Ramping down? or not?

I have been finding myself more and more confused lately about my romance with D. Sometimes I really feel like winding down the whole affair; other times, not at all. The thing is, I have no idea why.

In favor of winding down: I'm still troubled by my brother's tepid (and almost disapproving) reaction when I told him about D, though to be fair I have not asked him since then if I read him right; I found myself worrying (when she bought Christmas presents for the lot of us) that she was trying to insinuate herself farther into my life than I was comfortable with (though it turns out I was wrong about that); I find her high energy levels exhausting, and I can feel as if I have to keep insisting on limits to preserve a little space of quiet that is my own..

Against winding down: the sex is always fantastic; my reasons for breaking it off are often weak (as I've noted even in the above paragraph); and D can still pull me out of myself and away from my preconceptions ... even (or especially) when the "certainties" that she is overturning are things I tell myself to make me doubt the relationship. (See here and here, just for example.) So maybe it's just my depression talking, and I don't really want to wind it down after all.

I wish the hell I knew what I want.

Hit and run

A few days ago, I came home and picked up the mail. There was a letter for Wife from the Oxballs Police Department, and a letter for me from the company that holds our auto insurance. [Oxballs is a town just a little under an hour away from us, and no that is not its real name.]

The letter from the insurance company was to inform me of my rights in case of submitting a claim. And the letter for Wife told her that she had been charged with hit-and-run, and that she had to make an appointment t pick up her citation in person or else they would issue a warrant for her arrest.

What???

Wife's story is that she was out shopping with Kevin, and "lightly bumped" another car while pulling into a parking space. She claims that she and Kevin both got out to inspect the other car and that she had done "absolutely no damage." So she didn't bother to leave her name or insurance information, but somebody obviously saw and wrote down her license plate number. Meanwhile, the owner of the other car is claiming huge damage ... hence the insurance claim and the police report.

Needless to add, neither Wife nor Kevin thought to take pictures of the other car with their cell phones, to back up the claim of no damage. And of course Wife is a listed driver on all our cars.

Somehow the clumsiness of her driving looks to me of a piece with the clumsiness with which she conducts the rest of her life. But, ... hit and run? God in Heaven!

It is getting harder to hang on until Son 2 goes away to school this fall.

Dorophobia, part 4

When I heard back from D (after my letter here), I found that I had completely misunderstood her: certainly her motives or intentions, and also what she expected of me. Here is what she said. The second and third paragraphs are absolutely critical in this regard:

Dearest Hosea,

If you tell me not to buy your presents, I won't. I respect your judgment, and I don't have to understand or agree with your reasoning. You are an adult and can decide what makes you happy or what doesn't please you and have that honored. I will do so, and stop giving you gifts.

That said, I never, ever expected you to give the books as a gift from me. I expected you, and still would like you to simply use the books for how they were mean to be used; to be read and enjoyed as a family. How you learned about these books is immaterial and can easily be explained without any reference to me. I certainly realize you could never tell Wife that I wish her well, although I do, but playing music that she might enjoy [this was D’s gift for Wife] did not seem out of line. She does not need to know that I discovered the music. Personal recognition does not matter. What matters is a richer existence than we might discover on our own.

It seems like the real issue here isn't about presents, for gift giving is honorable and has a long history. What strikes me is your lack of imagination. Returning the books to Amazon is the last thing I desire; if you don't want them or don't feel comfortable with them, simply give them to Hogwarts, or pass the CD to an organization that provides music for the less fortunate, or send the entire lot to http://www.firstbook.org/. Why did this never occur to you?

It is ridiculous to ask me not to be hurt. Of course I'm hurt and dismayed, because no relationship should be without the possibility of gifts. Gift giving can be just a social convention, but on a much more important level, it is fundamental. Our existence is a gift, and many good things, including our relationships with one another, are freely given and cannot be mandated, or made simple matters of "duty and responsibility". God himself transcends his own law and covenant in the Incarnation, a gift of Himself as fully human to us. In His example, we find the courage to give each other the gifts of love, presence, and connection. At times, that means accepting tangible gifts with grace and imagination; at times the gifts are more intangible. Yet, I worry about someone who cannot accept material possessions and use them in creative ways, not because the gifts themselves are particularly valuable, but because they represent something that cannot be easily expressed. The wise men -- note they were called wise -- gave gifts as symbols of what they understood to be the various dimensions of salvation offered to the world by the child they sought to honor. Jesus himself honored gift-giving when he accepted the gift of costly perfume poured over his feet; he recognized the woman weeping while she washed his feet, understood he was soon to die. Oddly, the names of the kings, even their number, have been lost, and despite Jesus' promise, we don't remember the identity of the woman who bought the perfume. Yet we remember the gifts. Gifts are precious because they can present, or re-present, something about the recipient that should be respected and honored, and in doing so, they bind us together. That you are not yet able to accept gifts is most unfortunate.

You are quite mistaken about being alone. You sometimes see yourself as an island, misunderstood and invisible. But "no man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main..." and we share this understanding in a myriad of ways. If you cannot accept gifts now, it does not mean that you will be unable to do so in the future. I will wait for that time, and I will rejoice when it comes. For now, simply donate the books, and out of respect for my gift, send me the details.

I always love you.

--D

Dorophobia, part 3

I suppose I neglected to mention in my post of a couple days ago that D did in fact buy Christmas presents for me. Hell, she bought them for the whole family -- me, Wife, and both boys.

This really put me into a panic. What could she have been thinking?? I mean, the gifts for the boys really looked pretty good. The ones for Wife and me may not have been quite so spot-on, but they weren't awful. But what was I supposed to do? Take them in on Christmas morning and announce, "Here are your presents from D!" Yeah, right ... good luck with that. I couldn't figure out the right approach here.

I also had some trouble understanding why she sent the gifts. It looked to me for all the world like she was trying to insinuate herself farther into my life, ... into the boys' lives ... one gift at a time. Did she -- already! -- see herself in the role of (unacknowledged and unofficial) stepmom to the boys? Was she trying to build some kind of independent relationship with them? And what did she truly expect Wife to say ... even if the gift was something she would otherwise have liked?

The whole package arrived at my office the Monday before Christmas, and for several days these questions haunted me. Nor could I come up with satisfying answers. In the end I packed the presents into my car's trunk, brought them home ... and left them there. I never unpacked them and never gave them out, because I just couldn't figure out how to. And on Boxing Day I wrote to D as follows:

Dearest D,

Your package arrived last Monday – I mean the 19th – and I should have written you then. But I am afraid I found myself in a bit of a quandry, and that made it difficult to know quite what to say.

I’m not sure that I can explain this in any way that makes any sense at all, but I’ll try ….

In the first place, I probably have to explain that the letter I sent on first receiving your note that a package was on its way – the letter where I said something like, “Oh goody, how exciting!” – was written more in a spirit of convention than out of irrepressible enthusiasm. I knew it was The Right Sort of Thing to write, so I did. But honestly I was more alarmed than excited. I am very skittish about getting gifts from anybody; and while once every so often a gift manages to hit the spot just perfectly, I would gladly give up even those perfect hits if I could avoid the anxiety that I feel about the topic all together. This means that I wish people would not buy me gifts. (Some day ask my parents about this and they will tell you I’ve been saying the same thing to them since adolescence or earlier. That they have cheerfully ignored my requests on the subject for forty years – much to my dismay – makes me despair of ever being able to explain to anyone how I feel on this point.) OK, it sounds churlish, and it is natural to ask if I mean that as a dogmatic, blanket prohibition or if it only applies some of the time. Well, I am shy and timid about making any general principle into a dogmatic, blanket prohibition, because I know that so often there are unforseen exceptions which crop up. But in general – yes, really and truly I wish I could be free of the whole economy of gifts, and free from all the social roles which form part of that economy. I wish that the ways I relate to others – particularly to those I love or care about – did not have to include the transaction of giving presents.

