And the new boyfriend still scares me

I have posted a couple of times before (here and here) that I have some worries about Boyfriend 5. Well, those pesky worries just won't go away.

I asked Wife today what news she had. She mentioned that Boyfriend 5 has been sick in bed for several days because he got "some bad drugs." Before I could ask what street-corner he had bought these on, she explained that he gets prescriptions by mail from some American mail-order pharmeceutical provider, and that every single one is prescribed for some legitimate health condition.

Then in what sense were they "bad drugs"? Oh, she said, they got the formula wrong on one batch, or something like that. Anyway, it made him really sick for several days.

There are several things about this story that make no sense at all. In the first place, Boyfriend 5 is (supposedly) not an American national; how can he possibly be getting his prescriptions from this company? Well, Wife insists stoutly that he is; and I suppose I can't prove that they do no business outside the USA. So that part niggles at me, but I can't pin it down as an absolute lie.

But the second part of the story is impossible. American pharmaceutical providers are controlled by the FDA, under regulations scary enough they would curl your hair. Therefore, any American pharmaceutical provider will have controls in place to guarantee that every batch of a given medicine is exactly the same as the previous batch. A company without these controls would be shut down, and their executives would risk jail time. And no CEO -- no matter how crooked -- is going to cut corners in an area that he knows will come under regular Federal scrutiny and that could send him to jail. As one coworker of mine put it (after several years of owning his own business): "The most important advice I could ever give any business owner is, 'Don't fuck with the Eagle.' "

In short, it is impossible that Boyfriend 5 could have been made that sick by some maintenance medicine that he regularly takes, all because of some processing irregularities on the part of an American pharmaceutical provider. At least one of the elements of this proposition has to be false. Either this is a new medicine and he is just now discovering unknown side effects (and the rest of the story is squeaky-clean), or he bought the drugs on a street-corner. Or maybe he was never sick at all but had some other reason for being away from his computer and unable to IM Wife for several days. In any event, somehow or other, he is lying to her.

Did I ever mention that he is an ex-drug addict?

It hardly needs to be said that Wife is absolutely convinced of this man's honesty, and is certain that anything he tells her must be true. I wish I knew any way at all to let her see what is so obvious to me. But she doesn't want to see it.

Do I undermine Wife with the kids?

One of Wife's chronic complaints about me is that I undermine her authority with the kids. Whenever she starts feeling really sorry for herself, she whines that "the kids both know" that I'm "the only real authority in the house," and that "any real decision has to be made by" me, and generally that they are under no obligation to respect her authority or her time or anything else about her.

Some of this whining I can explain easily. Wife's idea of what it takes to respect someone's time requires an almost neurotic punctiliousness and a clear understanding of the thousands of unspoken rules that she personally grew up with as a little girl. There is no way that mere kids could possibly avoid "disrespecting her time" according to her definition of what that means. Kids are, after all, self-centered beasts; and "respecting Wife's time" means catering assiduously to her in such a way that she is allowed to be a self-centered beast instead. So this one is a foregone conclusion.

She has some funny notions about authority, too. Wife figures that if she calls out from the other room -- once -- "You two had better go clean your room now," and then continues to sit at the computer for another two hours, ... well by golly they've had lots of time so that room ought to be spic and span. The fact that they don't begin to take an order seriously if it is spoken only once -- particularly when there is no visible follow-up for hours -- is to her a sign of disrespect. For my part, I can't imagine why she would expect anything different. Even Confucius says you can't treat subordinates like that and expect anything to get done.

But I have always been a bit bothered by the claim that I personally undermined her standing with the kids. I am always telling them, "Do whatever Mommy tells you," or "I don't care what you think is fair -- Mommy said X, so that's what goes." Doesn't that count as supporting her authority with them?

Today, though, I think I saw this "undermining" at work. Watch the following scene, and tell me if you see it too. [All quotes are approximate, and are intended only to convey the meaning. I don't remember anybody's exact words.]

I came home from work this afternoon, sat down in the bedroom to take off my shoes, and asked, "So, how was your day? What happened that I should know about?"

Wife: Well, Son 1 and Son 2 went over to a friend's house, and together with the friend's little sister they all went out to a park. But then Son 1 and his friend deliberately ditched Son 2 and the little sister, who were both very upset and scared at being lost. They both came home several hours ago.

Hosea: What have you imposed as a punishment?

Wife: I haven't done anything yet. I don't know what to do.

Hosea: [shouts out to the front of the house] Son 1! Son 2! Get back here -- front and center!

Boys: [hurrying in together] Yeah, Dad? What is it?

Hosea: Tell me what happened at the park today.

Each boy told me his version of what happened. The upshot was that I don't think Son 1 behaved in malice, but I think his friend was being an obnoxious jerk (his friend initially proposed the idea) and Son 1 was a dam' fool for going along with it. Poor judgment but nothing worse. On the other hand, I also figured that a point had to be made so that Son 1 will know better next time. So I told him ...

Hosea: Next time your friend comes up with an idea like that, your job is to tell him its wrong and you're not going to do it. You never split up when you are away from home in a place where some people don't know how to get back. So as a consequence, you are not going to eat dinner tonight and no snacks later in the evening. You can eat again at breakfast tomorrow. Now go finish your chores while I get dinner for the rest of us, and then we have other things to do this evening.

Son 1: Awww, Dad ...!

But he did it. And after ten minutes of pouting and feeling sorry for himself (while nonetheless finishing his chores), he was fine for the rest of the evening. Meanwhile, once the boys had left our room, I asked Wife ...

Hosea: Do you think my choice was wrong? You didn't say anything. If I need to overturn my decision, I can still do it.

Wife: I don't know. I really didn't know what to do.

Hosea: Well, did you think that any consequence at all was appropriate?

Wife: Oh yes, absolutely. I just didn't know what.

Hosea: Fine. Well this is a consequence that will get his attention, but it absolutely doesn't harm him in any way. So I think it should be fine.

Now here is the quiz for attentive readers. Did anybody catch what happened in all this that could have made the boys think that I am the only real authority in the house, and that all real decisions (including especially decisions about rules and punishment) have to be made by me? This is what Wife calls "undermining her authority with the kids." Is that what you call it?

P.S.: This whole question of respect gets even more fun. Wife feels guilty for not telling the boys that she is deeply, madly, head-over-heels in love with Boyfriend 5. After all, he is the single most important thing in her life (these days); isn't it wrong of her to keep it a secret? Isn't it implicitly lying to them?

And of course it is all my fault that she "can't tell them" because I "won't allow" her to do so.

Let's leave aside the irony that Wife is really distressed about "lying" in this case, but that she lies so cold-bloodedly in so many other cases. What does it mean to say that I "won't allow" her to tell the kids?

All it means is that I have counseled caution and delay. After all, this is the kind of news that she can't un-say. Once they know, they know. And I think she should think long and hard before telling them, precisely because I think it is very likely that once they know, they will lose all respect for her. And I want to preserve the possibility that she can keep their respect, at least a little while longer.

I don't remember if I have ever explained this in quite those terms. Maybe I should. I think Wife is too besotted with love right now to understand that the boys could seriously lose respect for her over this. But maybe it is worth pointing out that she and I had the exact same conversation back when she wanted to tell them "the truth" that she was regularly fucking Boyfriends 2, 3, and 4. (Yes, there was a time that they all overlapped.) At the time, the only argument I could make which persuaded her to wait was that the boys were young enough not to have any discretion, so they would tell their school-mates who would tell their parents ... and did Wife really want this kind of gossip all over the PTA? She didn't, and so she dropped the idea.

But suppose she had told them back then, and suppose she followed through with her desire to tell them about Boyfriend 5 today: in that case, exactly what kind of a slut would they then take her for?

And would this enhance her standing with them?

Would they feel more respect for her?

Am I once again "undermining" her respect with the boys by suggesting that she keep her affairs secret from them?

By all means let me know what you think ....

