Fragment 33: The Life & Times of a Social Experiment
Trouble and strife. Or, put it another way, strife and trouble.
This fragment might be flagged as: The one where I do something really stupendously, unbelievably, mind-bogglingly stupid. But that would be to understate the issue.
I got married again.
Not that there’s anything wrong with getting married. Rather, it’s a matter of ‘to whom?’
And the ‘to whom?’, in my instance, was a beautiful young woman who I had not taken sufficient time to get to know properly.
I can say this with confidence because, within twenty four hours of our being married she said, “You realize you won’t see your daughter again.”
Was this was some kind of joke? It appeared not to be. She continued: “You can’t have divided loyalties. To see your daughter would be a clear divided loyalty and that would be unacceptable.”
I was dumbfounded. But I couldn’t quite believe it. It was surely nonsense, wasn’t it? And I insisted that I would still see my daughter.
There ensued an uncomfortable period during which my daughter made periodic visits to us but, because the mood was always so grim, I came to realize that these encounters were actually benefiting no-one.
In the meantime, I was sinking ever deeper into a swamp.
By this time, on the work front, we had moved to a larger office building on Goswell Road, Islington, to the north of the central area. Mike Gold had alerted us to this opportunity. Mike introduced us, too, to a couple who would feature prominently in my life - Cliff Prichard and Pat Russell. More about these in future fragments.
All sounds good, huh? So where does the swamp analogy figure in all of this?
Well, my wife decided that she did not rate or even like any of the people with whom I worked. They were, so I was told, losers, and I was a loser to work with them.
The worst thing about all of this was that it created doubt, uncertainty and confusion in my mind. I came under such a relentless mental onslaught that I came to doubt myself and, inevitably, things then did actually start to go downhill.
The events I’m describing here took place forty years ago at a time when conditions such as co-dependency and narcissism were far less discussed than they now are, and I’m not even sure that exotic-sounding conditions like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) had even been identified except, perhaps, within the walls of medical institutions.
From today’s vantage point it is clear that I was being confronted with one or other or a combination of these conditions - co-dependency, narcissism, BPD, that is - and I had absolutely no idea how to deal with the situation.
But I think I did do one thing right: I worked out that the common denominator across all of the relationship problems I had had and was currently experiencing was … me.
My relationship with Libby had been abruptly banjaxed when she chose to marry someone else. My relationship with my first wife had similarly been scotched when, despite our having a lovely daughter, she upped and offed with another chap. And now I was in a ruinous maelstrom of a relationship where I was being undermined on all fronts.
So, maybe - and I was a bit slow on the uptake but I got there eventually - just maybe it was me that was contributing in some way to the creation and subsequent torpedoing of these relationships?
So I went in search of help and found it in London’s Chelsea with an organization that styled itself Self Transformation Centre. More formally, it was The Bellin Partnership, led by a married couple, Walter and Gita Bellin, from Australia, and supported by another Australian couple, Graham and Babette Brown, who were based full-time in the UK.
There was a fair old dollop of woo-woo in their offering. Stuff about past lives and the like. I abhor that sort of thing and was irritated and amused in equal measure by people’s credulous belief in such ideas.
When reporting on their supposed former lives folks were far, far more likely to declare that they had been Napoleon Bonaparte or Joan of Arc rather than the four hundred and twenty fourth peasant on the left from that hovel over there by the river that was little more than a hole in the ground.
But I could forgive all of that because there was also some truly wonderful stuff, including helpful techniques (for example, a meditation process that I use to this day) and sheer human kindness that really did make all the difference at the time.
Meantime, at home, life continued, yo-yoing between sort-of-peaceful and distinctly-violent states, and always conforming to that clichéd but so precise metaphor of walking on eggshells. By this time, my photograph albums had been scoured and any photos that dared to show a glimpse of my previous wife had been destroyed. There was even damage to some of my books: for example, the copy of Finnegans Wake given to me as a twenty-first birthday present by Nellie had been vandalized; I still have it but some other volumes were damaged beyond saving.
The Self Transformation Centre program required us participants to take a close look at how we confronted the world - how we realized and exhibited our individual experiences of personal power. This required, not least, as unflinching a look as possible at how we had got to where we now were. What ego drive was in operation? How and why had it arisen? What were the implications?
