First, I would like to remember the anniversary of Sheila’s first husband, Anton Murray, who died on April 17th,2007. Rest in peace, Anton. Love Bill and Sheila xx
Next, I wish a happy birthday to Tracy Adamson who lives in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Enjoy your special day, Tracy, Love Bill, and Sheila xx
My song today is ‘Moving On’. This 1950 country standard was written by Hank Snow. The song reached Number 1 on the ‘Billboard Country Single’s Chart’, where it stayed for 21 weeks. It was the first of seven Number 1 Billboard Country hits that Hank Snow scored throughout his career on that chart. The song's success led to Snow joining the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ cast in 1950. Hank Snow proposed the song for his first session for ‘RCA Records’ in the USA in 1949 but recording director Stephen HJ. Sholes turned it down. In the spring of 1950, Hank Snow recorded the forgotten song and It soon became one of the defining songs of his career.
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When it comes to ‘moving on’ whether it is a job that one has done, a home that one has lived in, a marriage or relationship one has left, or a country one has come from, each significant change in one’s life is never easy to adapt to.
First, a lot will depend on whether the change is sought by us or imposed upon us, and whether we perceive it as being welcomed or threatening. How much the change is desired by us will influence how good or bad we might feel about it. ‘Moving on’ is good for all individuals, but only when they are ready for a shift in circumstances. Whenever a significant change of circumstances is forced on us or is not of our choosing, it is invariably perceived as being unwelcome, feared or resented. There is also a personal pride factor involved in being the first to announce a proposed change in one’s life. A newly married couple, for instance, will usually prefer to personally announce that they are to be future parents to their family before their neighbours, or to have the news announced on their behalf without their prior consent.
Imagine going into the boss’s office one morning to inform him/her that you have decided to hand in your notice as you did not feel that you were getting on in the firm as well as you had hoped you would when you started there, and now felt that your employment prospects have fallen far short of your initial expectations. However, as you walk into the office, and before you can announce your decision to your boss, your boss prefixes what you were about to say with the words, “ I am so glad you popped in, Bill, as I had planned to see you later today. There is no nice way of saying this but, with business not coming in as fast as we would like, the management has decided that we will have to ‘let you go’ and offer you redundancy at the end of the week. Having reviewed the performance of the entire workforce in the sales department you work in, we are less than satisfied with the poor record of your sales compared to our other reps. We are sorry it has not worked out as we would have liked, but I am afraid that we have to let you go. “
Or as an alternative scenario, imagine getting dumped by a girl you had been courting and had already decided to end your relationship with the very next time you met up. Before you could tell her the sad news, however, she gets in first by issuing the rejection slip in front of all your mates.
Or Imagine having been married for ten years. There are no children born to the marriage and for five years now, the relationship between you and your spouse has gradually worsened and has long past its ‘sell-by-date'. You and your spouse have been unhappy for a long time that over one year ago, you both commenced extra-marital relationships with the partners of other spouses. With each of you having been preoccupied with covering up your own trail of deception, both of you have missed spotting the obvious signs of your partner’s affair. With both of you in ignorance of the other’s infidelity, fate has decreed that you each choose the same moment in time to own up and unburden your own indiscretions, with a view of making a clean break from the marriage by an amicable uncontested divorce. You have each concluded that you would be happier ‘moving on’ with your life, instead of kicking a dead horse that cannot be revived.
That very same weekend, you are determined to inform your spouse of your unhappiness, your infidelity, and your subsequent wish for a divorce as soon as possible. In one of those strange moments where you each partner in a relationship decide to tell the other at precisely the same time, one of you needs to allow the other to speak first. Still retaining some qualities of a ‘gentle man’ to the very end, the husband allows his wife to speak first. As the husband listens to his wife unfold her dark secrets of unfaithfulness and unhappiness of late, he starts to feel angry as she reveals how long she has been carrying on behind his back with her boss. All of the past year when she has supposedly been attending a night school class twice weekly, she has instead been having it off furtively down some country lane in her boss’s car. Having been so easily deceived by her, her husband finds his pride being wounded more than the fact of their continued affair. The more he thinks about having been cuckold and played so easily by the ‘love rats’ the more instinctively angry he is, despite his own secret affair he has not yet informed his wife of.
As his wife continues to declare her infidelity amid some genuine tears of remorse, and lots of shame that she cannot conceal, she concludes by saying, “I know this cannot be easy to hear, but I had to tell you today. It has made me feel so bad about myself for so long now when I could have felt much better by being honest and upfront with you. I am so sorry to have deceived you for the greater part of the past year, and I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me my deception and allow me to get on with my life. You know that things have not been right between us for a few years now and were unlikely to improve. I want to reassure you that all this is down to me, and whatever has gone wrong in our marriage, I do not lay the fault of its breakdown at your door. I know you are a good man deep down and that you also deserve to find some happiness and contentment in your life. It’s time we both accepted that our marriage is over and that we moved on with our lives!”
Hearing of your wife’s adultery has disturbed you but the shock of learning she ever had it in her to have an affair and manage to get away with her adulterous activity so easily has stunned your sense of judgment in her more. Your shock cannot be disguised, and it presents you with an ideal opportunity to portray yourself as being the ‘let down’ partner in the marriage. You ‘magnanimously’ tell your wife that you feel enough for her to allow her to ‘move on' with her life without you placing any additional obstacles in the way of her future happiness. She cannot believe that you have been so understanding about it all and feels guiltier about her own deceit even more now.
After the divorce has been granted and all financial settlements agreed between you and your ex-wife, six months later you publicly declare to your ex and the rest of the world that you have just met the woman of your dreams whom you plan to wed. Your ex-wife is basically a kind woman and is naturally very pleased that you have been able to ‘move on’ with your life also. In addition, your own happy news about ‘finding someone new’, enables your ex-wife to assuage a lot of guilt she was carrying around with her, as well as enabling herself to feel less responsible for any initial unhappiness she ever brought into your life by cheating on you.
Given the above scenario, I wonder if it would have played out any differently had the husband been the first to own up to having had an affair and desiring a divorce? What do you think? Are women more honest with their emotions, or are they just as devious and downright deceitful if they think they can play the villain and still and emerge as the injured party? I’m afraid that I will have to leave the jury out on that little puzzler and move along to another story for another day.
Love and peace
Bill xxx