the brink of civil war, famine and chaos. More than once or twice I wanted to howl like a dog in despair and complete hopelessness. Factories and factories stopped, money became cheaper rapidly, products were issued on cards once a month. And I have a pregnant wife, a diploma of the head of the orchestra of Russian folk instruments and no idea how to behave in the confusion. But I stubbornly continued to believe that God would arrange everything, the main thing is to live rightly. And this faith saved in the most difficult times.
I got a job as a mason's apprentice. In practice, such "apprenticeship" was reduced to a tray of brick and mortar experienced workers. We had to get up at six o'clock in the morning, because we could only find a job in a nearby town. I got up, ran on the train, drove for an hour in a frozen car, then transferred to a frozen bus and was still fifteen minutes late, for which I invariably received a stick from a harsh foreman. Then - eight hours laid on pallets icing brick, carried buckets of solution to the fifth floor and continued to receive colorful remarks from the foreman, now about my slowness. He returned home after eight in the evening, barely alive from fatigue, and the next day again neither light nor dawn ran to the train. And one thing only warmed my soul in the midst of this checharade: I feed my family. Then she was still very young (wife and son, whom she carried under her heart), but - her own, dear, beloved. If I don't, they'll just disappear.
A year later, I was already quite famously laying brickwork myself, and began to earn quite decent money at that time. We had enough food and clothing, but we didn’t have our own. But I still lived with the unshakable conviction that God was sending us everything we needed, and that there would come a time when he would send us shelter. That's how it happened. In the beginning, life forced me to make another important decision.
We lived at my mom's. In the crowd, but not in offense, as they say. One summer evening, the wife gathered the children for a walk in the yard. I went to the balcony and suddenly saw... No, nothing special happened there - the courtyard is like a courtyard, as I remember it from childhood. Imagine: a square of 60 by 60 meters, formed by four typical five-story buildings. Cultural life is centered around three tables. Central, under the apple tree - the most boiling and crowded. He was chosen by local drunks. Twenty-five people spend the whole evening in a goat for a flight. The game is accompanied by a stormy vocabulary and consumption of cheap port wine. Here, under the apple tree, a small need is coped with. Immediately the most unstable are laid to sleep on the grass, and the most active beat each other's faces.
At the next table there is a young man, a multi-age punk, sluggishly picking up the girls passing by to the accompaniment of a trashed cassette tape.
But the most deafening is the third table at which grandmothers gather. There is also a card game, only the old women are cut not into a “goat”, but into a “fool”. And they swear at the same time with such a genuine feeling that even drunkards are afraid to pass by them again.
Throughout the yard there are a dozen and a half different dogs, released by the owners for an evening walk. Dogs chase cats and cheerfully shit in the sandbox. On the sports ground, colorful carpets are hung on the bars, from which the nuclear hostess in the same colorful robes knock out the dust with cannon blows. Everything is as usual, with one difference: now in the middle of this "magnificence" are my children. Very small. With a bucket and a spatula. And they look around confusedly, trying to find a corner for their childhood activities. I looked at them and felt like such a bastard.
It's me, not someone, who lets them out every night to take a walk in this whole business, and they should thank me for growing up in the same dumpster I grew up on.
And if I don't get them out of here, no one will.
After a while, I moved my family to Gizdra, a small one-storey town where I was building the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God. For the first four years we rented a house, then we bought a house. And instead of spitting out a spoiled yard, my children were now playing the weed under the linden, and they only heard the maternity at school.
When the temple was built, I went to work in the suburbs. It was year 98, another crisis. Again - the depreciation of the ruble, again - empty counters. Again, I was afraid to tears for my wife and children. And when I had to spend weeks sleeping in some smoky construction car, where besides me in three tiers there were a dozen Moldovans, I still strengthened myself with the idea that God would give everything and that if I now broke down and escaped, my wife and children would have nothing to eat. It's been seven years. Then the history of cooperation with Thomas began, thanks to which I, from the proletarians, began to drift slowly towards the creative intelligentsia.
That's the outside of my life. And looking at her, who would blame me for not living for my family all these years?
No one's taking it?
Then I will try to do it myself to make the picture larger.
