Discovery

Dearest Hosea,

My husband showed up on my doorstep this morning, with a new computer monitor and keyboard. [Remember that D lives is another town from her husband, because it is close to her work. Her husband does all of her IT work for her because it frankly baffles D.] You and I may think surprises are problematic; my husband seems not to suffer from the same dislike. He went through my files with a fine tooth comb; he discovered your photos, and a couple of passionate letters; one about Cavafy and one discussing Martha Nussbaum. Both must have been written when I reverted to writing [my e-mails as] Word documents [and then copying them into mail] after something went wrong on the internet account. They were fairly well hidden, but he opened them anyway. He was here for nine hours; you can well imagine everything he found. He discovered my secret e-mail account and tried to delete it, but did not; I protested too much. He did not get into the account; he needed the password, and I refused to give it to him. However, there is no question in my mind that he knows about our relationship. Hosea, it is impossible to think he does not know we are lovers.

At the end of the day, I have a new computer set-up, including a new printer (paid for on my card; the old one would not plug into my little computer). Everything is sorted and filed and organized; I'm left nerveless and not knowing what to do or think. He never said a word, never paused, never commented on any of it, including your pictures or my letters that began "Dearest, beloved Hosea...". I don't know what to think. Does he not care as long as the status quo is maintained? Does he plan to use this information in some way? Is he stunned and does he need time to process it? I have no idea. Our time together was relaxed, outside the few times he was frustrated with my technical incompetence, which is understandable and usually deserved. Hosea, I don't know. I just don't know. But our affair is no longer secret, that much I comprehend. What that means for the future, for us, I have no idea. Like yourself, I find it difficult to predict the future. But I am filled with apprehension and I'm not sure what I would say if confronted. Ideas are welcome.

Let's take a collective breath, and remind ourselves that this was inevitable. We need to think about what steps we should take to maintain our freedom, and yet still give me the opportunity to love you when the fall-out becomes difficult. What will he tell the children? My adult daughter warned me that my love for you could harm innocent people needlessly; I know that is true, but today's situation was out of my control. There is a message in here somewhere....

My dearest darling, I wish you were here to hold me and tell me that you love me. Thank you for saying the same so often in your last letter; I couldn't help but feel your warm arms around me and see your tender smile. Whatever the future brings, I have no regrets loving you; I only wish I could be with you more often. Somewhat like the hero in Babylon 5, I think we have twenty years together. And ever after, one of us will watch the sun come up every day, thinking of our love ....

I love you, now and forever,
D

Crazy plans

While the conversation yesterday morning had a lot to say about the state of our marriage, we talked about some other things too. One piece of news is that Boyfriend 4 is going to get married.

Apparently he met this woman on the Internet. She and her two daughters live 2000 miles or so from where Boyfriend 4 lives right now. She had been living with another guy (not the father of her girls) until he picked up and left all unannounced; so Boyfriend 4 flew out to help her with some of the daily domestic challenges for a week (much as he did for us a few years ago), fell in love and decided to marry her. He has flown back home to pack up his stuff. A month from now she will fly out to see him, they will load up a van, they'll stop here to visit for a few hours on their way out of state, and off they'll go. Their plan, apparently, is to take the girls out of school by offering to home school them instead, and then drive around the country in an RV.

Wife thinks this is crazy, and can find a dozen major flaws in the plan without breaking a sweat. Of course it is crazy. There's no doubt. It shows absolutely no care for the future, no prudence or foresight. Only, ... how much future does Boyfriend 4 really have, at this point? 18-24 months? How much does it matter if he decides to do something crazy on a lark? How long is he really going to have to deal with the consequences?

It may be a little crazier for his blushing bride-to-be, who runs the risk that as soon as she marries him she'll have to start nursing his decline. But for Boyfriend 4 himself, the prospect of leaving the stage on the crest of a new adventure may be just the thing.
____________________

Speaking of crazy plans, Wife is thinking about flying out to see Friend.

Or maybe not. Friend may be out of town on business. But at least she'll see one of Friend's housemates ... whose rich husband will be buying her ticket but will also be out of town on business ... or something like that. (I haven't bothered to ask why, if they are rich, they live with multiple housemates. Let it pass.) She tells me that they said they would pay for her ticket and all her expenses for a week, but she'd be back by the weekend. What did I think?

