Counseling 4

Why do we keep doing this, over and over? Isn't "doing the same thing and expecting different results" supposed to be a definition of insanity? But after all these years, we keep going to marriage counselors.

Today was our next appointment with the marriage counselor. "How do you feel? What's been going on for you this week?"

What has been going on for me this week is that I don't feel much of anything, any more. I don't get mad. I don't especially get happy. I go to work, come home, make dinner, pay bills, and go to bed. Repeat as needed. And I've started to wonder if maybe this is really the best we can hope for. That was the point of this post last week. Do we even want to fix our marriage any more? Are we willing to do the things it would take? Or have we both reached a point of exhaustion, where we just can't be bothered to stretch ourselves out that far? And in that case, why don't we just pack it in and call it quits? Of course neither of us wants to hurt the children, so that will take a little ingenuity. But if we are fundamentally unwilling to improve things, why try?

So naturally Counselor asked "Well, what do you think is the best case? What would that look like for you?" I had to say I didn't know. I supposed the best case would mean "fixing" the marriage, not because I can any longer summon up some kind of image of what that would be like, but because I know intellectually that that has to be the right answer. So Counselor asked Wife the same question, and she answered "Yes of course I want to work on the marriage because I still care about Hosea very much. But if he expects to make any headway at all, then he has to change a lot of the things he is doing right now!"

She then proceeded to list a bunch of things that I'm not doing and have never done: things like ...

• insulting her intelligence (which is considerable, and I would never deny that)
• ordering her to spend the day on housework (which I have trouble remembering long enough to do it myself, let alone ask it of somebody else)
• telling her what to do every minute of the day (which I really try to avoid doing -- right up to the morning a couple weeks ago when she lay on the bed moaning about how hungry she was and how much pain the hunger caused her, even though it had never occurred to her to stand up out of bed and walk into the kitchen to get a little breakfast)

And that pretty much answered my question for me. If Wife insists that I am doing a bunch of things I have never done -- and that these actions of mine are the cause of all our problems -- then obviously we are living on different planets. Obviously our perceptions of the world, and our understandings of basic things about each other, are so different that there is (practically speaking) no point of common ground. Which means, as near as I can tell, that we are through. The divorce is over. Even if the paperwork takes another thirty years, the important part -- the divorce of our minds and our affections -- has already happened. In other words, we have failed.

I should clarify that I don't think Wife is psychotic. I don't think she hears voices which aren't there, or sees little green men, or anything like that. I just think that she and I understand basic words and phrases in the English language so differently that we might as well not be part of the same conversation.

Of course, nobody gets out of a therapist's office that easily. These appointments are scheduled for 60 minutes, after all. So we spent some more time talking about our feelings. Counselor ended up suggesting as an assignment that we make a point of telling the other one how we feel, even while acknowledging that we don't have a clue why the other one feels differently. Counselor's idea is (among other things) that we can't argue about emotions because they don't have to make sense. They simply are. I have this hunch that whenever we start this exercise, it will soon devolve into an attempt by one or the other to say "Well, I'm entitled to my feelings -- unlike you!" And what will we have gained?

But I guess we'll see ....

Premonition

Wife can't sleep tonight, because she has a strong premonition that something bad is going to happen to Boyfriend 5. She says she knows they have a profound psychic link, because whenever his illnesses give him a lot of pain, she feels it too. (I wonder if she IM's him to ask, "I had a premonition last night that you have pain in your back: do you?" Then she could wait for the answer, "Yes, exactly," to prove the point ....) So I guess we'll see ...

Visit from Wife's best friend

Wife's best friend, D, visited yesterday, or one of them. She doesn't visit often because she lives a couple thousand miles away or so; but she arrived in the morning and we spent all day talking. I really like D: she is bright, cheerful, and always interesting to talk to. She and Wife used to be co-workers years ago and soon became fast friends ... although they were superficially so different that it baffled people what they could see in each other.

At a couple of points, I tried to turn the conversation to account. Once, during a discussion of Jane Austen, I mentioned that I had recently seen an article on the meaning of betrayal which had analyzed it through a careful study of Willoughby's behavior in Sense & Sensibility. D immediately took the ball and ran with it, talking about how she felt when she found herself betraying her own ideals, about how easy it is to lie to yourself about your own motives when you betray someone, and about how a lack of integrity in small things invariably presages a lack of integrity in big things. Later on, when D asked Wife something about Boyfriend 5 (whom Wife had mentioned just as someone she has been writing to across the Internet), I told D that Wife has sent him money and that this concerns me deeply. D, bless her heart, spent the next hour earnestly telling Wife why you should never advance money under those circumstances -- even to the best of friends. To illustrate her point, D told a story of one time when she had lent a large sum of money to someone she knew very well -- and had known for years longer than Wife has known Boyfriend 5 -- and of course she never saw it again. So I could hardly have hoped for better from the visit, in terms of how it reflected what was going on between Wife and me.

