Happy Halloween

Wife in tears, part 3

This is still more drama from last week, but I hardly have the heart for it. This fight was about food. I traditionally make dinners, and a couple of months ago I started trying to vary my repertoire of dinners ... a repertoire which had gotten very stale over the years. Among other things, I started introducing a lot more vegetable dishes and cooking fewer meals that centered on greasy meat.

Well one day last week Wife came completely unglued about dinner. This is the same woman who for years has told her vegetarian friends, "Well I used to be a vegetarian before I connected with Hosea, but he refuses to eat anything except large hunks of meat." Only now that I am doing something just a little different, it seems that I am a tyrant who doesn't care if my family starves because "everybody hates" these meals (never mind that I see the boys taking seconds) and I "never fix anything with any protein in it any more." And so on, only there were tears and a lot more shrieking.

Oh hell, forget it. It was plenty dramatic at the time, and that's when I told myself I should add it to the "Wife in tears" series. But I can't even remember what was said, ... or care much, either.

I think Wife must have been under a lot of stress last week, because so many things seemed to set her off. I asked her to handle all dinners this week. More work for her, but maybe less screaming.

On lying, part 6

The other day, I was reading an essay by Leskek Kołakowski on lying. Kołakowski, of course, grew up in Communist Poland, so one of the kinds of lying that interests him is political lying. But as I read along paying maybe half-attention, I suddenly lit upon two paragraphs which I think may be tremendously important in understanding Wife.

I have written before of my frustration with the casual way that Wife treats the truth. Now of course Kołakowski's political explanation per se is not appropriate here, because Wife grew up as an American. But she grew up as (in effect) an only child of (in effect) a single parent; and her mother – who was far the dominant influence in her early life – played pretty fast and loose with the truth herself. What impact would that have on an impressionable child? This is exactly the topic Kołakowski addresses, even if indirectly.

"When we turn to the kind of lies told in politics, however, there is an important distinction to be made. Lies in politics are a frequent occurrence, but in democratic countries freedom of speech and criticism protects us from some of their harmful effects; the distinction between truth and falsehood remains intact. If a minister disclaims knowledge of something he knew perfectly well, he is lying; but whether or not he is found out, the difference between truth and falsehood remains clear. The same cannot be said of totalitarian countries; in particular it cannot be said of communism in its heyday, the Stalinist era. There the distinction between the true and the politically correct was entirely blurred. As a result, people half came to believe the 'politically correct' slogans which they had been mouthing, from sheer fear, for so long, and even political leaders sometimes fell victim to their own lies. This was precisely the aim: if enough confusion could be caused in people's minds to make them forget the distinction between truth and political correctness, they would come to believe that whatever was politically correct was thereby also necessarily true. In this way an entire nation's historical memory could be altered.

"This was not merely an instance of lying: it was an attempt to eradicate altogether the very concept of truth in the normal sense of the word. The attempt was not entirely successful, but the mental devastation it caused was vast, particularly in the Soviet Union. In Poland, where the totalitarian regime had never attained its full potential, the effects were milder, but still deeply felt."

Custody and revenge

Part of my discussion with Wife the weekend before last consisted of my trying to position the conversation about our separation so that I could get more time with the boys by agreeing to store some of Wife's piles of useless junk. As I reported back then, this offer on my part (though I never phrased it quite that baldly, I think) caused D to panic. I gave some of her remarks in the post linked above, and my reply was kind of long and pedantic. But in particular, I replied to her question ".... In short, what do you get out of this arrangement besides more responsibility and the pleasure of the boy's company?" as follows:

It is not just the pleasure of their company, delightful as they can be. I am also taking to heart your remarks about the toxicity of Wife's influence, and therefore am trying to reduce the amount of time they spend around Wife to an absolute minimum. I think it may be one of the best long-term services I can do them.

Some time later I re-read that, and it smelled intolerably smug to me. Also, I know that when she gets into a panic, D is particularly intolerant of self-righteousness and self-congratulation. So I sent a follow-on note a while later that ran:

Reflecting on our conversation on the phone, I realize that I was mistaken in something that I wrote. Specifically, I said, with respect to my custody goals, ... [and then I quoted the line immediately above]. But of course my goals have very little to do with suggestions of toxicity, yours or anybody else's. They are, rather, purely vindictive, motivated by a desire for revenge. And as such, they are also likely to get in the way of any rational solution. A rational solution doesn't have to be nice or kind, but it cannot be motivated by passion. (sigh) Oh well.

For what it is worth, D replied to this second statement far more mildly than I had anticipated, a sure sign she was recovering from the alarm she had expressed earlier in the weekend.

I realize you may have written that when you were depressed, but I might reconsider in the light of day. I'm not doubting that there is a measure of vindictiveness in your wish to keep the boys with you. But it's small.The idea that revenge lies at the bottom of your desire for primary custody is absurd. Wife is unable to provide discipline or affirmation. She is passive and dependent. She is often ill and weak, and unable to provide basic supervision or care. She is inconsistent at best, and frankly, an inconsistent parent can be more difficult for a child to understand than a overly harsh parent. Her behavior, particularly towards Son 2, has been inappropriate and sexually charged. She is their mother, and she does love her children. But she has genuine limitations as a caregiver. Hosea, almost none of what we do is "purely" anything. It's always a measure of good motives and less honorable ideas. It's important to recognize your real desire for revenge. But it's even more important to sift through these matters carefully, aware of your strengths and goodness. The research is very clear; even one good parent who truly cares, and loves their children with insight and thoughtfulness, can cancel the deficiences of a poor parent. You are that good parent. It's important that the boys get as much from you and your friends and family as possible.