Well of course I think it is deranged. Surely she knew that before she even asked, so I didn't bother to say it. So here is what I told her:

1. It's a free country and you are an adult, so I can't stop you and won't try. All I will insist on at the most basic level is that if you end up incurring any expenses unexpectedly, you pay for them out of your money and don't expect me to contribute. That sounds callous and shallow, I know, but I really can't stop her so all there is not a lot of point in digging deeper. Call regularly and keep in touch with us so we know you are OK.
2. Watch yourself. Of course that is always good advice to anybody who travels. There are always Bad Guys who prey on confused tourists. But all the more so in this case, watch carefully for anything that seems wrong, because these people have told you so many stories that don't add up. I don't want to get a phone call from you saying, "The good news is that my flight arrived OK and I met up with my friends right away. The bad news is that they want a zillion dollars ransom money in small unmarked bills in a nearby parking lot by midnight tonight."
3. If you get a chance, snap a photo of some of these people on your phone. It would be great to know if they really exist. Does Friend, for example, really have any of the visible burns he has talked about before? For that matter, will you even see any mail addressed to Friend anywhere in the house? This part of the trip could be very educational.

Or not. She nodded at everything I said, but I have no idea what will really happen. My guess, based on things that have happened before, is that they will call her tomorrow morning and cancel the whole trip. But I guess we'll see.

I need a mission statement

D lent me a copy of Judth Wallerstein's What About the Kids? I have started reading it, and one topic she discusses is how much to tell children about why you are divorcing. Of course, she points out that different messages are suitable for different ages; but she urges being simple and truthful within certain basic limits. ("Mommy has been banging the Green Bay Packers" is probably out of line; "Mommy is in love with somebody else" is OK.)

So naturally I started trying to figure out what I will say, and I realize it is fairly nebulous. I mean, I can give an answer that takes twenty-five years to say; and in a pinch I could probably boil it down to twenty-five minutes. But any really simple reason is going to suffer from the drawback that one could honestly say, "That's problem [whichever one I pick] has been there unchanged for years. Why now?" And I don't really want to answer "Why now?" by saying, "Well, Mommy got a bit of an inheritance from her Aunt, which will start the ball rolling for her financially; and real estate is in the toilet so the house is worth bupkes and I might be able to hang onto it in a pinch instead of having to sell it." Somehow I would like to sound a little better than that.

So yesterday I realized what I need. I need a mission statement.

Ironically, Wife may have been helping me towards one this morning. We sat down and started talking, ... and we talked for a good three or four hours: nothing special by the standards of the old days (in particular, pre-children) but probably the equivalent of three or four months' worth of communication right now. The conversation meandered all over the place. But one of the threads in it started when Wife said she was still "working hard" at trying to "save our marriage" even though she feels like it is "hanging by a thread." The "working hard" seems to refer to some therapeutic work that she has started with Counselor in my absence. (He proposed some exercises in CBT.) But the "save our marriage" part interested me, and I asked her what that would look like. What does she think that a good marriage would look like?

Her first answer was predictable: she wants more respect from me. This is her single most common answer to that question. But I said that's a purely abstract answer, and it's not something that can be handed to anybody on a plate. What would it take to get there?

The first thing she articulated was common decision-making. I said we already have that; indeed, dividing our finances makes it more likely that we will consult each other on big decisions rather than doing something unilaterally; because without the other partner's buy-in, a unilateral partner risks having to pay for whatever-it-is all alone.

The conversation meandered for a while, but the second thing she articulated was sex and physical affection. Here I had to be a little blunt. She hs been very cruel over the years about not enjoying sex with me, and I explained that I have learned it's a no-go. She doesn't really want it, or at any rate not from me. In fact, I really wonder if maybe she can only enjoy sex with new people, and I said as much. In any event, I said that I assumed that the prospect of sex between us was a non-starter. (I avoided telling her how disappointing I, too, have found it; I certainly didn't explain that sex with D is way more enjoyable.) She started to say, "Well since physical fidelity is so important to you that means I can't supplement with anybody else, so I'll have to get used to complete celibacy." But I interrupted that physical fidelity was a big deal to me in the past. It's less of an issue now. The way I put this was to say that if she always needed new people, then it made no sense for me to insist on physical monogamy. What I did not say, though I thought it, was that at this point I really don't care what she does with her body any more. But I didn't think that would be productive. She added, "Of course I wouldn't insist on physical monogamy from you; would you want somebody else?" I rolled my eyes and said, "Just what I need in my life -- another woman and more complication!"