At first, my wife and I were arguing about who was in charge. And when she once again indignantly asked, "Well, why is it always you who decides how and what to do?", I always answered her, "Because I am a man." This recipe from the cool macho Goshi from the movie “Moscow does not believe in tears” became for me the main argument in family quarrels. Very convenient argument, by the way. Nothing explanatory, but final and indisputable. And then it seemed to me, stupid, that this - oh how right! Now I see that Batalov’s hero is just an unhappy person, vulnerable and proud, who failed to realize himself normally in society and is suffering. What is the level of decision he made? Fill the muzzle of gopniks in the alleyway, organize outdoor drinking in nature, teach the girl to cut onions. And then – to arrange a quiet hysteria and for two weeks to go into a binge because of the aggravated complex of social inferiority. This is indeed a worthy example to follow! However, it was his paradoxical logic that became the basis for self-affirmation in the family: “Because he is a man.”
My poor wife tried to resist this for three years. Then she accepted. And I proudly explained to my friends that here, they say, as with wives it is necessary - strictly, in a manly way. And if later the wife did make some timid attempts to clarify the relationship, I told her with "male intransigence":
- You don't like a husband like that. No one's holding you.
And I knew for sure that she was not going anywhere. Because the kids are small. Because she has nowhere to go. And most importantly, because she loves me, a fool. Then - still loved... And so, well aware of all this, I told her what I was saying. And the heart froze in sweet languor from the consciousness of his own invulnerability in such clashes.
“My beauty and joy are short-lived,” the little prince said to himself, “and she has nothing to defend herself against the world: she has only four thorns.” Oh, I knew, I knew what Exupery was writing about! How many generations of self-confident men have rushed to break off these wretched thorns on their roses with such enthusiasm as if before them not a beloved woman, but a samurai with a naked sword. However, the samurai probably would not jump so famously, they were afraid.
Well, that's lyrics. And this is what happened in our lives. When I moved the family to Gizdra, in three years we changed seven rented apartments, which were ordinary rural houses without water and gas, with heating and comfort in the yard. They say two moves equal one fire. After three and a half of these fires, I dragged my wife and children through. How frightened and uncomfortable she was in those strange houses. Everything frightened her - the darkness and desertion on the street in the evening, the lack of a phone (mobile phones in the province was not yet), the stove, which could not be melted... There are three small children with no friends or mother. One heroic husband who lays bricks all day, and in the evening collapses on the couch and demands “something to eat”. And this would be fine, but how many times did it happen that the “tired breadwinner”, having had a snack and rested, would go somewhere late to visit, having previously asked in a gentle voice: “Ninochek, will you let me go?” And what else was poor Ninochka left to do, except to smile exhaustedly and say: "Yes, of course, go, relax."
And I saw, I saw, that the smile was tortured. I realized that I was essentially leaving her with the children for this evening, alone in a strange city. That she will sit and shudder at every rustle until I return, because she is afraid for her children and for herself. Well, it's full - because I explained to her that Gizdra is a quiet city, there are no bandits here, all the drunks are quiet, and in general everything here is raspberry. Let him learn to overcome fear!
And what was it like when I was missing for weeks at the Moscow Sabbaths? One day, I needed a carnation at home. I rummaged through all the tools, I can't find them. Suddenly my wife brings it from the bedroom. Turns out, when I was away, she put a nail-driver next to her bed at night. That means there was something to fight off from the raiders, if anything. “Only she has four thorns, she has nothing more to defend herself from the world.” Here we go.
There was also a painting in my memory. The end of winter, underfoot snow porridge, icicles hang from the roof. I come from work, open the gate, and I see my wife standing in the middle of the yard washing clothes in the trough. On the head of the hat-ushanka, on the hands - orange rubber gloves, under which she put mittens so that her hands are not so cold. And laundry. I'll never forget her look then. It's as if she's caught up in something embarrassing. She just felt sorry for me! I knew I was going to worry, so I tried to finish my wild laundry before I came. And there was no time... After a couple of years I managed to earn money for the house, in the first week connected it to the plumbing and immediately bought a washing machine.