We agreed to settle on "mixed motives." But sometimes I wish I couldn't see myself so well, because there are times (like this) when I don't much care for what I see ....

Wife in tears, part 2

Tuesday of last week, I worked till almost 6:00 pm; I was reviewing a draft document written by one of my employees, and I wanted to finish it up because it had been sitting on my desk way too long. So anyway, along about 6:00, Son 2 and I left the office; and as we were walking to the car, I called Wife on my cell phone to say we were en route.

She picked up the phone on the first ring, and I heard an deafening, inarticulate shriek. Of course this worried me, and I asked her what was wrong. I got a torrent of words that came out so fast I couldn't understand them. I asked her -- through the shrieking -- to repeat it: what was wrong? On the third try, she finally slowed down enough that I could understand her. This afternoon she had tried to balance her checkbook for the first time since we separated our accounts at the end of July -- and she couldn't make it balance. She was beside herself: weeping, wailing, moaning. I talked to her for several minutes (many minutes) and reassured her I would help her with it -- maybe tonight (if she could stay awake) or maybe on the weekend. I repeated -- over and over -- that it would turn out all right, that I had total confidence that we could solve this. I refrained from using any affectionate pet names to help calm her, such as I might have done in earlier years, because somehow they seemed out of place; but otherwise I was as comforting as I could be. There's no way the world will end over one unbalanced checkbook, and there's no way we can't find the problem and fix it. Just put it all away right now, and we'll tackle it together. It will be OK.

During all this time, Son 2 and I were standing in the parking lot of my work. When I finally got off the phone, I opened the car for Son 2 (who was looking a little impatient) and said, "I'm sorry you had to wait. Mommy was pretty upset."

He replied, "Ya think?" [It's an expression he picked up from D, ironically, after her two visits to stay with us.] Then he added, "You only told her, 'Relax, don't panic, everything will be all right' about fifty times ...." But he wasn't mad. He was just playing at being long-suffering, and perhaps teasing me just a little. He chuckled and added that of course he hadn't really counted how many times I had said it, but was just making a point. At any rate it seems that he wasn't panicking.

I often worry about Son 2, in particular, getting sucked into Wife's craziness because he is sensitive and because he has long seen Wife's well-being as his personal responsibility. I have to remind myself that he is also capable of being totally dispassionate about it all ... and that he is getting more so all the time.

Out of the mouths of babes

Son 2 and I were talking last night over dinner, and somehow the conversation turned to hangovers. (Don't ask me why.) Son 2 wondered if I had ever had a hangover and I admitted that yes, well, over the years I've had a few ... not a lot but a few. Son 2 started to say that he was never, ever going to have a hangover, and then qualified it by saying that maybe in college he would. (He is 11 years old, so the whole concept is a little theoretical at this point.) I wanted to demystify the subject for him a bit, or at least deromanticize it. So I explained that basically a hangover is just like having a headache at the same time that you feel queasy in your stomach. Nothing special other than that. He said "Oh," with what sounded like a smidgen of surprise and disappointment that it should be something so commonplace.

To emphasize how dull and ordinary this is, I added, "And there's nothing special about a headache or queasiness. Your mom can feel that just by being sick -- you know she gets those symptoms a lot because of her illnesses."

And Son 2 lobbed back, "Mom can feel that just by seeing HAPPINESS."

Wife in tears, part 1

The assumptions I made Saturday about how smoothly my conversation with Wife had gone proved to be a little overconfident. At the time, I thought I had gotten at least to the point that she could envision a more-or-less weekend custody arrangement.

Then Monday she called me at work to say -- in an obviously tearful voice -- that she "just couldn't live with" an arrangement that meant she saw the kids only on weekends because it would make her just an adjunct to their lives.

I asked, Do you want to work it out right now?

No, we can talk when you get home.

Because if we have to discuss something complicated during the day, I'll ask you to send me e-mail.

When you get home is fine.

OK, we'll talk about it when I get home.

But then, very unwisely, I couldn't resist a parting shot. "Remember though, my point over the weekend was that you don't spend that much time with the boys now. If that was a problem for you -- if you wanted to be more than an adjunct to their lives -- then I would have thought that you would have done something about it before now. The plan that has you see them on the weekends is a plan that gives you as much contact as you have today. So yeah, if you want to we can talk about it when I get home ...."

OK, it was a vindictive and stupid thing to say.

When I passed this story on to D, she let me know this in no uncertain terms:

I feel like frigging Myrtle, about to run into the street and get hit by Daisy [all from The Great Gatsby]. I have had the day from hell, not purgatory, and you have been kind, extremely so all day long. I'm still going to scream, "Stop! Hosea, think!" I'll probably deserve to get run over.