But the day after -- that's today -- Wife was really glum. Was it because she was brooding on any of these discussion points? Had they made even the slightest impression on her? Naaah, ... Wife was brooding because, as she saw it, D had a perfect life with perfect successes and perfect appreciation from others -- living in a perfect house with a perfect husband and holding a perfect job -- while she (Wife herself) lives in this crappy house with me for a husband and no job whatsoever. In short, Wife had envy of her friend D oozing out of her pores.

For what it is worth, I could swear I heard a different story. D was quite clear that she lives 120 miles away from her husband -- ostensibly to take this job, but they must have jobs like this closer as well. (Her kids are both in college.) The house is clean (because D is a neat-freak) but tiny. Her bosses and coworkers don't understand or appreciate her, and the best she can hope for is that they get out of her way. But the signal difference is that she enjoys it all intensely. She doesn't let it get her down. Wife lets everything get her down. That is really all the difference.

In the end, I don't know if Wife is happy D visited or not. I had a great time. I even got a big hug and a kiss out of it as D left in the evening, and what more can a guy ask for? But for Wife, I'm not so sure ....

What's the real requirement?

I have always thought that divorce is just not an option, but recently I have started to wonder what I mean by that. To put it another way, what is the real requirement?

• Is the real requirement that Wife and I have to preserve -- or revive -- a marriage that is a perfect union of body and soul? So that we have a gratifying sex life with each other, our minds are in perfect harmony at all times, and our hearts beat as one?
• Or is the real requirement that we have to maintain a household that functions smoothly, pays its bills, and provides a wholesome environment in which our children can grow to adulthood? And then, after they move out, is the real requirement largely fulfilled so we can do whatever strikes our fancy after that?

I've always assumed that "marriage" meant the first one. At any rate, that's what it sounds like we promised each other. You know the litany: "to have and to hold, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, from this day forward until death do you part."

But it is possible that the true moral requirement is the second one, since after all the children are innocent bystanders in this mess. And (like all human children) they are helpless for years and years before they can actually look after themselves. So I have to wonder.

The second one would sure be a lot easier. At least, I think it would be ....

Counseling 3

Wife and I had one of our boilerplate fights this morning. By "boilerplate" I mean that we have had what is structurally or formally the same fight once a week (sometimes it seems like once a day) for the last 25 years. It goes something like this (and I always start it):

Hosea: Is it raining outside or sunny?

Wife: You don't have to pick on me all the time just because I can't stop it from raining! Why are you always attacking me over the weather?

Hosea: [shouting] What?? I am not attacking you over the weather! I just asked if it was raining or sunny! How can you accuse me of being so irrationally critical?

Wife: [shouting back] Well you're always yelling at me, like you did just now!

Hosea: [even louder] But I wouldn't yell at you in the first place if you didn't accuse me of being some crazy man who holds you accountable for the god-damned weather ...!

And so on.

It's a really stupid argument, the way other people's arguments always are. But somehow it left Wife with the idea that I was going to throw her bodily into the street when I got home from work. I don't know how she could have thought that, but there is a lot about our interaction that still baffles me.

Anyway, we saw Counselor over lunch, and we spent the session deconstructing this argument. What took 90 seconds in real time took over an hour to tease apart in Counselor's office. Honestly, I doubt that Roland Barthes or Leo Strauss could have done as thorough a job on that particular "text".

And the upshot is that Counselor said we were both reacting to wounds we had undoubtedly experienced in childhood long before we ever met, and that it would really help us to go very slowly over the terrain the next time we hit one of these arguments, so that we can each tell the other as clearly as possible what we are really feeling in that particular moment. Boy, I bet that analysis really shocked the pants off of you, didn't it?

And you know, it was just physically tiring to hear this because it never changes. We have discussed the same fight with marriage counselors -- including this one -- for years; and in all those years we have always gotten the same diagnosis and the same advice. Now either we just aren't following the advice (very likely) -- in which case we probably aren't going to start now and our counselors should start recommending something else, like rapiers at dawn -- or else the advice itself is useless. I don't know which, but the fact remains that nothing has changed in all this time.

I hardly need to add, I suppose, that Wife spent the whole morning trying to make plans with Boyfriend 5 for how she was going to keep me from throwing her out into the street; then she spent all afternoon deconstructing Counselor's deconstruction, going over it piecemeal and trying to figure out What It All Meant. Is Hosea just biding his time, so that he can throw her out next week instead? Is Hosea too cowardly to throw her out at all, even though he desperately wants to? Is Hosea basically just a basket case who needs heavy medication? Inquiring minds want to know!

What a waste ....

A slap in the face

Wife slapped Son 1 in the face today. I don't know what was going on, exactly, because I was at work. Her version is that she had tried and tried and tried to get him to do something simple, and he blew it off completely; his version is that he was making some sarcastic remark to his little brother and Wife thought it was aimed at her.