So I was already nervous even before your package arrived and before I read the e-mail which went with it. Nervous, but I figured I could soldier through. But somehow it had never occurred to me that you would be sending presents to the boys. And when I saw that you had, it absolutely stopped me. I could not begin to imagine what to say or do from there. It’s not that I thought they were badly chosen: at any rate the book you picked for Son 1 looked spot on, and I am willing to trust your remarks about the one for Son 2. But I could not imagine how I would bring them home. What would I say? How would I present them? In the first instance, most immediately, I worried that Wife might throw a fit and spoil the day, or that the boys might feel obligated to dismiss the books in order to make her feel comfortable. But as I thought about it longer, I saw another dimension. How would I feel if Wife brought the boys Christmas presents from Boyfriend 2, or from any of the men she is seeing now? Would I be nice about it? Well I might not make a scene, but I would be pretty unhappy … and I would think I had a right to be unhappy. So in that case, how could I deliver these presents from you?

I have summarized my train of thought in a short, serviceable paragraph immediately above, but the actual thought process was nothing like that tidy. It took days and it was unbelievably difficult. But in the end I decided not to give out any of the presents you sent, and I am pretty sure it was the right choice. I’m sorry. I will contact Amazon to find out how their return policy works. And I hope I can persuade you – cajole, beg, or implore you – not to buy me any more presents. Not for birthdays, not for Christmas, … just not. I know it sounds churlish, self-centered, ungrateful. I despair of ever being able to explain to anyone why I feel the way I do about this topic, because I think this is one point where I am alone in the world to feel the way I do. I fear you will feel hurt, and that is no part of my intention. But you have told me time and again that our relationship is not a conventional one; that because we already stand outside the limits of social convention, we are not bound by conventional expectations; that all we owe each other is the truth. It is that reassurance I rely on now. Please don’t be hurt.

All my love,
Hosea

Dorophobia, part 2

Good to know someone else feels the same way ....

http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/this-christmas-no-gifts

Dorophobia

Getting gifts makes me anxious. I'm sure it doesn't truly rise to the level of a full-fledged phobia, so my heading for this post is a bit misleading. But it still bugs me.

Why, for heaven's sake?

I think it has to do with what I perceive to be all the implicit obligations on the part of the recipient. There is nothing "free" about a gift, after all. At any rate, if it comes from somebody you care about then you have to be delighted to get it (even when you aren't). You have to keep it (even when you have no use for it). And heaven help you if you don't reciprocate with something at least as "nice" -- either at the same time (if it's a general potlatch event like Christmas) or when it is your turn (if it's a birthday). This means you have to have a good instinct for things, and for understanding how the other person will translate the value of your relationship into a corresponding value of things. It also means you have to have a good memory for what things the other person has given you before, and a good sense for what those things are worth.

There are people who are really good at this; there are people for whom it is effortless. I'm not one of them. I don't understand things at all; I don't know how to pinpoint what things adequately express how I feel for which person; I have no use for most of what anybody ever gets me; and I scarcely remember what I got last time, because whatever it was generally wasn't very important to me. After decades, my immediate family has finally begun to catch on. They haven't been willing to stop giving me anything, which is what I have asked for. But at least instead of giving me yet another book on some subject that doesn't interest me (because "Hosea likes to read") or yet another sweater to add to the large number I don't wear now (because "Hosea looks good in sweaters") ... I say, at least now they have learned to give me alcohol, which I will drink up and not have to keep around forever and ever. Or food, which is almost as good.


But I remember one Christmas not too many years after we were married, when I gave Wife the kind of gifts I would have liked -- little token gifts, mostly food, to express that I was thinking of her but not to clutter the house permanently because they would be eaten. She bought me two cashmere sweaters, which I had absolutely no desire or use for. And then after we opened our gifts to each other Christmas morning, she ranted and wailed for the rest of the day at what an uncaring cheapskate I was, because I hadn't spent nearly as much on my gifts to her as she had spent on her gifts to me. And after all, as every fool knows (but apparently I didn't), you can directly measure how much one person A cares for another person B by calculating how much money A spends for B on Christmas and at birthdays. More money = more love. Simple as that. So plainly this meant that I didn't love her. Cue the tears and unconsolable wailing, the unreasoning recriminations, the incalculable self-pity. This happened almost twenty-five years ago, and it still feels like a knife twisting in my heart to remember it at all.

In the end, I was never able to teach Wife to do anything else. She has finally stopped buying me presents, because we split our money in the summer of 2009 and she believes she has none. My worry now is whether I can teach D to stop buying me presents, or whether she too believes that this is the only way to show me she cares for me. I sure hope I don't have to go down that road again ....

Narcissism 101: A fragment

Evening. Hosea enters.

Hosea: Hi there. What did we get in the mail?

Wife: Just ads. I recycled them all.

Hosea: Uh huh. [Pause.] Oh wait, look -- there's a Netflix disk in the recycling.

Wife: Well I sure didn't put it there!

Hosea: Ummm, ... OK, but I've been at work all day.

Wife: Well I obviously didn't mean to recycle it!

Hosea: No, I never said that. I just don't want to recycle the damned thing by accident instead of returning it, because they'll charge us.

Wife: Fine! It must be my fault because everything around this house always is!

Hosea: I never said that either. Geez ... just let it go.

Wife: You just get the fuck out of the kitchen and out of my way while I make dinner, huh?

Hosea: OK ... going ... going ....

But shit, why is it such a goddamned big deal in the first place?

Sewing project

Last week Wife embarked on a sewing project. Her grand vision was to “shop for Christmas in the garage” by making clothes for everyone, thus using up some of the boxes and boxes of fabric we have in the garage and not spending money (of which she feels chronically short). In the end it hasn’t worked out quite that way. Her very first piece, a vest for Son 1, took her a week instead of a day – a very, very frustrating week – and cost her $150 in a service call to repair her sewing machine midway through. During this week she has been progressively more panicked as she sees time slipping through her fingers, and she has berated her own mistakes mercilessly: “I’ve known better than to make that mistake since I was six!”

When he hasn’t had homework from school, Son 2 has been helping her ever more deeply. First he was just unpacking boxes of fabric from the garage, or holding one end of the measuring tape; but after a couple of days he was helping her read the pattern and making suggestions what it probably meant. (Apparently his suggestions were right, for what it is worth.) I began to get a bit disgruntled at this, because I remember so many years when Wife would set herself some big project that was simply outside her grasp and I would have to step in and do a lot of it for her. (None of these were sewing projects, at which I would be nearly useless, but still.) But I didn’t say anything until he actually told her, “Mom, I wish I knew how to sew and then I could do this all for you! Maybe you can teach me.” I truly love how much compassion Son 2 has for others, but this went so far it disturbed me.

I talked to him privately just for a moment, to say that even if he did know how to sew I feared it wouldn’t make Wife happier; that in the past when I stepped in to help her with a project she just planned her next project even bigger, to take account of the help she knew she would get from me. Son 2 was distinctly unimpressed, and growled, “So you’d just let her suffer?” Ooops. Fail.

I had a little better luck, surprisingly, talking to Wife after Son 2 had gone to bed. I started by reminding her, “You remember back when we were first married, how you would talk about the things that were bugging you and I would always try to fix them? And finally you had to tell me to lay off, because sometimes you just needed to vent and weren’t asking me to interfere?”

“Yes.”

“Well that’s what Son 2 is doing right now. The reason he is being so helpful is that he hears how unhappy you are with the way your project is going, and he’s trying to fix it for you so you’ll be happier.”

