BS: What did your ex do TO you?

Subject: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: GUEST,Chongo Chimp
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 06:08 PM

Ha! Get ready for a thread that will outlast the MOAB...

- Chongo

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: GUEST,not playing with fire
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 06:19 PM

Ho ho Chongo--talk about a Pandora's Box!

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 06:27 PM

Well box doesn't even come close - none of that-----------

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Guy Wolff
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 06:36 PM

She gave me to wonderful boys whom I love and respect as I do her for being thier mom !! Respecting a person you have made good and bad choices with makes a person grow instead of shink . I am sorry my first wife dose not like me much but there are reasons people dont " fit " and those can show up more as devorse comes on and then the years go by .. I have been a very lucky person . I am thankful that my first wife had the bravery to show me that we didnt have to stay in pain and together. She is happy now as am I !!! So I guess the third gift after the 2 boys is she gave me the chance to find the right marrage . All the best to all here. Guy

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: open mike
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 11:29 PM

guy, thank you for answering this potentially bitter question in a positive way!

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: hilda fish
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 02:09 AM

Hafta do the same. Gave me a wonderful son and loved me dearly while he could. Was angry at me and I at him but jeez, on looking back, I'm glad he was part of the pattern of my life. Now I have some ex's rather than one an ultimately I wish them well. They mattered absolutely at the time and parting was bitter/sweet/sorrowful/a relief but I am glad they were all part of me and I part of them. At the time it worked - can't we all say that?

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 02:28 AM

Well, I can't be quite so positive, although I don't think her problem was her fault, and I think she's finally overcome it after ten years of being single and two failed marriages.

She was a compulsive saver, and took absolute control over every penny I earned, except for $20 a week and whatever I could hide. After we split up, she kept collecting more than half my paycheck - but only for about three years. She also weaseled her way into getting the grandfather clock we bought in Germany and that I had cared for over 20 years, and she never winds it. And on top of all that, she treated me with undeserved suspicion for twenty years. She was sure I was having affairs behind her back.

But she left me my government pension, which is why I can afford to be retired now. So it's not all bad.

And now she's remarried and seems to be happy, and that's nice.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: fiddler
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 02:40 AM

I like this thread no bitter recriminations a very balanced and positive outlook.

I thoroughly dislike my ex - can't see how I ever managed to survive with her (well my 2nd ex & my kids mum) but as I say to the kids - I loved her once and she loves them so it aint all bad.

Now I have the CSA off my back - at last I can begin to enjoy life - sadly she is very bitter and apparently talks (with her mum and other relatives) about what an arse I am and what I am doing now and why I am stupid and should not be doing that. The kids fortunately point out that this is their Dad which apparently stops the discussions dead. It is a shame she can't read what has been said before in this thread, it makes you right warm inside to hear these stories.

My other ex's are all fine (one wife and two live in ladies) we all get on well and are great pals. Praps that is all we ever should have been.

I think we all learned form the experience and are better people for it - but could have done without all the angst.

Phew don't I go on - praps thats the bit I've not learned!!!!

Andy

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: GUEST,Not bitter just resigned to it
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 05:20 AM

Well lets see

Left me after 20 years for someone who was 20 years younger than himself who is so emotionally immature it untrue.   This is a person who kept txting me to ask me if I thought that he would stay with her.
and reads all his txts and mail and heaven forbid that he should even talk to me

Managed to produce a baby 8 months and three weeks after he left me.

Completely alienated his daughter by

Assuming that she would just come up and see him in the boosum of the new family which to her credit she did but was stumped by her stepmother's behaviour who apparently couldn't cope with the competition for attention.

Making her feel like an after thought in relation to brithdays etc or worse still turning up on the shop floor in Boots with a birthday present after they have had a blazing row, even when I have deliberatly been out so they could meet at the house.

Had a huge row with her at a friend wedding after she had had a row with her boyfriend and needed support.

and so on and so on.

Reading it all sounds quite trivial but you really would have had to be there.   Given up now. I encouraged her to see him and her half brother and made it as easy as possible. They are at a sort of vague stand off.    She says they get on passably if they don't talk about anything important. I say give it a couple of years and see what the situtaion is.

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Davetnova
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 06:05 AM

What she felt she had to, as we all do.

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Peace
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 10:08 AM

ex says it all.

