| THE MASTENS' ANNUAL RELATIONSHIP RENEWAL |
We, Richard and Billie Barbara, are terminating our legal marriage in divorce, 1bb as we no longer believe in the state of wedlock. One human being cannot possess another; one human being cannot belong to another. Billie Barbara is no longer MY wife, Richard is no longer MY husband, henceforth the word "my" will be used to express relationship to, not possession of. 1r
Realizing now, that intimacy 2bb withers and dies in the face of the phrase: "Till death do us part" which is not eternity, we are now willing to pay the price for that intimacy by giving up and letting go of false security. 2r We have come to believe that the flower is only beautiful because we know its beauty will fade, and have found that a flower held to closely dies even more swiftly. 3r
We enter now into a new relationship. One cycle. One year. One spring, where things start to bloom but are not fully realized. One summer, warm and lovely but also miserably hot. One autumn, beautiful but at times with chill in the air, and a winter that can be close and comfortable but also cold and freezing. We pledge to see one entire cycle year through, together, one year from his date Sept. 3rd, 4r and at the end of 365 days we will then decide whether we shall renew this relationship for another cycle year
.
During the year when we are together, we will give each other our attention, time and thoughtfulness. 3bb We will respect each other's dignity and privacy and not expect more than the other is willing to give. We will not use honesty as brutality, 5r but will answer a question honestly when asked, yet not tell more than the other wants to know. 4bb In short, we will respect each other's right to own his or her own mind, body and spirit. 5bb
We enter into this relationship knowing full well either one of us might wish to terminate it at any time, and realizing that there will be moments of fear, anger and jealousy, we pledge to see each other through these times and only break this agreement when it is clear that it is a matter of absolute personal survival. This would be determined after counseling with a trained uninvolved third party (counselor, minister, etc.).
The reason we feel we want to enter into this relationship is because of history 6bb and time spent together, and although our past relationship died we want to see if from that death something new can arise. The past has not been wasted and it will always be ours and shall honor it as we do the fruit of that relationship, our children. We will never sever the past though we may wish to form new relationships. And the fact that we might not wish to renew this agreement does not mean that anything we have had is lost, but rather that two people moving forward in love have moved apart .7bb
Each year this ceremony may be rejected, rewritten, added to or subtracted from. This is not a contract of probability, rather it is an opening of all possibilities.
All things are possible now . 6r
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
1bb - After writing our contract, Ric and I were so excited. Holding hands we went to the Monterey County Courthouse and got the papers to file for a do-it-yourself divorce. Although it's no fault, the papers still read petitioner and respondent. As grounds for divorce we put infidelity and mental cruelty. When we returned the papers, the clerk swelled up like a Bantie hen protecting her chicks, saying, "You can't do this! Mr. and Mrs. Masten, California is one of seventeen states where the only grounds for divorce are irreconcilable differences."<BACK>
We went to a lawyer. He said to go to Mexico or lie. That was the point as far as we were concerned. No More Lies! So we are not legally divorced. However I began to realize that what I wanted was a psychological divorce. Who am I, separate from Ric and the children? <BACK>
1r - I would never have admitted it then, but for the first 20 years of our relationship I considered Billie Barbara my personal property. I courted her, won her, and then with the help of the church and state took her off the open market and made her my possession. "Look folks, here comes my wife through my front door with my golf bag." Or at a party when she would be having a marvelous time with ol' Fred out in the kitchen, I'd find myself charging between them like an enraged bullmoose: "Billie, you're getting drunk, we're going home!" <BACK>
2bb - Intimacy, like marriage was a word I had never bothered to define. I thought we were intimate because we engaged in sex. Intimacy however, implies risk. I expose and offer myself. I can be straight with my feelings. I can ask to be listened to, to be held. I can throw a tantrum and know you won't feel responsibility for my behavior unless you are. I can ask you not to tell me what to do. I can ask you to encourage me to find my own answers, solutions. I can ask for your advice. I know you can reject me, hurt me. I still feel safe enough to risk it. <BACK>
2r - As I see it the marriage license was not designed simply to permit marriage. Rather it was conceived to give the little woman legal protection against her rascal of a husband during the expected eventual divorce proceedings, a document created by men to force some security for women in a male chauvinist society. God knows we didn't want them competing with us out there in the work force. <BACK>
3r - Why are we offended when we discover the flowers in the restaurant are plastic? Perhaps because they've fooled us, but more than that I think it's because plastic flowers are intended to last forever. We bring cut flowers into our lives to keep us in touch with the "now;" we give them our immediate attention for we know that they will soon fade and be gone. Billie Barbara and I have come to believe that "Till death do us part" does not mean the relationship will last forever. Quite the contrary, it means death is going to part us, either a personal death or the death of the relationship. The bouquet must be enjoyed, in fact can only be enjoyed, today.<BACK>