Good news from Boyfriend 4

Boyfriend 4 called yesterday. The doctors have finally given him a prognosis. If he continues to respond well to treatment, and assuming there are no complications when they perform surgery to remove the tumor, they expect him to make a full recovery. Cancer-free. This is certainly unexpected, but it is good news in anybody's book.

Do I have green teeth?

I'll keep this short. That's easy because I don't understand it well enough to have anything to say.

Yesterday morning as Wife and I woke up, I wanted to fuck and so I really tried to interest her as slowly and attentively as I could: shoulder rubs, gentle kisses, lightly stroking her hair and arms ... the works. Absolutely no response. Not the slightest interest. She didn't even roll over a bit to make it easier, which she used to do (sometimes) if she felt like going along. So I sighed and got up to make some coffee and putter about.

When I cam back to the bedroom maybe a half an hour later, her legs were spread wide and her vibrator was deep inside her. She was sopping wet and totally engrossed.

Well, I'll skip the rest of the morning because this is a blog about my marriage and not a porn site. But I don't understand. At first I thought she just wasn't in the mood. But obviously she was just as horny as I was, or she wouldn't have reached for her vibrator as soon as I was out of sight. All the same, as long as I was the one carressing her, she wouldn't let herself betray any hint of interest.

So I am left with the question: Am I that repulsive? Do I have green teeth, or what?

Wife's nightmare

Wife had a nightmare last night. She was in a wheelchair and we were walking along the streets of a very hilly city. We were going up a steep hill and she started slipping backwards, rolling faster and faster away from me, out of control. Meanwhile I appeared not to notice and kept marching on forwards. She feared she would crash.

She told me about this dream this morning. Does it mean anything? I told her I don't know. Fact is, there are all kinds of things I can do with the symbolism of her being swept away from me and into danger she can't see by forces beyond her control. But I didn't think it would exactly win me any points to say so, and I kept my mouth shut.

On lying, part 2

Meanwhile, I have gotten a couple of e-mails from Boyfriend 5. I thought it could be kind of useful to be able to correspond with him directly. But now I am not so sure there is any point.

One of the first things he told me was that anything I send him will be kept in absolute confidence and not shown to Wife. I guess he was trying to build up my trust. The problem is that I cannot possibly believe this, try as I might. So the result is that he has undermined my trust rather than bolstering it.

If he had said flat out he would share whatever I wrote with her, I would have given him points for honesty. If he had never mentioned the subject, I probably wouldn't have thought about it. But now that he is insisting on a point that I am certain is a lie, I have to assume I can't trust anything else he says either.

Not that this is a big surprise, I guess. It does persuade me (in a cynical kind of way) that he and Wife were made for each other, because this is exactly the kind of lie she uses on me too. Whenever I ask her a question, she tries to figure out what answer will make me happy rather than just telling me what is true. But there is not much point in my carrying on the correspondence under these circumstances.

The thing is, I have learned belatedly that little bitty lies over trivial things are always indicators of more fundamental behavior. Back when I had only known Wife for a couple of months, I overheard her talking to her mother on the phone and casually lying about how she had spent the afternoon. And I almost walked out right then. Part of me told myself that I should tell her, I can't be involved with you if you lie like that. But I was still head over heels in love, and I told myself it was no big deal. I told myself it wouldn't happen to me. And I have spent the next quarter century with it happening to me repeatedly, more often than I could dream of counting. The moral of the story -- and what I should have realized at the time -- was this: If she lies to her mother, then one day she will start lying to me.

Some time, I need to tell Wife the following: If you get fed up with me and want to run away with Boyfriend 5, then just do it. If you want to go running off to the Middle East and spend your life drinking mint tea and haggling in bazaars, I can't stop you. Get it over with and let's both get on with life. I'll be sad, but I have spent years in advance grieving over an impending divorce because you have threatened it so often. By the time you pull the trigger, it will be just a formality. But before you leave, remember one thing. If he lies to me, one day he will start lying to you.

Running scared

I spent some time talking with Wife over the weekend. She said at one point that she thought the bravest and wisest thing she could do right now would be to e-mail Boyfriend 5 saying "Never contact me again." I'm sure she expected me to jump all over this offer.

Of course I realize that if she did this, she would simply hate and resent me for it. She wouldn't be doing it because she actually believed -- let alone understood -- in what respect it was the better thing to do. It would just be "one more time" that she sacrificed "everything that mattered to her" for my sake. Now maybe I should have taken her up on it (see, e.g., my remarks in my previous post about the role of self-denial in monogamy); but I have seen plenty of the "Hosea is a cruel and ruthless tyrant" drama over the years and I am in no big hurry to see more of it any time soon.

So instead I proposed to her that I have no idea whether that would be the right thing to do, but that doing the right thing for the wrong reasons can lead to all sorts of trouble. And I further proposed that she really doesn't know what she wants ... at any rate, not down deep. Because she doesn't know herself.

She wasn't sure what to make of this. At first she disagreed, saying that she thought she knew herself pretty well. And she said she does know what she wants -- namely, that she doesn't want anybody involved in this drama to get hurt: not me, not our kids, not Boyfriend 5, not herself.

Great, I replied. That's like wanting an end to world hunger. More exactly, the situation we are in right now is a situation where it is impossible to avoid people getting hurt; so to say that you don't want that outcome after getting yourself into this situation is just to deny any personal responsibility. It is to consign yourself to the role of permanent victim. Better would be to figure out what you really, truly want at a fundamental level and then accept the consequences of getting there.

I admitted that this isn't an easy thing to do; and I told her I think it is all the harder in her case because she is in constant pain and running scared, and therefore can't focus her attention. I suggested that this is why she so often thinks I am criticizing her, even when I tell her outright I'm not; because she hurts so much and is so scared that anything sounds like an attack. And I also suggested that she is afraid of failing to meet her own standards, and therefore invests a huge amount of energy in lying to herself about her actions and motives. This requires a never-ending stream of self-talk, to reassure herself that everything she does is ustified and none of it is her fault. The consequences of this stream of self-talk are, first, that whenever she thinks she has been accused of something she has an entire speech ready to defend herself (into which she will launch at the drop of a hat); and, second, she never has a minute's peace and quiet in which she can actually look at herself in the mirror and see the truth of who she has become.

Her first reply was that of course she thought I was criticizing her, because any time I talk about our relationship she comes out sounding like "a shallow, selfish little shit." I answered that much of the time I am simply describing events that happened, and I suggested that if she hears an accusation in my voice it is because her own standards tell her than anybody who does this and this and this must be a shallow, selfish little shit. And so I repeated that I think in many ways she is more afraid of her own standards than she is of me, and that she merely pastes my face on the superego which is condemning her because her only other alternative is to claw her own face off.

She was very quiet for a long time when I said this. And when she finally spoke, it was in a tiny little voice. She said she thought she could see a lot of truth in what I was saying. She wasn't sure that she and I were thinking of the same examples, and I told her I wasn't going to give examples right now because I wasn't sure she was ready for them. But, I said, the next time you think I am criticizing you and I say I'm not -- that will be an example you can meditate on.

Thinking through polyamory

Wife is fond of saying that she is polyamorous as an excuse for her affairs. She brings this claim into the discussion as if it some kind of medical excuse, like diabetes or asthma. “But how can you expect me to be faithful when you know I am polyamorous? I can’t help falling in love with multiple people at once!”

As an aside, I have to wonder if this makes any sense at all. Is polyamory an attribute of individuals or of relationships? The explanations I have seen on polyamory websites make me think that it is really an attribute of relationships, so that it is just as much a category mistake to speak of Wife (as an individual person) being polyamorous as it would be to speak of her being dyadic or triadic.

