Why didn't this marriage make sense -- at least as much sense as most marriages? In part because my wife and I come from (and adhere to) very different cultures. I don't simply mean California and Poland; I mean much more specific and irritating misalignments as well. Though my wife understandably dislikes the terms, I find it pretty much accurate to describe her family as trailer trash and troglodytes. No one reads books (they actually ridicule those who do). Her brother has a large collection of online imagery, mostly naked girls with lots of black leather and metal studs, piercings and tattoos. Whatever turns you on, eh? No one reads the newspapers. Ola refuses to vote. She probably does not know who the current President of Poland is. She is not stupid, but she is conditioned to live in a cave, and she has never broken free from that conditioning.
The focus of Ola's mother's social housing flat is a large (and far more expensive than she can afford) flat screen tv that is left on most waking hours, including during dinner, blaring away about everything that is unimportant -- the weather, local road accidents, or the Polish soap operas. The woman has never been outside Poland, and has never had a desire to be outside Poland, even though the German border is just two hours away, and Berlin, one of the most interesting, cosmopolitan cities in Europe, is just three hours away. Germany is not every Pole's idea of heaven, granted, but for the price of the flat screen tv, she and her husband could easily have had two all inclusive weeks on a Greek Island (at pre-collapse prices).
Ola's father, until he died earlier this year, was a clownish long-unemployed alcoholic who, after years of playing the same moaning overture over and over, killed himself with drink. He'd threatened to do so often enough -- and had spent large amounts of his own mothers', brothers', and sister's on various fruitless forms of rehab and other juju (but wouldn't do anything that involved accepting responsibility and making a commitment, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, which he predictably told Ola was "stupid.") By the time he died, I think nearly all of us had our fingers crossed. For once he didn't disappoint.
He could be pleasant enough in person, at least in comparison to his wife; but Ola told me he frequently said bad things about me behind my back. Even to my face he ridiculed my books and the admittedly eccentric middle names I, with Ola's appoval, had chosen for our children. Parochial is far too kind a word for such a person. What a relief, I thought, when he finally cashed in his tiny stack of chips. However, I quickly discovered that his death meant that his malicious, paranoiac scold of a wife was left insufficiently occupied and free to search for more victims. Me, for example. She's an evil harpy. Even more than most evil mothers-in-law, she somehow thought she was the mistress of all she surveyed. Killing her would be a favour to humanity -- I only hope someone does it while I am out of the country. Tempting as it may be, I am sure I won't bother, but just in case I indulge my nobler instincts one day, I've sent an email to my friends in the police department saying that if something should happen to her -- if someone should pound a rusty nail into her head, for example -- they should simply come over and pick me up. I'd almost certainly have done it, or I'd have a receipt from whoever did.
But my wife and I had children, beautiful, wonderful children, and that fact imposed pressures and motivations to continue no matter how troubled and troubling our home became. We tried marriage counselling, and I made more frrequent and desperate use of my long-term psychaitrist, Dr Jack Dusay, whom I speak to on the telephone. Marriage counselling is generally good if both parties want to use it to make progress. If either party -- and it usually ends up being both parties -- prefers to use marriage counselling as a sort of boxing gym for perfecting one's left jab and right upper-cut, with the counsellor acting as both coach and referee, then progress is the last thing that will happen. In fact, getting stuck in a rut is the only thing that can happen. My wife and I talked (and too often screamed) past each other, and, increasingly, we each began to think the other some sort of strange, irrational, cruel and unworthy creature from another planet. Or worse. I thought Ola would become more American, or at least more Western European, in her outlook, behaviour, aspirations, ambitions, etc. She seems to have thought that, by living in Poland, I had agreed to become Polish. And not just any Polish, but troglodyte Polish. Not a chance.
