Now here's someone totally refreshing

I was enthralled by Robyn from the first time I saw her. She was friendly with everyone and everyone's friend. You couldn't help but to like her. Perhaps that should have given me a clue what it would be like to be in a relationship with her.

I heard but took little regard to the stories about Robyn living with her boyfriend and having relationships with a number of other guys. It was surely just jealousy talking? Sure, she was living with her boyfriend, but according to Robyn it was her ex-boyfriend and she even stopped sleeping with him moved into another bedroom to prove it.

It amused me how opposite our "leaving home" stories were. I left home as soon as I could, then my sister, then my mother leaving my father in the house by himself. By comparison, Robyn's father moved out, then her brother and sister and finally her mother, leaving Robyn in what had been the family home.

In both cases, neither Robyn nor I had the opportunity of moving "back home" if the going got too tough trying to make it on our own. Robyn's mother had taken to a life on the road when she sold everything and took to a nomadic lifestyle in various caravans and houseboats with her new husband. Perhaps it was Robyn's mother who had enthused me to investigate the caravanning lifestyle (which Shona and I are now enjoying as often as we can).

Perhaps as you scroll down this page, you'll note that Robyn loves to pose for a camera. She loves to be adored, and her mother said I looked like a good match for her as I spent all of my time around Robyn adoring her.

Robyn worked at a job that had her doing various shifts, so we didn't often get to see each other. Whenever we did, it was like we were young lovers all over again.

When we were first dating, I was living with a mate and she was living with her ex-boyfriend, so when we were both off work at the same time we used to have to rendezvous on some road somewhere and then sit in the one car chatting and pashing on until it was time to go home to get some sleep.

When we wanted to take it to the next step, we had to go to a motel!

Let's live together

Having quickly fallen for Robyn, I just had to get under her skin too. I had no idea how to do this as Robyn seemed to have her focus on a guy that was a fair bit younger than herself and he was living in Sydney. I noticed that most of the guys that Robyn was interested in were a fair bit younger than her.

What sort of a chance did I stand to win her heart?

Perhaps it was a spot of luck that the guy she was engrossed in confessed to her one day that he wasn't interested in her "that way", he believed he was actually gay.

So after telling Robyn to admit she had feelings for me for quite some time, she at least agreed that we could live together.

Although it was the house she grew up in, her ex-boyfriend refused to move out. This meant that Robyn would finally have to leave "home". We both searched for quite a while to find a place we could afford and still have her dogs with us. There did not appear to be such a thing as a rental that allowed dogs, let alone being one that we could afford. Eventually we had to agree that the dogs would stay with the ex-boyfriend as he was prepared to look after them.

One of the girls Robyn worked with told her that her father just happened to have a place that he wanted to rent out. The rent he wanted was actually more than we could afford, but as we were friends of his daughter's he compromised a little on what he was asking.

Once we'd signed up for the place, it only took me a short time to move the few things I had, but as Robyn had never moved before, we hired a truck.

The pains of moving

The Budget moving truck had an hydraulic lifting platform at the rear. It was the sort that was tucked in under the truck so you had to lower, then swing the steel flap out, before you could use it to raise or lower your load.

We got to Robyn's old home for the last load, and I went around the back of the truck to lower the platform. I reached through to the flap and was swinging it into the open position when I found I was pinned with both thumbs being pressed extremely hard into the underside of the truck.

Initially unable to comprehend what was going on, I heard the motor for the hydraulic pump labouring. I looked to where the operating lever was and Robyn was standing there investigating what it could do. I yelled 'Stop", she did that and looked at me with a 'What have I done?' look on her face. Still trapped by both thumbs I calmly asked her to move the lever the other way.

When the flap had lowered sufficiently and I'd swung it into the open position, I surveyed the damage to my throbbing thumbs.

There were a couple of big chunks of skin gone, the thumbnails torn and blood was starting to flow from the wounds. I clenched both thumbs inside my fingers making fists of sorts and then put my fists in my armpits squeezing and trying to cope with the pain. As I don't like blood (particularly my own) I was also trying to not pass out!

We put both fists under some running warm water as all the medical stuff had been packed away, then wrapped a handkerchief around each thumb like a pressure bandage.

Third time lucky?