But I am losing the thread here. When I asked, "OK what do you want from our marriage besides shared decision-making and physical affection?" she reverted to asking for respect. But sweetheart, that is an abstract request. What does that look like for you? What do you want concretely? Also, remember that you aren't in a bubble here. You aren't a completely passive victim but rather a part of the dynamic, and the way I treat you has a lot to do with the ways you behave. What would it take from you to get what you want from me?

She didn't answer the first two questions, but she turned the third one back on me: give me a list of what you (Hosea) want from me (Wife) before you will respect me. And that I could answer: the first thing I want is for you to stop asking for lists.

See, what I have wanted all along is a wife, a partner, not somebody who runs errands. So it has never been so important to me which tasks Wife does or doesn't do. It has never been about the tasks. I have always been willing to be flexible about what she does or doesn't do. It has always been the how that matters to me: is she doing ... well, whatever it is ... because she feels like contributing, because it just now crossed her mind that this might be a good thing to do, because it would help out the family, because gosh -- we're all part of this together and why not? Or is she doing it resentfully, because it is a chore that has been assigned to her by someone that she feels she has to treat as a boss? Because if the second answer is the right one, I'd rather she didn't do anything. I would rather she sat in bed and didn't lift a finger than that she pitch in resentfully. Some months ago I wrote a post about housework, and some of the comments I got back were from people who thought I was complaining that Wife doesn't do enough work around the house. Well, in fact she does almost nothing, but that wasn't what I was trying to say and it just goes to show how ineptly I expressed myself. What I was trying to say is that I want her to want to contribute to the rest of the family, and I also think (by the way) that she would be happier if she did so. Busy people are often happier than idle people. But the key is that I wished she would want to help, because that would mean that she felt like she was a partner. That she felt like we are all in this together. That she was a wife in truth, meaning a peer, and not merely a drudge.

For this reason, as I say, I have never cared about the individual tasks all that much. When she has asked me, "What do you want me to do so that you will respect me more?" I have in the past listed this or that thing that needed to be done. But what I tried to explain today was that, as far as the love and respect were concerned, those were always just examples. It wasn't that I would respect her if she ... oh, I don't know, fixed dinner once in a while or ironed my shirts or whatever. I tried to say today that if she took one of those lists I created years ago (in answer to her questions even back then about respect) and did everything on it but in a mood if subservience or resentment, I wouldn't be satisfied because it would not have been what I really wanted. And conversely if she did none of the things on the list but somehow did something else (even something totally selfish) so that by the end of the day she was radiating happiness and enthusiasm and self-confidence and was willing to be a full partner claiming an equal status ... why in that case I would cheer and say, "Yes, that's it exactly! You've got it!"

In other words, I said, whenever I have said that what I want or need from you in order to respect you is this or that, it's like those paintings of people made up entirely of dots. You could erase any one of those dots and not miss it. You could erase half of them -- even all of them -- and replace them with different dots, and the picture would still be there. Because the individual dots aren't important. The picture is important. If you want to be part of this marriage, please live the spirit of the marriage; don't obsess about the damned tasks and chores. Yes, they need to be done. But they have absolutely no bearing on the health or sickness of the marriage itself. Please see the picture and don't obsess about the individual dots.

She said she didn't get it.

More to the point, she acknowledged that I have said things more or less similar to this before, and she didn't get it then, either. That in fact, over twenty-five years, she has never gotten it.

And this may be my mission statement: that I have finally figured out that Wife does not understand -- and has never understood and may indeed be incapable of understanding -- what I mean by marriage and partnership. And therefore that the marriage has always been in nomine solo, and it's time for us to cut the crap and get it over with.

Just a thought.

Pizza lunch

Sometimes it's nice to write about something totally different, just because it's not part of the same tired drama. A couple days ago, my pre-teen boys went out to lunch with my company's HR Director.

I need to set the stage a little bit.

1. This guy works in one of our other offices, in another state. He stops in here a few times a year. But despite his long tenure with our mother company and his exalted rank as a member of Senior Management, he also has the sense of humor -- and the attention span -- of an energetic twelve-year-old boy.


2. For the last year, Son 1 was attending a school no more than 5 minutes' walk from my office. So after school, he would regularly wander down to my work; I'd find him an empty desk somewhere, and he'd start his homework. (OK, usually he would start by hitting up the coffee machine for a hot cocoa; but then he'd have to pull out the math book ....)


