What Shapes Us?

What Shapes Us?

No descriptions of explicit sex, just the question, 'What shapes us, what makes us what we are'? Is it one event, is it an accumulation of events, is it nature, is it nurture, is it circumstance. I am sure there are many more qualified than me to answer that question. But for me I believe I can definitely pinpoint the event that in hindsight helped shape my own relationship with sex, with voyeurism, and with the happy and one sided open relationship I have with my wife.

To explain, I have to go back to my formative years.

Back in the days before mobile phones, the internet and PlayStation's, us kids used to actually play outdoors for our fun. By today's standards our parents felt it was safe enough to let us roam and so we had so much more freedom. It certainly wasn't unusual for me and my friends to be out of the house by eight in the morning to take off on bike rides and not be expected back until tea time. Living in a large village with lots of adjacent countryside we'd cycle for miles, make dens, swim in local rivers, tie up rope swings, even help out on nearby farms.

One day in the school summer holidays me and some friends were out on our bikes and about 11am and a good few miles from home, I realised I had a slow puncture in my front wheel. That was when we found we didn't have a patch in our inner tube repair tin, I guess we'd previously used the last one and not replaced it. Feeling it would take too long and be unfair for the others to wait while I borrowed a bike to take the innertube home and fix, I had no choice but to let my friends carry on and for me to make my way back home with the pump. Inflating my tyre every 10 mins or so.

Sometime around noon I was freewheeling down a country lane when standing up on the peddles I looked over a hedgerow and saw the roof of a car parked up just inside the entrance to a field. It was not just any car though; it looked like my uncles, that is my dad's older brother. Cars weren't uncommon, but were still a relatively luxury item, and my uncle had a nice one because he owned the local garage.

Now with me and my peers having reached puberty we would talk about sex, share the odd girlie magazine that one or other of my friends had snuck from their older brothers - so I had a good idea why a car would be parked up in a field out of sight. Being inquisitive I wondered what my uncle was up to and more importantly, who with. I stopped, and after resting my bike against the wall I used the hedgerow for cover and crept a little closer. I was hoping to see something that I could have bragging rights over with friends about when I next saw them.

I was right, it was my uncle's car and I could definitely see my uncle in the back seat and he wasn't alone. With a sense of excitement, I could see he was kissing a woman. My uncle was doing the dirty. I should say that my uncle wasn't married but was never short of female company. Then to my shock I recognised the woman my uncle was making out with. He was with my mother, and they were doing more than making out, they were, in what I would now call, 'in flagrante delicto'.

I didn't stay and spy, to be honest I didn't want to, I was scared I would be caught and wanted to get away as fast as I could. I backed up and snuck away and with my head in turmoil I hurriedly made my way home.

About an hour later, maybe a bit longer, I was in our back yard with a washing up bowl of water from our neighbour repairing my punctured innertube when I heard my uncle's car pull up. A minute or so later I heard my mother's footsteps as she walked down the garden path alongside the house. I could hear her laughing. When she turned the corner of the house to enter the back yard, I saw she was with my uncle.

My mother stopped in her tracks when she saw me, clearly startled by my unexpected presence. As far as my mother had been concerned, I was out riding with my friends. Seeing me she first asked if I was okay and then enquired why I was home. I explained that I'd had a puncture. My uncle said 'hi'. My mother told me my uncle had seen her waiting at the bus stop in town and had given her a lift home, he was stopping for a cup of tea.

A half hour later I saw my uncle leave.

Needless to say, after this I was always watching to see if I could catch my mother with my uncle. For a while when I would see my mother leave the house I'd follow, and although I never managed to catch the two of them parked up again, I did see my mother by the bus stop getting into my uncles' car. Of course, being on my bike there was no way I could keep up and although I made my way to the field where I'd first seen them, I never found them there again. Sometimes I would follow my mother only to see her going into the Garage dealership my uncle owned. I never did see a repeat of that first time and gradually I tired of trying to follow them.

While all this was going on, my uncle was a fixture in our house, a regular visitor, going to football with my dad and most Saturday nights my uncle, my dad and my mother would go out together. My uncle was always present for birthdays, special occasions, bonfire night, Halloween, Christmas dinner, New Years, but despite watching closely I never saw anything untoward.

A year later my uncle gave me a Saturday job on the garage forecourt and helping out in the showroom, I even learned how to drive. The last time I saw my mother meeting up with my uncle was just before I left home to join the Navy. I never told anyone and I don't believe my father knew and I have no idea when or if their affair ended. My uncle died several years later.

***

So, how did I feel about my mother and my uncle? To be honest I don't recollect any feelings of outrage or anger towards my uncle, if anything I was more worried that my mother was going to leave my father. I knew my mother and my uncle shouldn't have been doing what they were doing and that's about it. If anything, I was more interested in seeing if I could catch them again, not even sure what I would do if I did, or even if I had, whether I would have watched.

When I look back, I now realise my unexpected presence probably interrupted round two. Of course, this never crossed my mind until years later, neither did the fact that I didn't recall my mother carrying any shopping bags.

I know I did keep an eye out at social gatherings, but I didn't see them sneak off or do anything they shouldn't. The truth is I liked my uncle before I discovered him with my mother, and liked him just as much after, and it wasn't as if I was upset. I can say I didn't see any indication, either at the time or when I was growing up, or in later life when I was an adult that my father ever knew, and I never felt that I wanted to tell him - to be honest I wouldn't have known how. Whatever was going on between my mother and my uncle, my parents always seemed happy, well as happy as anyone else's parents.

What my discovery did, it made me obsessively keen to catch others, so much so that when out and about I was always in hope of stumbling across others doing the dirty. Although I spied on some courting couples and found the local lovers' lane, I never saw anything more than canoodling -- and certainly nothing explicit. However, my voyeuristic inclinations had been set in motion and I believe at some subconscious level my attitude to extra marital sex.