As part of this process I contacted Rupert. If you have read earlier fragments in this series you will recall that the Reverend Rupert Bliss features prominently throughout my early life. He had been padre in the regiment where my adopted father served, and his pastoral care was wonderful. He was a lovely man.
So, I wrote to him. I didn’t keep a copy of the letter I wrote but, from Rupert’s reply, I must have told him that I was undergoing some form of therapy. Here is his reply, dated 28 March 1984:
Many thanks for your letter with news about yourself. I’m sure the psychologist’s diagnosis was on the right lines. Of course, you were born at a very unsettled period of our history and many of your generation have similar emotional problems. Nearly every home was disrupted to a greater or less degree.
George & Nellie couldn’t beget a child of their own and they were passionately keen to have one. They applied to an adoption Society, who required three or so referees. They named me as one, but I don’t know who the others were. I got a very long questionnaire to fill, which I did with all the honesty I could muster. I remember I made no bones about George’s severe emotional instability, whilst giving Nellie full clearance.
I quite thought that my comments would block the adoption, and the positive decision of the Society came as a surprise, and something of a shock. (Unlike today, the adoption societies were crowded out with ‘unwanted’ children. One of the bad effects of the war, I suppose, and its aftermath.) However, I consoled myself with the thought that Nellie would make a very good mother.
I knew the then Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral, one “Dick” Milford, a capital person, who afterwards became Master of the Temple. He is 89 & still alive. He made contact with George & Nellie, and managed to get George to see a psychiatrist. George was a difficult patient, but I think the psychiatrist gave up rather too easily. He complained to me that George was “very poor material”. Well, in some respects, poor dear George was, but I thought that was a rotten excuse for abandoning the case.
Dick Milford might be able to shed some light on those Lincoln days. Despite his age his memory is remarkable. [Contact details provided.]
During that time I remember that George had one (or two) of his mental collapses, when he just wandered off into the “blue”, to be picked up, miles & miles away, by the police, with no memory of what he had been up to.
Nellie’s staunch membership of her Methodist Church was, I think, a great help. The support both of her minister and of her fellow Christians was a life-line for her.
I’ve always felt that Nellie was quite an exceptionally fine person. I was fond of George because, in a strange way, he was truly lovable, open and sincere and, in his ramshackle way, he really did try! But he was also one of the most exasperating people I’ve ever had dealings with. He was certainly no ‘material’ to make a good father out of.
Still, with Nellie as a counterweight, I am sure that, while you could have done better, you could also have fared much worse in some other home.
I hope that helps a bit.
Well, I’d go along with that.
By the by, re-reading the above prompted me to Google Dick Milford and, lo and behold, there he was.
He was born in 1895 and died in 1987, and his first wife, who died while still young, was one of Charles Dickens’ grand-daughters!
However, I didn’t follow up Rupert’s suggestion to contact him. Silly me.
There was a hell of a lot going on at this time and I’ll add to the story in a further fragment very soon.
But to conclude this fragment suffice to say that although I had wondered every so often up to that point about the circumstances leading to my adoption, the therapy stoked a yearning to conduct a proper investigation into it at some point.
And, oh, one further point …
Quite early on in the proceedings when Graham Brown was outlining some of the theory, he said the following - and I paraphrase …
When two people meet they are not just looking at what’s on show in ‘the front window’. As or more important, they often use what’s on show upfront to work out what is missing. What’s not there? What’s not on show? What is being kept out of sight in the back of the store?
Which is to say, the attraction may well be, “Wow, they’re hiding the same stuff I hide!”
Was this true? I didn’t know. But I did know that the concept felt credible. Viz: what you keep in the back of the shop is as or more revealing than what you put on show in the shop window.
In fact this has a very current connection and relevance with the work that I am involved with in supporting my friend and colleague, Dr Olaf Hermans.
It is fundamental to Olaf’s meta-conversation concept that it is vital to understand this ‘front of mind’ versus ‘back of mind’ reality, and be able to align the two ‘worlds’ thus created. More about this in my business communications.
Truly, it seems, Everything is Connected.
Thanks for reading.