What I mean is that these websites characterize polyamory as a relationship where the (sexual) partners themselves have other (sexual) partners, and where all interactions among all these partners are open and above-board, and where the primary concern of each member in the relationship is that the other members not be hurt by anything that is going on. These features – mutual openness, mutual respect, and a reciprocal concern not to hurt each other – sound to me like features of relationships and not individual virtues; and this is part of why I think that Wife’s describing herself (rather than some relationship, like our marriage) as “polyamorous” is just an error.

And is our marriage polyamorous? I don’t see how it can be. Wife has other partners, but I don’t. Wife may not lie about the fact that she fucks other men, but she lies about little things like how much of the day she spent IM-ing with Boyfriend 5. Wife knows that what she does hurts me, but it doesn’t stop her. And one website I found says flat out that if you fuck multiple people but you are secretive about it and you hurt your partner, that’s not polyamory but cheating.

OK fine, so I’ve succeeded in scoring a trivial grammatical point against Wife. So what? The fact is that Wife is trying to get at something concrete; arguing that she used the wrong word for it is just pedantry. And we all know how successful pedantry is in navigating personal relationships.

The point she appears to be making is that “some people are just capable of loving more than one person – even romantically – at the same time.” And because she is one of these special people who is capable of loving more than one person at once, her current tangled love life is a natural consequence.

But how special is this?

I concede that some people are capable of loving more than one person romantically at the same time, but I would go one step farther: I think almost everyone on Earth is capable of this. It’s nothing special. Parents can love more than one child; children can love more than one parent. And if most of us couldn’t fall in love with more than one person at once, volumes and volumes of stories and songs throughout the ages would lose their point.

So if it’s that easy – if it is nearly universal – to fall in love with more than one person at a time, where did monogamy come from? Isn’t it therefore unnatural? And why do we find any culture at all (let alone several) promoting an ideal which looks so unnatural?

The answer is that monogamy truly is unnatural. What is natural is the behavior driven by our instincts, and monogamy is obviously not an instinct. But that does not necessarily make it bad, nor even suspect. Many good things in human life are non-instinctive. Some of them, like fire and tools, are more or less essential to survival; others, like music and art and literature, do not so much enable us to survive as make it worthwhile to survive. Either way, to say that something is unnatural (in the sense of being counter-instinctive) says nothing about whether it is good or bad. Indeed, if I stop for a moment to think how dreadfully impoverished life would be without fire or tools or art or music, I could almost join Katherine Hepburn’s character in “The African Queen” when she says, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put on earth to overcome."

Is monogamy something like art, then? Not really. Think about it for a minute and it should be clear that monogamy is a form of social organization. That means it is less like art and more like government. Monogamy is a human institution, like democracy or the rule of law. Now democracy, too, is unnatural, as the long struggle to create stable democratic states should attest. The “natural” political order, if there is such a thing, is probably permanent war and the rule of the stronger, which makes the life of man “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” But I don’t hear anybody calling for us to abandon democracy because of its unnaturalness. That has to mean that democracy, although it is artificial, counter-instinctive, and a purely human creation, is nonetheless better than any more “natural” form of government.

I’m not really trying to write a blog on political theory, but there is a point here. This whole discussion of democracy is an endless analogy. The critical part is that democracy is better than nature by virtue of putting constraints on our natural political instincts, because when those instincts are unbridled they are so catastrophically destructive. And monogamy, to get back to the real topic at hand, works exactly the same way. Monogamy is better than nature by virtue of putting constraints on our natural sexual instincts because when those instincts are unbridled they are equally destructive.

Let me be clear: there are a number of sober and boring arguments in favor of monogamy which argue that it is conducive to a stable and wholesome social organization. These are arguments which point out that a society typically has about as many men as women, and that any serious disproportion in how the sexes are allocated to each other is likely to deform other parts of society. And that’s fine as far as it goes. But there is another side to the discussion – the personal side, which is the part that is relevant in this blog. And on the personal side of the equation, the argument in favor of monogamy has to be that any more “natural” arrangement is horribly destructive.

But how can this be? If falling in love with multiple people is so easy, where can the problem possibly be?

The problem is this: it is very easy to fall in love with multiple people; but for most of us, it is very, very hard to have our partners fall in love with multiple people! The whole point of monogamy turns out not to be about us at all. The whole point of monogamy is that we forego some desires that call to us profoundly and insistently – and we swallow the pain that this causes us – in order to avoid hurting other people.

Anybody who doubts all this should make up a bunch of popcorn and rent “Othello” this evening to remind themselves. But I hope you don’t mind if I don’t join you; I find it way too painful to sit through.

Great theory. I wish it helped me any.

On lying

How many times have we repeated something like the following quarrel?

Hosea: Hi there!

Wife: Hi.

Hosea: Say, did you ever get those mangoes put away, or do I need to do it?

Wife: No, I didn’t get them put away because I had a herd of elephants come crashing through here recently and I just spent the last hour cleaning up elephant dung.

Hosea: Oh don’t say that! You spent the last hour playing video games; don’t pretend it was elephants.

Wife: What makes you think I was playing video games?

Hosea: Well I was standing over here doing the dishes, and I can see straight through this window to the room where you were sitting.

Wife: That does it! I am sick of being spied on! First thing tomorrow I’m going to wall up that window!

So at a guess, how many times have we had that quarrel? I’d have to say easily hundreds. In fact, if we argued that way an average of only once a week for the last 25 years (and sometimes I think that is a conservative estimate), we’d still be looking at some 1300 repetitions. So whatever the number really is, it’s a big one.

The more interesting question, however, is this: What is the topic of the discussion? What is the core issue that we are actually arguing about? This question is interesting, because we don’t agree. That is, not only do we not agree on the positions we take, but we don’t even agree on what we are quarreling over.

For Wife, the real issues – the fundamental issues – all have to do with freedom and control, or (to put the same thing another way) with privacy (secrecy) and exposure. For Wife, the root cause of this quarrel is that I am trying to control her, to coerce her into putting away mangoes, to prevent her from having any free time when she can do something she enjoys. For Wife, the pivotal sentence is "You spent the last hour playing video games," in which I bring an accusation and then convict her, acting as prosecuting attorney and jury and judge all at once. And for Wife, her plan to wall up the window is a blow struck for self-determination, for freedom, maybe even for survival. She might be able to imagine a way that it could hurt me, but only because I am trying to demand things that I have no right to demand. If I get hurt by her legitimate exercise of freedom and self-defense, well sic semper tyrannis!

What is remarkable is that my perception of the exact same quarrel is so different that we do not agree on a single point of the description. Not one. For me, the real issue has to do with truth and falsehood, the pivotal sentence is "Oh don’t say that!" and the only person Wife hurts by walling up the window is herself.

How is it possible that two people who are both supposed to be so good with words nonetheless fail so utterly even to agree on what they are talking about?

Actually, I don’t really know how we get so confused. I have a couple theories, but they are no more than that. It might help, however, if I start out by explaining how I can believe my version of what this argument is about. I choose to explain mine and not Wife’s for two reasons: first, it is mine, so naturally I am partial to it; and second, I think it is not as obvious as hers. In fact, at the moment I expect that most people are on Wife’s side and think I am being a jerk. I hope to explain how I see it differently.

The first point is that I really don’t think I am all that important; I surely do not expect other people to take my desires all that seriously. Do I ask Wife to do things for me? Sure, all the time – in exactly the same way that I assume she will ask me to pick up a quart of milk on my way home from work. We have joint responsibility for running a household, so I figure that we share the chores. I don’t feel shy about asking for her help, but if she’s not able to do this or that it usually doesn’t matter much. If I forget to pick up a quart of milk on the way home from work, the worst it costs us is a little inconvenience, not major tragedy. It is exactly the same if she doesn’t iron my shirts before a business trip or pay the library fine. All this stuff needs to be done, but lives don’t hang in the balance on any of it and in the worst case we’ll just have to get the job handled another way. Big deal.