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: *daylia*
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 10:45 AM

left me .... they all up'n left me .... they were all hung too .... *sniff*

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: *daylia*
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 10:46 AM

all hung over that is

probably shouldn't have drained 'em like i did

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 10:55 AM

I don't have an ex, which also says it all.

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: frogprince
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 11:26 AM

Well, she must be my "ex", 'cause the a***ole I was working for when we got engaged (24 years ago) said "It won't last six months". And actually, what she did to me last night wasn't half bad...

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 11:33 AM

I suppose that I could start a thread, What Did I Do To My Ex? It would be equally valid. I don't think that any marriages fail solely on the basis of what one person did. If a failed marriage is perceived as being all the other person's fault, there's not much room for change or growth in the "aggrieved" person. I've tried to have compassion for the destructive things my ex-wife did to me, because I believe that she is crippled, deep inside and not wholely responsible for what she did. There was nothing I could do to change her. Perhaps the best thing I could do is file for divorce to break what was a mutually destructive relationship.

Now me... there's been a lot that I need to work on in my life and my failed marriage was a spotlight on my own weaknesses just as much as it was my ex-wife's. I was not emotionally mature enough for marriage, and it took years of commitment to change who I am before I was prepared for a truly loving, unselfish union. I look upon a divorce as a challenge to both parties to grow in love and compassion, and to look critically at what part each person played in destroying the promise of a life together. I don't think I could ever have known the beauty of my marriage to Ruth if I hadn't gone through the pain of a disastrous marriage. Sometimes it takes failure to force us to look critically at ourselves.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 11:52 AM

Absolutely nothing, concrete is very difficult to get out off, especially as it's now part of a flyover on the M62

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Amos
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 11:56 AM

Jerry's spot on, as he so often is. Focusing on the bad acts received from another is a sure path to lunacy. Every step of my previous marriage was my own responsibility right up to the end of it, or them, depending on how you count. There are a million things I could have done to shift their directions and steer them toward other outcomes.

But, ya know what? I am delighted with the outcome I did steer toward. We're 26 years strong now, and still surprised and delighted every week at how well we suit.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 01:48 PM

On a positive note, it was a genuinely useful 10 year apprenticeship. I learned a lot about life, the universe, everything -- even myself. (Although some of that took a few more years before I could work through it all.)

On a less than positive note (depending on how you look at it), I have a bit of trouble with someone who kept wanting to kill himself and take me with him, and then, when I decided I needed to get out of an abusive situation, decided if I was dead or a paraplegic I couldn't leave him.

Haven't seen him since the night they carried me out of the house on a stretcher.

But if it all hadn't happened, I probably would never have met Curmudgeon (25 years ago on December 15th). You can never count on life to run smoothly, but it's been a lot better since we've had each other. (We've got a year and a half to go til we'll have been married for 25 years.)

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 02:02 PM

She just kinda wasted some of my precious time
But I told her "Don't think twice, it's all right"

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: kendall
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 05:17 PM

My first ex drove me to drink. I never did thank her.

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 06:43 PM

Die

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 25 Nov 05 - 04:38 AM

My wife left me with a great sense of relief of not having to come home to someone in a bad mood, she was in a bad mood for the last five years we were together, [ only women can do this ]

eric

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Nov 05 - 06:53 AM

My ex

aaaaaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

24 years later, it is still too awful to write down. The only good thing that happened was that he left.

Luckily there is a benevolent universe. My next one was kind, talented, and patient. Lucky, lucky me.

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Nov 05 - 11:22 AM

You really don't want to know.

Some things are secret, not because other people will think less of you for having experienced them, but because talking about them (and hearing about them) makes people angry and sad to no good purpose. I work hard to live in the now; I would go crazy with rage if I spent any time dwelling on the past.

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: GUEST,shy cat
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 10:21 AM

messed with my head and nearly drove me nuts, all in all glad to be rid of that one!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 11:48 AM

Some here who know me probably remember that when my parents divorced it was pretty messy. My mom made an uncomfortable hash of it for everyone and it took growing up and moving away from her exclusive sphere of influence to finally see what had happened. After his death I read the court papers--someone should have shaken Mom, hard, told her to let go and get on with her life. Her anger poisoned a lot of things for us. I loved my mother, but not for this.