Hosea, it is absolutely imperative that you get as much time with the boys as possible. If I were you, and the stakes were this high, I would avoid gratuitous personal attacks on Wife. So you really expect her to think of herself as an auxiliary parent? Is she going to sit at home and think, "...gee, Hosea is right. I do very little for the boys; if I accept his arrangement, I'll be able to see them for as much as I usually see them, and since that's not very much anyway, I'll be content." I don't think so. I think she will remember the spankings you used to give the children and think of them as abuse; she will recall all the times she bragged about how talented and smart the boys are and how much she contributed to their education. She will realize that there is nothing -- literally nothing else but her role as their mother to give her life meaning, and she will fall apart. You will not gain custody of the boys by reminding her that she is useless and that her role in their life is very small. You must think about what your attorney said about custody matters and you need to depersonalize it. It is rational to argue that your ability to provide transportation and supervision of their homework after school means you should have them during the week. It is rational to argue that her diminished health means you should have primary custody. It is hopelessly subjective and unkind to build your argument for custody by accusing her of not spending time with them anyway, (sub-text: you are a bad mother) so she should just give them to you. After all, she thinks you are also going to keep the house, so you get it all. Sure this is slanted and unfair. It's emotional stuff and you are pretending that you are being impartial. Not so. Re-think.

Re-read the books I gave you. Contact your lawyer. But do not belittle her parenting skills if you want to achieve an amiable divorce. Please walk around this issue again. You wanted to be kind and generous; I argued that it was extremely difficult to compassionate after you have experienced years of humiliation and denigration at her hands. Just think again, with your heart and feelings fully engaged. I know you can approach this from a different direction, and if you can't, ask for help.

God in heaven, I hope you will forgive my saying all this.

In the event, Wife and I have not picked up the conversation at all since that point. I deserved the smack upside the head, no doubt about it. I deserve another one for not going out of my way to bring the subject up again as soon as I got home, specifically to reassure Wife on this point. But it seems like there is always more.

Starting to talk ... barely starting

Saturday morning, Wife and I started talking about what things should look like when we separate. It was a meandering conversation, one that from emotional topics to practical ones and back again with no particular pattern. And it didn't get very far. But it was a start, and I think that is worth while.

On the emotional side, Wife kept coming back to saying, "I thought you would always be there for me. I thought you would never leave me for the rest of my life." At these times she would start to cry.

All I could say to that was, "How strong did you think I am? You spent so many years pushing against me, kicking at me, tugging away from me ... did you think I could continue to carry you forever and not drop you? Did you think I could carry that burden forever and not break under it? I guess in a way that is flattering, but I'm not Superman ...."

On the practical side, we came to no agreements but at least put a couple of topics on the table. None of these issues can be resolved at a single blow, however. My general approach to complex, high-conflict issues is to stake out a general position on things like custody or the house, ... then let her rail against it for a while, ... circle around, ... remind her that if we can't come to an agreement we'll have to go to court at which point neither of us gets what we want, ... and then drop it. Hours or days later we can pick it up again and there is a chance she will have shifted herself to a slightly more reasonable starting point. During the discussion Saturday, for instance, it looked like there was a chance that I might be able to get more time with the boys if I agree to look after some of her stuff. Is the stuff mostly worthless junk? Of course. But if I can get a better custody agreement that way, it might be worth it.

It is also very important to her that we not sell the house right now, so that the boys can still live in it. Her first position on this was one I didn't much care for -- viz., that she should stay in the house with them while I pay for it. Sorry, but no; I told her that I would rather go to court than accept that solution ... and I have been assured by several people that going to court means the court will order us to sell the house and split the proceeds. (In this market, that may be pocket change.) She wailed about this for a while -- how heartless I am, that I want to deprive the boys of their home! No, I said, there are several options that allow them to stay there: you could scrape together the cash to buy me out (and then work out a way to make the mortgage), or I could stay in the house with them. The only one I have ruled out is paying you to stay there. Well, after several hours she circled back to this topic with the thought that she might be willing to accept my staying in the house with the boys if she could still retain 50% title, so that in the future we could sell it at a profit. I said let's talk some more later.

Another example of "circling around": she started by asking for the kids Wednesday evening to Thursday morning and then all weekend (Friday night to Sunday night). Since then, D has assured me that is a pretty normal division of time; but on the spot I responded by offering her Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday. That went nowhere, and we bickered for a while. It would sound like there is not a lot of way forward there. But she is also really afraid of living in the kinds of neighborhoods she'll be able to afford -- her assumption is that she'll only be able to afford poor neighborhoods with lots of gang activity. (Wife also suffers from strong racial prejudices that she staunchly denies ... but that all her friends see and just shrug their shoulders at. Anyway, these prejudices affect her view of where it would be acceptable to live.) So after we wrangled for a bit I dropped the issue and we talked about something else. And a couple of hours later, she came back to say that if I could look after some of her stuff, she might be able to look for an apartment in a small town about 20 minutes away, a town which is cheaper and -- for the money -- nicer. This small town is close enough that we could still keep actively in touch; but it is far enough that she really couldn't ask to have the boys for a week night on a regular basis, because it would be inconvenient to get them back to school the next morning. Which means that in a roundabout way she has dropped the demand for Wednesday without actually having to concede anything explicitly.