Lately my wife began to scream at me, largely without explanation let alone discernible rationale: "You're a monster! A liar! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!" That she did this in front of our bewildered and anxious children did not improve matters. When I asked what I had lied about, or why I was a monster, I got no answer, just a repeat performance at higher volume. So I've had to guess at her reasons. I lied (in her mind, that is), each time I said the house was dirty and I wished she would do more cleaning. I was a monster each time I pointed out that long ago we had decided to share the housework (including the shopping and cooking) more rationally, so that I had more time to write, but that, in spite of our agreement, I still did 100% of the shopping and 99% of the cooking (my wife makes better coffee than I do), as well as at least 50% of the laundry, and 100% of the taxi service. Ola's mother is a compulsive ironer, the sort who iron underwear and kitchen towels and just about anything made of any kind of fabric; Ola has not touched an iron in the seven years we've been together, so far as I can recall.
You can read our various cruel and squalid rants in the many emails that follow. My wife said repeatedly that I was "harassing" her -- harassing has a specific legal meaning in Polish family law, and allows the harassed party to have the other party arrested and jailed for 48 hours. There is no hearing; the party claiming to be harassed only has to convince the police. Perhaps I should point out that, although the law is gender neutral, its enforcement is not. I rather doubt that any Polish woman has ever been detained for harassing her husband, though plenty of Polish men have been driven to drink, or worse, by their harassing womenfolk. Ola charged me with harassment roughly a year ago, after I had been forced by the noxious fumes of too much shrewishness in a confined space to carry her meddlesome mother out of our flat and deposit the snarling ferret on the stairs (unharmed, I am sad to say) -- at which point Ola and I wisely separated and made the first tentative steps toward divorce. But a month later our daughter was born. My shrink convinced me that Ola was most likely acting under the influence of powerful discombobulating hormones and would soon enough calm down as she nursed our latest child. So, for the sake of the children, we reconciled and things moved along more or less acceptably (though unevenly) for many months.
Perhaps I was once again harassing my wife, but if so it was unintentional; I just wanted to live in a clean house, like the clean house that I had grown up in, and for that matter like the clean house that Ola had grown up in. Yes, though the Świders are troglodytes, Mama Świder keeps a spotless house -- devoid of books, art and examples of culture, but gleamingly clean. I eventually found out that the spotless house Ola had grown up in was a very sore point for her, for she considers her mother an obsessive cleaner, and felt the wicked old bat had spent far more time cleaning than in loving her children. I'm sure that's true -- but as Auden said, Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return. Just as often, they don't return it; they pass it along to the next sap who wanders by and can be made into a victim. What Ola seemed never to have understood is that it is not her mother's cleaning that is the problem, it is her inability to love her children, or anyone else. She probably thinks she loves them, and she can put on a good show, but it isn't love at all -- its control. Do anything other than what she demands of you and the snarling ferret appears in an instant.
It never occured to me that there was a better, clearer, more honest way of saying what I needed to say than, "Please clean the house." Perhaps if I had undertaken some sensitivity or motivational training I would have known a better way. But then again, I don't think it's my job to motivate my wife to clean the house. Wives have been cleaning houses for millennia. It's supposed to be genetically encoded. As a "new man," I was prepared to do lots of the housework, but not more than about 40% of it, particularly in view of the fact that my wife had given up her job to be home with the children. Even when my outrage at our squalor was at its worst, as when I boiled over about the fact that the inside of our house too often looked like a gypsy camp after a week-long orgy, I didn't think I was behaving badly or unreasonably. Rather, I felt provoked beyond the bounds of decency. Our house is almost always so messy and dirty that's it's embarassing to have anyone over. Often I even felt ashamed whenever someone came to read the electric metre or the gas metre. The Faulkner characters I think of in respect of our squalid life are the Snopes. Amazing characters -- but possibly not so fun if you are living the story. My wife didn't seem to mind being a Snopes, but I did. As my shrink recently remarked: I really can't see you as a guy with rusting wrecked cars up on blocks in the front yard. Got that right.
A Word about Privacy and Confidentiality -- the Word is Bollocks.
