What, no friends?

The kids are about to graduate from their current school and move on to another. Wife has been ranting for most of this school year about how they don't learn anything where they are, so you'd think she would be looking forward to the change.

At least, that's what I thought.

So I was a little surprised this weekend when she began bemoaning the upcoming transition to a new school. But Wife explained that this school asks for a lot of parent involvement, while the next school might not; and -- what is more -- her "entire social life" revolves around her involvement in this school. So when that is taken away, she will be completely isolated and alone.

I'm not really sure what to say to this. "Gosh, dear, that's terrible, we should find some way to keep them here at a school you hate even beyond graduation"? Or maybe "You're right, sweetheart, that's intolerable -- let's find a way to stop them from growing or aging so that they never have to get a day older -- never grow up, never leave home -- and you can live out your life in the PTA, living vicariously through them"?

Somehow neither of these comes out sounding quite right.

Then there's a third option, which runs something like this. "How can your entire social life possibly be bounded by your children's school? If that is true, then that is the problem you need to address, not the fact that it is time for them to graduate. Why exactly is it that you have no other social life? Fine, I understand that you don't hold a job, so you don't have office mates. But we aren't exactly new in town. Maybe you could take a class, or volunteer somewhere, or do any of a hundred other things that other people do in order to meet new people."

But I didn't say that, because I know the answer. Wife doesn't do things like that because she doesn't make friends that way, or at any rate not lasting ones. To put this in perspective, Wife doesn't actually have lasting friends, unless you count one sister and one ex-coworker who is now thousands of miles away and calls once a year.

How come? Heck, I don't know. Maybe it's because Wife despises so many people, and sneers at what they do. ("You can't honestly expect that I would volunteer to go do that! You know the kind of people who do that.") Maybe it's because Wife stakes out extreme positions on every subject under the sun, and is unwilling to concede that she might be wrong about any of them. Maybe it is because she is so blind and deaf to normal unspoken social cues that she offends people without the slightest awareness that she has done so, and then (if the fact is pointed out to her) she insists that she was right and that they are fools for being offended.

Maybe this is why she has no social life. Maybe the restricted scope of her social circle is the direct consequence of things that she has done which have driven people away and tightened the circle ever closer around her. Or maybe I'm all wet.

But I'm not about so suggest any of this to her. She is not especially generous about accepting personal criticisms, even if they are meant only tactically, to help her get what she wants. It would be nice if she figured this all out herself, but after this many years I'm not holdiong my breath.

Excuses, excuses, excuses

I love Violent Acres.

Oh, I don't mean that I think she'd always be fun to hang around with. After a quarter century married to Wife, I think I can recognize a high-maintenance woman when I see one, and I'm positive V is as high-maintenance as they come. Nor do I think she's any kind of saint, out there making the world a better place. She has said she isn't, and I believe it. I certainly don't think she's a safe person to share a highway with.

But in and around all the bitchiness, sometimes she nails a point exactly. And when she does that, it's a thing of beauty.

A few days ago, V posted a diatribe against excuses. Her point, in a nutshell, is that excuses insult the person who offers them. In fact, she elaborates:

Every time you whine about your lack of time or resources
or what the fuck ever, what you are really saying is, "I’m not organized
enough or smart enough or creative enough or ambitious enough or
determined enough to accomplish my goals."

And of course this is a hell of a thing to have to listen to.

The insidious part, which V doesn't spell out in so many words, is that excuses actually sap the strength and resolve of the person who makes them. Make enough excuses for why you didn't do this or that or the other thing -- with the idea in your head that you are just trying to get that other person off your back -- and you start believing you are a helpless victim surrounded by relentless persecutors. And this is a recipe for complete passivity.

I have been struggling with Wife over this point for as long as we have been married, and I am embarrassed to admit how long it took me to see what was going on. At first she would offer excuses when she didn't do something, and I would brush them off or ignore them, as if they were some kind of minor verbal tic. Then I started to get irritated by them, and I would try to deflect them by reassuring her "I'm not attacking you" or "You don't need to be so defensive over this." Sometimes, when the excuses and defensiveness got really extreme, it would actually make me mad -- where I hadn't been mad at the original triviality that she was trying to excuse -- and I would demand "Why are you trying to pick a fight over this?" Her justification was always "Well you get mad at me all the time, so I figure I had better placate you in advance," and it did me no good at all to explain, hundreds of times, that it was the placating itself which enraged me, rather than the (long-forgotten) oversight or omission which had been the ostensible trigger.

