Beginning...

Some years ago, searching for a house my brand new family could move into, I stumbled upon an interesting book in a charity shop. A sign? It seemed so to me and maybe what its anonymous author, 'A Graduate in the University of Matrimony', had in mind, for he or she dedicates it 'To those brave men and women who have ventured, or who intend to venture, into that state which is "a blessing to a few, a curse to many, and a great uncertainty to us all, [...] in admiration for their courage.'
I felt I had no choice but to buy it!
Since then in similar fashion to the very marriage it was meant to guide, rather than be a source of enrichment, the book sat ignored and forgotten. Do not assume this is due to faults with its prose or content, for I had no idea about either: I had only managed to get to page fifteen and I did not remember when or how. Poor performance one may think but in the current climate it was quite an achievement really, considering that reading, always an activity as fundamental to me as breathing, since marrying and having children, had become an insormountable task.  
Books collecting dust offered a stark reflection of the course my life took since getting married and of course also of the marriage itself.

I have found married life, the hardest thing I have ever done, far more challenging than having children and raising them. When I say 'married life' (or m-l from now on) in my case means the sharing of my life with another human being and our offsprings. For me this is crucial at the moment for I feel (and hope to be proven wrong by those without children and by my own researches) that my m-l without children could have turned out quite different. If this is an illusion that needs to or will be shattered by my voyage rests to be seen.

Some share this feeling, others condemn me or look at me with pity for not feeling the whole package of m-l as one is meant to, as one should: as part of life, or life itself, a skip in the park hand, and so on.

It could be that I have lived had a 'life of Riley' previous to m-l. A life embedded with the luxuries and conforts of independence of thought and judgement, freedom of movement and of choice. A life in which admittedly I had not suffered any real true hardships but more to the point a life where equality between the sexes was the current currency.
As a child I wanted to be like Pippi Longstocking and I wanted to live the way she did: by herself but not alone. I wanted to lead not a solitary life but an independent life, a life where I was in charge, surrounded by plenty of friends and beloved animals, within which I was free to be me. I also spent long Italian summer days reading Scott O'Dell 'The Island of the Blue Dolphin' and re-enacting Karana's survival adventure in my garden, dreaming of an island all for myself. From the library I kept borrowing over and over a novel about the adventure of a wild pony, the title of which I cannot recall. Today I sob inconsolably, to my family amusement, watching Spirit - Stallion of the Cimarron galloping freely in his land, his stolen freedom feeling way too close to home.
After a few cagey and rebellious teenager years I managed to break free and moved to London. London has always been my Wild West. Only in London I felt truly free as was able to develop a truly mine sense of self.
I spent 10 years in such blessed state. Even with ups and downs and positive and not so positive adventures and encounters I was living my life and I loved it.
Then one day I met what I never thought it existed: the soulmate, the other half, the one to walk with for the rest of your life.
What I did not know, and still don't know, was how to walk this walk. My lifetime spent perfecting the solitary life meant that m-l felt like being captivity. Here I was saddled and bridled by the person I trusted the most would preserve the essence of ME. This is the story of a once wild horse who tries to make sense and survive in her new stable compounds.
It is not intended as a guide, nor a handbook. I offer no solutions or advice (not directly at least), hardly knowing what I am doing myself. But I will share my experience, my thoughts, my attempts to make it work not just for the children's sake or for the couple, but for my own sake, having recently concluded that ultimately in order to work m-l has to work for me too.

With the book at hand I will write about my attempts to make sense of it; record progresses and failures; point at sources of help; analyse the culture in which my experience live and from which it has grown. In doing so I aim at looking at the position and role that women hold in our times within matrimony, hopefully as cross-culturally as I can. It is my primary interest to assess whether my condition is an isolated case caused by my own personal upbringing and proper to my individual personality or if patterns of similarities can be found when compared wth the story of others. For this reason every comment will be truly appreciated.
Perhaps a global medium such as the internet and a tool such as a blog could allow for the unveiling of an interesting picture of the 21st century woman within marriage.

But enough for now.

This is the beginning... the beginning of the blog, but also the beginning of something I do not yet know. More to come. More about what happend before, more about what is happening now and more about what has yet to come.