As I mentioned in my post earlier this morning ... and as anybody could tell by a casual glance at the system dates on the page here ... it has been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. Partly it's because I have been busy at work; partly it's because I have been tired in the evenings. (One day I even took my lunch hour to go swimming, which would make the first time I've exercised since ... when exactly? A while ago, at any rate.)
But I have also been corresponding with Wife's friend D. This has given me another venue in which to discuss how things are going with Wife and me, and it may be part of why I haven't felt I could also take the time to blog.
Not that corresponding with D is anything like blogging. For one thing, blogging is a whole lot easier. The worst I got after neglecting this site for a week and a half was a sweet e-mail asking if everything was all right; if I let one of D's e-mails go too long without an answer, she broods that I have had second thoughts about discussing personal topics with her. She is also very quick to let me know when she sees things differently that I do. I mean, she is nice about it -- at one point she wrote "I would like your views...however contrary to mine. I care deeply for you, and have no desire to win any argument. Rather, I'd like to share the complexity of the situation with you." But that doesn't mean she is the least bit shy about telling me when she thinks I have fallen short in precisely the areas I tell her matter most to me. In principle this is a good thing -- that someone is willing to holler "Bullshit!" when I most need to hear it. I only wish that it didn't happen so often merely because she misunderstood what I was trying to say.
What is this thing with me and overly-intellectual Type A women, anyway?
The point of this long dreary story, however, is not just to gripe about D. Rather, she recently suggested to me a whole new way of looking at Wife's relationship with Boyfriend 5, one that honestly had never occurred to me before. I alluded to this a little the last time I wrote about my correspondence with D. But in her most recent e-mail she made the same point a lot more clearly:
[When I talk to Wife she tells me] this is a real relationship, not just an email relationship (translate-a fantasy). I understand from [Wife] that you have challenged her relationship with [Boyfriend 5] on just such grounds, and I might question the distinction anyway. As I've noted in [a previous letter], I think the storyline for [Boyfriend 5] is far more meaningful and significant than her real life, which is full of pain, sickness, loneliness, and shadowed by meaninglessness and death. Reality, [Hosea]? Your real life is surely far more agreeable and promising than hers. It's very powerful to find a companion who understands suffering and isolation without comfort or love while being trapped by circumstances beyond his control (and you of course realize that the life of a hunted terrorist is as trapped as any life you can imagine).
In other words, if I understand D correctly, it really doesn't matter whether the stories that Boyfriend 5 spins for Wife are true or not ... but it is totally understandable that she would believe them anyway, and want to live in the world that those stories paint for her; because in that world she loves someone who sees no faults in her, who loves her perfectly, and who leads a dangerous and exciting life fighting for freedom against terrible odds. What can her mundane life, here in the suburbs, where she suffers from chronic pain and terminal illnesses and where her big accomplishments are to help in the classroom or do the laundry -- I say, what can this life possibly offer her to compete with the glamor and romance and meaningfulness of that other life?
On D's understanding, it seems that the fact that this meaningful life is a complete fantasy -- is, in fact, provably a lie -- is beside the point.
I'm not quite sure what to do with this point of view. It is so important to me to know whether something is true that this idea doesn't fit very well into the existing shelves in my mind. Maybe that means it's crazy, or maybe that means it is time for me to do a little remodeling in there ... to put up some new shelves. I'm still puzzling over this.
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4 comments:
I can relate to this. I enjoy my fantasy life much more than my real one for many reasons.
But I think it is important to make the distinction. I am aware and in fact constantly remind myself that it *is* a fantasy, that even if I chose that life over my current one (which in essence I can't because my fantasy man is not available for any real life) it would certainly not match the fantasy and would be as troubled (albeit in different ways) as my real life.
Does that mean fantasy can't work for someone else? Well if it is enhancing someone's life instead of taking away from it, I think perhaps. Only you and Wife can decide that.
For my part my fantasy life does enhance my real one, merely because it helps me cope with it. Usually it does anyway.
Kyra, I think anybody can use fantasy the way you describe. But for me the critical part has always been remembering that it is a fantasy. My correspondence with D is making me rethink this; and at this point I am no longer so sure it is a problem if Wife fails to make that distinction, ... so long as the fantasy stays at an Internet level. If she starts making plans in the real world, then I'll start to worry again. But as long as she does no harm, I think D's point is that it may be better to let her believe the fantasy. And D might be right.
I've re-read D's comments several times and still find them confusing. But my take on it is I think the same as yours, "it really doesn't matter whether the stories that Boyfriend 5 spins for Wife are true or not."
This seems intrinsically wrong to me. Of course truth matters, and reasoning which seems to prove otherwise is therefore invalid.
But maybe all she's really saying, despite some words to the contrary, is that this fantasy life is more appealing than reality. Sure. But to call it meaningful is a stretch, and I think warps the truth of "man's search for meaning". Frankl would not be amused.
Apollo, I have found a number of D's comments confusing and more than confusing. This week has been especially unsettling, as my correspondence with D seems to have taken on a life of its own. I'll be posting more about this in a while.
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