As a result, I don’t think Wife is buying anything significant by lying to me about what she has done. If it wasn’t that important which of us put away the mangoes, it really doesn’t matter much that she was playing video games while I washed the dishes; all it means is that now I should go put away the mangoes before they get soft. So where is the benefit, the payoff, in lying? If I were the kind of man who was going to shoot her for playing video games, then I could see a real payoff. If we lived in Nazi Germany and the Gestapo came to the door looking for Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals, naturally it would behoove us to say that there were none in our house even if every single one of us was actually Jewish or Gypsy or homosexual – or even all three at once. But Wife has never claimed that I am going to kill her if I get an answer I don’t like – no matter what the question. The most she has ever claimed is that I yell if she doesn’t do what I want, but even this is patently false. I admit it is true that I yelled a lot over inconsequential trivia back when I was a callow, immature kid … say, in my twenties. But that was a long, long time ago, and I don’t yell over those things now. I also really hope that we aren’t all held permanently to account for the things we did when we were callow, immature kids, or else we are all doomed.

Well, if lying doesn’t buy Wife anything significant, does it cost her much? Or is it just a kind of freebie? Here we get closer to the core of the issue. I believe that lying costs Wife a very great deal.

Go back to my example of the Gestapo for a minute, and ask yourself why do people lie? For most of us, it boils down to one of two reasons: we are afraid of what the other person will do if we tell the truth, or we want to get something from him. But just wanting something isn’t enough – lots of people want things and work honestly for them instead of lying to sneak them deceptively. For most of us, we have to believe that we can’t get what we want any other way, before we try to get it through lying. In other words, for the vast majority of us, lying is caused by fear or weakness. Or both, of course.

This connection isn’t something we always think about consciously, but our souls – our minds, our spirits, our psyches – know it implicitly. Whenever we lie, our souls see us do it and conclude that in that particular moment we must be weak or afraid: else why would we be lying? And our souls learn by repetition. So anybody who lies chronically is chronically telling his soul "I am weak and fearful. I am weak and fearful. I am weak and fearful. I am weak and fearful…." And after enough cycles of this, the soul starts to believe it.

This, I think, is the profoundest cost of lying: every single lie chips away a little bit from one’s self-esteem, one’s self-respect, one’s basic courage. Lie too often, or too frequently, and your soul becomes a Swiss cheese, with no light or life or love left anywhere inside it. And when that happens, you die. Oh, your body may still walk around and talk to people for another fifty years; your body may still hold a job, volunteer at charities, pay taxes, drink too much, or have sex. But you yourself – your true self, your inner self, your heart of hearts – you will have died. And where your soul used to live, nothing will be left but an icy darkness of shrieking fear and clawing incapacity. This is a hell of a way to finish out the rest of your days.

So much for what lying costs. Now what exactly is it that I want?

Wife will tell you that I want to have my own way; and that I want her (in particular) to make it happen. And I suppose at the most superficial level, it would be hard to argue with that. After all, doesn’t everybody want to have his own way? And what would make me different from everybody else?

So sure, at the most superficial level of course I want to have my own way. But at a deeper level, the answer changes. Remember that I don’t think I myself am all that important in the grand scheme of things. My impact on the world is negligible, my achievements and distinctions are inconsequential, and any self-love I feel is a suitable target for humor. Therefore, I don’t expect anybody else to take me all that seriously; and in particular – at a deep level, now – I don’t expect Wife to do so. Nor do I think it would be healthy for her to obsess too much about me. Her proper task is the care of her own soul’s health, not mine. To the extent that she looks after her own soul responsibly, she is working towards her own long term well-being. To the extent that she is doing anything that injures or damages her soul, she is slowly killing herself. Because I love Wife, I want her to live well and be happy. This requires that she work hard to build up the health and well-being of her soul, not tear them down. Because I love her, I want to see her tend to the health of her soul and avoid unhealthy habits in the same way that I don’t want to see her addicted to smoking.

And lying will rot away her soul as surely as cigarettes will rot away her lungs. Therefore I don’t want her to lie. I really do mean it when I write that the pivotal sentence in my little dialogue above is "Oh don’t say that!"

Notice that the main motive here has nothing to do with my own convenience, nor with catching her doing something discreditable so I can chant "Neener neener neener!" Naturally at the most superficial level, I would be glad of anything to make my life more convenient. (I hope, however, that I have outgrown the desire to chant "Neener neener neener!") But it doesn’t necessarily help me for Wife to tell the truth. She might tell me truthfully that she didn’t iron my shirts because she didn’t feel like it, and if I mind then I can fuck myself. And how exactly does this make my life any more convenient? Plainly it doesn’t.

The person who benefits is Wife herself. When she tells the truth to and about herself, even about discreditable things, then she can at least face the world whole. Every time she tells the truth about something that scares or embarrasses her, she will feel a little less fear the next time. A regimen of unpleasant truths about herself can build up her soul when it was withering away from too many flattering lies. (I hope it is clear in all this that when I talk about the truth, I mean the truth about oneself. Insisting on telling the unvarnished truth about other people can be a form of hostility or aggression, which is far removed from the kind of health I am advocating here.)

So let’s go back to walling up the window -- who suffers from that? Well, it might inconvenience me; but in the long run the one who suffers is Wife herself. How does she suffer? That’s easy: by blocking the window and preventing me from knowing the truth about how she spends her time, Wife makes it possible for her to continue to get away with things. And as long as she can get away with things, she’ll do it because it looks easier than turning around and standing firm. But that means she will continue to remain a prisoner of her mendacious lifestyle – her disease of the soul that eats away at her basic courage and forces her to lie more and more often about more and more trivial things. And in the long run, like cigarettes, that will kill her. Leaving the window where it is looks more painful and embarrassing in the short run, but it forces her to stop hiding. And she will never recover until she stops fleeing for cover.

Total transparency and total honesty about herself are the first steps towards peace and courage and health. And that is why I have always thought they are so essentail for her, and why I have always urged her to be totally honest about herself inside that small circle where it is safe.

She may disagree whether it is safe for her to be honest with me, but that is a topic for another day. If she would even start by being honest with herself, that would be a great big improvement over where she is right now.

What do I want?

I tried to spend some time this evening addressing my marriage through prayer. Lately my prayer life has gotten fairly mechanical, or at any rate noisy. I know what I want -- I want this whole sordid business with Wife to vanish miraculously. But I know it doesn't work like that. And I haven't been able to reach a level of peace and quiet inside my own head that would even allow me to hear it, in case the Lord decided to whisper me some advice. (I know, I know ... it usually doesn't work like that, either. But I know that sometimes it can and I'd hate to rule something out ahead of time.)

So I spent some time this evening, outside in the quiet of a moonlit night, simply trying to articulate clearly what it is that I really want out of this situation. Here are some of the things I came up with.

I want a wife who loves me, not one who hates and fears me.

I want a wife who wants me, not one who avoids me.

I want a wife who thinks well of me, not one who mocks me to strangers.

I want a wife who is true to me -- not just sexually (although that too) but also emotionally -- not one who chronically betrays me.

I want a wife who is true to herself and others: who is honest with herself about herself, because she can look at herself in the mirror and not flinch; and who is secure enough to tell the truth to others, because she doesn't fear it.

I want a wife whom I can admire -- not necessarily at the level of "achievements" (although that would be OK too) but at the level of the ethical standards that she lives every day.

And I want this woman to be Wife -- the very same woman I am married to right now! I don't want it to be somebody else.

At this point, a little voice in the back of my head said, "What if you are asking for a contradiction? What if Wife is simply not that person? If she doesn't want to be that person? Then you are asking for a round square." I don't claim this was the voice of God, of course. It could have been just a voice of wry contrariness somewhere in my head.

But I decided to hope for the best, and answered, "Well you could make her be that person! You could make her want to be that person! Can't you do miracles?"

And I could swear that I almost heard the answer, "It doesn't work like that." So I went on.

It's not just about me. I also want a wife who is a good mother to my children.

I want a wife who loves them, and whom they love.

I want a wife who encourages them to be their best, who is herself worthy of their admiration and emulation, and whom they can admire and strive to emulate.