Finally, decades after I should have figured this out if I really had any brains, I have started trying to pitch the whole subject a different way. I have started telling her that if she can bring herself to avoid making excuses to me, it will make her feel stronger and more self-confident internally and this could help alleviate her depression. I also hope, to myself at least, that it will mean fewer times a week that I want to rip my own head off with frustration. But hey -- any way I can sell this point so that I actually make the sale is fine by me.

This means, that I have to disagree with V's essay on one small, technical point. V writes that:

As far as I’m concerned, there are only two appropriate
things to say when you’ve failed at a task.
1. I’m sorry. I’ll fix it right away.
2. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to let it happen again.

This list may be complete as far as the workplace is concerned, but logically speaking there is one other response which is at least possible, namely:

3. Yeah, you're right, I didn't do it. But frankly
that's because I don't give a shit about doing it; and if that's a problem for
you, then you can just fuck yourself.

As I say, that may not be a career-enhancing thing to say to your boss. But it is at any rate a logical possibility in the non-work world, and it still avoids the degrading business of having to dream up and offer excuses. You should take it as a sign of how sick I am of hearing Wife's excuses that I would even prefer answer #3 to hearing one more of them. I've told her as much, in fact, but so far I don't seem to have made much of an impression. Maybe some day.

Some how I think there is a connection with this post too, but I'm not sure I can spell it out. Let me know if you can.

Standing up to challenges won't ruin your life

Today I saw the most snivelling, self-centered screed in Dear Abby. I know, I know, I really shouldn't expect anything else there. And many days I don't bother to read it. But Wife was reading the column while I was trying to find the funnies in today's newspaper, so I scanned it over her shoulder. What caught my attention was that so many of the details of this whine could almost -- I say "almost" -- have been written by me, but the author takes them in a direction I can't abide.

You can find the whole piece linked here. The gist is that this guy married a woman who proved to be a major challenge in a hundred different ways; now his son wants to marry the same kind of girl and he wants to warn his son that marrying his wife (the son's mom) was his worst decision ever and ruined his life.

It's not like I can't sympathize with a lot of the specific complaints. He says his wife suffers from "severe anxiety disorders"? Check. "Chronic illnesses"? Check. "Severe mood swings"? God, yes. "Learned helplessness"? I have no idea what he means by this, but I'm feeling generous so let's pretend there's a match there too.

It's not even that I think coping with all this kind of thing is easy: I know it ain't. Most of the time -- on heavy psychological medication -- Wife keeps a pretty even keel these days. But there is a reason her depression is labelled "severe" and "treatment-resistant"; and I remember enough cyclonic tantrums ... when the boys were bawling and I was terrified and I couldn't tell how we were going to make it through the next hour ... that I'm not about to minimize the challenges this man has to face.

But marrying her "ruined his life"? Give me a break. Marrying her may have changed his life; it surely redirected his life. Apparently marrying her meant he couldn't hold the kind of job he wanted to hold, and couldn't make as much money as he wanted to make ... besides the fact that he had to look after his wife when she was dysfunctional or non-functional.

And so what? You didn't get the life you expected, the life you had talked yourself into thinking you had coming for you. That expensive "Ph.D. from a top business school" didn't end up meaning that you got to live a life full of "international travel" and "high ambitions" and hot-and-cold running secretaries to flatter your poor little ego and tell you how great you are and how much everybody else envies you. Big fuckin' deal. Nobody gets what they expect. Nobody gets what they think they "deserve" in life. Plenty of people get a lot worse than they think they deserve, because -- bad news dude! -- life is just like that. A few people get way better than they deserve, or even than they think they deserve. Some of us just get surprised by how much more imagination life has than we do, so that we get -- daily -- things we could never have conceived, much less expected. Some of these will be challenges, even really tough ones. Others will be graces we could never have earned that just drop in our laps to brighten an otherwise crummy day. And sometimes it is the very challenges themselves that turn out to be the most enduring graces.

The thing is that at the end of the day, we aren't graded on how much money we make. If you have enough money to keep your family fed and clothed and out of the rain, you're there. Medical care and education should come next. Everything else after that is just toys. I admit toys can be a nice thing to have, if you can afford them. But whining that your life has been "ruined" because you were deprived of a toy is an adolescent trick. Nobody who says that kind of thing deserves to be called a grown-up.

