ABSTRACT
I married a man who was adopted. I chose him over my long term boyfriend because I thought he needed me more. He managed to bypass the normal process of getting to know each other while ‘going out’ and somehow just moved in on my life. Briefly a part of my mind knew that he was behaving like deprived children I had met in my work, offering affection to strangers freely – which even though it was endearing, was inappropriate. But I wasn’t listening to reason and his overwhelming ‘thereness’ must have engaged with some emotional need in me. We talked a lot in those early days about how we would bring up children. We cared very much about how it should be, he shared his books on child psychology with me. We both wanted to parent better than the way we had experienced it ourselves. His unhappy experience was obvious and mine had been far too cold and English middle class, being looked after by successive nannies and au pairs. I remember looking up and saying ‘Mummy, mummy’ in a pleading sort of way and the nanny saying to my mother ‘Leave her, it’s just power they want’. We were determined that our children would have that power to demand and expect love.