I want a wife who builds a safe and secure home for them to grow in, who gives them her time ungrudgingly (instead of holing herself up on the computer IM-ing to her boyfriend, for example), and who places strict but fair demands on them so that they grow into the best young men they can be.

And I want to spare them the betrayal of divorce. Take a walk through the playground of our children's school. Right away, you can pick out the ones whose parents have divorced: they are the kids -- about 50% in all -- whose eyes are ever dull and lifeless, who never feel joy in the games they play, who never engage with those around them. They are the walking dead, the children whose souls, whose very lives -- by which I mean their lives raised by two parents who love them and each other -- have been ripped out of their hearts and casually smashed by parents too selfish or self-absorbed to see the casualties inflicted by their anger at each other. I don't want my children's souls to die before their bodies even mature. I could never want to live another day if I did that. And for this reason it is not enough to say that I want a wife who is thus and thus, but the Wife to whom I am now married is not those things and never wants to be, so ergo I need a different wife instead. It is not enough, because that solution betrays my children at the most basic metaphysical level.

I didn't hear anything from the voice at this juncture, so I went on with the third thing I wanted.

I know that the things I have asked look contradictory at first blush.

I also know that sometimes the good Lord brings about a solution so elegant, but so unlikely, that it almost looks like he has achieved a contradiction by reaching two totally incompatible goals at the same time. He doesn't do it often, but it doesn't take often.

Therefore, I want guidance. I want to know how to get there from here. I don't really know where "There" is; maybe it is some mythical place where I get all the contradictory things I have asked for, or maybe it is a place where I stop being discontent. I don't know which. But please, Lord -- please, oh please -- guide my blind and faltering footsteps to reach the right goal, if only by mistake. Let us both get, somehow and some day soon, to the place where we ought to be. And tell me what to do.

After all this, I can't say that the heavens opened up in a dramatic way. More's the pity -- it would have made a great story for this blog. On the other hand, while it wasn't a voice as such, my mind did run unbidden to the thought, "Well I already suggested weeks ago that you look up your old marriage counselor. Did you need more advice than that right now?"

It's true, I have been dragging my feet on contacting our old marriage counselor. But I did it today, and got a sketch of when he has openings in his schedule. He might even have one tomorrow, which would be pretty cool. In any event, Wife has agreed to go see him, which I take to be a good sign. Every time in the past that we have gone for marriage counseling, it has been on her initiative because she wanted the counselor to make me stop being an asshole, in one way or another. (The specific issues have shifted over the years.) This time I really think I'm going to have to present the opening issue, by explaining that I think Wife is descending deeper and deeper into relationship addiction. I know she feels guilty about the relationship itself; I also know that she projects a lot of that guilt onto me and then interprets it as criticism. And she lies about the relationship (with Boyfriend 5) but feels compelled to keep it up anyway. This sounds like addictive behavior to me. It remains to be seen if there is something that can be done about it. And if she doesn't want to change, of course any attempts to change her will be non-starters. I think that's what the voice had in mind above, when he (it?) was talking about round squares.

Free will sure is a bitch, ain't it?

Making everybody mad at me

MEMO dated October 16, 2012: I started this post and never finished it.  In the ensuing four years it has sat in "Draft" status because I haven't really been willing to delete it.  Don't know why not.  Anyway, if I'm not going to delete it I may as well post it as a partial diary entry.  I have no idea, needless to add, what I was going to say in the rest of it.

So let's see ... where was I?

Saturday we went to a wedding of an old friend. Wife uttered not a single word regarding our discussion the night before. Or well, ... OK maybe one or two words. That morning, when she was groggily crawling into consciousness, I asked her if she remembered our conversation; she said "Yes, I remember it; but that doesn't mean I want to discuss it in a lot of detail." I figured that was pretty clear, and I left the topic alone for the rest of the day. She, for her part, was either commenting on the wedding, or on the bad fashion sense of the other guests, or on how she had a headache and felt nauseated ... or else she was drifting off to sleep. Absolutely zero discussion of anything substantive between us -- even during the 90 minute drive to or from the wedding. Admittedly we had the kids along; and on the way back, she was asleep. Come to think of it, she pretty much fell asleep once we were home, too. I don't think she ate any dinner at all. Certainly we didn't talk.

Sunday was Father's Day. We spent the morning in bed talking -- nothing juicier than that (like fucking) I am sorry to say. I wish I could remember more of what we said. In the afternoon I took the boys out, while Wife (who was sidelined with a headache) spent a few hours exchanging IM's with Boyfriend 5. One thing I do remember mentioning to Wife was that she should start a blog to record her thoughts each day, and that it would be best if she didn't tell me the URL; that way, she would be free to write whatever she felt like. And I think that it is important for her to learn to be honest with herself, about herself. If it helps get her there to have a place where she can write anything without fear of discovery, so be it.

In the process of discussing blogs, I mentioned that I had recently done a search on blogspot.com and had found a whole subculture of blogs related to infidelity. Not that I thought a blog of hers would necessarily be an infidelity blog -- she has lots of other interests -- but just as an example of what people have going out there.

My mistake. Turns out that Wife didn't understand I was simply pointing to an example. ....

And the rest is lost to history.

Police state?

I mentioned in my last post that I was worried about the possibility that Wife -- perpetually soft-hearted and without the slightest shred of healthy distrust when it comes to her love life -- might some day be tempted to send some of her prescription pain medication to Boyfriend 5.

Well, somehow I managed to introduce the concept as a topic of conversation in a way that kept her from pelting me with questions. And I kept it all very hypothetical. But I tried to remind her ... just in case she ever felt any temptations along these lines ... that something like this would indeed count as a felony, and that there would be nothing I could do to intervene, and that falling afoul of the DEA is a bad experience all around.

The last time she was arrested -- a few years ago, when she stopped taking her antidepressants and then one evening began hitting me with a stick, threatening to throw a wine bottle through our living room window, growling like a wild animal, biting my cheek until she drew blood, trashing the kitchen with a large knife, and then gesturing threateningly at my balls with the same knife -- I say, the last time she was arrested I was able to get her released by paying a lot of money to an attorney we couldn't afford and then writing a sweetness-and-light account of what happened for the judge. My story didn't exactly contradict anything in the police report, but -- to the extent that this is even imaginable -- I put it all in the best possible light. (The things we do for love!)

Well, I wasn't going to remind her of that time too forcefully or too exactly, but I did say that there would be nothing I could do to protect her from the DEA. (And at some level, for all that she alternately hates me or fears me or resents the hell out of me, I think she understands that for a very long time now my job has been to protect her from things.) To make this prospect really vivid for her imagination, I proposed the theory that there really are no civil rights any more for people accused of drug trafficking or other drug offenses. This is only partly an exaggeration -- if this were a political blog instead of a personal one, I could get a lot of mileage out of the consequences for America of the War on Drugs. But I'll leave that to somebody else. Meanwhile, in talking to Wife, I asked her to imagine that the Bill of Rights had been systematically repealed for all defendants accused of drug crimes; I asked her to imagine that -- from the perspective of drug crimes -- we live in a police state. And I told her that I would be very, very frightened for her if she ever did anything to call down the wrath of the Federal Government on her head. As one co-worker of mine put it (albeit in the context of running a small business), his cardinal rule has always been, "Don't fuck with the Eagle."

I don't know if I made any kind of impression at all. She didn't argue, but then again she really didn't say much of anything. I hope that at least I planted a seed of some kind.

Meanwhile, it is no lie to say that I am scared for her.

... but the new boyfriend still scares me

I wrote before that I was afraid Boyfriend 5 might turn out to be a clever con man.

Now I find out that he has been whining to Wife about how much pain he is suffering because of this ailment and that ailment and especially the other ailment. And I'm not quite sure, but I can't rule out the possibility that she has been mailing him some of her prescription pain medicine. I'm not about to confront her over this, because she would deny it stoutly (and she is very convincing in that kind of a lie) and then she would only wonder what made me question such a thing. And I really don't want her wondering that, for a variety of reasons.