We further agreed that any arrangements will have to be somewhat flexible: so that I can take the boys if she is sick, or she can take them if I have a business trip, or neither of us insists on "our"time if there is something special happening over a weekend somewhere. After all, more and more the boys will want to spend time apart from us both.
__________

The conversation resolved nothing, but I was fairly pleased by it. At least it opened up some topics so that we could explore them a little farther. But when I described it to D on the phone that afternoon, she got very quiet and withdrawn, the way she usually does before some kind of meltdown. I asked her what was wrong -- and had to push considerably -- and finally she said that if I kept the house and kept Wife's stuff, then I could never afford to visit her. Well that's silly, and I tried to persuade her that we were talking about apples and oranges here and that I was trying to make concessions in areas I didn't care much about in order to sweeten the deal in areas where I did. But when we ended the conversation, D was still quiet.

The next morning I got a follow-on e-mail from D which expanded on her fears. It ran in part:

As I see it, you will not be free to build a relationship with me, or with any woman in the years ahead. You will be trapped by a mountain of things you neither want or use, but they are yours to care for and store anyway. You will spend more for your storage locker than you will on travel during the year, and that doesn't even begin to deal with the house and garage. You will have a large mortgage, alimony payments, credit card debt from her past purchases and likely, at least one tuition bill. There seems to be no 'starting over', no freedom gained at all. Of course, I realize that you feel sorry for her and your compassionate nature recognizes her sadness, but I wonder how guilty you ought to feel; you will be left with staggering debt and you will be the primary caregiver for your children. You certainly did not sign up for this deal; you hoped and worked for a relationship that offered some genuine love and support. Instead, Wife violated every precept of decency and now wants to take away any opportunity you have to build a new life. I am deeply apprehensive. You reassure me that you will be able to afford to see me, but I'm not convinced; you haven't done the financial calculations and my head for figures (simple calculation is the only math I do) tells me you are being optimistic at best. More seriously, there is no way to adjust our relationship, and you never mention moving beyond brief visits in cities far away. Perhaps this is because you have never been very good at planning for the future, but without growth and challenge, the relationship between us will remain on the edge of your life. I'm not sure how satisfactory that will be for either of us. It certainly doesn't build community or family, and that's always been central for me. For example, say you had the opportunity to join me in [another state]. Let's assume we were both able to find work and the boys were able to go to a good school and receive an excellent education. Under the arrangement you have now, there is no way any such arrangement could work. It's not a matter of custody; the boys could fly and see Wife on a very regular basis. But you would have custody of her property, and it's like Jacob Marley's chains, forged over a life of greed and extravagance. You will remain in the city where you are now, caring for them even if the boys attend boarding school and are far away. I'm not convinced this is viable, at least not if your happiness matters.

.... In short, what do you get out of this arrangement besides more responsibility and the pleasure of the boy's company? The last is a vital and all-important consideration, but I might want more. I know I want more. I'd like the opportunity to spend some genuine time with you, living a regular life and sharing meals and daily activities with you. I want a regular and exuberant sex life. I'd like the boys to see a loving relationship, and I'd like them to realize that change is inevitable and often a good thing. That doesn't mean I want to live with you permanently, or anything of the sort. But I'm worth more than a week's vacation here or there. Any woman you cultivated would want more of your time and energy. You are loving, kind, humorous and great company. You might open the possibility of that being returned in your future life.

Wow. Well, there are several possible answers to this, some of them kinder than others. Among them: I'm not suggesting any of this out of any feeling of guilt; nobody has any numbers in the first place, so it is specious to talk about even "simple calculations"; nobody ever said any of this was cast in stone; and I'm not planning to marry D. Fortunately she ended her letter by explaining very clearly that this was her own, personal, emotional response to what I had said, and that it was absolutely not any kind of request for me to change course by an inch. But my pushing her about why she had become so quiet had forced her to unpack her own feelings, and here they were.

We talked some more over the weekend (mostly by e-mail, actually), and D calmed down. I thanked her for letting me see it from her perspective, and I reminded her that nothing has been agreed and nothing is cast in stone. And she relaxed some. There is still a long ways to go, however.
__________

There is more ... the follow-on to this conversation has been trailing through the week ... but I think it belongs in another post.

"Is this just a mid-life crisis?"

Thursday evening I worked late, collected Son 1 from his soccer game (they won 3-0), drove home, and we all had dinner.

After dinner, Wife and I talked a little more -- very lightly, but even talking that lightly is a big change from the silence recently. She said that the trip to see Boyfriend 3's dying father [Tartuffe] yesterday was really "intense." I asked about this, because it seemed to me that except for half an hour with Boyfriend 3 at the beginning of her visit, and twenty minutes with my parents at the end, she was alone for two hours with an unconscious, dying man. There are ways that could be intense, but I wanted to know which ones she had in mind.

Piecing it together (although this was not the order of the conversation), it seems that a lot of her reflection started with seeing Boyfriend 3, and with them sharing their regrets for their affair (as I mentioned yesterday); then after he left, it seems like she spent time pondering the turn of events which meant that that affair (and others like it) had led us to making plans to split up.

Once again she started crying, commenting that -- as I know -- she doesn't deal with change very well and our divorce will be a very big change. She also said plainly -- for the first time that I remember -- that she is really frightened by this looming change. I think this is valuable because I think it is true, and Wife says all too few true things. So part of why I have the patience for this kind of conversation, even though we don't really "accomplish" anything in them, is that I preserve a hope that even now she can find her way to seeing the truth instead of hugging so tightly to self-deception.