Nor are we graded on how easy our lives are. Lives worth the time and effort of living them frequently aren't easy at all. And easy lives -- lives in which you get what you want -- aren't the key to happiness. I know a man who for the last twenty years has been able to do pretty much whatever he wanted. Sounds like he should be happy, right? Not a bit of it. He is chronically discontent, and a day does not go by that he isn't second-guessing some decision he made half a century before. Excuse me, but isn't this a complete waste? What's done is done -- how about you focus on doing something today that you will actually enjoy, that will make you a happy man? But no. His todays are all filled, like Willy Loman's, fretting over what will make him happy later ... some day ....

None of us gets to choose what external conditions are thrown at us. Shit happens, and we're expected to cope. It may be unfair, but those are the rules of life on earth -- when we are born we get signed up for the game, and that's how this game is played. Tough luck, bubbeleh. What we can choose is how we deal with it. I don't mean something stupid and obvious, like the fact that you could have divorced this woman if it was that stinkin' bad -- although that part is true enough. I don't even mean that you could have dragged her kicking and screaming into therapy or medical treatment -- although that's what Dear Abby tells you (a little too nicely to suit me, but she's got an editor to satisfy). What I mean is that even in the worst of situations there are options, and you could open your eyes to them instead of sulking over the few that have been closed off. You could also try growing up a little, by which I mean getting over this childish notion that everything has to turn out just the way you day-dreamed it or else you'll hold your breath until your face turns blue. Best of all would be if you could bring yourself to see that, at the end of the day, we get graded on how well we bore up under the assignments we were given -- how well we held the posts that we were stationed at -- and not on how much money we made or how many countries we visited.

Why did you marry this woman in the first place? Didn't you love her? And if so, then how exactly could that change? Oh, I know you didn't know how much trouble she was going to be. When I married Wife, I didn't know that she was going to have so many affairs, nor that she was going to be sick so much of the time, nor yet that her psychological illnesses would prove scarier and more debilitating than her physical ones. I knew none of that. But I knew that I loved her. And when I discovered all the rest, it was painful and difficult and challenging, but it never made me stop loving her. How could it? Love doesn't work that way. When you first fall in love with somebody, sure, it is because there are these things about them that attract you. If you knew the uglier facts at that point, you probably would never take the first step. But once you have entangled your life with somebody else's, you no longer love her merely because of this or that fact about her. At that point, you love her because she is HER. Don't you? I mean, stop and think for a minute: if your son, whom you are now trying to warn away from his girlfriend, ever became a bank robber -- would you stop loving him? Absolutely not! You might grieve over his choice of a life of crime, but you would still love him unconditionally. Why is it any different when the wife you married -- because you loved her -- becomes a psychological basket case with "anxiety disorders" and "mood swings" and the rest of it? Isn't that the same kind of thing? And doesn't that mean that, deep down inside, you still love this woman? You claim to put on a pretty good act, and I suggest that you couldn't make your act that convincing if it weren't also at least partly true.

And of course in that case, you have no business claiming that your life has been "ruined" if you are spending it with the woman you love. Harder than you expected? Absolutely. Mine too, buddy, and I feel your pain. Agonizingly difficult some days? You bet. I'm right there with you. But "ruined"? Impossible. Hard times come to everybody. Standing up and facing them like a man doesn't ruin your life -- it makes your life.

As for your son, it is at least possible that you underestimate him. Should he make his decision about marriage with his eyes open? Well sure, I guess it's always good to have all the facts before you make a big decision. But just because you think you have been building this careful facade around your marriage all these years doen't mean you have actually fooled him. Children can be easily misled about facts, about data; but at the same time they can be profoundly insightful about emotions and character. I bet you most kids know things about their parents that the parents themselves have never understood about themselves. So don't assume that your son's feelings for his girlfriend are based purely on delusion. It is possible that he really does love her. It is also possible that he already knows everything he needs to know about his mother's problems and instabilities and loves her too, in spite of it all.