“I really appreciate that he is helping me so much. He doesn’t have to.”

“I think he thinks he does.”

“I’ve even told him to go do something else for a while, because it’s my project and I should handle it. But it just seems like he really needs to help people. And I think that’s good.”

“It is good, but that’s not what he needs.”

“What, then?”

“What he really needs is for you to be happy. He has tried to look after you ever since he was three, when you were so sick. And every time you complain about the project or insult yourself for your mistakes, he hears it as a call to arms, to come to your rescue. All he really needs is for you to be happy … or at least, if you are disappointed in how the project is going, not to grouse about it out loud.”

She said she’d think about it.

I was pretty depressed for the next day or so at Son 2’s disappointment in me. Clearly I shouldn’t have said anything, but I also didn’t – don’t – want him to get sucked into the trap of spending the rest of his life rescuing Wife. But then I realized maybe I should just relax over the whole issue and trust him to figure this out by himself. In the evenings this week I have been reading him C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, and there was a passage in the chapter we read last night that directly addresses this whole topic:

“Quick,” she said. “There is still time. Stop it. Stop it at once.”

“Stop what?”

“Using pity, other people’s pity, in the wrong way…. Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a ind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity…. Even as a child you did it. Instead of saying you were sorry, you went and sulked in the attic … because you knew that sooner or later one of your sisters would say, ‘I can’t bear to think of him sitting up there alone, crying.’ You used their pity to blackmail them, and they gave in in the end….”

The details are different, but Son 2 is a bright kid.

Son as parent

The last couple of nights, Wife hasn't eaten dinner with Son 2 and me.  She has said she is too tired, and has gone straight to bed.  Or rather, she has said she's too tired and then she sits and stares at the wall, or picks up her phone to text on it ... and Son 2 has taken her firmly by the wrist and made her go to bed.  Two nights ago he gave her firm instructions to nap all of yesterday: to cancel her appointments, turn off her phone, and sleep.  She didn't do it, so last night he talked to her about it again, pretty sternly.
 
I assume he learned this style, this technique for handling her, from me.  And when I describe it this way, it sounds a little heartless.  In fact there is a tender side to it as well.  He has clearly decided that it is his job to look after Wife.  In a sense, I think he decided that back when he was three, and he has been trying to carry out the responsibility ever since.  So he sits and talks patiently with her for hours about whatever interests her; but also, more and more, he tells her what to do or how to manage her time.
 
As Wife was falling asleep Thursday night and becoming progressively less coherent, she called out from the bedroom to go get the sour cream out of the refrigerator.  (She had assembled many of the ingredients for dinner, you see, but just not cooked anything.)  I told her rather sharply just to go to sleep: if she wasn't going to be out here cooking, she shouldn't try to manage how we fed ourselves.  Son 2 took me rather sharply to task for this, telling me that Wife had just been trying to help and I ought to be kinder to her. 
 
I thought about this for a couple of minutes before answering, and then said, "Of course you are right. It's always better to be kind. But sometimes it is just very hard to do."
 
"No it isn't. You just do it."
 
"Maybe you do. And I hope that you always find that you can do the right thing just by knowing it is the right thing. All I can say is that when Mom and I had been together only thirteen years [Son 2 is thirteen], I was still able to be kind. But over the years it has just become harder."
 
"Well, maybe it's different because you have known her a lot longer than I have even been alive. But I still think you could be kind if you would just try."
 
The conversation took a little longer than that, but that was the essence of it.  And of course he was right.  I was acting wrongly to get so peevish with Wife.  After a while we started talking about other things.  Before we left the topic completely, though, I did clear up one misconception.  Son 2 had told Wife, as part of urging her to go to bed, that she was "working herself to death" and just needed sleep.  I pointed out to him afterwards that if indeed she was pushing herself too hard, it would have to be more accurately characterized as "socializing herself to death" because most of her activity during the day -- when there is any at all -- is social: talking to Kitten on the phone for hours, seeing Boyfriends 6 and 7, flirting with her other pals on OKCupid.  I didn't spell out a lot of detail for him, but he knows she has all these friends.
 
So last night it was the same story, only she hadn't even gotten out the ingredients for dinner.  And again Son 2 sent Wife to bed.  He must have said something to her that I didn't hear, because from the other room I heard her object, "I'm not socializing myself to death. I just had to go meet ... [mumble] ... because we go walking together."  He hectored her about the importance of getting enough rest, and then came out to eat dinner with me.
 
Over dinner Son 2 was shaking his head and muttering, "Christ, woman. You don't just have to go walking. You could cancel that. If you 'just go walking' with three different people then of course you won't have time for a nap. But then you are dead later. Why do you do that?"  I told him that I couldn't answer Why?  But I could tell him that the total inability to plan ahead ... that is, the seeming inability to tell that if she chooses to do this the consequences will be that ... has been true for a long, long time.  I don't know if it was always there, but I have seen it so many times by now I can't count them.  Son 2 just shook his head.
 
I also couldn't help noticing that he said "three different people."  Now, did she say that?  Maybe, although I thought that Al was the only one she went walking with.  Maybe she told Son 2 she went walking with the others as well, because she needs the exercise, even though in reality when talking about Boyfriends 6 and 7 she should spell "walking" with an initial F - U.  Or maybe Al was the only one she mentioned and he just knows a lot more than he says about the other two.
 
I suppose that's fair.  I don't say everything I know about them either.  But it does leave me wondering.
 
 

Hair

A couple of dates ago I tried to explain something to D -- answering a question of hers about what I think looks good on women's bodies and what doesn't -- and I got so embarrassed and tongue-tied that I couldn't make the words come out. Then I tried to write a post for this blog, and I had a similar trouble. This is frustrating. Someone who talks as much as I do, and who writes at such length about the smallest thing, shouldn't have so much goddamned trouble saying something so bloody simple ... especially not in an anonymous blog, for God's sake! So even though I don't expect it to be of any interest to anybody else, I'm going to force myself to go through with this out of sheer cussedness.

I don't like razors.

I wish women wouldn't apply razors to any parts of their bodies below their necks.

I don't care what other men do. More precisely, I don't shave my body and I think that men who do shave their bodies are damned fools. But it's not a question of sexual attractiveness for me because I don't have the slightest interest in other men's bodies. If they want to be damned fools, I don't give a fuck. It's a free country.

Am I consistent about this? No, of course not. I draw the line at facial hair on women, which I find unspeakably gross. There's a woman in my company's European office with a mustache. I will go out of my way to avoid any meeting where she is also present, because the mustache is so grotesque and distracting. As for men's facial hair, ... well, I shaved my chin clean for many years. Now I have a beard, but it is narrow. I shave around it. So I'm not consistent.

And in all this I have no objection to trimming your hair shorter if it threatens to get in your way, or to be inconvenient. I try to keep my beard around 3/8 of an inch long. The hair on top of my head is thinning, so I keep it short enough that nobody thinks I'm trying for a comb-over. (Comb-overs are pathetic.)

I also recognize that sometimes there are practical necessities which make shaving unavoidable. Back in school I had a good friend who cycled competitively. Every spring when cycling season started, he had to shave his legs because his cycling uniform clung to his skin so tightly that it would rip out any hairs left standing. So he shaved them all off. It was either that or give up cycling. Similarly, I have known women who work in places that mandate panty hose. Naturally they shaved their legs because the alternative was to lose their jobs. OK, it's sad but understandable.


But in the absence of hard necessity, ... goodness, where do I start?

When I see a beautiful woman who has shaved off her body hair, ... well in the first place I know something is missing. It's obviously not there. And I can feel the absence. I want to say that it feels the same as looking at an amputation, but of course that's too extreme. It's not that bad. But still, I can't shake the feeling that something is wrong because something just ain't there where it's s'posed to be.