Are the emails that follow "private," deserving the status "confidential"? Those of you who know me well know I am not sure such status exists at all and that I find complete transparency a much preferred solution to the inherent problems of communication and honesty. If you don't want to be quoted, don't write and don't speak -- certainly don't write or speak to me. So, with the encouragement of one of my better read and more insightful friends -- the one who, after reading many of these emails commented that, together, they are "better than Faulkner," amounting in their brutal intensity to something like Dostoevski -- I have decided to throw everything up on the web and to let people with the energy and interest to read through it all decide for themselves. To a writer, even one going through the painful collapse of his marriage and theft of his children, comparisons to Faulkner and Dostoevski are high praise -- and a temptation too great. If even half true, it would be a shame to bury this stuff away.
I have not removed or changed names, but other than my own name, my wife's name, her mother's name, my children's names, and my shrink's name, I have shortened them to a degree that I expect only real "insiders" will know who is writing or being written about. I have not honoured any prior requests, and will not honour any subsequent requests, for confidentiality. If I decide that an email should go up, it will go up. Some of you will be shocked by that, perhaps embarrassed by what you wrote or the way you wrote it, perhaps disturbed or offended by the whole grotesque enterprise. Some will urge that I ought not to subject my children to these tales of the pain and tumult of their early life -- but I don't know any person who, upon becoming old enough to read this sort of thing, would not wish to know about his or her origins, no matter how unpleasant the tale. By the time my children are old enough to be able to find this blog, and to want to find it, they will be old enough to start delving into it, asking the right questions and, with luck, finding answers that make sense for them and motivate them to do better than Ola and I have done. By putting all this up on the web where they can find it, the children will, at very least, have more than one view of what went wrong and why, and plenty of detail with which to judge the actions and motivations of everyone involved.
OK, then; let's get started....
FROM Andrew Hingston
SUBJECT Would like to Skype, please
DATE 5 November 2011 16:21
TO Mimi, Mark
Hello --
I'd like to check in with my Marriage Mentors, if possible. Let me know some possible times. Hope all is well in the Lost Ghetto. Things a bit crazy here.
-- Andrew Hingston
Zakrzewo (Dopiewo), Polska
________________________________________________
This string of emails from 07/11/11 is in reverse chronological order. You may be less confused if you start at the bottom of the string and work your way to the top.
And please get help.
-- Andrew Hingston
This string of emails from 07/11/11 is in reverse chronological order. You may be less confused if you start at the bottom of the string and work your way to the top.
FROM Andrew Hingston
SUBJECT Can we Skype?
DATE 7 November 2011 16:47
TO Mimi
After you read the emails between me and Ola, let's Skype, OK?
I think Ola is coming unhinged. I may be the catalyst, but I am not the reason.
-- Andrew Hingston
Zakrzewo (Dopiewo), Polska
+
FROM Andrew Hingston
SUBJECT Point Counterpoint
DATE 7 November 2011 16:02
TO Ola Swider-Hingston
Ola,
I react strongly when you behave childishly and petulantly and in a deliberate effort to piss me off, like saying the house is clean when
in fact it is filthy.
I had just cleaned off the buffet when you deliberately put the baby carrier down on it rather than taking it across the room to where it
should go.
You scream at me and call me a monster and say "Fuck you!" to me in front of the children.
Given how far your moods swing, and how fast, I think you may be suffering from some sort of mental illness. You are very unpredictable and beset by drama. It can't be good for you, the children, or anyone else. I would like to help you, but you don't want my help. So I urge you to get help from someone -- it may be that your therapist is not enough, or is not the right therapist for you. I don't
know. But you are acting like a crazy person. Believe me, I know.
I assume our plan for me to pick you up today at 6pm is now cancelled. However, you are very unpredictable, so I don't know. Are you and the children coming home tonight or not? Please let me know as soon as you can.
And please get help.
