Bread and Roses, Why I love my Mere Male

My partner and I have been together for 25 years now. He is from England and I am from Malaysia.

I will call him “Mere Male” after the tag used in a popular Reader’s Digest series for funny stories about the males in our lives that we love.

My Mere Male used a great pick-up line when we first met. I was sitting at a train station after work, heading home, reading a book by John Pilger. MM came sauntering along and as he swung his lithe frame onto the seat next to me, he nodded and said “Good book, that.”

My face lit up and I was about to open my mouth to start dialoguing about the book, but I stopped. Something about him told me that he had never read the title.

I found later that I was right. His friend had told him it was a good book, and that was the extent of his experience with it.

A crowded train came and I jumped on, surprised that he followed me. As the crowd thinned out, he struck up a conversation with me. He told me “I’m a printer by trade” showing me his inky thumbs.

For reasons I can only describe as “Fate”, I solemnly told him where I worked and that he could call me there if he wanted.

Poor Mere Male. I then went on one month’s leave, and every day he rang my workplace, asking for me.

When I returned, an exasperated colleague informed me that either someone was stalking me or really wanted to get in touch with me!

The first date that we had was me dragging him out to a cinema to watch the 1994 movie “Bread and Roses” about the story of pioneering trade unionist, politician and feminist Sonja Davies, who rose to prominence in the 1940s and 50s.

I have kept the really sweet Valentine’s Day cards, complete with teddy bears holding roses, that he lavished upon me during our first few years together.

He demonstrated his wanting to get to know me by dutifully attending talks about anti-racist measures and helping the citizens of Burma, that I gave at public places, and attending a concert of amateur singers that I was a part of, where he was astonished that I could sing.

I loved just sitting beside him, watching his prowess with computer games like Cannon Fodder, and got to know Jools and Jops as much as him, plus the theme music became one of my favorites.

This is not to say our relationship was not rocky at all, because there were sometimes huge boulders in the way.

We had a small ally though, in the shape of a beautiful cat, Shandy, whom became our de facto “child” and was a thread that kept us together.

After our “sunset years” or after our intrigue with each other began to unravel, we found our differences (like my loving to be surrounded by material things and his liking to be a minimalist, and my wanting to plan things and he insisting on doing things spontaneously) had a way of putting up nasty barriers between us.

Sometimes communication goes out the window, when both are inexperienced at relationships and neither wants to give up ground. Then stress and frustration, and even anger appears, spilling over into shouting matches and smashing things up or running out the door. It happened to us.

It may sound weird to say that the first 20 years of us being together were on the whole “stormy” rather than supportive and pleasant.

Relationships can be powder kegs, when 2 people are involved whom both need to realise that each needs to love and approve of herself or himself.

Besides being very different to each other, in terms of approaches or attitudes, MM and I had both experienced neglect from those close around us, and had a lot of inner work to do.

That was working out that we didn’t need the approval of everyone around us, and we needed to relax and be confident and love ourselves in order to let good things happen.

While learning how to set boundaries, somehow we stuck together, and not just because we both badly needed companionship, but something else invisible kept us together.

Sometimes you can dig deep and find in your heart or soul that you are meant to be together; and you trust that tie, which actually is a cord of reciprocity keeping you bound in a good way.

Besides being sweet and funny, my Mere Male has out-shone the years of shouting matches between us, that happened 5 years ago and previously.

Since 2014 he has applied his logic and intelligence and his upbeat and humble nature, to take care of me through open heart surgery in 2014 to replace a faulty heart valve that I was born with. He supported me through the long recovery, including helping me to manage my medication.

If it wasn’t for him, I would be in big trouble now; because although I am a positive person, I had been wrestling not only with a wound infection and 2 sternectomies, but with measuring my INR or anti-coagulant factor to work out my warfarin doses.

Had MM not taken an interest in this and helped me with it, I wouldn’t be writing this now. He has supplied me with “bread” or food, by doing the shopping and cooking; and with flowers when I needed cheering.

An important thing to say is that:

It is not only his excellent nursing help, which I am eternally grateful for, but the main thing that I love about my Mere Male is that he has a unique freshness and funniness or lightness of being, that makes me smile.

When I’m upset over something that happened at work, however small or big, he can make me laugh with suggested responses.

He naturally has a creative and happy way of looking at things, and doesn’t take things too seriously. This balances my being rather serious and tending toward worrying or being a perfectionist.

Recently we watched “Pride” on television, the 2014 movie about U.K. gay activists working to help miners during their lengthy strike of the National Union of Mine workers in the summer of 1984.

I spoke about my writing letters to the Editor about issues that I had felt strongly about, years ago, and Mere Male enthused “Oh yes, Western Australia had lots of great newspapers back then.”

“What was the best one?” MM queried.

“I remember Peggy Independent” I replied helpfully.

“No!” Mere Male exclaimed, “there was the Daily Mail, wasn’t there?”

I had to think this one over.

MM picked up on my baffled look, and pointed out, “No I’m sorry, the Daily Mail was where Superman worked.”

I love my Mere Male!