90 Days of...

By Annalise George

This book, written from the heart, captures the terrible joy, anxiety and pain of an illicit relationship. The character takes us through the wringer as we feel with her the excitement, the pleasure and the anguish that a life-changing 90 days bring – a 90 days that highlight just how different men and women can be, and how hard it is for a woman, acting as honestly as she knows how, to understand the male half of her relationship. The writing is blunt and honest. I imagine that there will be few women who will not relate closely to the tortured, almost obsessive, re-makings of each encounter, the minute inspection of each nuance, and the utter helplessness when even the most careful analysis fails to yield the understanding so desperately sought.
This is a strongly written book that touches on subjects and emotions not often discussed with such candour. One is left with a vivid impression of the 90 days of...
Jane Serfontein
Editor: Boutique Books

• Language: English
• Publisher: Annalise George
• Release date: Feb 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9780620746939

Annalise George

Annalise George is an ordinary woman living an ordinary life. The only extraordinary thing she ever wants to accomplish, is to share her most inner being on paper - as an inspiration to women from all walks of life.

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90 days of ...

Annalise George

© Annalise George 2017

90 days of...

Published by Annalise George

[e-mail]

eISBN 978-0-620-74693-9

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Layout and cover design by Boutique Books

Quote on page 54 from Mindrealitynews. blogspot. com

Quote on page 74 from Paul Scarpitta: Dating and Romance: 2007

For J,

who disappeared on me

Introduction

A person’s moral compass is the ability he or she has to judge what is right and wrong and act accordingly.

None of us are born with a moral compass…

Therefore a moral compass cannot be inherent. I am of the belief that moral compasses can become inherent throughout our lives but, during our childhood years, we are taught through external influences what our moral compass should be. These external influences are mainly our parents, school and the church to which we belong. Therefore, we judge right and wrong according to what we were taught right and wrong should be.

For the majority of mankind this moral compass becomes internalised as an adult. Although it was taught through external influences, one accepts something as absolutely right or wrong because you have come to really believe in it. If you have been taught by your parents for eighteen years that stealing is wrong and you learn the same thing at school for twelve years, the Sunday school teacher who teaches you the same thing will, without any uncertainty, fix that moral value within you as an inherent belief. Thus you will believe for the rest of your life that stealing is wrong and you will never steal (or not with a clear conscience).

But how does one then explain the existence of people called kleptomaniacs? These people just do not have the ability to control their desire to steal. It is simply an impulse that cannot be controlled. Just like the rest of mankind, they were taught by the same external influences that stealing is wrong, but it has made no difference to them. That is why it is clear to me that, even though you were taught a certain moral compass and want to live by it, it is not always possible; and I am of the belief that this is simply because we weren’t born with a moral compass already in place. It is therefore impossible that all people are born with the ability to adhere to the moral compass that is taught to them.

Kleptomania can be treated with therapy but the desire to steal will never go away. Therapy can simply teach a kleptomaniac how to control the impulse. That is why mental illnesses truly exist. Kleptomania is a mental illness, just like depression, Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. These disorders can be treated with medication and therapy but the disorder can never be cured; it can only be controlled. It is therefore impossible for a kleptomaniac to ever develop the inherent belief that stealing is truly wrong even though he might have the genuine realization that stealing is wrong and tries to control the impulse for the sake of the community around him, who expects him not to steal.

This story starts with one woman’s inability to develop the inherent belief in something in which most of mankind believes. It is about the constant, daily struggle in which she has found herself for the first fourteen years of her adult life, how she reached a turning point in her life and tried to conform and how, after sixteen years, she finally decided that she couldn’t fight anymore.

At some point in your life you have to accept that you are different from other people and that the war you have been fighting within you is not worth your life. Why must a person live in despair every day of her life because she has to consciously control an impulse which would never even be an issue to most people around her? You control this impulse due to the fact that the moral compass you have been taught expects it from you, as well as the community around you.