3. So what with one thing and another, Son 1 and HR Director met a few times and hit it off immediately. Did I mention that Son 1 is twelve, and that HR Director might as well be twelve if you judged by his jokes and energy levels instead of by his thinning hair? Anyway, they became natural buddies.


4. Next Monday, school starts for Son 1 and Son 2; but for right now they are still at loose ends.

Anyway, HR Director flew into town this week to work on some projects with our local HR department. Monday afternoon, he asked me, "So, is your son around this week?"

Meanwhile our local HR department was asking me, "Can you bring in Son 1 to distract this guy for a while? You can't believe how hard it is to get any work done when he is in town."

And that night, when I mentioned that HR Director was here, Son 1 asked me, "Can I go to work with you tomorrow? HR Director is awesome!" Just for good measure, Son 2 (who is 11) chimed in, "Hey, if Son 1 gets to go then I get to go too!"

So we worked out a plan. HR Director is mad about pizza. Unsurprisingly, so are the boys. So I brought them in one morning with the idea that he would take them out for pizza.

And, remarkably enough, he did. True, the boys didn't have a lot to do around my office that morning ... I had them help out with a little filing and they ended up washing a coworker's car just to beguile the time. But then it was lunchtime. HR Director asked me if I was going too, and my boys promptly interrupted, "No, Dad has to stay here. You're just taking us." He looked at me quizzically, I smiled and shrugged ... and off they went.

Apparently they had a fine time. After lunch, Wife drove over to my office to pick them up. But that evening, HR Director stopped by my office and said, "Dude,* your kids are just amazing. You know, it is really rare for kids that age to be able to talk to adults. But both of them can talk to me just fine, and carry on interesting conversations. And I have to tell you, that's an important sign of success in later life."

I don't know where he gets his facts about success in later life, but it is great to hear. Son1 and Son2 have to be the best things I ever got from Wife. I wonder how they are going to weather the next few months; sometimes, thinking about them, I still wonder if I am making a mistake. But there is no doubt in my mind how wonderful and precious they are.

* Yes, he really talks like that. The man is fifty years old, he grew up in the Midwest, and he starts every second sentence with "Dude."

A Marine's view of love

I was never in any branch of the service, let me start off by making that clear. I've been a lifetime civilian.

But D has a lot of interest in the military as an "alternative lifestyle" and so she reads a fair bit about it. Somewhere around a month ago, she sent me the following:

Dearest Hosea,

.... [Day-to-day news snipped] I actually sat down to send you the best piece of writing on love I've been fortunate to read in a very long time. It is worth sharing because so much of it applies to families, including you and the boys. I realize the next few months are likely to be very difficult, and you will find yourself depressed many times and relatively cheerful on other occasions. Throughout, I will love and support you.

This passage comes from Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood, an unsparing book about fighting in Iraq. The writer is Donovan Campbell, their platoon leader, and graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School. I have shortened it slightly because some of the examples are only relevant if you have read the book, and I'm interested in his understanding of love for us outside the military.

"...I think I understand a bit more about what it means to truly love, because for my men, love was something more than emotion. For them, love was expressed in the only currency that mattered in combat:action - a consistent pattern running through the large and small, a pattern of sacrifice that reinforced the idea that we all cared more for the other than we did for ourselves. For them, love was about deeds, not words and...a thousand small acts came to mind....

As time went by, these small acts - so many of which I either failed to notice or simply took for granted - created something in Joker One that was more than just the sum of all of us. In fact, these acts gave Joker One a life of its own, a life that wove all of us inextricably into itself, until the pain and joy felt by one was the pain and joy felt by all. And that life grew so vibrant and so powerful, that my men practiced the ultimate extension of love - laying down their lives for one another - nearly every single day.

For me, loving Joker One - something I so desperately hoped that I did - meant much more than simply feeling I cared. It meant patience when explaining something for the fifth time to a nineteen-year-old who just didn't get it. It meant kindness to a Marine who had made an honest mistake while trying his hardest; mercy when deciding the appropriate punishment. It meant dispensing justice and then forgetting that it had been dispensed, punishing wrong and then wiping the slate clean.

Love was joy in the growth of my men, even when it diminished my own authority. It was giving credit for our successes to the team while assuming all the responsibility for our failures on myself. It was constantly teaching my men, sharing everything with them until I had nothing left to give, with the expectation and the hope that they would become greater than me. It was making myself less so that they might become more.

