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.