There is this dynamic that has been building between Wife and Son 1 for some time now, that I have not had time to write about. But a lot of it revolves around her telling him to do things and him not doing them. Wife takes this personally -- as direct, intentional disrespect or contempt. I think there are a lot of other explanations -- among them, that Son 1 is almost a teenager and hardly ever hears anything anybody tells him any more. I also think that Wife's techniques for getting other people to do things may not be calibrated very well to young boys. In any event, I find I have a lot less trouble than Wife does in getting cooperation -- though there are days that I fail too. The fact that I get at any rate more cooperation than she does is part of what makes Wife think I must somehow be undermining her with the boys.

Anyway, I thought the slap in the face was significant. The last time I ever did that to one of the boys -- easily five years ago by now -- Wife damned near served me with papers on the spot. And I made certain never to do it again. I don't know for sure what is going on in this part of her head these days, but I hope we are seeing an isolated incident and not a trend.

The dynamic with Son 1, however, is definitely a trend. Some time soon, I should write more about that. But maybe not tonight.

Great essay on jealousy (not by me)

In a somewhat less melancholy vein, I found this essay out on the Internet last night, about jealousy. Brilliant stuff.

Update (August 2009): Marianne, the author of this post, has closed up her blog; so the original link (above) won't work. But, out of her extraordinary kindness and generosity, she has allowed me permission to reprint it here.

Maybe I think too much

I recently scanned over the last few weeks of my postings. Maybe I'm just not in the right mood at the moment, but somehow most of what I have written comes off sounding self-righteous and snotty and way too intellectualized.

Maybe this is part of Wife's point, huh?

Comments on some other blogs

I've left a couple of remarks on other blogs recently.

In her blog Naughty Wife's Double Life, bad girl recently posted an article where she asked (among other things) whether it is possible to love two different people romantically at the same time. Of course I thought of this post where I talk about exactly that, and so I left her the following comment:

Absolutely you can love two people -- or more -- the same
way. Romantically. But it can be really painful for everybody.

Usually I've been on the other end of this (and that's
what you'll find on my blog, for instance). My wife has had several lovers over
the years, and it hasn't been easy. But I guarantee you she loved every one of
them.

The first time I saw an article about polyamory, I showed
it to my wife and said, "Have you seen this?" Ever since then she has described
herself hands-down as polyamorous. But mrj is right ... that too is tough when
you don't have everyone on board.

Sorry I don't have any good (non-depressing) advice. But
to answer your question -- yeah, it's totally possible.

In his blog Secrets Revealed, a man who calls himself Hubby writes in this post about how he felt when he first discovered his wife's infidelities. I commented as follows:

I've lived through everything you say; the only difference
is that for me it's not recent.

In a shameless plug for my own blog, I have to say that
we've even written about some of the same things. Liars lie to themselves even
more than to others? Yup. No sympathy for the craven advice that somehow you are
doing "the right thing" by keeping your mouth shut? Yup.

And as a quick note to ms. inconspicuous, ... yes you are
right. If you love your wife more than anything -- if she (and the kids) are the
center of your whole world -- then yes, that does in some sense mean accepting
the whole package. But it can be really, really tough and hurt like
hell.

Just found your blog tonight. Hang in there.

Hubby also has a more recent post about how crazy his emotions have gone since the discovery. This sounded way too familiar, so I commented as follows:

Like "Anonymous" I could start off "From one married guy
to another ...."

When I found out about my wife's first boyfriend, it was
completely deranging. I would see them together -- even just sitting, talking,
telling jokes -- and I'd feel like I was going to explode. I can't say I got in
shape or made myself any sexier, but I threw my life 180 degrees in a different
direction (bailed out of graduate school, got a job doing something completely
different).

Only she didn't quit. She told me she loved me and hated
to hurt me, and I believed it all. But she also loved her boyfriend and felt
totally torn in two. And really, I loved her so absolutely I couldn't even tell
if I wanted to insist that she quit -- although inside I was raving -- because I
wanted everything to be perfect for her.

In the end she kept it up with him for about a year. I was
still jealous and irritable, but after a while I didn't feel like I'd explode
any more. After a couple of times being in the same room with them while they
were fucking, I no longer got upset at watching them talk or tell
jokes.

Did I want to believe her, after it was all over and she
said it wouldn't happen again? With every ounce. When it was her second
boyfriend, and then her third, did I want to believe her when she gave me some
stupid-assed excuse for the passionate e-mails and the mysterious absences? Of
course I did! More than anything. But by that time I started to slide into a
different mode, where I just said "Oh give it up. I know you fuck other men.
Just have the backbone to tell me the truth about it instead of making up so
many creative lies."

I don't explode any more. Partly it just makes me sad.
Partly -- and this is really difficult to explain -- I have come to realize that
her passionate nature has always been one of the things that attracts me to her.
It's not going too far to say that it is one of the things I married her for. So
when that passion comes bursting out in the form of infidelity ... what call do
I have to complain? At some deep level, didn't I already know this was going to
be part of the package 25 years ago when we married? It wasn't conscious, but I
have to think that I somehow knew. And at the end of the day, the woman I love
more than any other is HER -- the whole package, infidelities and neuroses all
wrapped up together. It just ain't easy.