Love accepted the Marines for exactly who they were and never believed that it was all they ever would be. Love demanded more, demanded their best, every single day; it cut through all the rationalizations and excuses. It constantly celebrated the good in my men and refused to condone the natural selfishness that dwelt within us all.

Love told the honest truth when lying would have been much easier or would have made me look much better; it admitted to the men that sometimes I had no answers. It confessed my mistakes and asked for forgiveness when I had wronged, and it moved past those mistakes when forgiveness had been granted.

Love hoped that things would be better someday, maybe in this life, maybe in the next, but it didn't deny the reality of the pain and suffering that surrounded us day in and day out; it didn't dishonestly rationalize them or explain them away. Love didn't try to make sense of the senseless; it simply offered a light to run to....even when faith and hope had left me, and I despaired, I learned that love somehow remained. Slowly...it restored the other two."

Have a great afternoon. I look forward to hearing from you. And always, I love you, ... more each day.

Take care, be well.

xxxoooxxx, D

"The J Word" (reprinted with permission)

When the brilliant and lyrical Marianne announced that she was closing up her blog "Indiscretion" I asked her about one post she had written a year ago that I thought was far too good to delete. Infinitely graciously, she gave me permission to reprint it, with attribution ... to which I can only say that I thank her and the Internet thanks her. And so it follows.


The J Word
by Marianne, "Indiscretion," July 8, 2008

I never said you couldn’t like her. In fact, in principle, I think you should like her, love her, fuck her, do whatever you want with her. If it makes you feel good, do it. I think you’re great. Why wouldn’t she? In fact, if she didn’t adore you, didn’t give you what you so obviously deserve, I’d be annoyed with her. How dare she? Has she no idea just how amazing you are?

Oh. She does. She wants you. Good. So she should. And while you’re with her, I’ll be with him. And maybe him, too. And oh yes, that other him. You know his words make me melt. God, we are such fucking grownups. After all the grownup fucking, you can tell me about her, what she does that makes you gasp, and I’ll tell you about what he does to make me come. And all the while, you’ll be fucking me, too, telling me you adore me, telling me how wonderful it all is. And god knows, I want you to have everything, everyone you desire. We’re so civilized, so liberal, so modern, so hot.

Here’s the problem, though. I want you to have what you want, but I want me to be what you want. Me. More than anyone. That’s the truth. I will maintain and defend your right to fuck her, a hundred hers, if that’s what you want, but behind the good-natured indulgence and self-confidence, I’ll be gritting my teeth, white-knuckling it all the way.

No. It’s even worse than that. I want to be the centre of your world, but I also want to be the centre of his world. And yes, his, too.

It’s not that I’m jealous. No. Never that (never admit that). I want you to have fun. I want you to like her. I just really, really want you to like me more.

That’s not too much to ask, is it?

It’s Time

I never wanted a divorce. Long before I was old enough to get married, I disapproved of divorce on a theoretical level. I told myself (with considerable arrogance) that once I had given my word on something, by God I was going to see it through! Self-righteous little snot, wasn’t I?

At the same time, I started fantasizing about a divorce from Wife less than a year after we were married. I even suggested to her right around the time of our first anniversary that maybe a divorce would be the simplest solution for both of us. In the years that followed, many was the time I found myself staring off dreamily into the distance, fondly imagining what life would be like without her. That dream has encircled my mind almost as long as the gold band has encircled my finger.

Now, throughout all this I never changed my opinion of divorce as such. I still classified it as running away. I still thought about my father – who has made plenty of mistakes in his life, and who regrets every single one of them – saying that at least he had been fortunate enough to avoid what he considered the Big Three: bankruptcy, divorce, and suicide. So I silently scolded those who got a divorce for lacking the courage to soldier on in the face of adversity, while all the time I clung to fantasies of flight and then castigated myself for my own cowardice. I guess there is nobody so self-righteous about avoiding this or that sin as the man who secretly craves it with all his heart.

This double-opinion had some interesting consequences. On the one hand, I thought nothing of moving a couple hundred miles and starting over in a new job when Wife got accepted into a graduate program near the city where we now live: I was committed to her, and supporting her aspirations was far more important to me than whatever dopey job I might be holding at the time. On the other hand, I felt profoundly ambivalent about buying a house (just about the time of our tenth anniversary) and having children (Son 1 was born a little over two years after we bought our house). With each of those steps – signing forms in the realtor’s office, hearing Wife’s doctors confirm that yes indeed she was pregnant – I heard a distant hammer nailing a door closed. I saw my escape cut off. And I knew that I had to make the best of what was left to me.

