I also dedicate my song today to my wife Sheila’s only sibling, her brother Winston, whose birthday it is today. I’d like to say that Winston will be celebrating his birthday today, but I am afraid that his prolonged depression and mental health issues that have still to be sorted out is likely to prevent this. Winston is at that non-functioning state which has existed since his unwanted divorce a few years ago, where he won’t help himself and will not allow others to help him. We pray for some state psychiatric intervention soon so that he may enjoy future birthdays.
My song today is ‘Torn Between Two Lovers’. This song was written by Peter Yarrow (of the folk music trio ‘Peter, Paul and Mary’) and Phillip Jarrell. The song describes a love triangle and laments that loving both of you is breaking all the rules. Mary MacGregor recorded it in 1976. The song became the title track of her first album. ‘Torn Between Two Lovers’ reached Number 1 on both the ‘U.S. Pop Chart’ in February 1977 as well as the ‘Easy Listening Chart’ in the final week of 1976 and the first week of 1977. It also reached Number 1 on the Canadian charts. The song also peaked at Number 3 on the country charts of both nations. In early 1977, the song peaked at Number 4 in the United Kingdom. It also reached Number 1 spot in Australia, Canada, besides coming in the top ten in Ireland and New Zealand. The song has been covered several times, including a cover by Connie Francis.
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We frequently hear about people lamenting that they never seem to be able to find true love, yet very little thought will ever be given to those who are torn between two lovers. I find it almost impossible to think of the heartache involved in such an emotional dilemma. Whatever decision the person makes, someone will get hurt and there will always be a sense of ‘unfinished business’. How deeply cut-up must the rejected one feel, having given the best of themselves only to watch another being chosen in preference them?
While working 26 years in the Probation service, along with observing the lives of my own friends and social group acquaintances, I have often known of a married person who was having an affair say that they are unable to leave their marriage partner or abandon their lover ‘because they love both’. While I am ready to believe in a so-called ‘lovers overlap’, where one person is ‘falling out of love’ with someone while they are ‘falling in love’ with another, I do not really believe that anyone can love two people simultaneously in the deepest and truest of manner. While I accept that they may ‘think they love both simultaneously’, I also believe they are deceiving themselves.
My advice to anyone who believes to be trapped in this love triangle would undoubtedly be is to choose the second person, because if you’d truly still loved the first person, you couldn’t have fallen for the second. I also think it to be unrealistically inaccurate to believe that a past lover can continue to be your best friend; either they never were in love with you or still are. I have also heard the indecisive feelings of those who have broken with one of their two lovers, only to wonder afterward if they had made the right decision. One man once told me, “I think I still love her, Bill. I still get feelings for her”. I simply told him that in my view, ‘feelings that come back are probably feelings that never left’.
When I was a teenager, although I loved all the women I occasioned to romance, never once did I want to get married until my late twenties, and only then after I’d travelled to other countries and awakened a few of my dreams. I romanced some truly beautiful young women who most men would willingly have rushed down the aisle, given half a chance, but not I.
If ever my resolve of bachelorhood weakened during my moments of greatest temptation, I immediately remembered who I was, what I wanted, and such recollections produced the mental game change. I learned that if I imagined being in the wild country parts of Canada and places in the U.S.A. I longed to see, within mere moments, all contrary urges that had been brought about by the temptation of female flesh would magically disappear. The predominant thought inside my mind would bring about a physiological change within my body as travel trumped touch and focussed thought triumphed over physical temptation.
The game change had been brought into play and my travel plans remained intact. All passionate thoughts that I transmitted between my brain and bollocks were immediately reversed and sanity was instantly restored.
While I admit that I have loved many women in my life, and even married a few, I have never loved two women at any one time. Loving two women at the same time is not a choice I believe I could ever make. I believe such a proposition to be no choice at all, and even were it possible, it could never produce an answer that one’s heart could ever reconcile with one’s head.
Love and peace Bill xxx