Did I ever mention that he is an ex-drug addict?

If true, this could be very bad indeed. I don't want the DEA showing up on my doorstep, that's for damn sure. But I don't know what to do about it.

A word I thought I'd never hear ...

Briefly: Wife and I were talking this evening, and I said in some exasperation "You can never actually hear what I say, because you assume it is going to be an attack and you are too busy preparing to defend yourself to actually listen. Why do you have to be afraid of everything I say?"

And she shot back, "Maybe because I feel so GUILTY!"

She went on to add that the pain she knows she causes me by her chronic infidelities hurts her terribly, and she does feel guilty about it. It's just that there are all these things she doesn't get from me that she desparately needs.

There is an opening here for a long, long conversation; because from my perspective she shuts out or blocks any chance at getting these things from me. I think she could get a lot more from me if she could only relax and put down her weapons for a few minutes at a time. But of course she sees it differently, and anyway that is a conversation for another day. I must admit, though, that I was not at all prepared for the word "guilty".

Loose ends ...

A couple of follow-on points to some of my recent stories.

In this post, I talked about Wife's furtive attempts to hide a bottle of personal lubricant, after I had already gotten a good look at it and knew it was there. A day or two later, I asked her about it (fairly obliquely). The gist of the question was, What's the point of hiding it when (a) I already saw it, and (b) it's no big deal to me if you are masturbating? Her answer (unsurprisingly) was that she knew all that, but she couldn't control the fact that it embarrassed her intensely: partly because she has (in her own words) become way more prudish with age (this is a true fact, and I discuss it -- in somewhat different terms -- in the next-to-last paragraph of this post); and partly because she can't orgasm anyway or at least hasn't in two years, so the whole topic makes her incredibly frustrated. OK, it's not profound but it is an answer.

The other news is that she seems finally, at long last, to have had a breakthrough with the anorgasmia. The other evening I cleaned out the bugs and slugs and assorted guck from our spa; and yesterday she IM'ed me at work to thank me and to single out the spa jets for special praise.

Me: Your afternoon OK?

Wife: Yep. TY for the jacuzzi. Miraculous properties, that jacuzzi. :)

Me: It works?

Wife: Oh, yeah, it works. :)

Me: Good to know .... Hope you didn't scandalize anybody trying to read the electric meter. :-)

Wife: Nobody came near ... happily. I had an uninterrupted hour.... I don't think the high jets are as strong as they used to be and don't know what we can do about it, but they were strong *enough* to do their thing. Several times. And after a couple of years, no I don't feel guilty.... Put me in a fairly good mood ....

I suppose in a way this is the kind of discussion that I was asking for in this post, although it may be just a one-shot. Still, the precedent has to be worth something. Let's see if it is borne out in the future.

What could be good about adultery??

I just read an article [follow this link here] about one of the most moronic books I have ever heard of in the field of relationship self-help. The book is called When Good People Have Affairs, and it is by a therapist named Mira Kirshenbaum. And it is all about alleviating the guilt and shame that adulterers feel, so they can go blissfully on about their business.

A word of warning: everything I know about this book comes from the article. But it saddens me that I can believe it all too easily.

The author starts off by saying that "Cheating on your spouse isn't a moral act," and "We all agree that infidelity is a mistake" and "I'm not encouraging affairs." But then she goes right ahead and does just that.

• "Those who have affairs are seeking real happiness and love in their lives."
• "Sometimes an affair can be the best way for the person who has been unfaithful to get the information and impetus to change."
• "If handled right, an affair can be therapeutic."
• "You could think of it as a radical but necessary medical procedure. If your marriage is in cardiac arrest, an affair can be a defibrillator."

A defibrillator? What?? Can anybody take this seriously?

I concede that an affair does not have to require a divorce: for all our problems, Wife and I have stayed together a long time. But the language of therapy and of getting your needs met sounds jarring in the context of marriage. That is the language of economic man -- the rational consumer. If we apply that language to marriage, it is because we assume at some level that marriage is an economic transaction like any other: I put food on the table and a roof over Wife's head, and in exchange I get ... well, whatever it is that I get.

Now, there is a word for this kind of transaction -- cash for sex, or for companionship -- but last I checked marriage wasn't it. I certainly hope that marriage is more than legalized prostitution. I will point out that one of the features of classical economic activity is that there is always room for competition. So if the price gets too high, any rational consumer takes his trade elsewhere. If the whole point of marriage is that I pay for sex or companionship, then as soon as Wife becomes too expensive (e.g., about the time she throws one of her cyclonic temper tantrums) it is only fair and rational for me to find somebody else who can provide the same goods cheaper. Sorry, no hard feelings and all that. There's nothing personal ... it's strictly business ....

If you find your flesh crawling at this view of marriage -- the way I do -- then maybe marriage is not really an economic transaction. But that means in turn that it is not really about getting your needs met in the most efficient way possible. Whatever marriage is, it sure ain't that. And this means that the whole premise of Ms. Kirshenbaum's book -- that affairs can be good because they can conduce to our getting our needs met better -- is nullified from the outset because that's not what marriage is all about in the first place.

Ms. Kirshenbaum's view of adultery is closely linked to her view of divorce: "Sometimes -- many times, in fact -- divorce is worth it.... It gets us out of misery-making marriages and we have a chance of finding happiness somewhere else." Well, maybe. If your outlook on life is so shallow, self-absorbed, and manipulative that you think building a marriage is like shopping for shoes, then sure -- trying on a new brand might enable you finally to buy sandals that don't pinch your toes. But if you think that building a relationship -- a marriage, a home, a family -- is like building up a little miniature country, then adultery is a form of treason and divorce is civil war. The research that has been done over the last couple decades on how divorce affects children supports this latter image: think Shiloh, and not shoes.

I loathe everything else that I have read about her book, so it should come as no surprise that I disagree with her about the value of honesty. She writes: "This is the one area in which the truth usually creates far more damage in the long run." The betrayed spouse will undoubtedly be hurt by the news -- as if this is any surprise! -- so the adulterous spouse should just shut up about it because it is bad to hurt people. Bad to hurt people? This is some kind of profound moral principle? My God, how old is this woman -- don't we expect children to get more sophisticated than this in their moral reasoning somewhere in their middle teens? I am dismayed that anybody this childish is allowed to practice any kind of professional therapy.

Sorry to have to belabor the obvious, but the hurt was done back when the affair happened. Knowing the truth is just a basic concomitant, because we can't any of us survive without knowing the truth about what is going on around us. If that truth hurts, tough shit: much of life hurts. And if it hurts the adulterer to inflict agony on the betrayed spouse ... gosh, that might have been something to think about before falling into bed with the Other Man (or Other Woman). But if you are going to commit adultery, the very least you can do is have the backbone to own up to it without flinching. Anything less is the basest cowardice, and I find it contemptible.

In summary, Kirshenbaum appears to teach that life is all about you and your needs, and that other people exist in order to meet those needs. Your challenge in life is to search until you can find the person you is best accommodated to you; how many hearts you break along the way, how many ruptured relationships you leave strewn in your wake -- none of that is important. Because, again, it is all about you. The very thought that you could accommodate yourself to somebody else -- or even to some kind of external principle of good behavior -- is just asking too much.

Kirshenbaum has written a philosophy for keeping us all perpetually six years old. I bet people will eat it up.

Talking about not talking

So I asked Wife this morning, as we sat in bed waking up, if she thought things would ever be better between us. She said she hopes so or it will be a pretty miserable rest of our lives, which confirms that she is still telling me she intends to stay with me.

There followed a long silence, which I finally remarked on. She said well of course there was silence, because we had nothing to say to each other (or at least nothing real, nothing substantive) other than recriminations about the past.