Of course, there were consolations. It’s a small house (maybe “tiny” is a more accurate word) and it needs a lot of fixing up, but at this point it has long since become Home. Also, we don’t have to negotiate with landlords all the time, which is a big plus. And I have loved my boys beyond all reason or measure since the minute each one first sucked breath: indeed, I have often thought that I am far more naturally suited to play the role of Father than to play the role of Husband. (Truthfully, it is only my affair with D that has given me any confidence at all in the role of Romantic Lover.) So it’s not like I wish today that we had never bought the house, or that we had never had the kids. But while those things were in process, I was at best profoundly ambivalent. And always I dreamed of escape.

Points of principle can never be answered by practical considerations; but so long as we live in the real world, practicalities have to be taken into account. When the principles are confused or conflicted, this is all the more true. So I can’t help noticing that, for a variety of practical reasons, if I am ever going to leave Wife then now is the time.

First, there is the simple fact that I have finally concluded it’s not going to get any better. For a long time I lived in hope that it would, but I no longer think that’s possible.

The boys are no longer babies, nor very small children. When they are young enough, all children need a mother – not that older children don’t, but the bond is of a different sort. Each of our boys nursed until about 14 months; obviously they couldn’t have left her then. If I had left then, the boys would have stayed with her. Even when they were two, three, four ... Motherhood would be a formidable concept to try to fight.

Do they need her today? In the abstract, yes of course – in the sense that all kids need a mother. But in fact she doesn’t understand what they need from her terribly well, and so she is not at all good at providing it. The younger one is already eleven years old; his needs are morphing, even as we watch, from the needs of a little kid to the needs of a teenage boy. Wife is pretty good at meeting the needs of little kids. She understands them. But she does not understand teenage boys. Indeed, she often has trouble understanding boys in general. Whenever we have had a discipline problem with Son 1, I hjave pulled him aside and worked it out with him without Wife’s input ... because I knew her input would be counterproductive and would cause him to dig in his heels. (Wife has resented this for years.) The situation with Son 2 has generally been a mite more ambiguous: he is younger, and traditionally he has identified more closely with Wife than Son 1 ever did. But at this point I feel reasonably confident in saying that the things Son 2 gets from Wife pull him backwards into little-kid-hood and not forward into adolescence. So on that front, yes it is time.

Wife’s health isn’t good, and hasn’t been good for longer than I can remember. But she is more stable than she has been in years, and her rheumatologist is starting to talk about the possibility of remission for her lupus. So if I were looking for her to be able to stand on her own, today is as good as it has been in the last decade, at least.

Then there is the house. As long as that was our single biggest asset, we would have had to sell it in a divorce in order to split the assets equally. But today, the economy has slumped far enough that the house – if you count in all that we owe on it – is a liability, not an asset. Since I should be able to make the mortgage payment but she probably cannot, this means that I should be able to keep it without having to buy her out at an inflated rate. Everything depends on the will of the Court, naturally, but these days at least the possibility exists.

In a way, it is kind of like we’re facing a Perfect Storm. If we are ever going to divorce – if I am ever to take more concrete steps than just gazing fondly into space and dreaming, or than waiting passively for her diseases finally to kill her – then now is the time.

How sex can change your life

I feel really dumb writing this, but I've been thinking recently about a pattern that I think I might be seeing in my life. Let me start by sketching it in the baldest possible terms.

Part One: Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, I applied to a couple of different graduate schools. I got into one of them and made plans to attend. In mid-August of that year, I first met Wife. Within a week, we were fucking; within a couple of weeks, I was spending the nights at her apartment. And then a month after we met, I got on a plane and left for graduate school. Only I didn't stay. Something like a week after that, I dropped out of the program and came back home ... more or less to move in with Wife. And about a year after we met -- to the month if not the day -- we were married.

Part Two: Last fall, after twenty-five years of a marriage marked by profound difficulties and chronic infidelity from Wife -- but by total sexual fidelity on my side -- I began an affair with D. And now, as if by the most remarkable coincidence, I look at my marriage and cannot see anything living in it. And I have begun the process of getting legal advice on dissolving the marriage, something that I always told myself I would never do. But times change.