When I saw that divorce was looming for us, I did everything I could to make it as easy on the kids as possible. A couple of years later, when discussing the difficulties of the children of friends who were divorcing, the kids said they'd gotten over our divorce "ages ago." They see their dad every day, they spend weekends with him, we have meals together, and we all get along and have been there for each other for support during medical procedures and such.

Divorce when you have children usually binds you tighter to each other than when you were married. The court dictates how things will be conducted if you can't work it out for yourselves.

I am encouraged by the many friends who have a solid and durable second relationships.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Deda
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 02:05 PM

My ex is a great ex-husband, as I always knew he would be. He's a great dad and a stellar grand-father. He was quite controlling back then (married from 1972 to 1987), and I was miserably unhappy being married to him, but he's on the very short list of important people in my life. I wish that I could have built a life-long marriage with my kids' father, but I think we've saved our kids from most of the destructive fall-out of bitter divorces.

What did I do to him? For one thing, I nagged him constantly. I never nag my now husband, because he's always three steps ahead of me on whatever I think "maybe we ought to....", whereas my ex (and my daughter) always thinks I'm somehow ridiculously anal for wanting to get (XYZ) seen to, taken care of, put away, whatever. So I'm a much nicer person in my second marriage than I ever was in my first. I'm now very happily re-married for 9 1/2 years, so someone who suits me fabulously. We're planning to invite my ex over for Xmas day, as we often do.

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 02:30 PM

That's a wonderful story, Deda. And good for you and your ex-husband that you can still see the good in each other. Maybve even more importantly, it sounds like you have grown as a person by looking at yourself and how you functioned in your first marriage. My wife Ruth and I will celebrate our 8th Anniversary this summer, so it's been a similar time.   And I can't imagine life being more beautiful. More accurately, I could never have imagined life being this beautiful.

The tragedy is that my ex-wife, who had very serious emotional problems not only made it impossible for me to have any contact with her, but she also made sure our sons were so alienated that they feel they can't have anything to do with her either. I was given sole custody of my sons when they were 8 and 14 (unusual in itself) and she set out to destroy any possibility of their being able to be in contact with her. She did the same with her parents, and if I hadn't taken our sons out of such a destructive relationship, she would have taken all of us down with her. It IS tragic to see a gifted, intelligent, talented person so destroyed by their mental illness.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 03:54 PM

What did I do to my ex-wife? Well, I was happy - and she was not. I liked being a husband and father and homeowner and a government office manager and all that stuff. It was tough having a wife who was unhappy, but I dealt with that and kept trying. But you know, if you're unhappy and don't understand why, it must be really tough if you're married to somebody who IS happy. I tried to sympathized and I tried to make her happy, but I didn't really understand.
I'm glad she seems to be happy now.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 07:33 PM

well...my 'ex' & I had a pretty civilized 'parting', but 14 years later, my mother died, and when my brother & I tried to sell her house, we discovered there was a lien against it because my ex-wife had abandoned a car we had bought together. She never paid any taxes on it....so I was stuck with several hundred $$$ due on a car I had not seen since 1977, and which had not been running since 1980..*sigh*...she also, during the first year I was gone, gave away a file cabinet that had been mine, and tossed out the contents...including all my old papers and childhood relics. I started to ask why she hadn't just called my mother and asked if she'd keep them till I came after them.....but I decided that if she couldn't see why that would have been good to do, it was no use discussing it...

My ex had her virtues, but she also had her own interesting sense of 'right'....

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: moongoddess
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 11:12 PM

He voted for Nixon!

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: van lingle
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 05:56 AM

Ouch, Moongoddess!

My ex, when I look back on it, taught me how to give and accept love. We parted amicably enough and were both relieved to be away from each other because after 2 years we realized it was not working.
In our time together she pointed up to me some very bad behavior that I had acquired and was completely comfortable with. I percieved her concern as nagging but in retrospect she was right and when I realized that later and went about changing, it actually helped prepare me for the real love of my life (actually the next 2 RLOML). vl

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: *daylia*
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 08:19 AM

What did I do to my ex-wife? Well, I was happy - and she was not...

Funny thing, Joe - that's the case with most of the separated/divorced couples I know, including myself. He was happy, satisfied, and content; she was just plain miserable.

Very strange. I wonder why?!?

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 08:48 AM

It works the other way, too. SHE can be happy, cheerful, optimistic, and mystified as to HIS unhappiness. Though, it is hard to be satisfied and content in such a relationship.