While my thumbs were still under the running water, Robyn was looking at me with tears welling in her eyes. She was astounded that I had neither sworn, got mad, called her any names or even told her off. 'Oh I do love you and will marry you', sprang from her lips. She told me afterwards that she'd never met anyone like me before. (I think that was a good thing!)

Once things has settled down and I'd lost both thumbnails and they'd grown back, I asked Robyn if she was serious. We picked a date about 12 months away and then started to plan everything out. Robyn had never been married as she was waiting for the "right one". Everything had to be perfect!

A big fan of a number of the TV soaps, Robyn used to tape them and watch and re-watch the weddings and romantic parts. All these staged, scripted, and over-acted theatrics building in her mind to what she wanted her own wedding to be like.

Her father asked Robyn if she was sure about me as after all, I'd been married twice already. Robyn came and asked me the same question straight away. I related my story of teenage lust in the first instance and a sense of obligation in the second, and of being over the moon in love with her, so there was no comparison. She was satisfied and also told her father that she was. She had also been unsure of the idea of ever having her own children, and the fact that I couldn't father children was enough for Robyn to decide she didn't really want any anyhow.

The 12 months flurry of activity that was the wedding plans continued. There was the search for the perfect dress, and the place she'd always wanted to get married that I had to have a look at, and the cars, and...

Married bliss?

All the planning for the wedding and the honeymoon allowed the whole event to almost go without a hitch. Apart from the bank losing a deposit I'd made before the wedding and then reversing a payment to one of the places we'd stayed at, oh and the bull ant that inconsiderately bit me on the posterior in a moment of passion, the honeymoon was all joyous happy times.

Then we were back into real life and day-to-day living and as far as I was concerned the honeymoon was continuing. I think initially Robyn did too.

When we were first together, apart from work hours Robyn was never far from my side and she enjoyed holding my hand and being affectionate.

Some of the people we visited with during this time said it was all so sickly to see us together. Some others told others who later told me, 'She's  the sort of girl you'd go out and have a good time with, but not the sort that you'd actually marry!'

A few years on - how's it going?

I was still lavishing all my attention on Robyn when I wasn't working one of my four jobs. Robyn was still busy soaking it all up.

She used to love to dress up and give me fashion shows. Asking for my opinion on what look went with what, and what suited her.

I'm not sure if she was trying to reinvent herself, see if she could shock me, or test to see if there were any limits on what she could do before I would tell her 'No'.

There were quite a few years that could be called 'high maintenance', and maybe if we'd been a whole lot more sensible with what our money was spent on, there would have been a lot more to show for what we earned between us.

Another couple of years on - Still going well?

After a short stint at being almost white-blonde with a very short hairdo, Robyn decided that red might be a better look as her  hair started to grow. Dark roots would blend better and not be such high maintenance after all.

Robyn had once stated to me that she wanted to be my best wife ever, and she was still checking every so often on how she was going.

In the meantime, I had  my right foot amputated partly from Robyn prompting me to go and have the chat with doctors again. I was now down to working only two jobs.

I still loved every moment we got to share, but was starting to get annoyed that she had to get her fix of TV soap when she got home before she would give me any time. It was on video tape after all, why couldn't it wait?

As I worked with computers, I used to find things to do to amuse myself on the computer while I waited for her to finish watching her soaps.

Did the job break the relationship?

Robyn would tell you that the promotion I took to become a Project Manager was when our relationship took a turn for the worse. I was excited about the prospect or earning more money and maybe not needing to work two jobs any more. We discussed it at length before the decision was made and I took the job on. It was supposedly a joint decision.

Within a few months I was working quite long hours and coming home exhausted. This wasn't much different to when I first met Robyn, except I was on a much better salary now! As well as having a company car myself, I got another one by salary sacrifice for Robyn to ensure she had a reliable and safe car that wouldn't break down on her.

Robyn's growing independence flourished during this time, and the busier I got, the more social she got. She as off with girlfriends to the movies, and having work dos in the city, or going for drinks.

I tried not to feel hurt or abandoned when I had to schedule time to be with her two weeks in advance. I also tried to be understanding when she decided to drive up to Tamworth with a girlfriend to surprise her niece for her birthday. (Her niece's birthday was the same day as mine.) I tried to be understanding and say nothing when she decided she had to get a belly button ring. I guess maybe I should have said something as she then went out and got a tattoo as well.