Besides all that, think about what the hair means. It doesn't grow in until sexual maturity. It starts to fall out in old age, as the body begins to shut down. In other words, on Nature's calendar, hairless people (male or female) are either prepubescent or really old; they are either not yet ready for sex or past it. Put positively, that means that women with body hair are in that sweet spot in between; they are adult, fully sexual, and not yet past it. On Nature's reckoning, body hair means SEX! That's not an advertisement I can ignore.

And finally, if it's good enough for Sophia Loren, where could I possibly get off pretending it's not good enough for me?

I never was able to explain this to D. I wonder if I should cut-and-paste this article into an e-mail for her?

I want my medal

Walking along with this [doll] Phaedrus felt as if the two of them were sharing this experience, as though he were back in childhood again and this were some imaginary companion. Little children talk to dolls and grown-up adults talk to idols. He supposed that a doll allows a child to pretend he's a parent while an idol allows a parent to pretend he's a child.

He reflected on this for a while and then his mind framed a question: ... he asked the idol [doll], "... What would you say to all this [everything that has happened in the story up till then]?"

He listened for a long time .... Then after a while into his thoughts came a voice that did not seem to be his own.

"All this is a happy ending." ....

"Then why do I feel so bad about it?" Phaedrus asked.

"You're just waiting for your medal," the idol [doll] answered. "You think maybe they're going to turn around and come back and hand you a citation for merit."

Excerpted from Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, by Robert M. Pirsig, pp. 402-403
__________

This passage popped into my head while I was fixing dinner tonight. I was thinking about all the craziness I have endured from Wife over the years -- some stories I have told you, and many stories I have never gotten around to telling. I was thinking about the turns my life has made because I was married to her, and how it could have gone in such very different directions if I hadn't been. And I reminded myself that I made all these decisions on purpose: marrying her because I sensed there was something I needed in my life that maybe I could get from her, and because she so plainly needed the love and stability I thought I could give her; and then sticking with her because it was the right thing to do, because in marrying her I had made a moral commitment. Did I know that choosing this meant giving up that? ... in this case, that choosing to stay with her meant giving up a career where I know I could have shone (scholarship) and (maybe, just maybe) a more invigorating, more mobile life? Sure I did; to a greater or lesser extent, at any rate. But that's what a moral commitment means, isn't it? If something is right, then you give up other things to stick to it and count yourself lucky to do so. After all, the things you are giving up are less important, less valuable, than doing what's right. Isn't that how it is supposed to be? Isn't that what we always hear?

And I suppose in a sense it is even true. Spend long enough at any hard job, and you will get something out of it through the sheer discipline of coming back again day after day and working at it. My marriage has been no different. Sure, I have learned things I wouldn't have learned otherwise. Sure it has shaped me ... "built character" as the saying has it.

Only, sometimes I wish someone were going to come along and give me a medal for it. Because there are these moments of doubt, when I think, "Throwing your life away on something worthless may build character, but in the end the struggle is still worthless. Is this what you have done?" If God were watching, and if I could be sure that in the end He was going to give me a medal for hanging in there all those years, it would make it easier to be calm about it all in retrospect.

Of course, I know this is absolutely the wrong attitude to take. In the first place there is nothing I can do about the past anyway, so fretting over what might have been is a complete waste of time. In the second place, I know that the healthiest thing for the soul is to cultivate an entirely different sort of attitude. Whatever comes next -- whether that means tomorrow (in this world), or a lifetime from now (in the next) -- the best way to face it is with a soul that is free, calm, attentive, and curious, one that looks forward with hope and not backward with despair. Disappointment, anger, bitterness over the past, ... all of these things are snares. They weaken the soul, make it less healthy and less able to deal with new situations when they arise. So whether there is another life or world beyond this one -- or not! -- it is completely counterproductive to obsess over what happened back then that I cannot change. Better far to shake free of all that baggage and look ahead. That's the real reason forgiveness is so important. It's not just that is important to those who wronged you, because it lets them off the hook. But far more is it important to you yourself, because letting them off the hook also unhooks you. Without forgiveness, you are trapped by all the anger and bitterness you feel towards them. Without forgiveness, you can't forget. Without forgiveness, you carry around a bigger and bigger past wherever you go. And the bigger your past, the less room you have for a future. So without forgiveness, you close off your own access to a future of freedom -- a future whose shape you can never know till you get there, a future you can never enter unless you are willing to adapt to new ways and new things, a future you can never enter without looking forward in hope and curiosity. I already know all this. I already know I should simply abandon what has failed in the past, and press forward.

I still want my medal.

Sleeping in the car

This weekend we drove the two hours to Hogwarts to see Son 1; also his coach was giving a presentation about the sports program, and they were having an Open House for prospective students ... which might include Son 2. (He like the place but isn't sure he wants to go to the same school as Big Brother.)

It was late as we drove home. I always do all our long-distance driving; Wife and Son 2 both slept at least part of the way. And I found myself thinking wistfully of this cartoon.

I'm glad to do the driving, even if it is a long way, if only I can offer this.

Still an anchor?

Yesterday, Wife told me she had had a nightmare the night before. Awful things were happening (I don't remember all the details, and mostly they aren't germane) and she was lost (which terrifies her). There were strangers who offered to help her find her way, but she just got more and more lost. "And," she went on, "I was trying to find you. It was like any other time I have a nightmare, I knew if I could only get to you I'd be safe."

Then she paused and reflected, "And in the dream, I even knew you didn't want to be with me any more. You didn't want me to be with you. But it didn't matter. I still knew that I had to find you, and if I did then I'd be safe." Pause.

"You really are still my anchor."

In another context, that remark might have cried out for a sarcastic rejoinder. There are so many things the symbol of an anchor can mean, and many of them aren't too good. But it didn't seem like the time for any of that.

And the crazy thing is that I suspect at one level this is even true. It's not a level that is operative in the real world, it doesn't inform anything she does, and it's not going to help anything once Son 2 is out of the house and we split up. But I don't think she was actually lying, .... It's strange.

Listless

Off and on throughout the day, I've found myself thinking about Wife's new boyfriends. And I just keep staring vacantly into space.

It makes no fucking sense. God knows I no longer care how Wife shops her body around. I don't want to stick with her for the long term. I sure as hell don't want to fuck her any more! She's become ugly and almost totally dysfunctional; meanwhile I have D, who is attractive and a sexual dynamo and who somehow (utterly unaccountably) adores me. Yes, D is many hundreds of miles away. But she's still incomparably the better choice.

Only, ... in that case why do I feel so defeated? Why is it so hard for me to pick up and do the next thing, whatever that is?

Admittedly there is lots going on. Work just announced a major reorganization whose impact nobody seems to understand yet, all so that we can focus on our customers more effectively. And I'm sure that's just dandy, although I have to wonder then what was the point of our last reorganization, or the one before that? Were those in order to help us focus less effectively on our customers? Or didn't they have exactly the same motivation this one has, which must mean that they failed or we wouldn't have to reorganize again? And so this gives me confidence in the latest reorganization ... how, exactly? Just because we are smarter than we used to be, so now we've got it right?

But when I found myself staring vacantly at my computer screen or wandering the halls aimlessly at lunchtime, it wasn't the reorganization that I was thinking of. It was the two new boyfriends -- the ones I don't care one whit about.

Maybe I just wish she could have waited until Son 2 is out of the house, because I don't trust her not to drag him into her network of lies and deceit. Maybe I just resent having to think about her at all, so any news of any change in the way she lives is automatically unwelcome.

