Counseling 23 and 24

During our session with Counselor two weeks ago, we spent the time deconstructing an argument from the previous night over a big professional photo which Wife had bought of the family. This photo was and is important to Wife; I didn't want it in the house. Counselor asked me to talk about why I felt so strongly about it (and whether I thought there was room to negotiate with Wife on the subject) ... and I was really too embarrassed by even discussing the subject to get very far (much the same way that I am embarrassed by the photo in the first place). One highlight: I commented that I wasn't even that interested in negotiating the point because I took it for granted that I would lose and Wife would get her way. Wife said that makes no sense, because the night before I was adamant about not wanting the photo hanging in the house. I said, "That's right. I absolutely don't want it. I also take it for granted that I won't get what I want on this point." This baffled Wife; because, in her view of things, when I say "I want X" that means "X has been decided conclusively." (Needless to say we have different memories about how past arguments have turned out.) Anyway, so this was just incomprehensible to Wife and Counselor tried to discuss it for a bit.


Then last week, Counselor highlighted another circular dynamic between us: something happens --> Wife feels controlled --> she defends herself --> I feel like she is blaming me for controlling her --> I defend myself --> Wife feels even more controlled --> ... and so on.

And for what must be the hundredth time, he urged us to look at our interaction as if each of us were watching a (different) movie: so what shows up on Wife's movie screen really is real for her (because it is part of her movie) regardless of whether it shows up in my movie at all, or how. And vice versa. He urged us to name how we are feeling without connecting it to a broader story, so that (for example) I might say, "I'm really feeling blamed right now" if I am. And he asked if this seemed valuable.

I had to say no, I couldn't see the point. Oh sure, theoretically it makes loads of sense. But practically speaking I have a very strong expectation that if I tell Wife "I'm feeling blamed right now" her answer will be "No, I'm just defending myself against you because you are being so controlling and dominating." (In other words, "Yes, that's right, I'm blaming you.") And where is the profit in that?

Besides, I added, it is ironic that we are even talking about my hyper-controlling Wife about the laundry or whatever, since I have basically disconnected emotionally from all of that stuff. I no longer ask her about any of that but once in a blue moon. I have shut down caring about it. Let her do whatever she wants, let it be however it will be; I'm not going there. And I haven't been, for a long time now. True to form, Wife was able to fish out some really inflammatory things I had said in the last couple of weeks. And when she quoted them, yes I remembered saying them. But I also remembered that each of them had reference to a very specific context, in which alone it made sense. Deprived of context, so that this or that remark is no longer a comment on this specific thing but just a free-floating insult? Meaningless. I didn't bother saying any of this in Counselor's office, though, because he has made it clear long since that clearing one's name against one or another accusation is not the point of counseling. (I don't mean that he is insensitive. But he points out rightly that the cycle of incrimination and self-justification can go on for years -- has, in fact -- without getting anywhere. So let's not waste time on that in his office.)

So by the end of the session I have to admit I felt pretty apathetic and hopeless.

When I described this session to D afterwards, I added that I know this hopelessness is all wrong. Surely, whatever else it is or means, one promise of Easter (or of the Spring Equinox, if you prefer) is that we can always hope. So, I told her, my mind knows better and in a while I'll shake it off. I can't stay feeling this way for long, just because I never do. Somebody tells a joke or I get another cup of coffee, and it passes.

And it did.

The calm after the storm

D felt much better today. All the anger and hurt from yesterday had dissipated, and what was left was a reflective and loving calm. I shouldn't be surprised, because it only makes sense that this is going to go in cycles, at any rate as long as the whole divorce process is under way. Probably longer.

And cycles were on her mind. After a long day of work, she wrote me in part: "I suppose what I am [mulling] is just the sheer creative energy it takes to love well. If love is creative, it isn't a continuous state, .... All creative energy has winters and summers, planting and harvesting, with time in between for growth. I feel guilty at times for my jealous feelings, my possessiveness, even though every part of my intellect knows that there is no reason for either. The literal coming and going which is unavoidably our lot reminds me of Martin Buber, who once said, "love is like a light breath, at times like a wrestling match." (You have I and Thou on your bookshelf in the study; you might want to re-read it.) [I suppose I should let her know I haven't read it even once. sigh.] He used the word 'meeting' to identify true encounter, and the word has a lovely sense of movement, a dance, advancing and receding. This morning, I spent hours on my work, only to turn and meet you again this afternoon [in e-mail]. Both can be wonderful; certainly both are necessary."

And so ends another day ....