When she elaborated on why she was frightened, she listed two fears in the following order: that it will mean a drastically lowered standard of living, and that it will mean she will see the boys less often. Later on, as we continued to talk, she said that the single hardest thing for us to work out would be the finances because the cost of housing is high. I said that's trivial -- if we have to, we can sell the house and each of us take a one-bedroom apartment; that will be cheaper than the mortgage plus an apartment. She still demurred, so I pointed out that we could always move to cheaper towns in the area -- the kind of town Wife has always looked down her nose at. She was quiet for a long time after that.

There was more. She wondered out loud whether maybe we were both just going through "mid-life crises" and were getting bored with a marriage that was "basically good." (I don't even bother trying to reconcile remarks like that with the other vile things she has said on other occasions.) I said I don't know what a mid-life crisis is. She said it is when you have to give up your youthful dreams for your life, and you worry about becoming less attractive and having to spend the rest of your life with the same mate, so you think about changing for somebody new. I rolled my eyes and said that the last thing I need right now is another woman in my life -- which, if you interpret it in the fullest possible context, is probably even true. After all, I've already got D in my life ... why would I need "another"? (smile) I also explained that, as a youth, I had never been able to envision the future very well; so my youthful dreams for my life were pretty inchoate. And I reminded her that we have gone over some very basic reckoning. A marriage typically involves mutual fondness, common property, and sex. But our mutual fondness has been battered by years of fighting; we can't agree on how to spend money (or handle property); and our sex life (which was unsatisfying in the past) is now clearly dead. So if this is "just a mid-life crisis," then what exactly is left to rebuild on?

All she said was, "I know. I come to the same answer every time I think about it." But of course it frightens her.

Then it was time for me to chase the boys into bed, and Wife turned in. As I was trying to get him to brush his teeth, Son 1 asked us if we thought he could be a lawyer. We both said yes, if he wanted to he would be an excellent lawyer. This made him happy, and he started to talk about how much money he could make as a lawyer. I told him yes, all that is very, very possible ... but I still made him brush his teeth.

Good night, all.

"I miss having you care about me"

Another brief conversation with Wife last night, although it never really got off the ground.

Boyfriend 3's father [Tartuffe] is dying. He was something of a family friend for a long time, and yesterday afternoon Wife went to visit him. He was unconscious for the whole three hours of her stay, but she saw Boyfriend 3 for about half an hour. She said that he had aged. (But hell, she's aged.) He is also unemployed and on Disability at this point -- for bipolar disorder. She said that they both agreed the sex had been a mistake, because it had cost them their friendship which was more valuable. His wife has said she'll allow him to see her at the funeral "one last time."

Wife also went to see Counselor, and got some suggestions from him about ways forward, strategies for negotiating a split. And they talked about her depression.

She said to me that she had told Counselor she was really, really sad at seeing the marriage over. I asked why. She started to tear up and said that she had thought I would always be there, would always care for her and look after her -- that she missed our friendship, and missed having me care about her. As softly and sedately as I could, I said I was a little surprised to hear her say that, because she had spent so much energy over so many years pushing me away. So I thought (I went on) that she wanted me not to care so much; and while it had taken a long time, I thought I had finally achieved that.

"When did I ever say that I wanted you not to care about me?"

Where do I start? No, Hosea, put back the laundry list. That's not helpful. Aloud: "Well, for example you made it pretty clear many times that you wanted me not to care who you were with ...." (Meaning "whom you fucked," of course.)

"I never knew until a month ago that it was ever an issue for you, who I was with."

Sigh. Where can the conversation possibly go from there? Of course it's not true, not without assuming massive amnesia on Wife's part. We certainly talked and wrangled and fought over the issue often enough. I think what it has to mean for her to say she "never knew" is that it is way too painful for her to contemplate that her affairs could have contributed to where we are now, because that means it's not just a random accident but the direct result of something she did. And I do honestly think she finds that possibility agonizing. So she would rather deny it.

The affairs were never the whole story, of course. But I didn't think the laundry list was going to help at that point. I may be an asshole at times (as in my mean remark above, about thinking she wanted me not to care for her), but I try at least to be a prudent asshole. In any event, the conversation pretty much stopped there. Wife brushed her teeth and went to bed, a sad and quiet girl.

It has been quiet around the house in general lately, except when the kids are raising a ruckus. Very quiet.

When do we tell the kids?

OK, I'm looking for some advice here.

Last night I asked Wife, "So what do we do now?" It was the first time we had talked about our marriage since we met with Counselor two weeks ago, and we meandered around the subject in a slow, desultory kind of way. We confirmed with each other, as if there could possibly be any doubt, that splitting up is all that makes any sense. At one point, for example, Wife said that she didn't want to live under the same roof with somebody who openly scorned her; I agreed that I don't want to live with such a person either. And I don't think either of us admires the other very far these days. At another point Wife insisted that I have been pointlessly cruel to her over the years, which I can account for only by thinking we must have very different definitions of "pointlessly cruel" ... different enough to constitute (so to speak) different languages. Nor do we have a common moral compass any more, at least not when it comes to claims against her medical insurance that I think count as fraudulent and she doesn't. (There are probably less self-serving examples that indict me instead of her, but -- predictably enough -- I can't think of them right now.)

But one thing I wanted to insist on is that we not drag the boys into this discussion yet. What I really wanted to avoid is that Wife start messing with their heads, like she did with Son 2 in this post. But I don't know how to say that or spell it out, so I opted for a broader blanket request that we just not talk to them.