Slowly but surely you get emotionally drained…up to a point in your mid-thirties where you decide: I just cannot live like this anymore. And after you have finally given in to your impulse, you are amazed by the fact that you have no guilty conscience about it whatsoever. For the first time in your life you experience satisfaction and you find your daily despair is gone. For the first time in your life you feel free…free from the emotional burden and struggle that has been stirring in you for more than a decade.

It is merely about survival, nothing else. We all need something different to survive. If, after more than a decade of trying, you are tired of fighting with yourself – with this spirit inside you that was created by your parents, school and church – and you give up on that fight…it is then that you realize you have been fighting in vain for more than a decade. All in vain due to what you experience after you have given in to your impulse: no guilty conscience.

But, if something is SO terribly wrong, why would one then experience no guilt? The only conclusion I can come to is the fact that not all of us can adhere to the moral compass expected from us. If your moral compass should establish how you judge right from wrong and then how to act accordingly, it means that you must feel guilty if you do the wrong thing. So, if you go out and do something which is wrong in the eyes of your parents, school and church, but you don’t experience guilt at all, there must be something wrong with your moral compass. It is therefore not in your physical and emotional power to feel guilt after a wrong deed. How can you make yourself feel something that does not really resonate with you?

This is exactly the issue which had arisen within this woman: It bothers me that it doesn’t bother me. Any normal human being would have felt guilt afterwards and would have been disappointed in failing in her values. But, although she knows that it should be part of her values, she just cannot get herself to feel guilty about it not being.

And that is when she started thinking about all the shows she has ever watched on the CI channel. How serial killers, after they have been arrested, have shown no remorse for the deeds they have committed. And how many times did she not ask herself: How can a man commit such horrific acts against a woman and have no conscience about it? How can he not realize what he did was wrong? Although this is an extreme example, it comes down to the same internal feeling this woman has experienced: he just could not feel any guilt. He knows that torture and murder are unacceptable but for him it is a need that finally takes over. It is not a justification for the deeds he has committed and therefore he must be locked up for the rest of his natural life. He must be locked up simply because he cannot control himself and because he is incapable of remorse.

It is exactly the same for this woman. Her deed will bring a lot of sorrow to the hearts of those who surround her and therefore she must hide it and pray that no-one ever finds out. For the sake of those who can adhere to the moral compass expected from them, she must hide her inability so that no-one gets hurt.

I can just imagine all the self-righteous and truly righteous people in the world condemning everything that has been written up to now. God-fearing people would simply argue that if something is a sin in God’s eyes you should do everything in your power to abstain from it. Believe it or not, this woman also belongs to a strict religion and has faith just like every other follower of God. In fact, her religious doctrine is rooted in the belief that God puts us on earth to struggle and that it is only in overcoming this struggle that one can be victorious and be granted Everlasting Life. Her absolute belief in this doctrine is what has made her live her life in despair every single day of her adulthood. And, just like alcoholics and drug addicts can have a relapse, she has had one too. The only difference is that her so-called relapse has set her free from despair. So, to all the righteous people out there, be grateful that your moral compass works like it should. Because, believe me, this woman has been praying her whole adult life for the inherent belief to be created within her so that she can truly know that what she has done is morally wrong.

Just because there is some part in her moral compass to which she cannot adhere, doesn’t mean that she has no moral compass whatsoever. She adheres to the moral compass that has been taught to her like everyone else does and she adheres to most of it because she has been able to comfortably create the inherent belief within herself. She doesn’t steal or murder and she treats people with kindness. So, in most ways, she is just like everyone else. The only belief she has not been able to inherently create within herself is the belief that adultery is wrong.