And the pattern? Looks simple, doesn't it? Hosea starts fucking somebody new, and his life turns on a dime. All his old plans and resolutions fly out the window, and it's a whole new world. Or, more summarily, Hosea is ruled by his dick.

That's not really how I want to see myself, of course. But when I look at the whole picture that schematically, it sure does look that way. So maybe that's all that is really going on. Maybe all the drama in my life -- all the internal wrestling with what to do next -- is just so much window dressing. Maybe my choices really are simply ruled by my dick.

In my own defense, both parts of the story are more complicated. Back in Part One, I was never really that committed to the graduate program in question. The only reason I ever applied was that I couldn't find a job and didn't know what else to do with myself -- but hey, I sure was good at Going To School! So maybe I could do that for a while longer, and put off having to make any real decisions about my life. As long as I didn't have anything else to do instead, why not ...?

When I met Wife, what our involvement gave me was an option ... or a reason to make an option. Before her, there was nothing going on back home to hold me there. So if I wasn't doing anything anyway, it didn't make the slightest difference where I was while I wasn't doing it; and graduate school offered the prospect of being kind of interesting, maybe. Once I met Wife, however, it did make a difference because I did have somewhere I wanted to be. So it was worth it to me to try a little bit harder to find work (which I finally did, after a fashion), and to plan out my future together with somebody else rather than just fantasizing impossible things in a vacuum. Once I met Wife, my choices mattered, they were meaningful, in a way that simply had not been true before. So yeah, I dropped out of graduate school before classes even started ... but I had never really wanted to go in the first place. Yeah, I flew back home and scrounged together a couple of crummy part-time jobs ... but I came home every evening to (and woke up every morning with) someone I loved. And at the time it didn't seem like a bad trade.

Fast forward by a quarter century. Was everything hunky-dory in my marriage before my First Date with D? You all know better than that, and so did I, even then. My marriage sucked. If I squinted my eyes real hard, I could still see little nuggets of value, or at least I could make spots swim in front of my eyes that looked like little nuggets of value. But I knew that Wife was never going to grow into a fully-functioning adult with any kind of normal emotional infrastructure or sense of personal responsibility. I knew it was never going to get better. If it were going to get better, exactly how many marriage counselors would it have taken for us to make progress, for us to stop repeating the same conversations in counseling sessions year after year? Not as many as we went to, that's for damned sure. And conversely, if we had to keep going to that many different therapists, it could only mean that things were never going to change. (How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, but the lightbulb has to really want to change. And Wife didn't want to change.)

So why didn't I leave? I gave a variety of answers to that question, none of them very helpful. (This one is as good as any of them.) But the real answer is that I had no motivation to leave because I had given up hope. I figured that if I put my head down I could slog through it, and if I died before anything got any better ... then oh well. Shit happens. Nobody promised me any better. And so on -- the whole litany of depressed, melancholic excuses for not doing anything. There were other factors as well, of course -- largely a concern about the boys. But my fundamental reaction to the suggestion that Wife and I divorce was "Oh hell, why bother?"

What I think I have gotten from D, therefore, is not a whole new reality but simply courage and hope. The word "hope" doesn't mean that I necessarily hope to marry D some day ... I may not marry again at all. And I don't delude myself for a minute that a match with D would be completely untroubled, either. All I mean is that I am willing to move off of dead center. It's not easy -- honestly, lethargy is still way too much of a temptation for me. But I think I am finally seeing through the bullshit. I think I am seeing that it just ain't worth it. And so there is nothing to gain by waiting. It is time to push forward. It's over.

All of this interpretation is a lot more flattering than the schematic one I sketched out above, so my cynical side questions whether it is true. Maybe it's just a story I made up to make myself look better; maybe all these complications are just excuses to disguise the fact that I let my libido steer my life. Maybe, but I don't think so. I think what I am seeing here instead is that sex can change your life (or at least mine) even if I'm not simply ruled by my dick. I think what I am seeing is that sex can create value where it wasn't there before -- that seemingly out of thin air it can generate hope, and courage, and life, and joy.

Not bad things, huh?

Seventh date

Another business trip. D was with me all week. We walked and talked. We ate in nice restaurants and dives. We went to a play. And, as always, the sex was marvelous.

Two things were different about this date.