I'm a little uncomfortable with the tone of acceptance (though I know it is hard-won) of the end of a marriage. Saw the Johnny Cash movie the other day. It was a great movie, great love story, but the premise of ending a marriage and family to get to your true love, no matter how true and good, leaves me a little queasy.

Can we hear more from those who are still able/trying to keep going despite all these (probably very good) reasons for ending a marriage?

With all due respect.

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: *daylia*
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 10:02 AM

Well, here's a hypothesis - do men, in general, find marriage a happier and more satisfying arrangement because, unlike women, traditionally they are not expected / required to do "double duty" for years on end (ie work outside the home to support the family PLUS being solely responsible for all the housework/child-care when they get home, exhausted, at night?)

Things are improving, albeit very slowly, in this regard. There are a lot more men "helping" out with child care and other absolutely necessary household chores (like cooking and cleaning) these days. But even so, the standard "Division of Labour" in the home still favours men, at the expense of women.

If in the future women achieve real economic equality with men, men will doing roughly half the unpaid work in the home that women now do. That is the main prerequisite of women's equality. If men are doing roughly half the unpaid work at home, that me ans that roughly half the primary parents--the parents who stay home when Junior is sick, reduce their job-related travel, or stay at home for years while the children are small--will be men. That is, the sexual division of labor in the home will have me lted away.

Men, on average, still earn more money for doing the same job as women. Therefore, women are more likely to stay in an unhappy marriage, for financial reasons.   Husbands are much more likely to be abusive, violent and adulterous than wives too (according to recent studies, 25% of women and 44% of men have extramarital affairs)... so I guess it's easy to understand why men are, generally speaking, more content in their marriages!

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Deda
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 07:02 PM

My ex would never have ended our marriage, although I can't believe he'd describe himself as "happy" when I, his wife, was seriously depressed year after year. But he was capable of being utterly oblivious to how I was feeling. Once we were at his parents' house and I was suffering from a stomach flu and was obviously sick and feeling wretched. His father told him to take me home, and he said, "Oh, she's having fun." It was so outrageous it actually made me laugh and became a kind of punchline between us -- but it was a sour sort of laughter.

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 07:35 PM

I tend to think that one of the components of having one partner be happy and oblivious while the other is wretched has to with the wretched one being silent and nonforthcoming about what's goine on inside. I think that often it has to do with perceiving unfairness - whether deserved or not - in either the division of chores or perhaps the neglect of that one's family for the furtherance of the other.

I suspect that we have all seen a woman who had not yet learned to be fair and open and honest with her unhappiness. Until she does, her mate may feel that everything is fine and that her moodiness is simply her hormones acting up. And he gets lots of support in that view from his buddies!

When she does learn to express her unhappiness, it may be the beginning of the end. I know from experience that when everything is put on the table, so to speak, things can easily get out of hand and stuff gets said that may not have been the original intent.

But sometimes it works. I was visiting my brother's family. He and his wife came home from work together and he went out to water and feed his horses then he came in and turned on the television.

In the meantime she got dinner during which time she got a couple of loads in the washer and dryer and also got their two little kids bathed and in their nightclothes.

Then they all had dinner after which my brother turned on the tv again while holding the kids on his lap.

My sister in law in the meantime did the dishes then she tucked the kids in their beds, read them a story and turned on the record player so they could drift off to sleep.

In the meantime my brother turned off the television and went to bed to read.

Then my sister in law ran the vacuum cleaner over the living room carpet - they burned wood for heat - and then made tomorrow's lunches.

At 10:00 she sat down with me for a cup of coffee. And then my brother called from the bedroom: Hey! When are you coming to bed?

I couln't believe it. This was my brother- the selfish pig! And believe it or not, they had a good marriage.

Shortly after my speech, they came up with a better division of labor. From then on he bathed and dressed the kids and he was the one who ran the vac. Not perfect but it made them both feel good.

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Dani
Date: 27 Nov 05 - 10:08 PM

Ebbie, I think you may have helped save that relationship!