I was running out of ideas on how to be supportive of a wife who was never there for me.

Where to from here?

Whenever we were in  the same place at the same time, I would try to discuss my concerns with her and try to get to a point where we could both agree on making things better again. We would never get to that point in any conversation, and the next time I would try to raise the same point, Robyn would just say, 'Haven't we already discussed this?'

In sheer frustration, I wrote all my gripes out on a few sheets of paper. I read somewhere that it is better to write things down than to have them racing around in your head. Robyn found these sheets and chose to focus on a couple of specific points rather than the whole, and she didn't even wonder why I felt I had to write them down.

She responded to my point about her dangerous driving and travelling too close to other cars in the company car I was paying for with, 'Well I never wanted a company car anyhow, and you made me give up my Corolla when I didn't want to'. At the time it was a joint decision, now it was convenient to say it wasn't.

She responded strangely to my point that a marriage was meant to be a place where both partners would feel loved and nurtured. I was trying to indicate that I was being ignored at home and might need to look outside of my marriage for some affection if it kept going the same way. Robyn just replied to this point with 'Well maybe you need to go and do that then'.

So much for getting to the bottom of a problem

So there we were without a solution. I needed to keep working hard, so Robyn kept up her social schedule.

I got to the end of the project at work, and I moved over to another area. There were a lot of problems to solve in the area and I needed to work closely with the team to resolve them all. One of the women at work started to take a bit of a curious interest in me.

I was overjoyed at the prospect of someone showing me interest (however remote it was), so I went home and told Robyn.

She did two totally opposite things. First she booked us into an expensive hotel for a luxurious weekend and lavished her undivided attention on me the whole weekend. After such a long time of fighting to spend time with her, this seemed totally foreign to me and I was overwhelmed.

What just happened here?

I told Robyn that the sudden rush of attention all seemed false. I didn't want anything from her if it didn't come naturally and from her heart.

She backed off again.

So after one weekend of pretend passion, it looked like it was back to what it had been for the last year or so.

There was no love or obvious desire to be with me any more, but Robyn started to spend more time at home "making herself available" for me. When I got home, there was no spark or anything between us any more, just two people sitting on a couch.

I told Robyn everything that I got up to, and exactly what was happening with this woman who had expressed an interest in me.

Robyn initially seemed jealous and tried to suggest more was going on than I told her her about. I then started to get a continual stream of phone calls and Robyn checking on me. I started to think that if I was going to be accused of being unfaithful, I might as well do something apart from just chatting with the other woman so, I had one session pashing on with her.

So who the hell is David?

Robyn and I were definitely in strife. I suggested she go and spend her holidays with her mother. Meantime I was doing some tiling and other chores at home trying to find a way to win back the Robyn I'd fallen in love with again.

For some reason I went into a drawer under the bed and lifted some of Robyn's jumpers up. There was a big wad of printed "love letters" that Robyn had been exchanging with a guy at work.

I rang her and asked what the hell I was looking at.

She replied, 'Now we're even. We can get back on track with our relationship.' I said, 'I'm sorry, I can't give my love to someone who is giving  their love to someone else!'

I'm moving out

When I met Robyn, it was her that moved into another bedroom to prove the guy she was living with was no longer her boyfriend. It was now me who moved into a back bedroom of our family home as the relationship was over. I just couldn't afford to move out.

I think the reality of what was going on hit Robyn after I started to sign everything we had over into just Robyn's name.

I moved out as soon as I could. It had been soul destroying to be in the home and not be getting Robyn's attention. I just couldn't handle the idea that this love had been freely on offer to someone else (who didn't even deserve it).

I ran my own credit card up buying me a small fridge and Robyn a replacement washing machine as I was taking the one we had.

Aftermath

• Even though I signed over the house we were living in to Robyn, she complained to at least two other people that I "stuck her" with it. I actually thought about her spending habits and the fact that she'd want her dogs with her. The house should almost have doubled in value, so she should be doing okay with it!
• A year after we split up, I had someone offer me a financial proposition to reduce the burden of paying for a second company car. I told Robyn I would be taking the car back and she would need to buy her own. Rather than thinking about how much money I'd saved her for the year that she had free use of the car, she complained about me forcing her to buy her own!

Lesson: Keep in mind that even when you make "joint" decisions, you may find out later that the other person has just "let you have your own way"...