Why did my cold wife lie to me for 58 years?
The first week was a consolation, a pure relief. The world will give you that once in a while, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life. FROM THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES BY SUE MONK KIDD (AMERICAN NOVELIST, BORN 1948) DEAR BEL,
I MARRIED an extremely attractive girl five years older than me in 1962. We had children in 1962 and 1963, after which my wife showed no interest in the physical side of our marriage.
During most of our married life this situation did not change, and I succumbed to temptation with other women. For this, I felt very guilty, and was severely criticised by my children, my family, neighbours etc.
One of my fiercest critics became a close friend and confidante of my wife for around 40 years. Some years ago my wife told her she had never really wanted me, but just wanted two children. The friend suggested my wife should tell us all the truth, but although she promised she would, she didn’t.
My wife died earlier this year from cancer. It was only after she had died that the friend told me and the children what she had said. Her reason was to make clear the criticism I had suffered for about 50 years was not wholly justified.
The children took the revelation very badly. I was very upset to think that for a 58-year marriage, I was never really wanted. A big problem we had was that my wife refused to engage in conversation over issues of any sort in our marriage, either regarding the two of us or the raising of our children. She did everything her way but marginalised me.I have now concluded that while I stood at the altar meaning every word, my wife did not. I believe she should have told me her thoughts before we got married.
I feel very let down and victim of a very long-term deceit. Being told of her attitude after my wife died clarified so many things my wife did and said over the years. Overall, she and I rubbed along fairly well and I thought the world of her, but now realise how much was missing.
There is now an impasse between me and the children. If they take on board the facts of our marriage, their opinion of their mother would be adversely affected, and I cannot change the facts as I see them. I have come to the conclusion that I have to live without them, which is so sad. TERENCE
M
ARRIAGE is one of the greatest tests of character anybody can face. After 16 years writing an advice column, I am astounded that so many succeed — although ‘success’ can too often mean staying together as the least worst option.
Please don’t think me cynical: I believe in the state of holy matrimony as society’s bedrock; if I didn’t I wouldn’t have had a second try. Nevertheless it is very depressing to realise that so many couples never communicate on any meaningful level and are ready to believe the worst of each other, too.
On the other hand, ‘rubbing along fairly well’ (your phrase) becomes, for many partners, a reasonable stab at contentment and rather better than living alone, especially in older age.
Here you are, widowed fairly recently, looking back on a rather turbulent marriage, determined on negativity. Your wife went off sex after having children (not unusual) and you believed that rejection (as you saw it) gave you carte blanche to be unfaithful more than once.
Your sexual activities were not kept secret but earned you the opprobrium of everybody you knew, even your children.
We can therefore conclude that it must have been pretty blatant — and must have made your wife very unhappy. But you say you ‘thought the world of her’. What if she thought the world of you too, and was desperately miserable? What if she loved you, but just didn’t want to have sex? Many women feel that way.
Enter the friend-who-mightwisely-have-kept-her-mouthshut. She used to think you awful because of your behaviour; now she’s convinced you it was justified. She says your wife told her she never wanted you, she merely wanted a sperm donor.
You’ve eagerly grasped this excuse for your infidelities but what did the ‘friend’ think she was doing? She seems to wish you and your children to think badly of your late wife. To what end? What on earth was the point of her meddling with the memory of the dead? Now you have taken a step towards blanket judgement, in asserting your wife was lying when making her vows, while you (her victim) were telling the truth.
You now say your wife ‘should have told me her thoughts’ — when you cannot possibly know what her ‘thoughts’ were when she set off for the church. Maybe she adored you but felt nervous. Maybe she was shy at the thought of sex. For you now to libel your whole marriage as ‘long term deceit’ simply because this socalled friend has tittle-tattled about something your wife may or may not have said...Well, it is misguided and plain wrong.
You also want your adult offspring to take your side, in other words, wish them to collude in blaming their dead mother for all that went wrong in your marriage. Worse You are prepared to sacrifice any relationship with your family from now on.
You will be cutting off your nose to spite your face. It’s in your control to choose.
Then, the Nazis had no power to pursue us there but after the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, we were forced into hiding. There we remained until we were discovered by the Gestapo and put on that train to Auschwitz.
AT NIGHT in Auschwitz we were forced to sleep naked in our barracks, because if you were naked you couldn’t escape. It was so cold, eight below zero, and with no sheets or blankets the only warmth came from other people.
Lying ten to a row on the hard wooden planks of our crude bunks, you would go to sleep in the arms of the man next to you just to survive and wake to find him frozen solid, his dead eyes staring at you.
Those who lasted the night rose to a cold shower, a cup of coffee, and one or two pieces of bread before walking to work in one of the German factories relying on slave labour from prisoners.