"More difficult in any way you want to name"

Recently a reader e-mailed me privately to ask, "Am I the only one of your readers who believes D when she says that you have nothing to do with the break up of her marriage? I'm in a very similar situation myself ..., and I can say with both honesty and accuracy that my relationship with a, or indeed any, man other than my husband in no way contributed to the demise of my marriage. I'd be willing to bet that leaving her husband was something that D had considered seriously more than once, but the leaving seemed just as unappealing as staying, and very certainly more difficult in any way you want to name. I say, give her credit for being an adult - a very astute and self aware adult - and accept what she says, not just as the truth as she sees it, but the truth."

For myself, I have to agree that I am coming to a similar conclusion. It is true that some months ago, when D first talked about divorce, I couldn't help but be struck by the timing. (It was right after our first date.) And so I assumed that somehow her divorce was all about me. Self-centered little prat, ain't I?

But I have come to realize that this makes no sense. D has been talking to me lately about the disintegration of the life she knew, and she has made it abundantly clear that she does not imagine I am somehow going to magically fix everything. She takes it for granted that I have no plans to leave Wife, and that we will continue to live in different states for the forseeable future. She recognizes that I have not promised her anything to the contrary, and that (if anything) I am on the whole unhappy about and uncomfortable with her impending divorce. But it's not about me, so my opinions (rightly) count for bupkis. For good or ill, it is about D and her husband and their thirty years together. Nothing else.

But to say it's not about me is not to say it is simple or easy. My correspondent is right about that. D has been going through an absolute hell of a time the last ... well I guess it has been two weeks since my last post. She saw her husband for Easter, wrote me glowingly about the vigil and the service, and then got into a bitter fight with her husband over some comment he made about the Easter litany. I don't know the details, obviously; I wasn't there. But it sounded like the kind of fight I have with Wife sometimes, that just materializes out of nowhere. One minute you are discussing something inconsequential, making idle chit-chat over morning coffee; the next minute somebody says something wrong or ill-considered, and there are tears and shouts and recriminations and nobody quite knows how you got there. D told me that she replayed the conversation and the fight over and over in her mind the rest of Easter Sunday, as she drove all the way back to the city where she works during the week. And the more she chewed it over, the worse she felt.

This story, by the way, constitutes proof (if proof were needed) that D is telling the literal truth when she says the divorce is not about me. Fights like that don't really materialize out of nowhere. They can't. As in physics, nothing comes of nothing. Fights like that can only appear and intensify that fast if they follow well-trodden pathways, cuing scripts that have been rehearsed between the same two people for years, ripping the scabs off of very old hurts. Whatever the history between D and her husband -- and I am coming to realize that I know next to nothing about it -- it long predates anything to do with me, or with our affair.

When I spoke with her on the phone yesterday, D was in a bad state. She was mad at me for ... well, nothing, really, when you come right down to it. And after we had talked for an hour she no longer sounded mad. But she still had this fight with her husband on her mind; then work has been crazy for a month or more, and she is heading into a month of even more intense craziness; and everything is falling apart. Look at it from where I stand, Hosea, she implored me. My marriage of thirty years is ending -- thirty years of high hopes and ideals and promises. My children are both away at university, but honestly they are both pretty conflicted about this. I am looking at having to do things for myself that I have never done in my entire life. Hosea, I've never had to do my own financial planning. I don't even know how to do my own taxes -- I've never done them! My work is run by madmen, and I have no idea if I will even have a job by the fall. I spend twelve hours a day at work, and then I come back to my apartment where I am alone! And I'm looking at being alone for decades to come, very likely for the rest of my life, ... with only brief visits with you here and there when you can get away. And meanwhile you go home to your wife -- here her voice caught -- and your children and you can be domestic with them, and .... Do you know how hard it is for me to talk to Wife every day and listen to her complain about you, and all I want to do is scream at her "You're living with the man I love and I don't even know when I'm going to see him again, and you have the gall to complain about it?" And then at the end of the day you can go home and ... Hosea, where is my home? This little apartment I'm renting to be near my work? Or the house that I own with my husband, where he lives and I don't? Or where, exactly? I know that I've chosen the situation myself, and I know that you've never promised me anything, and I don't even think you owe me anything, ... and I know that the only way out is through. But Hosea, some days it is so hard.

Some days it is so hard. Got that. And lately she has been going through a lot of those days.

I wish there were something I could do. I hate for her to suffer like this. When I hear it, I feel like a jerk for not abandoning everything to catch the next plane out to where she is. But I know it's crazy to think like that. And I know neither of us is really planning on crazy. And so I know this means she is going to go through a lot more pain before this is all through.