It looks, however, like I was probably wrong. Or at least I hear that from two sides already.

The first is D, who wrote me an e-mail this morning that said, in part, "If you think the boys don't know that you are preparing to divorce Wife, you are engaging in wishful thinking. They most certainly know, both because children, particularly children as bright and sensitive as yours, make it their business to carefully monitor their parent's relationship and second, because she has undoubtedly said a great deal already, which is why she hesitated to to keep your discussions a secret. I'm all for transparency. I see no value on any front to keep this a secret. Children need to understand that people work together and forge a path through difficult matters by discussion and compromise (why does everything need to be settled before you say anything?), and they need to comprehend the fundamentals; that both parents love them and will be a part of their lives in the months and years ahead. They also should have the opportunity to ask questions and express their feelings.The idea that you 'know' what concerns them is almost certainly untrue, and you would be wise to address their worries directly. They also need the support of their wider community; the school should know, their coaches should be informed, and your parents need to be in the loop. We need each other during difficult times; secrecy serves no one well." Then later today I was thumbing through Judith Wallerstein's What About the Kids? and ran across a paragraph that says, "If your children are old enough to attend school, you should gently run each [suggested parenting] plan by them. Tell them that you had a meeting, these are some of the plans you have in mind, and do they have anything to add? Did you overlook anything important to them? ... But make it clear that they have a voice, not a veto."

So my plan was probably wrong.

But then what is right? At what point do we tell them, and how do we say it? I don't want to get this wrong -- heaven knows, at this point doing the right thing for them is the only reason I have for moving slowly and gingerly. (Fine, maybe not the only reason. But a big one.) But I don't know how they will react, and I don't have any clue how to proceed or approach it.

Advice would be welcome.

Wife's bad dream

I was trying to get the boys some breakfast this morning, before all of us bundled out the door (them to school, me to work). Wife has taken to sleeping in the living room -- or rather, to moving to the living room in the middle of the night because she says I snore too loudly for her to sleep through it. (Interestingly, D says I don't snore at all. I'm never awake at the time, so I couldn't tell you.)

So along about the time I was trying to balance a gallon of milk in one hand and a carton of eggs in the other, Wife toddled into the kitchen from the living room to tell me she had just had a terrible dream. Really? That's awful, what was it about? Apparently there was nothing more to it than that we were having some bitter fight about something; and then at the end of the dream, she said, I put my arm around her and told her everything would be all right. At that point she added, "But I guess that's not reality, is it?" and slunk off to the back of the house.

I was preoccupied with breakfast, so I didn't really say anything, but I also don't know what I would have said. Once upon a time I would have abandoned breakfast to follow her back there and try to talk to her about it. I don't know if that is what she wanted or expected. But today I had neither the time (the boys and I really were in a hurry) nor -- honestly -- the motivation. I couldn't think of what would have been the point.

Maybe that very lack of motivation is what she was dreaming about, in a way. What I mean is that maybe she senses it from me (and I guess it wouldn't be hard) and her unconscious mind was reacting to it. But the whole life in which I would have followed her back to the bedroom, in which I would be entangled enough that we could fight, seems like a distant world now, long ago and far away. And truly, we haven't fought about anything, not for months.

Isn't that better than it was?

"So, how is D?"

Scene: Dinner has been cleared away. The boys are playing in the other room. Wife is taking her nighttime medications and getting ready for bed. Hosea is sitting on the edge of the bed reading the paper left over from the morning.

Wife: So, how is D doing these days?

Hosea: Hmmm?

Wife: How is D?

Hosea: D Who?

Wife: You know, ... D [last name]. How is she doing?

Hosea: I don't know .... [looks puzzled]

Wife: Well I opened the cell phone bill today, and I can see that you've been texting her several times a day all month. So you must know how she's doing.

Hosea: [thinks to himself] Damn, I'm getting sloppy. I could have hidden that bill way better than I did. And it's typical that Wife would exaggerate a number like that ... no way have we had a chance to text each other that often. [says out loud] I text a lot of people. Honestly, at work it is the best way to get a quick answer out of somebody who is stuck in some interminable meeting.

Wife: Well I know I saw her number, and I know I recognized it. I could go get the bill and show you.

But at this point, Wife is already lying down and she doesn't bother to get up. Hosea just grunts but doesn't say anything more, and after a while Wife rolls over and drifts off fitfully to sleep. By the next morning, all cell phone bills for the past year have been mysteriously moved somewhere else ....

____________________


The real answer is that for most of the last week, D and I were fighting. You remember that last week I decided to back off from full-scale war with Wife, hoping that maybe we could talk through some kind of "kinder, gentler" divorce instead. I was planning to write D about this, but it was going to take a little time. The counseling session was on Thursday, and I spent Thursday night writing it up for you folks. I was going to adapt that version for D Friday night, but she beat me to the punch. She had been reading Wife's online journal, which contained a stray reference to the appointment with Counselor; D jumped to the conclusion that I had deliberately hidden this appointment from her "for reasons unknown" and raked me over the coals for dishonesty.

I don't suppose that most people show their best side when under attack. I know I don't. In any event, I responded by getting quiet and logical, and by sending her the story I wrote you with minor adjustments. I will add that it did not even begin to mollify her. I won't bore you with the whole litany of "he said ... she said" after that, except to say that a lot of harsh things ended up being said on both sides. As D said later, when it was all over, "We really need to not get mad at each other, because -- when we do? -- we don't fight fair. Either one of us. This was really bad."

