[Treasur]

As some of you might know, we have a coronation here today. Given that our new Queen was an ow when Charles was married to Diana, it’s interesting to observe how unsettled a lot of folks here, even enthusiastic monarchists, are about the idea of her as Queen. Even though some kind of our more ‘hoorah’ press are trying quite hard to big both her and Charles up as a ‘twu luv’ story, or that she’s a nice woman and Diana wasn’t perfect either, people seem to be accepting it but not overkeen on it if that makes sense. Surprisingly long memories actually. A largely unvoiced feeling that she isn’t ‘our’ Queen even if she is ‘his’ or ‘the’ Queen and that it reflects poorly on his character and ability to honour serious vows.......it’s interesting to observe. This article (from one of our more monarchist and right wing papers probably sums it up pretty well https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-12053029/AMANDA-PLATELL-wish-King-Charles-not-making-Camilla-Queen-today.html or this one from a more left wing POV https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/05/the-guardian-view-on-the-coronation-crowds-the-public-are-crucial-for-royalty )

And of course it creates some hiccups around some of the core issues underpinning our kind of monarchy with his role as the head of a state Church that still does not approve of divorce or remarriage,...lots of odd circles to square all round regardless of what one thinks about the players involved personally. The coronation service is actually a deeply religious one, founded on the idea of a monarch being chosen by God, not just about bunting and cake and dressing up.)

There’s a kind of polite ambivalence about it, even if (just about) the majority of Brits prefer the idea of a monarchy to an alternative as head of state or like the pageantry of it as a particularly English thing. (I say English bc there is a difference in how Scots, Welsh and Irish see the most narcotic given our history.....just as there is in countries that were part of an old Empire who still have the King as a legacy head of state). Like the concept of marriage post-divorce perhaps, once you are forced by circumstances to shine a bright light on it, it throws up some mud, doesn’t it? And of course the wider context of our society and what kind of country we are, or want to be, is rather different than in 1953.

Never been much of a monarchist (in the spirit of full disclosure) and it seems self-evident to me that it both symbolises something about our culture and is inherently undemocratic at the same time....like most people here, I respected the Queen as a link to a previous age and as embodying a kind of national service outside of politics, even if I was not a fan of a monarchical system. So, largely meh about it....but even I have raised an internal eyebrow at the active involvement of Camilla’s grandchildren in the coronation service and found myself uncomfortable with a certain ‘cake and eat it’ principle or how over the years the public were lied to that Camilla would not be a ‘real’ Queen but some other kind of role.  Tbh I have always found it a bit odd when people abuse their marital vows with seeming aplomb and then choose to marry again wanting those vows to be seen as something different, as if the first set didn’t count somehow bc they decided they didn’t  People’s personal relationships are one thing, but once you start on putting legal or collective recognition around them, it can raise some not so straightforward inconsistencies, I think. I didn’t used to think this way but, like a lot of others, realising that it took two to get married in a public way but only one to get divorced regardless has made me uncertain about a lot of things I used to assume were true  And I didn’t have to make public vows to be chosen by God as a monarch or role model for a church lol.

Has made me wonder if that is what life is always like for ow down the line, or at least when dealing with people who know some of the history. A polite ambivalence at best or the karmic consequences of broken things that you and others all know you both broke. I don’t think I would like to be an ow.....even one with a daily hairdresser and a big crown lol.

[Treasur]

A little update and some musing on the ripple effect of lies.

My friend who was embroiled in the drama of a late life OW romance? Predictably - bc even given the little I know about the man involved, he has a long history of creating hurtful messes in other peoples lives, of big words and opposite actions  - some kind of s$it hit the fan and it ended. My friend was very hurt, too hurt to want to talk about the details which I have respected. I am relieved though bc I saw nothing good in hitching her and her daughters life to his wagon. Whatever happened has made her decide she needs serious therapy to change the kind of men she finds appealing bc she sees her own pattern and she has already started to work with someone.  I love my friend and want her to be happy, so I hope that this will be helpful to her. The man involved has, I suspect, simply gone back to his previous life with his live-in partner, doubtless bewailing how sadz he is…..

A chum of mine talked to me yesterday about an employee who she described as a ‘pathological liar’. Caught out lying about a phone call with a client that never actually happened, the list of lies are now popping up like fleas…lying about his mother dying, a car accident, where he was when he wasn’t at a scheduled meeting. My friend, even though she has no emotional investment in this person, told me that for a couple of days she just felt bewildered by the scale of the lies to the extent that she doubted her own eyes even. That it just felt a bit insane. That his doubling-down on lies made her feel gaslit and off-kilter and how weird it was that his reaction to being caught was rage and even more lies. She did say that it had made her realise a bit more what it might have felt like to have a spouse of decades behave like this and how confusing and overwhelming it must have felt for me.

And in another story, there is a well-known morning show presenter here who has been caught in lying for years about his affair with a much younger staff member. Married for decades with two daughters, there was a big hoo ha here when he publicly came out as gay in 2020….much self-flagellating tears, celebrity go you and acknowledgement of his wonderful supportive wife and family respecting who he ‘really is’. Turns out he had been having an affair for years with a young show runner barely out of his teens and lied about it to everyone, including his family of course. What a great way to thank a wife who showed you such respect and love after your grand announcement, eh? The wife - predictably, and they are still legally married - is saying nothing but it’s interesting to see how shocked and angry so many of his colleagues and others seem to feel that he lied to them. From the cheap seats, I find myself thinking how odd it is that we can be so shocked when someone who we know has lied about big things to those closest to him turns out to be y’know a liar…..