Her

It is probably true that you can find no inherent wrong in certain sins due to experiences from your childhood. People love to generalize and say that as an adult you have a choice and that you do not need to use the excuse of the bad experiences from your childhood to keep on making mistakes and sinning. I honestly believe that this cannot be said of everyone. People are born with mental illnesses and those bad experiences become triggers for unacceptable behaviour to follow. Someone born with a mental illness is merely a ticking bomb waiting for a trigger that will inevitably let the bomb detonate some day. For most sufferers it happens during their teenage years but for some the trigger might only be set off in their twenties.

This woman was diagnosed with a mental illness at the age of thirty but it took two years for her to fully come to understand what exactly that meant. You see, the biggest problem concerning mental illnesses is that the affected person has probably suffered from it for many years, but to be formally diagnosed can take a long time. In this woman’s case, it took two decades for her to be diagnosed as having Bipolar Disorder. With the help of therapy she reached the understanding that her disorder had already been triggered at the age of eleven.

Bipolar Disorder used to be called Manic Depression. Manic Depression actually does describe the root of what Bipolar Disorder is. Instead of just being depressed at times, you can become manic at times too. In other words, you just become crazy and do irresponsible things. With the help of medication a bipolar sufferer can control these two extreme moods. Having been triggered at the age of eleven it is quite understandable that this woman has been struggling with this conflict of morals within her. Your childhood years are your formative years and what you are taught as a child is what inevitably will become part of your fixed inherent moral compass. But, if you experience something that goes against what you have been taught, especially as a child, it creates a lasting image in your mind that can never be erased. It creates a lasting conflict within you about what is truly right or wrong.

In her case, she witnessed something which at that stage had never even been discussed with her as being morally wrong. At the age of eleven she had never been taught what adultery is. At the age of eleven no-one had ever even had a discussion with her about sex in general. And at the age of eleven, she witnessed adultery. This experience had a very profound impact on her, mostly because no-one ever cared to explain it to her afterwards. Even after she had attempted to discuss it as an adult on more than one occasion, she was always shut down. And till this day she remains this deeply confused eleven-year-old girl.

Witnessing adultery as an eleven year old who has no concept of sex yet, becomes an experience difficult to explain. Deep inside of you, you realize what you have just seen is wrong but you cannot find an explanation for why it feels wrong. The wrongness is confirmed when you lie awake at night and hear the fights going on in the bedroom next to yours. By the age of thirteen, when sex has been explained to you, you start to realize that what your mother had done is wrong. Although no-one has told you that adultery is wrong, you make your own assumption that is must be wrong because otherwise there would never have been so many fights. By the time you are a teenager, you have been taught by some external influence that adultery is wrong and when you look back at your experiences, everything starts to make sense. It was never acceptable to go and visit another man at night while your father was working. It was never acceptable for you and your sister to accompany your mother and this man to a restaurant and then to be left in the car. For years you were confused by that kiss you witnessed, knowing that something was wrong about it, but neither your mother nor your father cared to acknowledge your distress. And not because they believed you didn’t know…just because they didn’t care.

Having an emotionally unavailable father from the time you can really remember things creates an uncertain young teenage girl. Already broken at the age of eleven, having to discover the cruelty of the world on your own creates a recipe for disaster. Developing children with good self-esteem was never a priority in the home in which this woman grew up. Her mother was strict and her father unavailable. She and her sister were well taken care of and they were never abused but I think, with all the psychology we have been exposed to, everyone will know that that is not enough. A father needs to tell his daughter how beautiful she is and that he loves her. All this woman was ever told by her father was: Do not ever come home knocked up. And then she had the bad luck of being the victim of a sexual assault at the age of sixteen and once again a trigger was detonated. Instead of this assault resulting in her becoming withdrawn from boys, her inborn mania was detonated and for the next three years she lived as promiscuously as her freedom allowed. For her, sex has just never had the meaning most of mankind has allocated to it.

