In the build up to International MGTOW day, I thought I would share a heart-warming tale about my old uncle Arthur.
Arthur was a simple man. Like many men of his generation, he went straight from school to work in the foundry. He met Joan at a local dance and after a brief courtship they married. In the typical style of the day (this was the UK just after WWII) they quickly settled down to family life. Soon, it was observed that whenever callers came round, Arthur would be seated in front of his brand new black and white TV while Joan raced around the house, cleaning, cooking and generally working very hard while Arthur put his feet up and watched the TV.
Relatives and friends alike agreed that Joan did the all work and that Arthur was very lucky to have her. Of course they forgot about his job in the foundry and what he did in WWII, the money he made every day, the burns on his arms, and the risks involved in handling liquid steel. Despite having a weak heart, Joan kept busy well into her sixties, by which time of course, feminism was in full spate and everyone began to bitch to Arthur about his apparent idleness.
No one bitched to Joan that she had started to receive a state pension 5 years earlier than Arthur because of her gender. No one complained that Joan wasn’t drafted in WWII but Arthur was sent to fight in Italy. Joan would scrub and cook all day and buy his food and wash his clothes, and Arthur continued – apparently – to do nothing around the house. Joan drove them everywhere. She reminded him of all the places he needed to go, arranging all his doctor’s, dentist’s and hairdressing appointments for him, diligently writing them all down because “he could never remember them”.
Arthur “wasn’t sociable”; Joan was the one who kept in contact with their children and who organised the family get-togethers. He “never invited” anyone to their house – Joan “had to make sure” they kept in touch with all their friends. Everyone could see the impact it was having on her health, the pressure of doing everything for him.
Then one day, sadly, it was too much. Joan’s weak heart finally gave out. At her funeral, everyone agreed that Arthur would not last more than a few weeks without her. He had no idea how to cook for himself. He couldn’t work the washing machine or the vacuum cleaner. He hadn’t cleaned the bathroom in his life.
How could this socially inept, insular man avoid retreating into himself without the woman who was the key to his entire social life? How could this selfish, lazy misogynist survive without the woman who was his servant and his mentor, who remembered all the things he couldn’t, who did everything for him?
A strange thing happened.
Without Joan, Arthur thrived.
It took him a couple of weeks to learn how to work the washing machine. When the bathroom needed cleaning, he took a cloth and gave it a scrub. Cooking took a while longer and his repertoire was limited to a few standard dishes. But if he wanted anything different, he went to the local pub or splashed out in the local restaurant. He had a good pension (he’d worked his arse off all his life for it). Without the domineering Joan brushing aside his conversations and overriding his wishes, he saw more of his children when he wanted to see them, inviting his own choice of friends around regularly, and rekindling friendships that had lain dormant for years.
He suddenly revealed a talent for booking and remembering his own doctors, dentists and hairdresser’s appointments. Without Joan, he began to drive everywhere himself, even holidaying in Italy – in a much more relaxed time – to sample all the great works of art he didn’t have a chance to enjoy before.
And he began to dabble in the stock market. Just a little at first.
Without the domineering Joan dictating how his money should be spent, Arthur made steady profits. He sold high and bought low. He avoided Black Wednesday (largely by luck, he confessed), and caught the internet boom of the late nineties, although he got a little singed in the subsequent crash. His new persona – which was in fact, the old one that Joan had stamped down and controlled for so long – astonished his brothers and Joan’s family. He even organised a Gilbert and Sullivan group and put on a couple of productions. His social life blossomed.
Arthur outlived the woman who had been his “everything” by 17 years. He died not a rich man, but very comfortably off. He never showed any desire at all to remarry, preferring instead to watch his cricket in peace, and nurse a pint in the local pub every Sunday afternoon. He told me he liked to watch the sun shine.
When his will was read, his children were surprised to find he wanted his ashes to be scattered in a local community garden rather than being buried next to Joan.
And that is where Arthur is now, fertilising the plants instead of taking up valuable real estate like his wife, who insisted – like everyone else – that he couldn’t live without her, and who, like everyone else, never realised that he could only begin to live when she was gone.
You say "love is a temple, love the higher law" ...You ask me to enter, but then you make me crawl. And I can't be holding on to what you got, when all you got is hurt
Clint Eastwood 2 years, 11 months ago.