Or maybe I just have no fucking clue why I'm acting like it matters to me, when all the reasons in the world tell me it shouldn't ... er, I mean doesn't.

Time for another glass of vodka, and then bed. I guess. Or whatever ....

Busy girl

And all this time I somehow thought Wife was just sitting back, staring at the walls and moping!

You all know Wife has an account on OKCupid, and that she was seeing Pop for a while. I also knew that she had struck up correspondences with a number of other men on the site. What I didn't know was that she was fucking two of them! Better than that ... she is fucking one of them (do I call him Boyfriend 6?) while she coos to him about wanting permanence and about how his warm body against hers has done wonders for her depression; and then at the same time she is "cheating" on him (her word, not mine) with another one (Boyfriend 7?) who knows about Boyfriend 6 but not vice versa. Wife tells Boyfriend 7 to be very careful that Boyfriend 6 not find out about them, because she doesn't want to spoil the potential for a permanent relationship with him.

I'm not sure I'll be able to keep these two straight with mere numbers, so maybe I had better give them names as well: I'll call Boyfriend 6 "Kevin" (which is close enough) and Boyfriend 7 "Jenner" (ditto). Then there's Al, with whom she appears (so far) to be "just good friends": they get together every so often to go walking.

Apparently Son 2 knows about these guys, or at any rate knows that they are friends of Wife. (I'm not sure she has let on that she is fucking both of them -- one behind the other's back, no less! -- but knowing how poor Wife's boundary control is, I can't be sure she didn't.) Last weekend Kevin (B6) gave Wife a whole bunch of food, which she explained away to me by saying that her friend Leia's mom is getting senile and buying food she doesn't need so she helped Leia clean out her mom's refrigerator. Come to think of it, Wife repeated that story to Son 2, while complaining to him that I didn't believe her. (That's not at all what I had said, but she has a hard time listening.) So I guess she is not totally transparent with Son 2 either -- and thank God for small favors! Meanwhile a few days ago she was still trying to meet up with Pop for breakfast, but apparently he promised he'd be available on a certain day and then skipped town.

This must explain why she was suddenly motivated to vacuum the house yesterday, after years of neglect: one of the two of them must have been coming over, and she wanted the place to look nice. It explains why she is always so careful to make the bed ... because she has been using it during the day, and has probably washed the sheets on top of it. My God, it has been years since she showed that much initiative or energy! There must be something to the idea that all them endorphins kicking around in your brain can make you do all kinds of unexpected things.

The only thing I kind of wonder is why she has bothered to hide it from me? Why should she care what I think, any more? Am I going to do anything about it? Well, in cold honesty I no longer care where she shops her body around as long as she doesn't interfere with the rest of us. Son 2 is in eighth grade, which means that next September he will almost certainly be out of the house at boarding school somewhere; and at that time, we'll just dissolve the marriage. There will be no more reason to stick together. And if I have stuck it out this long, there's no real reason not to stick it out just a little bit longer.

Now how do I break the news to D, that Wife is getting more sex than she (D) is? That's not going to go over at all well ...! I suppose I can try to console her that at any rate Wife's not getting me, but I don't know how much comfort she will find that. I don't know. But I do think it is remarkable that Wife can still conceal that much of what she does, after all these years when I thought I had learned to read her pretty well.

What a busy, busy girl ...!

Twentieth date

I think this must be a record -- four months between dates is a long time. But we have had a lot going on, D and I. She moved some eight or nine hundred miles from where she had been living (depending on whether you fly or drive), to take a new teaching job in a place I'll call Weather City. A couple months into the job she figured out that the administration was even crazier than at her last place; also they seem to have bitten off more than they could pay for in hiring her, and so were trying to encourage her to quit. I know, it sounds nuts -- but that what she tells me and I don't know any more about it. A couple of weeks ago she finally quit, and has been looking for a new line of work. (She may have found one too, but that's a different post.)

For my part, I had a couple trips out of town in August (when she was trying to start up at the new job) but then nothing for a while. And the trips in August were timed in such a way it would have been awkward to steal some free time between them anyway. So what with one thing and another we hadn't seen each other since the end of June. Add to that that I had more or less unilaterally cut back how often we wrote or talked, and the result is we were beginning to drift out of touch. And then I had a week in one of our European offices, at the end of October. D couldn't join me in Europe -- she was still extricating herself from her job at that point -- but I routed my return flight through Weather City and stopped off for about 18 hours. It wasn't a lot, but it was a visit.

D was practically giddy when we met at the airport; I may not have been quite as goofy, but of course I was glad to see her. We kissed and kissed ... then periodically stopped and kissed again as we made our way out of the airport. (At one point someone else on the same airport shuttle cracked, "Get a room" ... which of course we were already planning anyway. We just laughed. I'm pretty sure it was meant good-naturedly, if only because there are some things that people get more tolerant of when they see grey hair.) On our way to D's new apartment she told me she had woken early that morning from a nightmare: "I dreamt we had some big argument and you wouldn't sleep with me! And you were trying to sleep on the sofa in my living room and complained how uncomfortable it was ...." Gosh, sweetheart. Have you been anxious lately?

We got to her apartment -- simple, elegant, almost spare except for all the books. (I know, like that's a big surprise.) She showed me around and I'm sure I spent at least five or ten minutes putting down my bags and appreciating how she had decorated before we settled onto the bed, began kissing again, and then fucked like maniacs. Sometimes, four months can seem like a long, long time. But it was blissfully calm, afterwards, just holding each other ... staring at each other as the sun went down and the room darkened.

What about dinner? She had planned a recipie she wanted to show off to me, so we got dressed and she began puttering about in the kitchen. First order of business was that she opened a bottle of wine.

"Umm, D?" I demurred. "I'm not sure if I should be drinking. I'm afraid I'll snore again like the last time; and I really felt awful about that. I really don't want to do it again." In the back of my head I reminded myself also that I had lost almost twenty pounds in the four months between then and now, which might also help. But yes, I was still worried.

D dismissed the worry abruptly. "Don't be silly Hosea. I'm not going to fret over whether you snore or not. Do you think I'm crazy? I've got a man in my bed tonight -- the last thing I would do is jeopardize that! Drink the damned wine; it'll be fine."

Dinner was delicious, although D insisted that the organic chicken she had bought tasted fundamentally different from factory-farmed chicken and it tasted the same to me. After dinner we sat in her living room talking for a bit, and then started kissing, ... and then somehow I found myself suckling her nipples as she was pulling her pants out of the way and my fingers were nestling into her crotch. Amazing how the conversation wanders ...! Somewhere along the line I realized that she had never bothered to close any of her windows, and I wondered if I should be a bit more self-conscious. I didn't see lights in any of the adjoining apartments, and in any event anyone who lived there would be a total stranger to me. But the only person with any call to pause at this was D, and her mind was absolutely elsewhere. So I dismissed the thought and went with the moment ....

After a while we found our way to bed -- and I'm sure there was a third time somewhere before dawn, though I can't quite place it now. In the middle of the night I woke up with a mysterious headache -- "mysterious" because I almost never get them. Was it the wine? The jet lag? Not enough coffee the day before? I'm really not sure. After some rummaging, D found a couple of baby aspirin in her bathroom and I settled back to sleep. We both realized with a bit of a smile that it would have been a lot easier to find medications back home, where Wife stockpiles so many of them.

In the morning, as we were breakfasting, I mentioned the windows to D. She shrugged and said, "Well, maybe we gave the neighbors a show last night. OK, well I guess I've always been a bit of an exhibitionist." Then she told me amusing stories about those neighbors she has met as we got ourselves back to the airport.