One guard, a woman, once had me given seven lashes for laughing at one of the jokes we told in our desperation to keep our spirits up.
Afterwards I had to stand for three hours in a cage, naked in front of everyone passing as blood seeped from the terrible wounds on my back. Every time I fell, weak with exhaustion and cold, the needle-lined walls of the cage stabbed me awake.
On three separate occasions, I was taken to the gas chambers but saved at the last minute when a guard saw my name, prisoner number and profession and shouted, ‘Take out 172338!’ Each time, I silently thanked my father for insisting I train as an engineer, making me what the Nazis called an ‘Economically Indispensable Jew’.
I was put to work at IG Farben, suppliers of Zyklon B, the poison used in the gas chambers. In that factory, I discovered that one of the machine operators was my sister Henni. She had always been very beautiful, with fair skin and lovely, shiny hair. Now she was a prisoner, her head shaved and her uniform hanging off a frame gaunt with starvation.
I was filled with joy to know she’d survived but we could not let on that we were related because the
Nazis might somehow use that knowledge against us. I couldn’t hug her or comfort her about the murder of our parents, and we were separated again when — in January 1945 — the Russian advance saw the Nazis marching us to camps deeper into German territory.
With no food and water, and temperatures falling to minus 20c, the Death March as it became known to the world, was the hardest time of my life.
When we stopped to sleep in a field one night I hid in a drainage pipe next to the road. I spent hours submerged in freezing water which was running so quickly that I lost my shoes, but when I emerged in the morning there was no one around. I was free.
For the next few days I lived in a cave in a nearby forest, surviving on raw snails and slugs, but eventually decided I couldn’t go on. I was so sick, I couldn’t walk. I said to myself, ‘If they shoot me now, they will be doing me a favour.’
I crawled on my hands and knees and made it to a highway. I looked up. Coming down the road, I saw a tank... an American tank! Those beautiful American soldiers. I’ll never forget. They put me in a blanket, and I woke up one week later in a German hospital.
I was sick with cholera and typhoid, and malnourished, weighing only 4st. I made a promise to God. If I survived, I would become a new person, dedicate the rest of my life to putting right the hurt done by the Nazis, and live every day to the fullest. And that is what I have done.
It was not easy at first. Returning to the Belgian capital Brussels after the war, I discovered that
Henni was living there in a boarding house.
To know that one of the people dearest to me was still alive was incredible but I remained a miserable ghost of a man even after I met my beautiful wife Flore.
We married in Brussels in 1946 and she had a challenging first couple of years with me. I was not sure if I wanted to live but that all changed when our eldest son Michael was born. What a miracle to be alive and to hold my beautiful baby, my beautiful wife. If you had told me while I was being tortured and starved in the concentration camps that soon I would be so lucky, I would never have believed you.
Love saved me. My family saved me.
Here is what I learned. Happiness does not fall from the sky; it is in your hands. Happiness comes from inside yourself and from the people you love.
And if you are healthy and happy, you are a millionaire.
Happiness is the only thing in the world that doubles each time you share it. Mine was doubled by meeting Flore. Each year we celebrate our wedding anniversary on April 20 — Hitler’s birthday. We are still here; Hitler is down there.
Sometimes, when we are sitting in the evening in front of the television with a cup of tea and a biscuit, I think, aren’t we lucky?
In my mind, this is really the best revenge — to be the happiest man on Earth.
There are survivors who will tell you that this world is bad, that all people have evil inside them, who take no joy from life. These people have not been liberated. Their broken bodies may have walked from the camps 75 years ago, but their broken hearts stayed there.
I do not ask my fellow survivors to forgive the German people. I could not do this myself. But I have been fortunate enough to have had enough love and friendship in my life that I have been able to release the anger I felt towards them. It does no good to hold on to anger.
SEVENTY-FIVE years ago, in the
days after the war, I learned of a Nazi being held prisoner for his war crimes and I arranged to see him. I asked him: ‘Why? Why could you do this?’ He couldn’t answer. He started shaking and crying. He was less than a man, just a shadow of one. He did not look evil. He looked pathetic.
And my question remained unanswered.
The older I get, the more I think, why? The only answer I can find is hate. Hate is the beginning of a disease, like cancer. It may kill your enemy, but it will destroy you in the process too.
So I hate no one, not even Hitler. I do not forgive him. If I forgive, I am a traitor to the six million who died. But I also live for them, and live the best life I can.
Life is not always happiness, there are many hard days. Don’t blame others for your misfortunes. Remember you are lucky to be alive. Every breath is a gift.
Life is beautiful if you let it be: please, every day, remember to be happy, and to make others happy, too.
ADAPTED from The Happiest Man On Earth by Eddie Jaku, published by Macmillan at €20.25. © Eddie Jaku 2020.