It was really bad. What finally helped, after several days of ever-less pleasant e-mails, was to pick up the phone and talk to each other. Somehow it is possible to write snotty, stabbing, vindictive things in e-mail (and to feel richly justified and self-righteous about doing so) when you could never possibly bring yourself to say the same things viva voce to someone you genuinely still love. So when D (bless her heart) finally asked me to call -- and then immediately followed up by begging me to call because she needed to hear my voice -- I called, and we resolved it all over the phone. In the end, it wasn't about any of the things that she had said in her letter, or at any rate not in any kind of dull, plodding, literal way. What was really going on was that she felt terribly insecure because we haven't seen each other since summer; so if now I was "back in counseling with Wife" (never mind that it was only once), and if I was "not divorcing Wife" (or at any rate not filing legal papers this instant), ... she was fearful that I might be planning to leave her. Of course I'm not -- you all know that. But virtual relationships are difficult for D. She needs the physical presence of friends in her life: their faces across the table, their voices in the air ... and (where appropriate) their bodies in her bed. Sometimes she blames this condition, a little humorously, on being a Catholic and believing an "incarnational theology" but I am certain it is the other way around: the need must have been rooted in her long before she accepted the Church.

Anyway, I managed to assure her that I'm not making plans to leave her, and we are back on track. So when can we meet again, come to think of it ...?

D also told me about her most recent trip "home" to the house she owns with her husband. It was his birthday, so she dressed up a little on the fancy side in case he wanted to celebrate. When she got there, late in the day, he was still in his pajamas. (He does all his paying work on-line, from home.) He hadn't bathed in several days. For that matter, she added meaningfully, he hadn't seen a dentist recently either. So she went out to the store, bought some groceries, and fixed him a nice dinner in. No problem ... except that she spent the rest of the day thinking about it. She told me later that the weekend left her very quiet and thoughtful.

It seems like everybody I know is "thoughtful" these days, in one sense or another.

Providence steps into Counseling 34

So he spoke. And the anger came on Peleus’ son, and within
his shaggy breast the heart was divided two ways, pondering
whether to draw from beside his thigh the sharp sword, driving
away all those who stood between and kill the son of Atreus,
or else to check the spleen within and keep down his anger.
Now as he weighed in his mind and spirit these two courses
and was drawing from its scabbard the great sword, Athene descended
from the sky ... [and] standing behind Peleus’ son caught him by the fair hair.
“I have come down to stay your anger – ....”

Iliad, Book I, ll. 188-195, 197, 207; tr. Richmond Lattimore

My prayer life has been feeling really disconnected lately. That sounds either meaningless or pretentious, but I don’t know how else to say what I am trying to get at. What I mean is that when I get away from all the noise in my life (say, out for a walk late at night) and spend time reflecting on what I am doing and where I am headed (maybe not too far wrong to call it a kind of prayer), I sometimes get a sense that I am where I ought to be, that I am somehow connected to a live circuit, even occasionally that I might hear something on the other end. But not lately. I have tried the experiment, going out for a late night walk and thinking about my upcoming plans for divorce, and all I have “heard” is dead, empty silence. I don’t claim to be intuitive enough to have some kind of right to anything else, but all the same I have noticed.

And then today I had a peculiar coincidence drop into my lap. Last week, Counselor had called me while Wife was in his office for her regular session, asking if I would be willing to join them today just to talk about where we are and where we are going. I agreed, even though I figured it was a waste of time. I already knew where I was going. I had already retained an attorney, I had asked her to draw up papers, ... things were moving forward. But I hadn’t told anybody about it yet, except for D and you. Nor did I want to say anything yet; I figured I would keep the service of papers a surprise.

Now for no particularly good reason, my attorney is in another city. (She was recommended by D’s brother, who is in the business; she seemed smart and capable when I met her; and I didn’t have the initiative to find somebody closer.) And when she drew up the initial papers – a petition to the Court for dissolution of marriage, a summons, and so on – she pointed out that they require an original signature. So her office mailed them to me ... at my work address, I hasten to add. The forms went out Monday. They probably should have arrived Tuesday or at the latest Wednesday, but in fact they didn’t show up till today (Thursday), about half an hour before I was scheduled to leave for Counselor’s office. The plan was for me to sign them and drop them immediately back in the mail; then when they arrive back at my attorney’s office, she will have them formally served on Wife. I was all set to do just that, and I was noting the irony that we would be discussing “where we want to go from here” just after I had dropped forms into the mailbox that would make the discussion moot and the choice of direction irrevocable ... when I noticed a couple of typographical errors on the forms. Obviously the legal boilerplate had been cut-and-pasted from somebody else’s petition, and there were simple errors as a result. (At one place the Petitioner – that’s me – was referred to as “her”.) I wasn’t sure if the Court would accept forms with mistakes on them, so I e-mailed my attorney’s office asking what to do, tucked the forms in my desk to be processed later, and then left to go see Wife and Counselor.

I got there before Wife – does this sound familiar? – and Counselor told me she seemed to him to be really lost, confused, and frightened. Then he asked me if there were anything that I wanted to tell him that I didn’t want her to know, relevant to the question where we are going next. I didn’t answer.