First, I introduced D to a colleague I work with. Strictly speaking, he is a consultant that I usually see only a couple of times a year but we enjoy each other and talk about a lot of things besides work. He made a point of telling me when he decided to divorce his wife of 35 years, and when he met his current girlfriend. He has also told me about his slow journey back to church after an absence that has lasted all his adult life. (The last time I wrote about him was here.) We usually go out to dinner at least once when we work together, and this time I brought D.

Well, D and the Consultant hit it off famously. He was glad to find someone who could really understand his religious journey, and who at the same time didn’t condemn his affair and subsequent divorce. She found him delightful company, and was pleased that he likes me so well. I don’t think the Consultant quite picked up on the fact that D and I are lovers, or perhaps he was giving us the benefit of the doubt to avoid the risk of guessing wrong. But it was crystal clear to him that we care for each other deeply. Since he also knows something about my troubles with Wife over the years, his only remark to me the next day was, “I really hope this works out exactly the way you want it to work out. Whatever that way is, you have been through a lot and I’d like to see you reach the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Second, towards the end of the week D started pressing me for when our next date would be. That in itself is nothing unusual, but the fact is that I couldn’t give her a date. Business travel is being cut back for me because of the lousy economy; at this point, I don’t have a single trip planned for the rest of the year. What is more, the drama at home seems to be accelerating; so I’m not really sure I am going to have the time or attention to spare for a date any time in the next few months even if the money just drops into my lap.

This answer made D very solemn ... then weepy ... and then angry. For several hours during our last evening together, it sounded for all the world like she was trying to break up with me. I don’t blame this all on D – when she started to get sad and upset, I began to talk frantically to patch things up. I have no solid recollection of what I said, but I’m sure I said things that made it worse. If you’d been sitting in the next booth at that restaurant, you probably could have leaned over and warned me, “Hosea, I wouldn’t say that if I were you because it is guaranteed to make her even more upset.” (But no-one did.)

On the other hand, somehow the things that I said sent her into a place I absolutely couldn’t follow. Back at the hotel she lamented that she couldn’t believe what a fool she had been all these months, that our whole affair had been a ghastly mistake, that I could never have loved her at all if I could say the things I had just said. (I sure wish I could remember what those things were – they must have been a doozy!) And then she calmed down, thought a minute, and said something that baffled me even more.

“No, I’ve thought about it and you are wrong. I know what I bring to the relationship, I know the constancy and love that I offer, and you are simply wrong when you deny it. You can push it off the table and say you don’t want it, you can walk away from it, but you cannot deny it.”

OK, now I am confused. I know I must have been saying weird shit kind of at random out of panic at her growing levels of upset, but I’m damned if I can remember ever saying anything that could possibly be construed as denying her love and passion. (Let’s leave constancy out of the equation for just a minute, shall we? This may not be exactly the right time to bring it up.). Nor can I remember saying I didn’t want it. I thought she was the one accusing me of not loving her, because I couldn’t set a date for our next meeting. When did I ever deny her love?

By this time we were sitting on the bed, undressed for the night but clearly sitting apart. I tried to express my confusion, and for a while D just kept telling me that I was wrong if I tried to deny her love, that love was something strong and permanent, that ... oh, I forget all the details. Finally I said “But I agree with all that." D paused. Then she smiled, relaxed, and lay down on the bed. I wasn't quite sure whether the argument was over, but then she said, "You know, if we have only one more night together, then touching might be a good idea." So I stroked her shoulder for a minute ... and then we kissed ....

Did I mention that the sex this week was marvelous?

When I got home, late the evening of the next day, I got a brief rundown of the week. Wife and the boys were asleep, but I had asked Boyfriend 4 if he could stop in and help out. Boyfriend 4 lives out of town these days, but his cancer prevents him from holding a job so his time is kind of flexible. Also, I should clarify that I wasn't really worried about Wife's ability to do basic chores ... just about the likelihood of her doing something erratic and dangerous. But apparently she didn't. Boyfriend 4 hadn't gotten there till midweek, but he had called every day before then. (Also, you will recall that my parents visited once.) He made dinner, but without doing a lot of shopping. (This was a big relief to me ... while I would have wanted him there anyway as a stabilizing influence, I can't forget that the last time he stayed with Wife while I was gone, the two of them managed to blow $600 in a single visit to the grocery store. I still can't figure out how they did that.) Wife complained a lot to him about me, but apparently did nothing more serious. So it could have been worse, and this report encouraged me a fair bit.

So, onwards and upwards, no?
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