I answered, no there are lots of things we might say. The past doesn't even matter, after all, except as it affects the present and the future. We could talk about what we want out of the present ... or what we hope for the future. I speculated that the reason we don't discuss those things is that we are afraid of fighting about them.

We batted this around for a bit and finally settled on a slightly subtler version. Each of us is afraid of discussing intensely personal feelings or beliefs with the other. But our fears are slightly different. Wife is afraid that I will inflict pain on her, as punishment or for some other reason. I am afraid that she will mock and scorn me, and that she will use what she has learned to betray me to (with) one of her other lovers. There are similarities, but they are not quite the same.

Then Wife said something that I found truly interesting. She said that the reason I can hurt her so badly is that we are so close, and that I know her better than anyone else alive does.

Although she didn't expand on the idea a lot, I can extrapolate from what she said. I think this means that if she should ever leave me, it won't be that we have "drifted apart" or that I have no idea what matters to her. I think this means that if she should ever leave me, it will be more like a break for freedom. And freedom is a very, very important thing for Wife -- so important that I think sometimes she does things she even knows are damn-fool ideas, just to make sure she really can.

We talked for a while longer, but this was the most interesting thing I learned.

Hiding and complaining

Wife complains I'm an asshole. Over and over. And maybe I am. But I think this is a two-way street, and from my perspective I have become -- at least in part -- exactly what she has taught me to be. I also can't help thinking that Wife wouldn't be happy married to anybody. I almost think maybe I should let her run off to live with Boyfriend 5 in his godforsaken part of the world, because nothing would bring their eternal romance to a crashing halt faster than actually living together. I've seen it happen with plenty of Wife's other boyfriends, not to mention with me ....

Little fragments of the day, not that they cohere into any kind of unified picture. Wife called me at work saying she had a fever and felt like shit, so she would take the boys to their sporting event this afternoon but wouldn't stay there with them. She was going home and back to bed; so could I please make sure to leave work on time so I could get to the sporting event before it was over and pick them up? Sure, no problem.

Of course, as soon as the words left her mouth for my ear, I began interpreting. Roughly put, I could think of three possible meanings for this request:

• Wife was truly sick and meant everything exactly the way she said it.
• Wife wanted to be alone so she could spend the afternoon feverishly IM-ing with Boyfriend 5, probably about something juicy that she didn't want to have anybody else accidentally read (such as one of the boys wandering in to ask "Mom, can I have a snack?")
• Wife wanted to be left alone for sex: either fucking somebody else (less likely, because her current flame is far away) or masturbating (more likely).

And of course I wanted to know which it was. So I left work a bit early and drove home before driving to the sporting event.

When I got home, Wife was in bed. She was alone and not moving, and looked like she really did feel like shit. But I think my guess wasn't entirely wrong, because there was a bottle of personal lubricant on the nightstand. It hadn't been there this morning, and God knows it wasn't there on my account: it has been way too long since we fucked last, and I don't expect that to change any time soon. My guess is that she was using it by herself, especially since I could see that the storage box where she keeps her vibrators looked a bit rearranged. And it's important for me to add that this is no big deal for me. Wife has been suffering from anorgasmia for months; it does not surprise me for a minute that she would be trying her own response to see if there was any sign of a breakthrough ... any sign that she could once again come freely and thoroughly.

All these thoughts took a fraction of a second. But I said nothing about the lubricant and just asked if I could get her anything. Yes, how about a glass of water. I got her the water, leaving the room for about thirty seconds. When I got back, the lubricant had vanished.

Now what was the point of that? Did she hope that I hadn't seen it the first time? How silly! Did she hope that I wouldn't notice it? I notice all kinds of little things -- and the fact that it suddenly vanished called way more attention to it than if she had just left it alone. Was she afraid that I was going to say something embarrassing, or yank back the covers to see if her vibrator was still inside her, or ask to watch? I know she thinks I have the refinement of a Neanderthal, so yes, she probably feared all those things. But I have also learned that our sex life is pretty well a lost cause, so I really had no intention of approaching her that way. (Besides which, I could see her vibrator back in its storage box where it belongs. So I knew that she wasn't really in flagrante delicto.) I guess I shouldn't expect her to read my mind, however.

I don't know that this little incident means anything larger, except that Wife cannot stand to admit that she is ever doing something for pleasure. (I discussed that point several months ago, in this post.) And the inhibition is especially bad when it comes to sex, for reasons that I have speculated about in this post. But you know, this is even something we have talked about. I guess talk doesn't help much when you are facing deep emotional conflicts. But for years I have tried to tell her she shouldn't be shy about my knowing when she masturbates. What is the big deal? Last year she finally countered, fairly savagely, "Well I never know when you masturbate! Why is it OK for you to have some privacy but not me?" Fair question. The real answer is that I usually don't get around to it until I'm about ready to go to bed, by which time she has been asleep for hours. But I could see how this would bug her. So after that I actually made a deliberate attempt (from time to time) to masturbate in front of her, while she was awake, so that she wouldn't think I was advocating some kind of double standard. I think this just fed her belief that I am an uncultured cretin, however. Anyway, I still think it was silly of her to rush so quickly to hide the lubricant. But whatever.

Later on, she bitched at one of the boys for doing something that bugged her. I stepped in to discipline him, hoping (at some level) to get at least a little recognition from Wife that I was on her side. No such luck. She carried on as if I had done nothing whatever. This made me mad and I barked some things I didn't mean. But later I tried to explain to her that I was sorry for yelling at her, but really all I had wanted was a simple "Thank you" for taking her side. What I got instead was a refusal to recognize that I even existed, and of course that hurt like Hell.

And then it hit me: there was nothing at all out of the ordinary or surprising about the way she acted. It was 100% consistent with the way she has acted at other times too. In fact, this is part of why our sex life has been so piss-poor for so long.

Wife's mother -- back when she was alive -- had this weird and highly destructive habit: she was totally incapable of praising anybody who was in the room and could hear her. All the time Wife was growing up, her mother would say "Your sister is so wonderful, why can't you be like her? She's so much thinner and prettier than you are, and she's so popular and charming, and she's always got dates so she won't die an old maid like you will." Wife grew up thinking that her big sister was the favored one in the family, and that she [Wife] was hated and scorned and barely tolerated. But at her mother's funeral, she heard her big sister confide how painful it had been growing up in Wife's shadow: "Oh it was terrible; Mom was always telling us about how smart you were, and about the clever and important things you were doing in that prestigious college you went to, and about how proud of you she was! It was obvious to me that you were the favored girl, and that Mom had no respect for me whatsoever. Can you imagine how horrible that was?" Funny thing, but Wife could imagine it all too easily.

The point is that I think Wife learned from this technique, as much as she also suffered from it. If something is actually good, it is like pulling teeth for Wife to admit it. She would rather be silent. While she can praise trivial shit that doesn't matter, she can't express honest praise or honest gratitude without the greatest difficulty. (Come to think of it, that may explain part of my experience with foreplay early in our marriage, as described here.) On the other hand, when something is less than good, she does not hesitate to slice it to ribbons with cutting invective that is intelligent, colorful, and endless. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that if Wife is talking, she is complaining.

What does this have to do with our sex life? Well, one of the reasons Wife doesn't want to fuck me is that she thinks I am a complete boor in the bedroom. And, truthfully, she's not that far wrong. Only I plead as an extenuating circumstance that this is exactly how she trained me to be. Years ago I was much more sensitive and patient and caring about lovemaking. And the result of putting in all that effort (sometimes for hours) was that she would either say nothing at all or else complain -- and often, once she had had her orgasm, she would close her legs and roll over, leaving me to masturbate or else to live in frustration! What I learned was that she would punish me for being a caring and sensitive lover. As a boor, however, at least I stand a better chance of getting my orgasm; and really, statistically, she has been about as likely to orgasm when I am boorish as when I am caring. So I can't really see that she is a lot worse off this way, and I know that I am way better off. And that sounds like a win to me. She doesn't like it, but it was at her knees that I learned it.