Sent from my iPhone
Andrew Hingston,
On 7 Nov 2011, at 15:42, Ola Świder-Hingston <alexabuona@gmail.com> wrote:
It is you who heralds and blackmail: " if you do not put this away I will through it outside of house", "do not sit down. You
can sit down after 16.00 if you did this and this..." etc etc. do not tell me I scream you do not becausc it is not true. You say I
do nothing - it is not true. So it is impassible that we live together.
Sent from my iPhone
Ola Świder-Hingston
Dnia 7 lis 2011 o godz. 15:27 Andrew Hingston <ahingston1492@gmail.com> napisa"(a):
Ola --
Please stop before you do something you regret all your life. Telling you that you do not keep the
Please stop before you do something you regret all your life. Telling you that you do not keep the
house clean is NOT harassing you. I haven't been shouting at you, or swearing at you, but you have been doing both to me. You need to pull back from the edge of the abyss. You need to check with your
therapist, with your friends, with everyone you can think of -- including my friends -- before you hurt
yourself and the children.
As for respect. How can I tell you that you are not keeping the house clean with respect? Everything I
say to you you interpret as an insult. It's impossible to talk to you, because you are ultra-sensitive and
react out of proportion to things. I don't know what you want -- expect to be left alone and to be allowed to do things your way, even when I think your way is wrong.
You are supposed to be my life partner. But you blackmail me all the time by saying you will leave and
take the children. That is blackmail. Stop it.
-- Andrew Hingston
Zakrzewo (Dopiewo), Polska
[Not sure where the tag went, but this is obviously from Ola to me, and must have been sent between before 15:27]
Ok. So good bye. I will take my stuff and children stuff and leave you. People can try to help me if they
do it with respect. You try to do it by screaming, insulting and with psychological force. It is not help.
Sent from my iPhone
Ola Świder-Hingston
From: Andrew Hingston <ahingston1492@gmail.com>
Date: 2011/11/7
Subject: Re: Blah blah blah
To: Ola Świder-Hingston <alexabuona@gmail.com>
I am not going away. I am going to tell you that you are not keeping the house clean or
showing the children how real life needs to be lived. If you think you are, you need a great
big dose of reality. That's where other women -- Mimi, Marta -- can help. Your mother
cannot help, as she is the source of the problem. She brainwashed you. You need to
break through into a better life.
-- Andrew Hingston
Zakrzewo (Dopiewo), Polska
2011/11/7 Ola Świder-Hingston <alexabuona@gmail.com>
I want to say it again: if you think I do nothing go away from my life.
Sent from my iPhone
Ola Świder-Hingston
Dnia 7 lis 2011 o godz. 14:44 Andrew Hingston <ahingston1492@gmail.com> napisa!(a):
Ola -- I have no idea why it upsets you to have people talk about you,
especially when all they are being is helpful and humane. You should talk
to your therapist about that. Do you imagine that people are trying to hurt
you? Why? Why would anyone want to hurt you? Can your seriously
believe that Marta wants to hurt you? Why would she? She is being
helpful. And I am glad you are talking to her, because she is a lot more
worldly than you are, and more experienced in life. It's not your fault that
you have led a sheltered and unrealistic life. I blame your parents,
especially your mother. But such a life cannot continue -- even though the
transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is bound to be scary and a bit
painful. For one thing,we have the children. They need to learn to deal
with real life, not with a fairytale life. I think you believe that somewhere
everything is easy and everyone is always happy and everyone gets all the
sleep they want. That place does not exist.
-- Andrew Hingston
Zakrzewo (Dopiewo), Polska
2011/11/7 Ola "wider-Hingston <alexabuona@gmail.com>
Do not talk to Marta about me and about changing me (" she learnt....").
No I did not change. I was always planning when important.
Do not invite Marta to "help" cleaning. I do not want that. You through out my mother from house when she was only help clean.
_______________________________
To be continued. As you might imagine, it takes rather a long time to do this sort of thing. And I do have other things to do. But I hope to catch up eventually.
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