My biggest fear about her current boyfriend has nothing to
do with sex. But she's never met him in person and I'm afraid he's an Internet
con man. But that's another story. (And another shameless plug for my own
blog.)

I repeat that it ain't easy. But keep at it.

Is this an addiction, or what?

Wife and the kids have been visiting my parents for a couple of days. (I have to stay and work.) They left yesterday morning, after Wife got in a good hour-long conversation with Boyfriend 5 over IM.

Hard to do that from my parents' house, though. Or is it?

Apparently this morning Wife persuaded my father to download free IM software under guise of setting him up to be able to IM with us. She exchanged a few words with me while I was at work. But she was on-line a lot longer than that. Of course her real motive was to talk with Boyfriend 5.

What I can't understand is how she could be so foolhardy to do this at my parents' house. Couldn't she just wait a day or two, until she gets home? I guess not. But I know what comes next -- my father will start asking me about this friend of hers that she had to talk to. My father is very inquisitive about things like this; OK, actually most people would probably call him nosy and intrusive. But Wife knows this! She has whined about it for years. Why would she deliberately set up a situation which is simply bound to raise questions?

In the past when my father has started asking a bunch of nosy questions, I have just changed the subject. But I don't see why I shouldn't answer some of these ones. It would be kind of fun to see Wife's response when my father starts asking her why she is giving money to some stranger on the Internet. I wonder if I should also mention that she wants to fuck his brains out. And his father's, while she's at it. This could be seriously entertaining, in a gruesome kind of way.

Maybe I'll just leave it at the money. Even that could get pretty unpleasant, right there.

It baffles me that she would do anything so reckless, especially when she is the one on whom any consequences would redound. Amazing.

What are these needs, anyway?

I asked Wife this morning, "What are these needs that you have, that Boyfriend 5 satisfies and I don't?"

She listed three things:

1. to feel needed
2. to feel appreciated
3. to feel understood

I have no idea whether this is a complete list. I guess it probably isn't, because she later described it to Boyfriend 5 as "a partial list." But it is certainly progress. Besides, some of the things that she probably wants -- like a decent sex life -- seem to be out of reach right now no matter what she does and no matter whom she is with.

But we talked about it for a while. I told her that I thought she didn't want to hear about how much I needed her, because the last time I melted down enough to tell her how much I needed her -- this was after I had been up for 24 hours fighting like hell to get home from a business trip on the other side of the country when my plane was cancelled and there were no more to be had and I feared she had spent the week fucking one boyfriend or another -- she was truly repulsed by it. Oh, today she says she wasn't repulsed at all; but at the time she told Boyfriend 5 that it was creepy and she didn't know how to deal with it. And truly, I believe that part: it has always been my job to deal with things in our marriage; how can it not be disconcerting or even frightening to Wife, to have me fall to pieces by admitting how very badly I need her?

Wife also complained -- as she has about a thousand times before -- that "You love me but you don't like me!" Leave aside for the moment whether this should matter, or whether "liking" is something more ephemeral than the morning mist, that should just be ignored in any long term relationship. Leave aside also the fact that Wife herself doesn't like herself. My basic answer was, "What am I supposed to do about that? Can you decide to like someone, just by choosing it? Or is it rather all in your power whether I like you or not?"

I wanted her to understand that she had some ownership in this situation ... there are things she could do to improve it. Among other things, she could stop lying to me. That doesn't guarantee that I would like her, because I might dislike intensely some of the things she tells me. But at any rate I would have more respect for her if she told me the truth fearlessly.

"Well, what about when I promised you that I wouldn't discuss any of our conversations with Boyfriend 5? I told you the truth about that, because I haven't! Do I get any credit for it?"

A fair question, of course. The problem is that when she told Boyfriend 5 (a few days ago) that she had made that promise, he came unglued and started shouting at her ... admittedly through the medium of IM. Her response to all this violent emotion, for what it is worth, was to tell Boyfriend 5:

"Whatever you feel you *need* to know, I will tell you.... I will break my promise [to Hosea]. It bothers me to break my word. But I will do it, rather than have you that upset or lose you. I will."

Remind me now, what was it that I was supposed to give her credit for?

Of course I didn't tell her that I know this is what she told Boyfriend 5. And my reluctance to show her evidence puts me at something of a disadvantage here, as far as "proving my point" goes. It leaves her the option of telling Boyfriend 5 that I am deranged or irrational, that I decide arbitrarily what to believe and what to disbelieve. And that is pretty much what she told him this afternoon. What I don't know is what goes on inside her head: does she herself believe that I am this irrational, because she has forced herself to forget the things she said only four days ago? Or has it occurred to her somewhere in the back of her head that the only times I disbelieve her are the times she is actually lying? I won't show her "evidence" because it will just let her see which window she has to close off. The question is whether she thinks that "true" is synonymous with "any statement that Hosea has not disproved to me in person with tangible evidence in his hands." Or does she recognize that there can be a truth that has not been proven yet?