Oh and our ex-PM is still, y’know, lying about some new things that have come to light. And another friend recently elected as a local councillor was in shock when another friend, also elected, wants her to cover up a lie that she doesn’t want to go to a public councillor event bc she has a Pilates class so is claiming to be ill to get out of it……

Liars do create a lot of drama and self doubt seemingly, don’t they?

My only takeaway from it all is how insidious and destructive lies are. They take our feet out from under us. I have become rather allergic to people who use lies as a primary go to in their toolbox tbh. They cause a lot of damage and make me want to cross over to the other side of the street. I can’t begin to comprehend their mindset….but, years on, I find it vaguely comforting that others who are much less invested in a lying person than I was still feel a similar kind of disorienting WTF as I did.

More and more, I find like that old anti-drug advert, I just want to loudly say ‘just say No’ to anyone who lies like this. I wish we had a community version of a Naughty Step.

[Dragonfly33]

Glad to hear your friend has finally realized it. I really hate it when people lie especially if they know it’s going to hurt other people. My xh lied so much and until the end I didn’t know which ones of what he said were the truth. And he’s just so good at it. He would tell half truths and half lies. You just can’t be with this people because it will become a very unhealthy relationship. And lies will always come back to you when you least expect them. Some people are just like that unfortunately.

[Nas]

Liars suck and being lied to sucks, for sure. Being lied to about everything by someone who is supposed to care about you sucks even more. Being lied to in a way that makes you question your own reality or it makes it feel like the person lying to you is doing so to firetruck with you because they know all of your traumas and sore spots is deeply painful.

I think I would give a little grace to the morning show presenter situation. I don’t know any of the details of course, but I do know someone in my previous life who is much older than me and for a long time was married to a woman and then came out as gay and left his marriage. A lot of factors go into a person denying a huge part of themselves and feeling that they have to conform to heterosexual norms. I think it’s different from the self-serving, selfish and entitled way that narcissists and MLCers carry on with their destructive behavior claiming that it’s because they never felt they were able to be true to themselves or live the life they wanted blah blah blah.

Affairs are never okay, and my heart really breaks for this man’s wife, but I think I wouldn’t put this situation in the same category as the others. It has all the same destruction, and the wife is left in the same position of looking back on the life she’s lead and wondering which parts were real, but now of course knowing (perhaps with more clarity and those of us here) that some parts were not what she thought they were. It’s very sad all around.

[Treasur]

It is sad, Nas.
But tbh I see liars as an equal opportunity thing.
There was a great deal of compassion for both him and his wife when he came out. People increasingly understand that sexuality and gender can be more complicated than we might think, right? But imho it does not give someone a sexuality-related hall pass to have an affair for years…or continue to lie about it while proclaiming to be publicly and maritally transparent…..or abuse a position of work power with a young person who was 15 when they met. If one changed the genders involved, if it were a married man with a young girl in her late teens, this would still seem like a tremendous and destructive betrayal and failing of character on many fronts surely? Why is it different bc he is gay? How is that different from a straight married man in his 50s wanting to have an ow or multiple ow?

I’m not claiming this is an MLC issue - nor the other two real life examples - just an example of the tremendous ripples that deceit and a sense of entitlement can create. Regardless of gender or sexual preference.

[MadLuv]

I think lies are the ultimate betrayal. In talking with affairs. Everything starts with a lie. A lie to oneself to carry on the betrayal. The lie to your spouse to continue the betrayal.  Those are the lies that cut deepest and hurt to the core. They for me are and were the worst. In ordinary life a person that lies if not intimately or personally involved with my life I just find as a character flaw of someone I would not want to or do not want to have to interact with. Yet, I can see it right away and find it bizarre.  Does that trait always exist in a person that has a MLC? I often wonder that.  In my XH I think it may have. In a small way when needed to avoid conflict. Maybe all people that lie are avoidant in some way.

[Treasur]

Don’t post much about myself any longer - not much to say - but I like to show up when I see signs of others struggling with what look like trauma signs. Heard this the other day https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/something-was-wrong/id1447286743?i=1000462962215 which is a therapist giving the best overview that I’ve ever heard of some of the different options you can consider if you feel you need help and why different things work for different people differently 

I’m having a bit of a blip day myself today which I am having to puff through. Nothing life-threatening, but a combination of things has activated my alert system. In fact, one of them is a really nice thing - a friend coming to stay and we are going to a local   music festival tomorrow to see one of my favourite bands. The things are all things that your head tells you are positive, constructive, getting back to normal life kinds of things….and I am duly pleased with myself that I can now do things that I could not before. But oh my goodness, it’s like a hammer of anxiety in my head and I can feel that my default all day is to breathe shallowly high up in my chest like a gasping fish so I have to keep stopping and calming my system down. I hate that I still can feel this way but i also am grateful that it is only a pale echo of how I used to feel. I am rather amazed that I survived my PTSD years at all tbh. 

[Treasur]

And I did it and it got better
Three big scary things in a 24 hour window. Things I could not have done last year. One full of potential emotional triggers.
Feeling good about that.
Just wanted to share for anyone here struggling in the long grass of PTSD or depression who doubts that they will ever feel better or closer to normal again. Bc if it happened with me, albeit taking longer than I’d have wished lol, it can happen with you too.

[KayDee]

This is really good to read Treasur. I imagine that part of the recovery is recognizing the 'blips' for what they are. I don't suppose it dampens them, but at least you now know they will dissipate, and that you will be able to function despite the feelings. It must feel like you have come a long way. I hope you had a wonderful time at the festival.

[xyzcf]

Glad you regained your balance. I still have times , mostly deep sadness.  Memories of what was and what could have been...they pass...and I accept that this is my norm, not just because of PTSD, but  a normal response to grief of a great loss.

As we have said, MLC, the gift that keeps on giving. Glad things are better now for you.