Poor boundary control

Janeway raised a question on my post from a couple days ago, and my answer began to get a bit long. (You're shocked, I realize.) By the time I hit my third paragraph, I decided to graduate it from a comment to a post of its own.

She asked:

Okay, so all you asked of her regarding her ongoing extramarital activity is not to let the boys find out that she's fucking someone else. Yet, not only has she introduced son #2 to this man, but also feels comfortable enough with son's knowing him that she can recount stories about him?

The short answer is:

Yes, that's right.

The longer version is, ... well, a little longer.

In the first place, she might not remember my saying anything. Wife has a lot of trouble remembering things she doesn't want to remember, in much the same way that she is very good at misremembering things when the altered version fits one of her ongoing narratives better.

In the second place, even if she did remember, I'm not surprised at her doing something else instead. In general I'm reluctant ever to ask her anything, because it sometimes seems that the mere fact that I asked her makes her want to do the opposite. If this were a Dr. Seuss book instead of real life, I would start asking her to do the opposite of what I want in the first place, but the pattern isn't quite reliable enough or mechanical enough for that. And maybe I am overstating it? But some days it sure does seem like that ....

Of course, you might think that she would be motivated to keep that part of her life separate anyway. Basic privacy concerns would be one reason. ("Sweetie, I'd like you to meet the man who has been banging the daylights out of Mommy every day this week while you've been in math class." Maybe not.) Then there are those warnings I read that in case of a divorce children automatically take sides against whichever parent (if any) they think has been screwing around.

But Wife has always had very poor boundary control.

• Back when she was seeing Boyfriend 2, she would meet him in a public park with the boys in tow and then she and he would talk while the boys clambered all over the playground equipment. (I assume they were only talking, in a public parkwhen the boys might come back at any moment wanting a snack. I never heard any stories to the contrary.)



• Boyfriend 3 was a relative of some friends of my parents, so she was quite open about taking the kids to go see him and his family. The sexual involvement lasted only a couple weeks before he broke it off because his wife found out and he had an attack of religious conscience. But the emotional involvement had been building for some time, and it never occurred to Wife that she needed to be at all discreet.



• Boyfriend 4 lived with us for two years, so he may be a special case. In some ways I think the boys became fonder of him (as a kind of uncle-figure) than Wife ever was, especially after they stopped fucking.



• And as for the whole Boyfriend-5/Friend drama, well of course that played out online. But Wife certainly discussed them with the boys. At any rate she discussed the parts she thought were innocuous, such as that they were terrorists, or that they bred dogs. But could she keep the romantic lilt out of her voice? I doubt it. I know for a fact that Son 2 watched over her shoulder as she signed off an IM-conversation with "ILYAAF" and guessed correctly what the initials stood for.

So no, I am not terribly surprised that she let Son 2 meet Pop, nor that she would tell him stories.

To be sure, the story that I overheard wasn't a terribly flattering one. Pop took her to lunch at a restaurant somewhere, and then right around the end of the meal had to make a couple of phone calls. So he got up and left the restaurant and was pacing back and forth outside, talking nonstop into his phone and chain smoking. The waitress brought the bill and Wife was left sitting there, alone and embarrassed, saying "My date had to make a call but he'll be back." (Yes, she used the word "date" when telling the story to Son 2.) It was a long time -- I don't know how long, but she made it sound an eternity -- before he came back and paid the bill so they could leave.

Now, Wife was telling this story in order to say what a rotten guy Pop was for being so rude. (This was Thursday night, by which time she was already pretty disenchanted with him.) But I couldn't help interrupting at that point with a theory: "He probably wasn't just rude. He was probably relying on your embarrassment being so acute that you couldn't make yourself just sit there and wait, so that you would pay the bill yourself and leave rather than wait for him to come back and settle up. He must have been very disappointed when you stuck it out like that." Wife took this as an occasion to congratulate herself with, "Well, I stood my ground." But what a sad choice of something to congratulate oneself on ... outwaiting your date in the slow race for the check!