In the end we got there in plenty of time but I spent too long gazing fondly into her eyes and had to run for my plane. But it was worth it. When I finally got home, Son 2 was bouncing off the walls with excitement to see me, and Wife complained in a sullen monotone about everything that had gone wrong since I left ... which seemed to be a long list. Yup, I guess I was back home.

Good news, bad news

Last night at home was almost like a “good-news, bad-news” joke. The good news was that everybody raved about dinner (Cajun shrimp). The bad news is that Wife told me she had met with Pop again. You remember Pop, right? She assured me they did not come to the house but met at a fast-food restaurant somewhere.

… Oh, and then she drove him home.

And she claims that her motive is that she still wants to get her money back from him. But I have to wonder … is she just constitutionally incapable of drawing anything to a close and then sticking to it? How can this be?

Never mind, it’s only a rhetorical question and I long since realized I should just sigh and roll my eyes at this kind of behavior. But it baffles me.

You don't count

It's strange, but I find that whenever I try to explain some kind of philosophical principle to Wife – I mean something I live by, something ethical, and I also mean something I think she doesn’t live by or I wouldn’t bother to explain it – whenever I try to explain this kind of thing I always overstate it so egregiously that I make it comical or absurd. Of course I don’t act like I find it comical – if she and I are arguing about fundamental ethical principles I am typically very much in earnest – but I always make the kind of overstatement where if I were asked about it later, once my blood had cooled down, I would say “Oh no, of course not; what I meant was something a lot milder, a lot less extreme, namely that ….” But my philosophical statements to Wife are always sledge-hammers, never tuning forks. I don’t know if it is because I get carried away by the heat of the moment, or because I figure I have to make big statements because she will niggle small ones to death, or because … well, I don’t really know. It is very strange.

Does anybody else in the world argue with a spouse over philosophical principles? Naah, I didn’t think so.

So it was dinner time last night, and I made a tofu-and-chickpea curry along with boiling rice and steaming some broccoli: hardly exciting, but I just got back from a trip abroad and so was planning the week’s recipies in the last half an hour of the workday. I served Wife only a tiny bit of everything, because she hasn’t been eating much lately; but I gave Son 2 and myself each somewhat larger (more “normal-sized”) servings. We ate and talked about the day. Son 2 cleared his plate and asked if he could have some dessert. By that time Wife had eaten her broccoli and pushed the other food around her plate, and she told him yes if she could have some too. She got up to put her curry back in the pan.

I was irritated on multiple levels, most saliently two: as a cook, that she was foregoing my curry for ice cream; and as a parent, that she was behaving in exactly the way parents traditionally forbid their children to behave. So I asked, altogether too peevishly, “Should I just stop cooking for you altogether? If you are just going to put the food back anyway so you can have ice cream, why don’t I simply buy and cook less food in the first place?”

She answered that she liked some of the meals I make more than others, and that it would be logistically inconvenient or impossible for her to make her own meals in the same kitchen so that she could eat at the same time with us, and more in this line, and I kept insisting that all this was completely beside the point. Son 2 actually tried to join the conversation briefly to say that he thought Wife got the point quite clearly, and I had to tell him that no she didn’t and could he please stay out of it. But I also found that I was totally incapable of continuing the discussion out there in the kitchen. The inhibition against arguing in front of Son 2 was so great that my mouth wouldn’t work. I asked Wife to come back in the bedroom where we could close the door.

Once there, I tried to explain myself … and here is where my statements started to morph into absurdity. I began solidly enough: “The point is that this is not a restaurant. In a restaurant you get to ask for exactly what you want, and their job is to serve you; then if you don’t like what you get you can send it back and make a scene with the waiter. But in a family the point is to eat together. This means …” and here I started to overstate the point past what I really meant, “… that the question what you like is completely irrelevant. It totally doesn’t matter what you like. If you make something I don’t like, I smile and I am nice about it and I eat it without complaining, because it really doesn’t matter whether I like it or not! And I expect the same thing of you! Regardless what I make, I expect you to smile and to eat it and not to complain!”

She asked, “But when you cook for a family, isn’t the point to fix what people like?”

I replied, “No, the point is to fix what will nourish everyone. If I were just going to fix what you like, it would be all ice cream and doughnuts.”

“I like other things too!” she protested. “And besides, I don’t complain about everything I don’t like. There are a lot of things you make that I don’t like, and I eat up most of them without complaining at all.”

I answered, “In the first place I don’t think you have any idea how often you complain, because I think most of the time you just complain on autopilot and don’t even hear it. So you probably honestly believe that you complain a lot less than you really do. But in the second place, surely you understand that there are more ways to complain besides just using words. I count rolling your eyes, sighing, inflecting your voice in a sarcastic way … all of that. And yes, you do it a lot.”

“Well, I have to wonder if you deliberately fix meals you know I will hate?”

“Of course not. In fact, I avoid a lot of meals that I would enjoy because I’m trying to steer around what you like and don’t like. If I were cooking just for myself, I’d make a lot more things with cooked greens (which I like) and mushrooms (which I love); but I know you won’t eat them.”

“Cooked greens are disgusting.”

“That’s a matter of opinion, and I disagree with you. But the point is that I don’t make them anyway.”

“I’m sure there are a lot of recipes in the world that don’t include chard!” [I am reasonably sure that what she meant here was, “Why do you insist on cooking so many vegetarian meals?”]

“Not as many as you might think. I can’t cook the way I did ten years ago, back when we only had a few different things – pork chops, spaghetti, broiled chicken, all on a rotation year in and year out – because I’m 50 years old and no 50-year-old man can afford that kind of cholesterol in his diet.” [Health isn’t the only reason behind the large number of vegetarian meals I make, but I figured it was a reason that she could hear and understand.]

“I didn’t know your cholesterol was too high. What is it?”

I wasn’t about to give her a number, so all I said was, “Well, it sure will be too high if I start cooking like that again. I’m 50, and I can’t eat that way any more.”

“No, I suppose not ….”

“And anyway, this is avoiding the main issue, because the main issue is a lot bigger than food. It is just this: I go through life assuming that whatever I want doesn’t matter – food or anything else – and I have made major life decisions on that basis. And I think you don’t believe that at all. And I just don’t get that.”

Of course, I don’t really believe this, certainly not in that form! If I had to defend a proposition like that philosophically I could never do it. At the very least, there is a distinction between tastes or minor preferences, which can change like a will o’ the wisp, and fundamental values. A better way to say it would be that some preferences are more important to me than others, so I am willing to dispense with the low-priority ones without missing them. I don’t know why I was overstating it so to her. But I did.

“Ummm, … no, I don’t.”

“Well, didn’t your parents ever teach you that what you want doesn’t matter, and that it is up to you to adapt yourself to other people and the rest of the world? Because that’s the truth and it is what grown-ups are expected to do. And if your parents never taught you as much, then I don’t know what to say. I just think that was very irresponsible on their part.”

What did I just say??? Did I really want her to think that other people’s parents spend their time indoctrinating their children with the idea that their likes and dislikes truly don’t matter? I don’t believe that. Why did I say it? What I really wanted to convey was the value of a kind of reticence that holds back from asserting itself too forcefully, as part of a mutual give-and-take that holds any group together – a give-and-take springing from mutual respect and consideration. I would never really want to make it all or nothing. What could I possibly have been thinking??

“No, they didn’t teach me that at all.”

“Then they failed in an important duty, because learning that is part of the difference between adults and three-year-olds. Little kids think that what they want is important and they insist on it. They throw tantrums if they don’t get it. But when you grow up you should learn that what you want really doesn’t matter, so that you are more relaxed about it and don’t insist all the time.”

“But when you cook vegetarian meals, isn’t that because you like them?”

