Rose's Cantina

Embed from Getty Images "What is the secret to a successful marriage? Don't get divorced." -- Olivia Harrison I've been thinking about Olivia's wise words, spoken to camera when she was asked how it was that she and George Harrison stayed together when other rock and roll marriages failed. She spoke these words after talking about his well known infidelity. As she said, "Women liked George. And George liked women." Her voice cracked, yet there was strands of love in those words. We move ahead. We persevere. For better, or for worse. Scott and I have been together for 14 years now, and are approaching our dotage together. Both of us were married twice before, he to a childhood sweetheart who cheated on him, and then to a woman who used to make him sleep in his car. I got married the first time when I was 24, and did so simply because everybody else was doing it. Two months after we said our vows, my husband cheated the first tim...

Hello CBC friends: I know you are CBC Radio friends because I check my stats every day and more than 600 people have visited this blog in the past three days. That's thanks to my repeat performance on http://www.cbc.ca/radio/dnto Maybe you're wondering what happened to me after my husband left me at the airport to take a trip to Bermuda to go fetch his new wife. Well, a lot of bad stuff happened, and a lot of good stuff. I raised my three kids in near poverty while he climbed up the corporate ladder. Today, he is a multimillionaire with a six figure pension. He's still a big shot. I've moved on. I beat the odds and married my third husband 12 years ago, and we are going strong. It hasn't always been easy, but it's been interesting. You will find my blogs about my life, a well examined life, in these pages. I wrote this blog for four years and it helped me heal, and it helped me learn about myself. Along the way, I made some great friends. I don...

As I sat in the radio sound booth in downtown Ottawa, it was just me, alone with my thoughts. I was about tell a national CBC audience on DNTO about the time my husband took me on a flight to London as a farewell present before he left me standing in the Toronto airport while he boarded a flight to Bermuda to be with another women, who later became his wife and step-mother to my children. The episode runs today. Anna, the producer from Winnipeg, got on the line and we went over my story. She asked me a couple of questions. I felt slightly uncomfortable. "What?" I asked. "You don't believe me?" "It's not that we don't believe you. We just can't believe this could happen." I smiled to myself and thought, "you don't know the half of it sister." And then I began to tell the tale of the flight from Toronto to London that ruined my life more than 22 years ago, the flight that took all my hopes and dreams with it and lef...

There's a standard piece of fine print in the marriage vows that many people should consider carefully before pressing the verbal "send button". I'm talking, of course, about the "for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health" part. It's true, a few people hit the jackpot and get the "better, richer, health" part. But I also know many more who get the low hanging fruit that is marriage. Like the woman whose husband is the town drunk and falls down, hitting his head, causing it to blow up and sending him to hospital for surgery to remove half his brain. And the fucker is still walking around causing trouble and she had to move out of town. Or the woman who marries a doctor and got several mistresses in tow. Or the other who marries a guy with a great job who loses it and becomes a professional video gamer while she raises the kids and brings in the dough. Men also get the bad end of the carrot. They marry th...

In the end, I should have listened to my mother. And I shouldn't have trusted him, that's for sure. But the person I married, the person my friend Katie now refers to as "the bad man" became my everything, and then I became my nothing. Choosing love over career was a bad decision on my part. Having his children was an even worse one. "But look," said the bad man. "At least you have these beautiful children!" "Yeah," I said. "But I could have had these children with someone who didn't leave me." I was thinking about this conversation reading the New York Times this morning, a feature about women like me who "opted out," then, when their marriages fell apart, wanted to opt back in. I am one of those women, albeit a little older than the ones featured in the article. When I met the bad man, I was having a relatively successful career in Ottawa. Back in the 80s, before mandatory enforced bilingualism, I could ...

I saw my cousin and her husband yesterday, and she's never looked happier. Pat and Don are attached at the hip. They go everywhere together, and do everything. It's hard to believe this is the same long suffering woman who put up with my biological cousin for decades, only to throw in the towel in her 50s. That must have been a scary time for her looking towards old age without a partner, living in an empty nest, with a precarious retirement ahead of her. I was so thrilled when she partnered up with Don as she neared 60. When my husband left me in my 30s, I had three small kids and I was absolutely terrified. I spent 10 years raising my kids on my own and I learned to be self-reliant. I grew during those 10 years, learned to unclog the sink and fix the toilet when it over-flowed. I became fairly well adept at putting together kids' toys and Ikea furniture. But I have to admit that I was happy, grateful, relieved even, to meet Scott nearly a decade ago. Like Don and P...

Over the past week, we've come to accept that we are living beyond our means. We don't have car payments or massive debt, but the day-to-day has become somewhat precarious. It's scary being in your mid-fifties and not having a retirement package. I used to be a saver but ten years living as a single mom to three kids sucked me dry. Scott is in the same boat, though he has a small pension from CBC; he lost his nut to an expensive divorce. We're still living from paycheque to paycheque, which is hard because the magazine I work for only pays me every two months. Scott is in commission sales so is at the mercy of the Ottawa economy, not to mention the elements. You might have seen the story in the paper today about all the car dealerships in Ottawa that have new cars that look like golf balls thanks to this week's storm. Scott was lucky this time around; his KIA dealership is one of only a handful in Ottawa's east end that dodged the bullets of hail falling...

It occurred to me this morning that if my first marriage hadn't crumbled under the weight of infidelity, we would be celebrating our 32nd wedding anniversary in July. If my second husband would have stuck around, instead of decamping for another woman's vagina, we would be celebrating our 26th anniversary. Interestingly enough, Mr. Small and his lovely bride -- the one flapping her arms on the sidelines waiting for us to fail -- will be married 30 years and Mr. Big and the White Witch of Bermuda will be married 20 years. So I have to ask the question: was is me? And another: what would my life have looked like if either husband had not preferred life with another to life with me? Let's see. If I'd stayed with Mr. Small, I would have travelled the world. He was a foreign correspondent and early Internet adapter who lived in Washington, New York, Moscow and London. If Mr. Big hadn't taken up with the White Witch, I would have been very rich indeed with ...

I have advice for anyone getting separated over the holidays. If one of you suggests staying together over Christmas, for the family...DO NOT DO IT. I learned this lesson the hard way, when Mr. Big announced he was leaving the family to set up house with The White Witch of Bermuda. Because she lived in Bermuda -- apparently she has a hotel there -- it would be months before The Witch could get packed and move to Ottawa, so Mr. Big did what most men do in such a situation. He continued to stay with us. I made him sleep in the basement and told the kids we slept apart because of his legendary snoring. Truth be told, I wanted him in my bed, but I realized once he'd taken up with the Witch, he no longer had a taste for Snow White. So in an effort to protect my aching heart, Big became a cellar dweller. I tried to get him to move, but he was in no hurry. On Sundays, he would cheerfully smear jam on his toast and check the rentals. This went on for months. Finally, in N...

Have you gotten any Linkedin requests lately? Linkedin seems to be the nerd's Facebook. A tool for bastards and boasters. Or the guy who has resolved never, ever to be on Facebook (because in reality he doesn't have any friends outside the office or because he left his family long ago and he's too embarrassed to put it out there). Lately, I've been getting loads of Linkedin requests. They remind me a bit of those Christmas cards folks used to send out with all the details of their fabulous lives and their perfect children. I always wanted to puke when I got those cards. I never trusted those handmade Christmas cards, and I don't trust people to tell the truth on Linkedin. What's the point of Linkedin anyway? It just seems to be a resume service. And most of those resumes look a bit padded, slightly contrived to make the vitae's curriculum a little sexier than it is in reality. Me, I'd like to write the first honest resume. It might...