She says she believes this, but she doesn't often act that way.

Am I trying to destroy Wife?

Many of Wife's complaints about me are that I want to control her or destroy her. Up till now I have ignored these accusations with disdain. But it occurred to me this evening that there might be something to it after all.

Over the past few years, I have shown progressively less patience with a number of Wife's behaviors that I wish she would outgrow. To name only a few:

• Wife has a very hard time accepting personal responsibility. Every single thing that goes wrong in her life is somebody else's fault. This is ironic, because in the abstract Wife talks a lot about the importance of personal responsibility as a virtue. But there it is.
• Since nothing in her life is ever her own fault, Wife spends a lot of time being a victim. She whines over and over that she is a victim, that she is helpless, that shit just happens to her worse than what happens to anybody else. This gives her room -- and, apparently, a license -- to complain incessantly about everything.
• Wife spends a lot of time dissecting the faults of others. That should be pretty easy, since after all Those Others are responsible for everything that goes wrong in Wife's life. And it does seem to be one of her favorite pastimes.
• Wife lies, to herself and to me. This, too, exacerbates her sense of helplessness, I think.
• Wife panics over any kind of imperfection. Of course the world is imperfect, but she deludes herself into believing that imperfection is intolerable, and that she will be shot at dawn if anybody ever discovers how imperfect she is.
• And, of course, each of these points feeds all the others.

As I say, I have been showing progressively less patience with these behaviors for some time now. I am less likely to make excuses for her. I am less likely to coddle her. I am less likely to buy into her opinions when they are utterly childish. And I am correspondingly more likely to suggest to her that there is a better way to live, one that may involve less short-term reward but that is guaranteed to be better for her in the long run. And her answer is generally "What's in it for me -- today?"

But what this means -- long story short -- is that I am trying to change her. I know it is a commonplace in the therapy business that one spouse cannot change another, because only you alone can make you change. And you will avoid doing it until the costs of failing to change are higher and more painful than the costs of change itself. Since those costs are pretty damned high, fundamental change is not common.

All the same, I am trying to change her because I believe that the way she lives today feeds her depression, makes it worse, and poisons her life. If she could overcome these behaviors (and others like them) and replace them with their opposites, I truly believe she would be a lot happier. What are my professional credentials, to stand behind such an opinion? That's simple -- I have watched her every day for a quarter century. I do not know how any professional's expertise could be better than that.

I should add that Boyfriend 5 makes no such demands on Wife. For him, she is just fine the way she is; and when she complains about how I have no respect for her (or whatever it is today), he jumps right in digging at me and throwing dirt in my direction. At some level, he may see her as a wounded puppy who needs extra care. Or maybe they are both wounded puppies, and therefore just right for each other.

This may be, though, why Wife thinks I am trying to destroy her. If you identify "her" with the whining, lying, neurotic basket-case who logs into IM each morning to chat with her boyfriend, then yes, I guess that is someone I would like to destroy. I want to replace her with someone better, stronger, more calm and assured, and happier. But from this side of the chasm that may be too hard to see.

Once long ago, Wife made a promise to Heaven, as part of her spiritual development and training, never to keep still -- to stop changing -- but always to remake herself closer to what Heaven wants from her. She promised, in effect, to die every day -- die, that is, to her old self so that the new self could be poured into her. I don't claim to be any kind of wise man. I am certainly no enlightened soul or religious leader! But somehow, from my mundane and pedestrian perspective here, it looks rather as if Wife has forgotten that oath or renounced it. Therefore when I try to encourage her to change in ways that would help her over the long run, she fears that I am trying to "destroy her". And she wants to run away to Boyfriend 5, who "understands" her better than I do because he has never tried to challenge her to be better. Boyfriend 5, like Boyfriend 4 before him, is "easier" than I am. She talks about our communication problems, which are real, but I think that more of it is this stuff.

Were we ever really married in the first place?

OK, this sounds like a stupid question. Of course we were married. We had a license, we had a cake, we had witnesses, Wife threw a bouquet ... if that doesn't make you married, then what does?

But I have been realizing for some time that Wife and I have different ideas of what marriage means. And I believe I have read that there are churches somewhere -- none that we belong to, but never mind that -- who teach that a marriage is not valid unless both parties have the same understanding of what marriage is, of what it means. Absent that common understanding, so this teaching goes -- no marriage.

Wife has been talking a lot lately about her unmet needs. She still hasn't told me what they are, so I could see if there are any I might be willing to try to meet -- but her conversations with Boyfriend 5 are full of remarks like "Why should I stay in a marriage just because it is 25 years old, if it is not meeting any of my needs? Especially when my relationship with you does meet all those needs! Where is the fairness in that?"