And we wonder why our marriage is so difficult. Everything that either of us does (so it seems) generates a feedback loop that makes the results worse and worse and worse on both sides. Wife blames me. I guess I blame her. It doesn't seem to get us anywhere.

Do these two stories have anything in common? Maybe not, except they both happened today. And they both illustrate troubles that make our marriage harder than it needs to be. I'd like to say that they also both prove that everything under the sun is Wife's fault and not mine, but I know that nothing is ever really so tidy. Oh well.

Where next? part 2

This morning I asked Wife if she had ever actually seen Boyfriend 5 teleport, since she talked about it so matter-of-factly. No, she said, she's never met him in the flesh. (Mind you, if she had met him in the flesh, I would take that as evidence that he's really some anonymous blogger from around the corner, and not really an exotic terrorist from Far-Far-Away. But be that as it may.) But he says he can teleport. Moreover, he'll IM her in the morning saying he is in one place, and then a few hours later he'll IM from another place that is so far away from the first place you could never get there by plane in that amount of time.

She seems to regard this as evidence. The fact that I could claim to be writing (here and now, this very moment) in Antarctica -- and that there is no possible way for you to tell if I'm lying -- does not seem to make much of an impression on her. (Wife believes in other paranormal phenomena too, and I'm generally not inclined to argue. Most of the paranormal phenomena that she believes in are pretty small-scale and ambiguous, anyway. But I can't help feeling total incredulity at a claim of teleporting halfway around the world.)

I also asked her if she and Boyfriend 5 have been discussing what happens in case she divorces me. Oh no, not at all, she protests. Now, I know that's a lie; but I didn't want to call her on it then and there, because I think I am not quite supposed to know this, and I'd rather not start a long discussion of exactly how I know it. Suffice it to say that soon enough the whole conversation would be about how much I know and how I know it (so she can plug the leaks in her own security) -- and none of it would be about the stuff I think is really important (like whether she plans to break up our family).

Right away she followed this denial by saying that Boyfriend 5 insists she should stay with me, so that our family is not broken up. She seemed not to notice that this reassurance contradicted her first denial, because obviously Boyfriend 5 could never have said such a thing if someone hadn't raised the subject. Then later on she admitted in a kind of sideways way that yes, of course she thinks about it from time to time; not because of any single individual thing that I've done recently, but just because (as I should know) she has been chronically discontent for a long time.

It's true, she has been. But I think that is a function of her chronic depression, which can get pretty despairing even on heavy medication. I truly think she would be this discontent with anybody -- be he never so perfect -- with whom she had lived a quarter century. But I think in her mind it's all because I'm an asshole. Maybe I am, too.

So do I need to call a psychiatrist to deal with the belief in teleportation, or a lawyer to protect me (just in case) from the threat of divorce? Or do I stick my head in the sand and pretend that it will all blow over? Maybe I'll choose this last option. I mean, it's worked before ....

Where next?

Wife appears to have no trouble with the conundrum that I posed yesterday, that suggested (to me) that she is being set up by con artists. So maybe Grandpa isn't allowed to come into the country -- big deal, he was probably in Texas anyway. Either he sneaked in (in disguise) or he teleported. Yeah, she really said that. I almost think she meant it.

Meanwhile she is starting to talk with Boyfriend 5 about leaving me and the boys -- yes, I mean divorce -- and going to live with them in their country. I have no idea how seriously to take this.

Now I'm scared

I've told you about Boyfriend 5 ... how there are really three of them, and how they are terrorists (politicians?) from a foreign country. Apparently Grandpa is not even allowed into the United States because he is on some list somewhere, or had a visa revoked or something.

So tonight Wife was IM-ing with Son (the middle one). He says he is in Texas right now, on a business trip of some kind. The conversation veered towards some complicated personal topic, and Son said his dad (that's Grandpa) had strong feelings about it. In fact, Grandpa was sitting right there, so he took the keyboard away from Son and proceeded to write about it all. Wife just ate it all up, and chatted away about this deep personal topic.

Only wait a minute:

1. Son is in Texas.
2. Grandpa is sitting right there next to him, so Grandpa is in Texas.
3. Grandpa is not allowed into the United States.

Something about this story is badly wrong, and now I am scared that Wife is being set up by some very, very clever con artists. But she is insanely protective of this new "relationship" so I don't know what I can say without driving her to make shit up in order to defend these guys. I want to protect her, but there is no way she will see it like that.

For the first time in this soap opera, I am really scared.

Needs

I asked Wife today what she thinks "love" is ... in other words, what she expects from a relationship where she and someone else love each other.

She came up with a number of creative ways to dodge the question, apparently because she thought that I was trying to play "gotcha" and trip her up on some admission. But I stayed deliberately far away from that.

After a while, she defined love as a situation where the joy of the other person makes her joyful, and the pain of the other person makes her feel pain. And then she herself asked a question that I had scrupulously avoided -- viz., so in that case how can she carry on a romance with somebody else and still claim to love me, when she knows it hurts me for her to do that?

As I say, I had made a point of not asking that. But she asked it, and she also supplied an answer: yes, it hurts me deeply to see how hurt you are when I take another lover. But I can't help it, because I have these needs that are so strong ....

And you know? I bet that's true. I bet she really is driven by deep, inchoate needs, and not by rational calculation.

Of course, another way to say the same thing is that I am starting to suspect that Wife is a romance addict, and to wonder whether an intervention is in order. But that is a topic for another day.

Well, I asked ....

I said in my previous post that I should ask Wife what's going on in her head and why she would rather go to Boyfriend 5 (a comparative stranger) to seek comfort over Boyfriend 4's [probably terminal] illness than to go to anyone who knew him better or was overall closer to the two of them ... like me, for example.

Apparently the answer is that I'm an asshole. I said nasty things about Boyfriend 4 while he was still an item (Wife has apparently forgotten the incomparably savage things she used to say about him when he got drunk and irrational, or violent), and I have made snide comments since then when he has called or (once) come to visit. Therefore "obviously" I hate Boyfriend 4 and want her never to mention him in my presence. So she has to seek comfort elsewhere, because I am such a jerk.

Well, it is certainly true that I wasn't very kind about Boyfriend 4's drinking, back when he and Wife were a regular couple. And it is equally true that I have made snide comments since then. (See, e.g., my remarks about Boyfriend 4 and his Christmas visit, in paragraph 6 of this post. I guess if that doesn't count as snide, then nothing does.)

But does that mean I don't want Wife ever to mention him in my presence? Oh come on. You know, I usually think Wife is pretty intelligent; but when it comes to understanding our personal interactions, she's no brighter than a small appliance bulb. I mean, I explained to all of you (back in paragraph 5 of this post) that no matter how much it hurts me to hear about all her lovers, it hurts me way, way more for her to lie to me and try to conceal what is going on in her life. I wouldn't think that would be such a hard point to convey. But Wife's emotional life runs at about an 11-year-old level; so even though I have made this speech dozens of times to her, it still hasn't properly sunk in.

"But you'll get mad if I tell you that I was talking to this boyfriend, or that I'm worried about that one.

No dear, I will get hurt. It's different from mad.

"But you yell and say mean things, so obviously this means that you don't want me to mention it."

Ummm, I yell and say mean things because I am in incredible pain; you yell and say mean things when you stub your toe on the door -- everyone does. Does that mean that I want Boyfriend 4 to vanish off the face of the earth? No more than it means that you want to burn the door down just because you have stubbed your toe. But doesn't it mean that I want Wife never to mention Boyfriend 4? I think I have already answered that question -- dozens, maybe even hundreds of times. Wife just can't see it, however. I can't buy the argument that she is stupid or has a blind spots where relationships are concerned, so my only remaining hypothesis is that she is so frightened that her fear overcomes her reason. I don't know how to fix that, though.

I'll write more tomorrow. Tonight it is late, and I am tired.