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 09:01 AM

Hmm... In my first marriage, I made breakfast and packed the lunches for our sons and got them off to school. When I came home from work, more often than not, no dinner was being prepared and I made dinner. I also did all the laundry, because my ex-wife didn't like lugging a heavy laundry basket down stairs to the cellar. I often ended up doing the dishes too, and cleaned the diaper pail when the kids were little. This happened for two reasons. Firstly, I lived on my own for many years and those were things I was used to doing and didn't mind (except for the diaper pail.) Secondly, my ex-wife had serious psychiatric issues that became more extreme rather than improved in marriage.

Now I have a marriage far more beautiful than any I could ever have imagined, let alone hoped for. I still enjoy doing much of the cooking, although my wife is a wonderful cook and is very willing to cook. We share the cooking and both enjoy taking care of each other.
I still help out on some household chores because I love to do things for my wife. In turn, she comes out and helps me rake leaves, weed the flower beds and do general outside work because she loves to be with me and help me. I help her do the decorating projects that she designs but has trouble fabricating, and she is always there with me whenever I perform or visit the sick. We never think of a division of labor, or which work is a woman's or a man's.
If the work needs doing, whoever has the energy or the time does it.
It is our work and we do it together, joyfully.

In my Father's generation there was a clear distinction between the man's work being everything outside and all houshold repairs, and the women's work being cleaning, laundry, cooking and taking care of the kids. In a way, that made sense because most women were in the home and not working (although my Mother worked.) It doesn't make sense any more, but people resist change. Just as my Father would never consider doing the dishes, he never would have allowed my mother to change the oil in the car, or spade the garden in the spring.

Every marriage has to find it's own balance of responsibilities. If it is arrived at through mutual love and concern for each other rather than selfishness, there is no "man's" work or "women's" work. It's all "our" work.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: *daylia*
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 10:02 AM

If the work needs doing, whoever has the energy or the time does it.
It is our work and we do it together, joyfully

Aw Jerry ..... *sniff sniff* .... does your wife know how lucky she is?    :-)   

And Ebbie, thanks for illustrating a very common and potentially destructive situation so well. Way to go taking that bro of yours in hand!

Once we were at his parents' house and I was suffering from a stomach flu and was obviously sick and feeling wretched. His father told him to take me home, and he said, "Oh, she's having fun."

Deda, were your ex and mine cut from the same mould or what? It seemed like there was nothing he enjoyed more than to see me angry or hurt or exhausted or worried. The worse I felt, the more he'd smile. And whenever I tried to talk about it, he'd clam right up, and sit there silently smirking at me.

Maybe he thought that being upset was a woman's natural state or something. OR maybe he just REALLY didn't have the emotional or mental maturity to empathize with anyone or to communicate openly and honestly.   Maybe I could have been more patient, more tolerant, more compassionate .... but I was only 23, and I did the best I could at the time.

And I suppose he was doing his best too, even though that left a lot to be desired from my perspective anyway.

I remember how much it used to hurt, and later just plain infuriate me when he'd walk in the door at night and I'd say "Hey, how was work?"   And he'd say "Okay. How was play?"

I learned just to quit asking after a while, because he loved saying that, no matter how harried and stressed and tired I was. Meanwhile, all day long I'd been looking after 2 babies and 1 toddler, babysitting other kids, teaching piano students, cooking and cleaning, studying/practicing for the exam that eventually earned me a degree in music when the kids were napping.

He didn't consider any of that "work" though --- "work" was only what you did for money, in his book anyway. IN fact, he didn't even consider my piano teaching "work", because I did it at home. According to him, that was all "play" too, even though my hourly wage was higher than his own, and covered at least half the household expenses.

It took me the longest time to even convince him not to sit right beside the piano and watch TV while I was teaching, turning it up louder and louder to drown out my student ....

Anyway, that's all ancient history now, praise be!   Thanks for listening,

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: GUEST,The folk is dead, long live the Hip hop
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 10:11 AM

Laughed at me jibblets so I crammed er wobblers in the breville

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 10:17 AM

I'm the one who's blessed, daylia. Luck had nothing to do with it.. :-) I'm not much of a friend of "luck" I don't like some of the flavors it comes in.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: What did your ex do TO you?
From: *daylia*
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 10:33 AM

Yeah, I know what you mean Jerry. It's just a habitual turn of phrase. "Does your wife know how blessed she ... or rather, the both of you ....are" would have been better.

I don't think there's any such thing as "luck". Nothing is accidental; everything in life happens for a reason, even if that reason is elusive for a long time.