4r - In a separate legal document, I have guaranteed Billie Barbara an all expense paid college education if she or I should ever decide not to continue our relationship. I consider this a form of retroactive pay for services rendered while I was out tooling up a career, 20 years of dishes and diapers while I worked at becomming a successful poet and songwriter. And gentlemen, you'd be surprised how you start to bring flowers home again when you live with an option that might not be picked up next year. <BACK>
3bb - When I first married Ric, I cried if I didn't get to sit by him in the movies. He always saw something different from what I saw. I'd miss all those pearls. He was the most interesting person I knew. Twenty years later, he was the last person I wanted to sit beside. Ric, the person I loved the most, became the person I treated with the least amount of common courtesy. <BACK>
5r - Before finding out that Billie Barbara was also "slippin' round" I hadn't planned to tell her about what I was up to mostly because I didn't want to give her license to do what I was doing. My secret had me troubled though, because I knew myself well enough to know that I'd use it on her the next time we'd stage one of our bickering sessions. Those midnight to morning screamers where Billie displayed her remarkable ability to recall every mistake I'd ever made. Waiting of course, till 2 AM on a morning I had an early plane to catch before rising up in the bed, cranking her head like the kid in the Exorcist: "I want to talk!" Coming on with "Remember the time 17 years ago when you went off to have a beer with Fred and left me standing in the rain? A really caring person aren't you? And remember the..." and on and on like this while I, try desperately to recall even one thing she'd done wrong, something I could never seem to do. The scene always ending at dawn with me raping her and staggering off to the airport leaving her to fall asleep, a satisfied smile on her face. But now, there was a devastating new secret weapon in my arsenal, and I was certain I'd never play our traditional game to its conclusion again. The next time I knew I'd fight back: "Well honey, you're right! I am an SOB, and there's something else I've been meaning to tell you -- I have a mistress!" Whamo! The winner and new champion of the world. Look out for honesty, it can be a form of brutality. <BACK>
4bb - When we wrote the contract we were both involved in other relationships. Ric told me he couldn't remember feeling for me what he felt for the other person. I felt hurt and cheated. We wrote this line to protect hurt feelings. Since then we've never used it in just this way as we are no longer involved in outside sexual relations.<BACK>
5bb - How can you love me and not believe the way I do? Yet I married him knowing he was an atheist and I was a fundamentalist Christian. Naturally, since I had the truth I'd convert him to my way of thinking. He, of course, was thinking he could talk me out of mine. <BACK>
6bb - During the crisis period when things were hardest I remembered only the bad times, the things I didn't like about Ric. Looking through family photograph albums, I was reminded that we'd had as much fun as tears. As Ric says, take a picture of everything, you'll need it later. I began to remember Ric as I first knew him. I realized many of the things I hated about him were the very things that had drawn me to him in the first place. I had been attracted to his ways that were different from my ways. <BACK>
7bb - I was raised by a mother whose parents were divorced when she was fourteen, in a little Texas town where no one got divorced. So divorce was a very bad thing. Feeling so dependent on Ric, I needed to know independence. Ric and I decided to take a month when he was away and pretend that the other was dead. It was during this time that I began to realize I was a survivor. All my life when things got bad I'd screamed suicide. I realized I wanted to live and it was a matter of becoming my own mother developing a nurturing parent inside my head, giving myself permission to experiment to see what I wanted to do. I needed to feel I had a choice in choosing an interdependent relationship. I had never been independent financially. Although I'm still not, I do make some of the income. I now have confidence in myself that if something happened to Ric I could support myself. I no longer feel that because I have unequal money power that I have no voice, no choice over my own life. <BACK>
6r - What we have shared with you is not important in and of itself. The essence of all this is the fact that two people with a dead relationship sat down together and did something about it. Robert Frost says, "When you want to do a 'think' on something, write about it." You might say creative writing saved our marriage. Of course you can't put the glue that holds a relationship together into words, but Billie Barbara and I rediscovered what we had lost between the lines; however we needed to write the lines to have something to look between. What all of us are really after cannot be put on paper and this has always been the poet's dilemma. So, after Billie Barbara and I had made it through all of the above I wrote a little song for her. In it I try to explain why, in 20 years, I'd never written a poem or song for her before, sort of killing two birds with one stone.
WORDS ARE JUST WORDS
Have I told you your smile
It comes without warning
Brings pictures of kitchen
Of honey and morning,
Of sunshine
And yellow canary birds sing
But words are just words
Your smile
Now that's the real thing.!
And the sound of your laughter
When we're running together
It's like wind in the shingles
And October weather.
Like pushing the children
Up high on a swing
Your laughter however
That's the real thing!
Have I told you I love you
Well how could I say it
With couplets
And verses
I'd never convey it.
Words may be pretty
As beads on a string
But words
Are just words
Would you settle
For the real thing?
<back to contract>
|