"Simple physical pleasure"

I got an e-mail from Boyfriend 4 yesterday that included a line I really don't know how to answer. I had posted to him my (genuine) opinion that his sexual involvement with Wife was only one of many features on the landscape of our collective interactions, and probably not the most prominent feature at that. But I think he misunderstood what I was saying, because in his reply he stated:

I never thought anything different. I would be *very*
suprised that someone as well-read as you would ascribe sex as anything more than
the simple physical pleasure it is... like breathing deeply, or enjoying a good
meal, or a soak in a hot tub. Didn't the Greeks do extensive work on
this?

Hmmm, well. Let's leave the Greeks out of it for the moment, although it would be intriguing to wonder what kind of "extensive work" this could be. (I can already see the line forming of volunteers to help with the research.) But do I send him an answer, and if so what do I say?

I mean, the fact is that sex is not a purely physical pleasure! It's a physical activity, right enough. But the pleasure is so much bigger than that. The pleasure is (at least 50%) a profoundly spiritual pleasure! It reaches right down into your soul, it touches you in your inmost being. That is why it is so important to everybody.

I sound crazy saying this, but look at how people behave. Do people feel jealousy and guilt over hot tubs? Do they make lifelong commitments to a back-scratcher? Do they weep over lost meals? Do they sit for hours staring into space pining over a chocolate truffle that won't be back in town till next week?

Of course not. But we take these things for granted when we are talking about sex. Not that every single person feels all this all the time over every single sexual encounter -- to be sure. (And admittedly Wife can feel guilt over watching an hour of TV, but I'm talking about non-neurotic feelings for the moment.) But are these reactions part of the landscape? Do they come with the territory? Absolutely. Are we the least bit surprised when we hear of sex sparking insane levels of adoration, devotion, commitment, possessiveness, jealousy, envy, guilt, deception, rage ... take your pick? Not at all.

It's hard to find any other pleasures that have this kind of a grip on us, for good and for ill. Maybe the pleasure of alcohol is at least a pale imitation, and certainly that too -- like fire -- can destroy us if we use it wrong. But if sex and drink can touch us that deeply, can move us to such divine madness or crush us so desperately, then I think it is fatuous to call them "simple physical pleasures."

But I don't know if I should try to explain this all to Boyfriend 4.

Am I inconsistent?

Last night Wife was on the phone with Boyfriend 4, and I guess when she hung up I must have sounded a little grumpy. She asked, "What's the problem? First you tell me I can sleep with whomever I want, and then you are jealous over just a phone call? With somebody that you know is only a Platonic friend at this point? You're being totally inconsistent!"

Am I inconsistent? Could be. If inconsistency is good enough for Emerson and Whitman, I guess it's good enough for me. But I think there are at least three answers to this question that Wife could have figured out on her own without asking me.

First, I never exactly said "Sleep with anybody you want." Or if I did use those words, it was only out of fatigue and surrender. What I said was that there is no way for me to stop her, and that I figured this out a long time ago. It's a free country and Wife is a grown-up. We don't live in one of those benighted places where I could keep her locked in a harem all day. So in that sense, yes she is free to do exactly as she pleases. I never promised to like it.

Second, I do not "know" that Boyfriend 4 is "only a Platonic friend" at this point. How would I know that? Because Wife says so? Oh please. Sorry babe, but this is one topic where you exhausted all your credibility years ago. Maybe it's true and maybe it ain't, but your say-so won't settle it. I might as well ask a Magic 8-Ball.

Third, there are other kinds of infidelity besides sex. Wife has already told me plainly that she finds it easier to be around Boyfriend 4 than to be around me, because they have more in common and she finds his company more relaxing. (I should add that Boyfriend 4 is an unemployed alcoholic, so I'm not sure I like the sound of the "more in common" part.) I have deduced from other things she's said that some time a couple years ago, in the first fine flush of their romance, she offered to run away with him for good. I don't think there is much chance of that today; but in light of all that, can she honestly be surprised if a phone call from him grates on me a little bit?

That having been said, I will concede that Boyfriend 4 is pleasant enough when he's not in his cups, and at least he and I have found things to talk about besides Wife. So if she has to have a boyfriend on the side, I guess I prefer Boyfriend 4 to some of the others she's chosen over the years. And as much as I'd like to draw myself up in a self-righteous rage, I can't really be mad at him for their affair. Yes, it takes two to tango; but I've heard the story of how this dance started, and he wasn't the one to cue the orchestra.

I don't know, maybe I am inconsistent.