“Sure, but that’s not the point. If I’m doing the cooking, sure I’ll cook something I like; when you cook, so do you. The point is that when you cook, I smile graciously no matter what you put on the table. I don’t have to like it. Because fundamentally what I like or don’t like doesn’t matter.”

“I can’t imagine what it would be like to live like that.”

“Happier. If you really think that what you want matters, you’re going to get really cranky trying to get it and you are going to expect that it will make you happy. And as a simple matter of fact, it won’t. The people I know who have gotten the things they thought they wanted are never made happy by any of it. But if you realize that what you want doesn’t really matter, that it’s just bubbles floating this way and that because tastes are so changeable, then you don’t get upset when you don’t get it because you can let go of all that. And you can be happier.”

Do I really think this? I guess I didn’t pull it completely out of my ass … I mean, in a certain very warped way it reflects the Buddhist teaching that craving leads to suffering. I’m not a Buddhist, but it’s reassuring to me to think there might be some respectable opinion out there that I was distorting. Maybe it wasn’t completely crazy. But it seems to me I was saying it crazily.

“Anyway,” I went on, “that’s why parents should teach their children that what they want doesn’t count. So they will have easier and happier lives.”

Whoa. Again, do I really believe that? I’m sure my parents never taught me anything like that, or at any rate not in so many words. They taught me I had to be polite to others, of course; and somewhere aong the line I learned to feel shame if I appeared too grasping or self-centered. But that’s not what I just said, is it? I just said that parents should inculcate the message “You don’t count,” which seems extreme. Have I ever taught the boys that? Surely not!

We went on for a while, back and forth this way and that, but towards the end I posed the following question to her: “If I had done just what I liked every minute for the last twenty years, would we even be sitting here having this conversation?”

At first she jumped to her default answer, “I have no idea.” But then she thought a minute and added, “You probably would have left me long ago.”

The conversation kind of sputtered to a stop, the ideas getting smaller from there rather than bigger. And then soon she was exhausted and fell catatonically into bed.

But I was thinking some more about what I had said, and I began to wonder something. Yes, of course the things I said to her were grotesque and outlandish. “You don’t count”??? What kind of philosophy is that for guiding your life? Of course I got carried away. And of course if I were to try to defend any of this rationally, I would first scale it way, way back and nuance it a whole lot before I would even make the attempt. But all the same … how do I say these things when I talk to myself, when I try to assess my own behavior or my own choices? Am I really so sure that I am careful to nuance the message the way I would have to before I could possibly try to defend it as true? Or do I say it to myself in just the same way, using just the same broad brushstrokes?

When I first began to mull last night, the question I posed myself was more limited: The times in the past that I chose to overlook how incompatible Wife and I have always been in the basic ethical principles we use to guide our lives – all those times I hung in there – was I making the intellectual mistake of treating fundamental principles the way I treat ephemeral tastes? In other words, since I knew that I should eat up when at somebody else’s table (regardless of what I thought of the food), did I make the mistake of treating my ethical principles with the same disregard, telling myself that it didn’t matter so long as I reaffirmed the communal bonds (meaning in this case the bonds of marriage) which are more important than personal preferences? Is that why I hung in there so long?

This morning, I realized that the question can safely be stated more broadly: All those times that I hung in there, was I making the more fundamental mistake of telling myself flatly that I don’t count? Could it be that the reason I state ethical principles in such a cartoonish and uncompromising way when I am arguing with Wife is that that is the way I really believe them myself?

I wish I could answer some of these questions with “No,” but I haven’t convinced myself yet that I can. It may require more thought.


Postscript: By the time we were done in the bedroom, Son 2 had put himself to bed. This morning he barely spoke to me. It is times like this that I start to despair of any decent relationship with him in the future. But then I remind myself that all the same, I have to do whatever I have to do. If it doesn’t turn out the way I like, … well, what I like or dislike doesn’t really count ….

Would you rent a car for this man? part 5

More drama Wednesday night, but it doesn't matter. (In fact I tried to post it by texting from my phone, but the messages seem to have gone off into space somewhere. Maybe they'll show up here all in a jumble two weeks from now.) Thursday, Wife saw Counselor, who naturally had a much sounder suggestion. He advised she should just walk away. Consider the $200 and the jewelry as irretrievably lost and abandon all contact with Pop. Block his calls from your phone, don't text him ... as far as he is concerned you should just drop off the face of the earth. Sure, it means losing the money and the stuff, but it also means you don't risk him doing you damage. Call it a fair trade.

OK, fine. But of course it's not that easy. Next, Wife spent the afternoon with her friend Leia, who insisted "No, you have to get the police to stop him so he doesn't prey on others." By the time she got home she was all confused. I asked what was she going to do, and she said "Well I guess tomorrow I'll go to the police," but without much conviction in her voice.

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know."

"Really? Because I think I know what you want to do pretty well at this point."

"Maybe you know me better than I know myself."

"Well think about it. We've been talking about the police for a couple of days now, and every time you have said you'll contact them later. If you wanted to call them, you'd have done it by now. So you don't want to call the police. Fair enough, but that means taking Counselor's advice and having no contact with him. In fact, you'd have to do that part either way, because part of calling the police is putting out a restraining order. And once that is in place you can't contact him either."

I spent a while trying to convince her that contacting him again was a bad idea, because she really wanted her stuff back. But she seemed to acquiesce. Then after dinner she said she was antsy and wanted to go for a walk.

Now, Wife never "goes for a walk." Even when she gets on a rant about how she needs more exercise and "tomorrow" she's going to start walking regularly, she never does it. If she has to get somewhere that is too close to drive, she'll put it off rather than walk over there. So I arched an eyebrow inquiringly. She then said, "Or maybe I'll just go to bed," and slunk back into the bedroom.

I gave her about five minutes and then came back. Not surprisingly, she was keying in some text message on her phone.

"Who are you texting?"

"My friend Kevin." [Another guy she met on OKCupid.]

"Let me see."

"No! You can't read my private text messages!"

"I don't want to read your messages, and I couldn't care less what you are saying. Show me the header where it says the name of whoever you are texting to."

"No! Get away! This is private!"

"Show me the name."

And after I stood there stock still for a minute or so, she relented and showed me the name. Of course it was Pop.

"Delete the message."

With much grumbling, she did.

Then I exploded, "What were you thinking? The whole idea is that you drop off the face of the earth to him! You can't do that if you keep contacting him!"

"I was going to tell him that his absolute last chance to give me my stuff back was to meet me tomorrow at 10:00 at the Starbucks near ---. And then if he didn't, it's 'tin-star time.' "

As an aside, how many "last chances" has she given him so far? Never mind. What I said was, "Are you out of your mind? Why would you tell him that?"

"I really want my stuff back."

"But he'll never give it back. Understand that your stuff is lost permanently. And you can't afford to contact him, because every time you communicate with him in any way you lose and he wins. And on top of all that, you don't threaten him. What kind of person do you think he is?"

"I think he is a criminal."

"Right! And that means the last thing you do is threaten him with the police. Especially if you are really going to them, you can't tip your hand. And don't you see that threatening him would endanger you far more?"

"No ... that's why I wanted to meet in a public place, like a Starbucks."

"And then what? Then he doesn't show up, and after a while you get disgusted and leave; and as you are walking across the parking lot to your car, you're accidentally side-swiped by a crazy but unidentifiable driver in a car with no license plates, and you end up in the hospital or the morgue. Is that what you want?" [I admit this is an extreme scenario, but I wanted to get her attention. And you may have noticed that can be hard to do when Wife gets an idea stuck in her head.]

Silence.

"Of all types of crime, which one is the least often solved?"

"Murder. I know that."

"And???"

Long silence. Then, ... "OK, I won't contact him."

