Interpersonal Conflict (With edit for punctuation)

 Short fiction novel

A Cradle of Life

By

Principle author

Mark. G

Published 2011

National University of Singapore Press

John, English middle-aged, pretty, unassuming, mild-mannered, richly provided in every aspect of his life. He had in assets a precocious trophy wife, Casy: knowledgeable in every care of housewifery, fastidious about every of its perfection, who at once managed two honorable daughters who grew up to be equally competent and respecting; and a still blooming director’s career which seemed to define the man he was as much as it did the converse.

He took such an interest in his ship broker’s his life was almost fully given to it. Mainly he felt so alive. His other satisfactions came from meeting and working with myriad like-minded souls for a common objective, together with the solutions chartered he saw made a difference to the lives and organizations of the people around him. These, coupled with the success with which he went about such objectives, exerted such a stronghold on his psyche, it would haunt his other life.

He professed every so often to love his wife and daughters, but they could not feel one instance of real connection made by him with themselves, not since Ann and Susan graduated from high-school at Hartfields. Neither would Casy, his wife, complained if it had been occasional, but John had not taken Ann and Susan on weekend getaways at Randalls for too long to be even unfathomable.  When John in his right element would never so much as to turn down a chance to give an employee in distress his hand, you could not imagine him slighting similar requests of his closest kin in favor of personal interests; he did not even bother to show up for Susan’s 18^th birthday.

Once when the family would make dinner together every other day an affair of religion, John was always the picture of the perfect dad at the dinner table, engaging effortlessly, purposefully, in after dinner table discussions of any shape and length, in any topic of any suggestion; one who was never afraid to laugh at his own ideas and antics both with Susan and Ann, but especially Casy, his first love, or feel embarrassed about making them. A score year later now, he had completely lost touch with being a man around his daughters and had not expressed physically, emotionally, verbally, anything admirable, romantically, to his wife in almost any aspect of her excellent femininity in a long while.

John had even stopped telling Casy he loves her, because she would for some cognitive fault of hers she did not have in the genial marriage past, instinctively read the diametrical opposite or that he rather loved her; and where once the loving exchange came about very daily, easily and naturally from himself to herself and conversely, now it felt very obliging and almost awkward, for they both had a conscience clear the vagaries of their relationship had simply not lived up to make sense of a pleasantry it once could.

Even if John envisioned a new life together, he could not in practice right away because himself estranged, he could not least expect her similarly alienated being, the real evil, delicate and highly sensitized by virtue of her femininity, to not require to re-assimilate in bits, physically, mentally, emotionally, verbally, into the proverbial bliss of marriage.

While Casy’s misfortune may lay only in her delicacy, the bigger misfortune and the other evil on her part, so John thinks, were the thorough misgivings she had towards him in almost every aspect of every other volition, idea, disposition, in every possible domain of life since the abrupt estrangement, and even after he sought reparations through repentance and her emotional reassurance. That was much too irrational and unreasonable to comprehend sometimes it was easier for John’s faculties to think that she had been through a lot, than try to alienate her further by contending her charges. The only doubt: John is two-minded the easy way is the right way out of the dreadful dysfunction; but neither can Casy be sure John will never hurt her and her daughters again, to be less vindictive and more willing to overlook minor disagreements with him in the future.

The  marriage relationship, consequently, had reached an impasse; the worst for Ann and Susan, who both though passed eighteen, somehow still affectedly scrutinize every way of their parents', and might have been dealt unfair treatment for having been too early acquainted with the evils that exist between a man and woman, and prematurely robbed of their innocence thus. They have every chance to litigate if the situation does not absolve in some positive way, according to the unalloyed, young hope that is in them.

John and Casy used to visit me twice weekly for marriage counseling at NUS Wellness Center. What do you think I said to them? Any approximations for the kids too? Say it; say your piece.

Special thanks to John and his wife, and their 2 beautiful daughters, for allowing me to share this vignette of theirs. The problem though has been resolved and their 3rd child, Brad, is testament to new found love. Still, I want to know what you think in the form of interpersonal solutions to like problems.

Love