But then he did not come near and did not help to wash in the cold, walked past, into the house. What a breadwinner! I came back from work, tired! Everyone has their own occupation... And this kind of brutality on my part for twenty years has been - at least bucket.
Now I am offended, leaving for the session: "Why is it that my wife has not called me for weeks?" But he himself like this - a drop, a thread, a spark - extinguished, tore and splashed everything that connected us. And it seems to have torn...
For many years, deep down, I boasted that my wife was really married, that is, to her husband. Like behind a stone wall! From all the misfortunes of life, I close it with a wide back, I take all the blows of fate on myself!
Why did I leave it behind that stone wall? Traditional kit: Kinder, Küche, Kirche? Well, I would have taken someone simpler. And then he married a talented, bright girl with a broad outlook and an inquisitive mind, took her to the village and put her in the yard at the trough, like a Pushkin old woman. Now is the time to take stock.
When the children were young, she did not have much time for reflection. And now that they have grown up, what does it have in the asset? It is not difficult to calculate: the absence of a profession - one, the lack of education - two, the lack of social status - three. While giving birth and raising children, peers studied, made a career. Now one of her friends is the director of a music school, another is the head of the department of culture, the third is the chief accountant in a serious office.
And she, when she recently tried to get a job, was offered a choice of vacancies: a cleaner in Sberbank, a nurse in a mental hospital or a dispatcher in a taxi. At the age of forty, an intelligent, pretty woman was faced with such a simple choice. Which I gave her with my "male" decisions. I broke the thorns, I protected the world. And now, by chance, I saw her on LiveJournal: "Married." My husband. Like behind a stone wall. Like in prison.
Here are two self-portraits, two pictures of my life. Every one of them is true. Just do not connect them with each other to get a solid image. These two truths fall apart, like a broken mirror, which, as you know, can not be glued together. And my family today is like in a broken mirror: everyone is in his own shard, everyone has his own interest, his own affairs and worries. We live in the same house and have been apart for a long time.
I once said, “I will make all the decisions in our house because I am a man.” Well, man, look at the results of your decisions now. You're the captain of this ship. You’ve been on it all these years, second only to God. And you ran him aground.
Forty years is a time of taking stock. At twenty you can still live by illusions, and at thirty you can still deceive yourself. But after forty it will not work, the results, as they say, are obvious. And if they turn out to be like me, it remains either to look at this sad spectacle, or to turn as soon as possible and rush away from it wherever your eyes look.
That's why I'm not going to judge forty-year-old men who leave their families. I know now what they're trying to escape from, what pushed them to try again.
I also decided to try to start over again. That’s how – just take, and cross out the lived-acquired, “as if not the former”, since it turned out to be so awkward. And start a new family life. From scratch.
There's no need for me to look for another woman. For all my labors and cares for the good of the family, I did not notice how, instead of love, I began to be guided solely by a sense of duty. And love has lost... Well, now I'm gonna try to collect what's lost. A little bit, a little bit, maybe it will. For without this is the price of all my self-sacrifice, and if I give up all my possessions and give my body to be burned, but I have no love, I have no use in it (1 Corinthians 13:3).
Twenty years ago, God gave me great wealth—a woman who loved me so much that she was ready to follow me to the ends of the world, to endure any adversity, to endure any hardship. I didn't save that gift. I didn’t learn to love even the closest person. Should I ask God for another wife? I'm sorry, Lord, it didn't work out the first time, can I try another? It's funny, right?
So I will try to start all over again with the very girl I once came to with a bouquet of gladiolis and penny rings. True, now instead of a torn sweater - life in holes ... As before, I believe that God sends everything necessary to man, the main thing is not to spit. I was wrong once, and I was wrong. But God can do anything. So maybe my broken mirror can be glued together. So that I and my wife may be reflected in him together again, and that I may say to him, “Be pleased to have mercy on me, and let me grow old with her.” (Tov 8:7). published
Author: Alexander Tkachenko
P.S. And remember, just by changing our consumption, we change the world together! © Join us on Facebook , VKontakte, Odnoklassniki
Source: www.pravmir.ru/kogda-zavyanut-pomidory-muzhskie-razmyshleniya-o-glavnoj-prichine-razvodov/
