I fell head over heels for a dark-haired, broodingly handsome man. The sex was explosive. 25 years later we're still together... and I've realised how truly stupid I was to marry him... but it's not why you think
I blame Emily Brontë. Reading Wuthering Heights as an idealistic 16-year-old set me on a path to find my own real-life Heathcliff – and in doing so, ruined my life.
As director Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of the darkly romantic classic hits the screens, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as doomed lovers Cathy and Heathcliff, it’s a painful reminder of the bad relationship decisions I made and my own bloodless marriage.
I won that damned book as a GCSE prize at school and as soon as I opened it and was literarily love-bombed by fiery Heathcliff – with his dark looks, wild moods and untameable passion – I was lost.
‘That’s what I want,’ I thought. And so, through my university days and early 20s, in my foolish quest for my own bad boy, I proceeded to turn down a series of kind, gentle, lovely young men, all of them with good prospects, who could have made me happy in the long term.
I kick myself for my naivety. As one pasty-faced hopeful at uni loomed towards me for a goodnight kiss, I remember feeling appalled at how anyone could settle for romance without fireworks.
We remained friends because – oh, the irony – we got on so well. In the end he married someone else, who I suspect also didn’t feel any fireworks but did get a buzz from his graduate job at a top management consultancy firm and his large Fulham apartment. Their little family eventually decamped to Dorset and appears to be very happy.
Meanwhile, I fell head over heels for – yes – a dark-haired, broodingly handsome man... with an explosive temper, no career prospects and, initially at least, lots of passion. Surprise, surprise, he has not made me happy in the long-term at all.
We met at a party and, like Heathcliff, he overwhelmed me with animal attraction. He worked in the construction industry, and the sex was explosive at the beginning. I felt delirious with desire for him.
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as the troubled lovers Cathy and Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell's new film adaptation
Meanwhile, I fell head over heels for – yes – a dark-haired, broodingly handsome man... with an explosive temper, no career prospects and, initially at least, lots of passion
Author Emily created her magnificent masterpiece completely out of her imagination and her insular life at Haworth. She wouldn’t have chosen Heathcliff in real life either, had she had the opportunity – though of course she died a spinster, aged 30, just one year after Wuthering Heights was published in 1847.
Horrible Heathcliff shocked readers and critics at the time and sister Charlotte even attempted to tone down the tale in the second edition. But too late. Almost 180 years later, Wuthering Heights remains one of the most important books in the English literary canon. And the new movie – even with its mixed reviews – is predicted to be a box office smash.
Now in my early 50s, I can look back with a better understanding and realise, ‘moody, wild and handsome’, are not attributes anyone should put on their wish list for a perfect partner.
Searching for a grand passion is a legitimate aim, but a man without the other bits – the kindness, generosity, even temper – will never satisfy you. Indeed, I was left with none of the good and only the bad – an unkind man who does what he wants and shouts a lot.
Unlike the whey-faced boys, my husband has never had any real ambition. He never got promoted or earned much.
We’ve split up a few times and I know my friends and family think I would be better off without him, but still I stay, largely for our three children and also because I feel so cross with myself and ground down.
With hindsight, it’s not as though the clues weren’t there.
In the book, Cathy describes Heathcliff as ‘an unreclaimed creature’ and tells smitten Isabella Linton: ‘I’d as soon put that little canary into the park on a winter’s day, as recommend you to bestow your heart on him! Pray, don’t imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He’s not a rough diamond – a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic; he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man... and he’d crush you like a sparrow’s egg.’
Poor foolish young me should have read that paragraph more closely, because I ignored so many red flags you could have made bunting out of them.
I also came to the terrible realisation, I was never Cathy to my Heathcliff… I was Isabella, who married him despite all the warnings and subsequently lived a life of misery.
Admittedly, my husband has never hanged my dog (and never would – unlike Heathcliff, of course, who hangs Isabella’s with a handkerchief). He mostly just ignores me.
And that, 25 years later, is the cruellest thing of all.
While he’s a good dad to our children, now in their late teens, he hardly shows any emotion to me, unless pushed. And living with someone who never says they love you, hugs or kisses you, who barely touches you, is truly a tragedy.
He’s not intentionally nasty; I simply believe he doesn’t think about me at all.
If I died before him, there’s no chance he’d wail with tormented grief, dig up my grave or sit at the window hoping for midnight visits – my absence would probably be an inconvenience since there’d be no one to vacuum the house.
Back in my youth, I dismissed the series of Edgar Linton types who asked me out as being too drippy. I wanted thunderclaps and drama, not placid kindness and mild manners. And so, I strode off on a path through those wild, windy moors rather than choosing one through pleasant, mellow meadows.
My life’s regret is taking that wrong romantic road.
If I had my time again, I’d be a better judge of character. Heathcliff should have stayed on the page, where he could do no harm, and I should have picked one of those sweet boys who would have made my life story a joyful and peaceful one.
In fact, 16-year-old me should have read Jane Austen instead.
Clara Peters is a pseudonym. All names and identifying details have been changed.