Righteous people might once again argue that this is no justification for committing adultery; that once you become an adult it becomes your choice to commit adultery or not. Well, I beg to differ. Being monogamous is not natural – go and Google it yourself if you don’t believe me. But even if it is not natural, it is a commandment God has given us and therefore we should uphold it. However, for some or other reason society has shown us that it is the hardest commandment to uphold. Many people will commit adultery and feel remorse afterwards due to their moral compass. This woman, however, has been unable to feel that remorse. For obvious reasons, we are supposed to be monogamous. God intended us to be monogamous purely for our children’s sakes. A child cannot be randomly conceived and needs to be conceived within a marriage. A marriage gives structure to a child’s life and creates the stability that a child needs to become a productive member of society and a decent human being. A child cannot be expected to learn accepted behaviour from multiple people. A child needs one father and one mother to create a confident human being who can one day go out in the world and pave a path of his own. Even as adults we need a sense of belonging and a marriage and family enables us to feel that sense of belonging.

The next argument that would arise would then be: you can’t have your bread buttered on both sides. You cannot be married to someone and sleep with someone else as well. According to much religious belief, that is true. But why is it then so difficult to uphold? I cannot speak for anyone else...only for this woman. For some inexplicable reason sex is a basic need we cannot live without and for another inexplicable reason most people will never be satisfied with having sex with only one partner throughout his or her commitment to someone else. We all crave sexual satisfaction and, once it isn’t found in the marriage anymore, people go and look for it somewhere else. In this woman’s case her husband has never been able to sexually satisfy her…he has always only had the ability to have sex for about three minutes. Is he a good man? He is the best man this woman has ever known and therefore, for more than a decade, she tried her best to stay faithful. She knew what was expected from her but it left her in despair every single day of her life.

One day, however, she sat with herself in the loneliness that she had become so accustomed to and realized that if she did not find sexual gratification she would not survive this marriage much longer. So, does she want to have her bread buttered on both sides? The simple answer is yes. She wants to stay in her marriage for the sake of her children and because she cannot see herself ever living without this man. She loves this man and this man loves her even more. But after fourteen years of marriage she just could not live without sexual gratification anymore.

One morning, after she'd had the three minute sex with her husband, she was close to tears as she always was after having sex with her husband. But this time the sorrow she felt came from a new realization. Just over a week before she’d had her first sexual encounter with a man about whom you will learn later. She realized that from that moment onward sex with her husband would become an even harder task than before.

Another good reason for monogamy dawned upon her then: if you only have sex with one partner your entire life, you will never know that it could be better with someone else. If she had never had the desire to stray from her husband, she might never have known how weak he was sexually. But then again…without straying she had read every Karen Rose novel ever written. And Karen Rose had taught her that there was more to sex that what she had experienced in her marriage. In the era we are living in we have the unfortunate/fortunate opportunities to read books and watch television shows that explore sex in a way never explored in the 20th century. Therefore, every aspect of sex is there for everyone to see. You don’t need to commit adultery to start to understand that your sex life is lacking. But, seeing that she had committed adultery, it made the prospect of an ongoing sexual relationship with her husband even more daunting. She had hardly even felt him that morning…something she had never really thought of before.

William

William was her saviour. He saved her from the promiscuous life that would have eventually led her to her death. She married William to escape the meaningless existence that she called life. She and William were the perfect example of best friends finally getting together and getting married: William being the cliché example of a male best friend who had always been in love with his female best friend but the love was never reciprocated. So, when she had reached the lowest pit of her existence, she decided that William was the only one who could save her from her destructive self. Not only did she realize that William would always be good to her, she knew she would realize his dream by becoming his wife. And every now and again she still asks herself: If I could do it all over again, would I? And the answer is always yes. She cannot imagine her life without him and she doesn’t want to be without him.

She knows as well as all the other people in her life that no-one could ever love her the way that he loves her. He loves her for everything she is. He looks past her shortcomings and treats her like the queen she doesn’t deserve to be. Is all of this fair towards him? Of course not. If there is one man who deserves all the happiness the