Well, that is certainly one view of marriage -- and even a pretty common one, these days. For my own part, I incline to a different understanding, however. The following excerpt was written by a friend of a friend several years ago, and I am quoting it extensively with permission:

... It should be noted that Faith is in some ways a radical demand today since it is not easily compatible with the commercial spirit which informs modern life in the West. The commercial spirit treats all relationships according to the model of the marketplace; on this view, the goal of the individual is to get his needs met, and he engages in a variety of transactions to do so. The value of a transaction is measured by how fully it meets the needs of the individual (balanced against its cost), and there are always multiple tradesmen competing for one’s business. Therefore, life is (on this model) a long stream of choices among competing suppliers, with the goal of maximizing one’s happiness or well-being.

... The commercial spirit differs from Christianity in that it refuses (as a point of principle) to recognize any distinction between short-term and long-term goods – or, to put it another way, between the true Good and whatever one happens to imagine that one’s own personal Good might be.

The commercial spirit, therefore, requires a constant re-evaluation of costs and benefits for every transaction that an individual might make. This is a good way to buy groceries on a budget, but it has some odd consequences in other areas of life. A husband [or wife, of course! --Hosea] who approaches his marriage in the commercial spirit is always re-evaluating whether his wife still meets his needs enough to make her worth the trouble she costs him; if not, like any rational consumer, he takes his business elsewhere. A soldier who thinks of his career in commercial terms may have chosen his line of work because of its favorable benefits; but when war comes, the balance between cost and benefit shifts and, like any rational consumer, he leaves his station.

Faith, by contrast, means choosing the Good even when there is no obvious short-term benefit to the one doing the choosing. A faithful husband stays with his wife because it is (in the longest possible term, or sub specie aeternitatis) the Good thing to do, even if he can get his short-term needs met by somebody else a lot cheaper. (If this is faithfulness, it follows that divorce is in principle just a legally-sanctioned form of infidelity.) A faithful soldier stays at his post even when the enemy is shooting at him.

So do we have the same understanding of what marriage is? I don't think so -- or at any rate, not today we don't. (I can't remember all the way back to when we were married, to answer what we thought then.) Therefore, ... are we really married? Or are we just legal partners in a contract that allows us to raise children and hold property in common? I think there is a difference. And that means that if we ever do divorce, it may be no more than a formality.

I don't want to think like that, however, and I hope I don't have to.

Another threat on my life (unless it is just bravado)

I mentioned here that Wife wants me to stop saying that she or her boyfriend is planning to kill me, even though I also quoted Boyfriend 5 saying something that sounded a lot like exactly that.

Turns out that the two of them had a conversation the same day that was a little more extensive, and on the same subject.

Boyfriend 5: [My father] is frustrated, angry, and wants to kill Hosea right now and be done with it.

Wife: That would be one solution.

Boyfriend 5: A solution you would not accept ... unless things got a lot worse. Why? Because of the children. However, if [Hosea asks you not to speak to me for a week and then] I don't hear from you a week Monday, I will come looking and I make no promises.

Wife: I agree that it's best for the children not to; also because he's been suspicious of it I don't know who he may have told that and told to look at me if it happened.

Boyfriend 5: Honey, I have my little ways of making things appear as they aren't.

Wife: Do you have your little ways of making things so I don't accidentally get arrested for it?

Boyfriend 5: If it needs to happen, ... then it could happen with efficiency.... Precisely, my dear.... Robbery gone bad... Coke on the body, whatever. Let's not talk about that, though.

I have no idea whether to take this seriously or not. I suppose I should drop a hint with somebody local, just in case I do suddenly turn up missing. (And it seems to me I heard that advice somewhere before, just recently. What a coincidence.) For the most part, though, I have to confess I find it hard to imagine. I guess that's what I get for living a cossetted life so far. Oh well.

Maybe I should go to the police. But nothing has happened yet, so I doubt there is much the police could do. I think the only consequence is that Wife would learn that I know at least some of what she discusses with Boyfriend 5. And that would hardly be a gain. So for now I think I won't.

Might go back to that "angelic" advice, however ....

Crazy with fear? Or just crazy?

It's been a long night of typing, and I want to get this finished. But I have a couple of notes that don't fit in either of my other two posts from tonight.

A couple of days ago, Wife and Boyfriend 5 cooked up a scheme that can only be called conspiracy to file a false police report. For days, Boyfriend 5 had been urging the idea that I was some kind of threat to Wife, and Wife kept telling him he was wrong. Well finally she gave in and consented to his suggestion that she send him an e-mail allowing him to intervene "just in case something happened." Specifically, this e-mail reads:

If I were to disappear and fail to communicate with you for any
considerable period, say over 48 hours, ... it would be wise for you to try to
find me and if you couldn't, to contact law enforcement personnel and have them
look very closely at [Hosea], my husband.... I own a Smith and Wesson .38,
which would likely be missing.