I have no way to know if she'll stick to that, and no way to enforce it. Needless to say, her word is worthless. But I hope I scared her enough that she'll back away from doing something stupid. If only she weren't so damned possessive about getting "her stuff" back. But of course she is.

I can hope.

Would you rent a car for this man? part 4

It just doesn't stop.
__________

Scene: Dinner time. Hosea and Wife are at the table. Son 2 is on a week-long field trip with his school, miles and miles and miles away.


Hosea: Well, what interesting happened in your day?

Wife: Well I got another text message from Pop asking if we could get together for lunch or something in the next couple of days. I said sure, maybe, if he could pay for it.

Hosea: I thought Pop was completely gone. Didn't I hear that right?

Wife: No, I never said he was completely gone. I asked him when I could have my money and jewelry back, and he said he can't get them for a few days but maybe Friday.

Hosea: Jewelry?? What jewelry?

Wife: Oh, that was when he was over here. He came back into the bedroom and saw my jewelry chest open, and he was admiring it. Then I made the mistake of leaving him alone in the room for a few minutes, and afterwards when he left I couldn't find this and that piece any more. I called him and told him I knew he had them, but he just yelled at me that I was crazy. I told him I wanted them back or I'd call the police and report them stolen, and he just said "I'm not talkin' to no fuckin' tin star!" Then he hung up on me.

Hosea: When was this?

Wife: Last week. Then Son 2 saw him loading stuff into his van, and there was a box whose lid was open, and the lid was mirrored ... and Son 2 said the inside was all metal. So I'm sure he has a bunch of jewelry in there that he was packing into his car.

Hosea: Son 2? Wait a minute -- how did Son 2 get into the story?

Wife: That was last Friday, when I texted him to ask when we were getting together so he could pay me my money and he texted back "We aren't. I'm gone." That was right about the time I was supposed to pick up Son 2 from school. So first I called Avis to make sure he hadn't rented another car on my credit card, and then I went to get Son 2. Only after I got him I drove past Pop's house to see if I could find him there. He was loading a bunch of stuff into his truck because he was leaving town, and I told him I wanted my money back. He said he'd have to get it from the ATM downtown, so I could drive down behind him if I wanted. We both got in our cars and somehow he worked it so that I pulled out first; so I headed off in the direction of downtown and then he peeled out of his driveway going the other direction. So I turned around and tried to follow him; and I called him and asked "Where are you going?" He said, "I'm trying to lose you." Well I wasn't going to drive recklessly with Son 2 in the car [Although you'll remember that's not what she said to her other Internet boyfriend.] So I asked Son 2 to dial 9-1-1, and then I told them that he had been drinking and now was driving ... also I described the car and gave them the license plate ... also I said that he was probably transporting stolen goods. The lady on the phone said, "You sound like you know him!" and I told her, "Yes I know him." She said, "Well I'll put out an APB, but we have to catch him in a violation to have a reason to pull him over."
__________

There was more. I can't remember it all. But after a while I finally had to ask, ...

Hosea: Have you called the police yet, to report the jewelry stolen?

Wife: Well not yet. I don't want to make him mad, because he has got a terrible temper. And the last time I asked him about all this he said he needed a few days and then he could give me "all my stuff." So I figured that might include the jewelry as well as my money. And I told him I wanted to be really clear on this because we seem to keep having these communication problems. Like then he went into a rant where he accused me of calling Avis five times, and I told him "If they said that then they were lying because I only called them once and I don't want to be accused of something I didn't do."

Hosea: OK, listen. Stop. You can't waste time worrying about what he accused you of.

Wife: But it wasn't true.

Hosea: Who cares? Whatever words come out of his mouth, they don't mean anything. You can't let yourself get caught up in worrying about them. If he promises something, or if he accuses, or whatever ... it doesn't matter. You have much bigger things to worry about. His promises especially don't mean anything. You will probably never see your money or jewelry again.

Wife: Yeah, I was afraid I might not get them back ....

Hosea: You can't be afraid. Just face up to it as a fact. Especially if you haven't gone to the police yet. And every day you put it off makes it less likely. And even that probably isn't your biggest worry. Everything you have told me about this fellow makes me suspect that you may be at risk for him physically hurting you. [I don't know what I heard that told me that, and I don't know if I have reported anything in this story that gives you the same impression or if those details have fallen through the cracks of my narrative. But when I said this I felt it as a certainty.] I don't know if he'd also be likely to hurt Son 2 or me, but I think there is a good chance he could come after you.

Wife: I know. That's another reason I haven't gone to the police yet.

Hosea: But you can't solve this yourself, and there is nothing for you to do except go to the police. You should have done it as soon as you saw the jewelry was missing.

Wife: I guess. But then I have to get a restraining order against him at the same time. And you know, I'd feel a lot better in this house alone during the day if you'd give me my gun back.

Oh great, just what we need! After all, she has shown so much prudence, restraint, and responsible judgement lately ... not. The last thing we need is for her to be armed with lethal force on top of it.

Hosea: No, I think that's a bad idea. There are too many stories of intruders getting the gun away from homeowners and using it on them. [I figure that's a reason she might buy.]

Wife: Oh, but mine is a snub-nosed .38, so it's really hard for anyone to grab the barrel and force it away from me. All I'd have to do is pull the trigger.

Hosea: But you wouldn't. Look at everything that has happened the last ... how long has it been?

Wife: I met him six weeks ago.

Hosea: Fine, look at the last six weeks. Time and again you have had something happen that should have been a trigger for you, that something was wrong. And every time you have hesitated and pulled back. That's why you haven't called the police yet. That's why you keep giving him "just one more chance." And that moment of hesitation is all he would need to get the gun away from you, because in that moment you wouldn't shoot! Figuratively speaking, you haven't "shot" at any time in the last six weeks, when you've had plenty of reason. So you wouldn't this time. Don't tell yourself that you'd have the nerves of James Bond. You'd falter ... and that is why it is far safer for you not to have a gun in the house. All you need to be armed with is a telephone. If he comes to the house to threaten you, call 9-1-1.

Wife: But he could kill me before the police get here.

Hosea: That depends on how long you wait before calling them. If you wait till he's already inside and holding a weapon on you, yes. If you call when he pulls up in front of the house (assuming you already have a restraining order) ... and if you then leave the phone off the hook so they can track the call, bolt the door, and hide deep in the house ... they'll get here pretty fast. We're in a city, not way out in the country -- the police can get here very fast when they need to.

Wife: Well, I would really need the restraining order. I don't even know how to file those.

Hosea: Ask the police. They deal with that stuff every day. They'll walk you through it.

Wife: [vacantly and without conviction] Yes, well I'll do it tomorrow.

Hosea: Hey, I have another question. If he did want revenge, do you think he'd take it on me or Son 2? Or just on you?

Wife: Oh, I think he'd just want revenge on me.

Hosea: Well then what if -- once you have filed a police report and given them all the information they need -- what if you disappeared? Go spend a few days with my parents. Or go stay with your friend Leia ... she'll be back in town tomorrow. Then you just won't be around. Would you be safer that way?

Wife: Maybe so, ... yes ....

Hosea: Well think about it.
__________

I know -- it's crazy. And why am I still here? I know -- that's crazy too.

When I told her she would falter at the critical moment, I was only partly thinking of the stories she has been telling me. Also, I was thinking of this post here, written by Alone over at The Last Psychiatrist. It is way too easy for a bully to manipulate -- almost to mesmerize -- his victim, to make the victim do anything he wants while the victim squirms but can't break out of the spell. I have known too many bullies in my life not to recognize the pattern. And it is obvious that Pop is a bully. So yeah, I recognize the pattern.

It's a mess.