When Wife arrived, the discussion started a little slowly. Wife asked about my walking out of our session a couple of months ago and said it seemed to her that this meant I wanted a divorce. I hedged a bit and said that all it really meant was that I saw no future in marriage counseling for us. Wife said a few other things, to which I replied, “Yes, you’ve been saying those things for decades and for decades I have been telling you that’s not what I mean or how I feel. So this is why I see no hope for marriage counseling for us – that I can explain myself until I am blue in the face and you still fundamentally don’t understand what I am saying. Nor ever will.” And in short order thereafter, we got to the point of agreeing that there was nothing left for us to salvage.

What then? Well, I explained that we really haven’t been talking to each other, about that or anything. And Counselor asked us to look at the situation. He reminded us that he sees a lot of divorcing couples. Some of them can work out the post-divorce arrangements by talking to each other. Others do it all through lawyers. And he put considerable emphasis on the consequences of using lawyers to solve your problems: that you never reach an end until you are out of money (at which point you get the same half-assed compromise you could have gotten tens of thousands of dollars ago); it becomes ugly and vindictive as each party tries to destroy the other; each party goes behind the other’s back to get an advantage, which means that each is afraid of the other, which means (since frightened people are most likely to lash out in dangerous ways) that each reacts to things blindly and irrationally out of fear of betrayal; and it is devastating to the children. He said that children can weather some kinds of divorces pretty well – but not this kind. Get the lawyers involved, and it is nearly guaranteed to scar them for life.

There was more. Wife was crying at the prospect that it was really all over. Counselor asked if we could promise not to take any drastic action – or any action – for a period of time, until we could talk things through. I would not promise anything. I didn’t say why I wouldn’t promise, although I bet Counselor figured it out: he is pretty shrewd, and his question before Wife arrived makes me think that he suspects I am already pursuing the legal route. All I said was that I really didn’t know. And in the end our hour was up. We agreed that Wife and I should try to talk over the weekend.

But I was left with a lot to think about. I had come within inches of taking the last step to make a legal process irrevocable: was that what I wanted to do? Really? And I have kept the whole thing a secret all along: was that how I wanted to do it?

As I mulled this session, I saw some things a little more clearly.

• I saw that I have been approaching this whole process in a spirit of hatred and anger; that I have wanted not just to separate from Wife but to destroy her, in revenge for all the pain I have felt over the years. That’s not the right way to make a decision like this.


• I saw that I have chosen to move forward along the legal track for the same reason that I hired this particular attorney – that I really haven’t known what else to do, so the whole thing has seemed pretty inevitable. That’s not the right reason to make a decision like this.

I also saw that both of these tendencies have been exacerbated by the advice I get from D. When I talk to D, the legal route looks natural, it looks like the only safe way to go, and it looks like a slam-dunk. But that doesn’t mean that D’s advice is simply true. I see several factors that could affect it.

• One is that her brother is a successful lawyer, and she gets advice from him; so naturally that advice is going to take the legal path for granted.


• Another is that she spent several years as a guardian ad litem in high-conflict divorce cases; so again, the environment seems like a natural one to her.


• A third is that Wife has done several things which have really angered D, so she is probably not able to be objective about this: Wife does something annoying and D thinks “Good luck behaving that way when you are on your own” ... and all of a sudden she starts feeling (at some not-very-conscious level) that the divorce is a punishment for how awful Wife is. So why would she want it to be easier? (I don’t say that she thinks this consciously.)


• And a fourth – you thought I’d never get to this one, huh? – is that D is in love with me and resents the hell out of Wife for living with me while D herself is far, far away. So again, at some emotional level she probably wants to punish Wife. Besides, if I make a flamboyant exit, I’ll probably be bruised and bloody from the experience, and need someone gentle and loving to bind up my wounds. Who better than D? And if her gentle ministrations convinced me that I was wrong about delaying remarriage, if I somehow decided that I wanted to marry her right away, ... well that could hardly be an outcome she would want to discourage, could it? (Again, I don’t say that she thinks this consciously. But I would be a fool not to allow for it.)

So I have been doing this all wrong. And I need to slow down and think. I need to remember some things that I know, but that I have failed to keep in mind:

• from Socrates, that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it;


• from Julian of Norwich, that “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well”;


• from B, that “Everything will be all right in the end; if it's not all right, it's not the end.” She’s right, you know.

Once long ago, I hired a man who turned out to have lied on his job application by inventing a degree he didn’t really have. When our HR department found out, they told me and asked what I wanted to do; they also reminded me that the application is a legal document, so that lying on it is perjury. In other words, if I wanted to fire him, I had every legal right to do it. I spent a couple of days thinking it over ... and over ... and finally came to a decision. I called him into my office and told him that I knew. I asked him if he had ever even set foot on the campus of the school from which he claimed the degree, and he said Yes but he just didn’t graduate. So I added, “You don’t actually need a degree for the job you applied for, but integrity is nonnegotiable. Therefore I’m going to extend your probationary period, and I want you to bring me some solid evidence that the story you are telling me now is true ... in other words, that you did attend the place once. A transcript, a student body card ... something.” He did it. And he was a good employee. Sometimes the legal route, the one you have every right in the world to take, isn’t the most productive.

I had forgotten that story until just tonight. It happened years ago. But maybe I need to remember it a little more often. It can be really hard to negotiate with Wife, because often she insists on things that make no sense. But I have to try harder.