This is obviously a lie, and a dangerous lie at that. As noted, Wife had told Boyfriend 5 for days that any such concerns were foolish. That she finally wrote the e-mail anyway can mean only one of two things: either she felt badgered enough that she did it to shut him up, or he succeeded in persuading her -- against her own better judgment! -- that this was a realistic fear.

And Wife wonders why I worry that prolonged communication with that family will warp her mind and poison her against me!

Other fears are maybe more clearly delusional. There is, for example, Wife's fear that my essay about the symmetry of our relationship and the tragedy of its decay was really an ultimatum of some kind.

But the most priceless example happened this evening when I needed to run briefly to the store for one thing. Wife asked me which store I was going to. I asked her (in turn) what she needed me to get. And Wife backed off suddenly saying, "Oh never mind!" It took five minutes of wheedling (on my part) before I could get her to confess that she wanted me to pick up a loaf of bread.

A loaf of bread? Wife is now afraid of a loaf of bread? Did I hear that right?

Well, no, she said. She wasn't afraid of the bread itself. She was just afraid that if she asked me to get a loaf of bread then I would get angry.

Angry. Over a loaf of bread.

Amazing. A true piece of work.

On the other hand, I suppose I should be grateful about one thing. At least this explains why she thought that I was giving her an ultimatum above. If she is capable of believing that I would get mad over her asking me to pick up a loaf of bread, then maybe I shouldn't be so hard on her. After all, at that point she cannot possibly claim to be of sound mind, so maybe the rest of it all isn't really her fault

But I don't know for sure. It is just bizarre.

Selections from Wife's list

So Wife spent part of the day -- when she wasn't IM'ing with Boyfriend 5 -- coming up with a list of basic demands. I guess this is because she thought -- as I describe here -- that I had asked for this. Of course, that's not at all the kind of list I was thinking of, but it is an interesting artifact in its own right. Let me quote a couple of the points and then comment on them.

I am willing to offer a week of "no contact" with [Boyfriend 5
and his family] beyond a daily e-mail stating "I’m ok" – nothing more – with no
response from them, and that because they are worried for my welfare. After that
length of time, though, I must be allowed some contact on a regular basis. An
hour a day for another two weeks would be reasonable and still amount to
severely curtailed contact, if the concern is that they will have far more time
with me than you will, and thus be able to brainwash me against you. But "no
contact" is not ok; it cuts me off from my outside support system and hurts my
friends, as well.

This, of course, misses the point. The question is, rather, What would it take for me to be your support system? What would it take for you to feel safe enough that you didn't need any protection from me? That's not what she answers.

We have to start from not assuming that a sexual relationship is the goal. I know that shaving your beard and mustache off is non-negotiable with you because you haven’t felt like you got "paid" enough for it in the past, and equally, sleeping with you while you have them is non-negotiable to me. They hurt, and sex without foreplay doesn’t work for me. Sex without trust doesn’t work for me and that would take longer, anyway.

Oh, let's get real for a minute. A sexual relationship is not the goal because you haven't been able to orgasm for two years, even when you masturbate by yourself in an empty house, except for once recently when you used the hot jets of the spa. The shower heads don't work, your vibrators don't work, your fingers just make you sore (as do mine) ... nothing works for you these days. You don't have to blame my beard. If that were the only problem and you didn't have other neurotic anxieties preventing you from enjoying sex, I might shave it off. Or we might find forms of foreplay that don't involve my lips. But the fact is that not long ago we went for two solid years without ever fucking once, and that was back when I was clean-shaven. I also brought you to a soul-shaking orgasm once a couple of Easters ago, and that was when I did have my beard. In other words, that is an excuse and not a meaningful variable.

I nor my friends has any intention of harming you in any way.
It would be nice if you could stop accusing me (and them) of plans to murder
you, since that is, in fact, a serious accusation and nobody means to do
anything of the kind.

Really? How nice to know. That must be why Boyfriend 5 said to you recently, ...

[If you, Wife, go offline for a week and don't come back online
promptly at the end of the week,] I *WILL* be upset, upset enough to come and
look for you, ....And if I come and look for you, I make no promises. In
other words, if [Hosea doesn't let you continue to communicate with me],
... you may well not have to worry about divorcing him, because...You just
may not.

I guess Boyfriend 5 was just promising to pay me off with millions of dollars so that I would let you go in peace. Is that it? Or was that really a threat after all, notwithstanding that you say nobody is planning anything of the kind?

It may be worth considering living temporarily in separate
quarters, as with one of us in an extended-stay motel within driving distance of
home, if we are going to consider a more permanent separation and before we do
so.

This was Boyfriend 5's idea. Not sure what the benefit would be, except that I couldn't tell if Wife were talking to him in the middle of the night.

Then we get to bigger stuff:

I have for a long time found mutual respect and equality
missing in our relationship. I think it was there when we first got together.
You have explained why you have withdrawn it over time. But I don’t think that
there is much hope for the relationship without it, and I can’t try for an
indefinite but expectedly long period of time to hope to regain those things
while you treat me with clear disdain.

