Counseling 13

My e-mails with D have continued as intense as they were before, and then today I have heard nothing from her at all. So I have been watching my Inbox fairly closely, worried that something I wrote last night may have crossed a line I didn't know existed. All of which is only to say that today's session with Counselor didn't have my full attention.

But maybe it should have. Wife announced that Boyfriend 5 (and his father) want to visit us some time in the next couple of months. Say what? Yes, she went on. They don't think it is fair to ask her to fly all the way to the Old Country to visit them if she hasn't ever met them in person. And Wife even agreed that she would feel more comfortable making an international trip to far away if she had earlier met the people she would be visiting.

Counselor asked me how I felt about this, and my first question was, "Are you asking me or telling me?" (She wasn't asking.) So how do I feel about it? Hell, I don't know. What difference does it make how I feel about it? It's a free country and it's not exactly like I can stop them.

But Counselor pushed a little more and I had to say something. I started by saying that -- as Wife knows all too well -- I'm not terribly good about sharing my living space with people I don't know. No problem, they'd come in an RV, so they wouldn't have to sleep on the sofa. (Why don't they just teleport? Surely it would be cheaper. Besides, then they could sleep in the comfort of their own beds at night and still come back the next morning.) Does that address my concerns?

No, of course it doesn't. Since I believe these people are continuing to lie to Wife about basic things, and since I can't figure out their motivations, I have to assume the worst. That includes assuming that they plan to case the house, or at least help themselves to anything small and moveable on the way out. Maybe not, of course, but I don't have enough data to take any possibilities off the table. So I suggested maybe they -- we -- could meet at a restaurant instead of our house.

Wife isn't too thrilled about that. I mean, she doesn't mind meeting at a restaurant first, but she sees their visit as lasting a couple of days and obviously wants to be able to bring them back to the house in the meantime. She also accused me of resisting this idea because I don't like them.

Well no, I don't. But there are people I dislike whom I would nonetheless trust not to steal from me. I didn't emphasize my fear of theft, but I did tell Wife that I thought the basic question of trust had to be settled before we could even talk about liking / disliking; and I pointed out that I don't know them well enough to have reached even that first level yet. (I remained silent about the things I do know which make me actively distrust them. I figured it was not the right time.)

However, Counselor had a good idea here. (Or somebody did ... I don't quite remember who.) I agreed, in a theoretical kind of way, that it would be a good thing if I could get to the point of trusting these people more ... sort of the way it could be useful for Hell to freeze over. Wife also wants me to trust them. So how about we take this goal -- my becoming able to trust these varmints -- as a common goal and brainstorm ways to achieve it? That way we can at least talk about these things without the conversation having to degenerate into Hosea vs. Wife. And who knows? We might come up with something.

I don't hold out a lot of hope for that, but at least we got through the session without any major tantrums or other trouble. And if we can get to a point where Wife is more willing to talk to me about Boyfriend 5 and his family, that might be progress too. I guess that's enough for one session.

Meanwhile I still haven't heard back from D since last night -- this is the longest she has gone without e-mailing me in two weeks -- so I am really beginning to wonder if I put my foot in it badly. I'll let you know once I find out.

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