This kind of baffles me. When she is talking about anybody else, Wife is a strong champion of the notion that respect must be earned, not just given as a free present. I have explained clearly to her that my inability to respect her is a direct consequence of things that she does -- lying to me, first and foremost. If she wants that respect back, she has to stop lying to me. And then it will take a little time, before I believe that she really means it. Does she have any intention of no longer lying to me? Well, in a rare moment of candor she told Boyfriend 5 (earlier today): ...

I can see why he thinks we're over unless something drastic
changes. Why he thinks I've lied to him, misrepresented things, chosen others
over him. I *have*.

Yes, babe, you have. And am I supposed to respect that? Or am I supposed to be too stupid to know about it? Could you respect me if I were that easily manipulable?

More to the point, can you possibly respect yourself knowing that you can't stop lying? Is it enough for you that you think I don't have any evidence to the contrary, so you can get away with it? Doesn't it simply bother you to find yourself lying in the first place? Doesn't it bother you even more when Boyfriend 5 starts lying? It should, you know.

And finally, ....

Your attitude is manifest ...even in simple lack of kindness
much of the time, and it gives me little reason to want to please you. Perhaps
you have a suggestion for this; I think it’s a situation that has devolved over
time and has continued to worsen until we’ve gotten to the point of barely
tolerating each other. You don’t like or respect me, so why would you want to go
on with me? As a result, you don’t treat me very well (though you think you do),
and I therefore don’t like you much either. Oh, I love you. I’m grateful for
everything you’ve done for me for 25 years. I don’t want to split up the family.
But where does that really leave us? Is there some basis to work on anyway? Or
does that just pull the floor out from under us? In which case, should we just
throw in the towel and admit defeat?

I don't really know what to say to this. Do you have to have people bow and scrape to you to soldier on? Do you have to worry about frivolous, ephemeral stuff like who likes whom? It seems to me that "liking" is a will-o'-the-wisp; here now, gone in five minutes. Who could possible care about a payoff that is so transitory? By my lights, love -- which for me is an act of will at least as much as it is an emotion -- is way stronger than liking and way more important. If you disagree, then we have serious value conflicts lurking not far below the surface. That's too bad. But I guess it is important to learn the truth, if indeed it is true ....

Counseling 2

I no longer have any idea what planet Wife is living on. She has ceased making any sense whatsoever.

This morning, I gave her a copy of my essay on the Balance of terror: I edited out the first couple of paragraphs, because they would raise questions that I don't feel like answering right now. I dropped the very last sentence, because I don't know what she believes religiously any more, and I figured it would just irritate her. And I changed all the third-person pronouns to second-person. I replaced the word "Wife" with the word "you".

My hope was that this could shed some new light on our situation, or maybe start a dialogue. I thought of it as an essay, a "think piece"; if nothing else, I hoped she would understand that I am just as frightened of her as she is of me, and that maybe this would help her relax a little bit. Even better, I hoped that she could allow herself to fantasize about what it would take for her to feel safe around me again.

No such luck. When we got to Counselor's office -- half an hour late, which meant we had almost no time with him -- Wife started off our session by saying "Hosea gave me an ultimatum this morning."

I did what?

"Yes, he gave me an ultimatum. Either we negotiate terms today in your office that allow our marriage to continue -- and he is going to insist that those terms include my permanently giving up all contact with Boyfriend 5, which I am unwilling to do -- or else he is going to file for divorce on Monday. He even wrote it all down, right here!" And she pulled out of her purse the printed copy of my essay about the Balance of terror, edited as noted above. In fact, let me quote it exactly, so you know for sure what I really said. And please -- please! -- tell me if you can think of any non-psychotic way to interpret this to mean what Wife said it means. Because I am flat out baffled. Here is exactly what I wrote to her:

I think I have figured out one of the underlying dynamics behind our marriage. It has to do with the fact that we interpret basic things very differently. In particular, we interpret each other's behavior very differently from the way we interpret our own behavior. This makes for disaster.It goes something like this.

1. One of us does something that hurts or scares the other one -- it hardly matters what.
2. The other one reacts with pain or with self-defense. Let's suppose it is pain.
3. The first one never had any idea that the first act upset the spouse, and therefore interprets the pain as an unprovoked attack. Response is some kind of self-defense.
4. The second one interprets the self-defense as a renewed attack -- not only was there an original attack way back in the beginning, but now there is this new one too! My spouse must really hate me or want to undermine and destroy me. This step therefore repeats step 2, but with greater intensity.
5. Repeat step 3, but with greater intensity.
6. And so on. For twenty-five years.

And all the while, each one thinks "My intentions are totally innocent, but that other person is a monster bent on controlling or destroying me!" This leads to the thought, "Why can't the other person see that my intentions are totally innocent? It must be because he/she is a malevolent beast who doesn't give a damn for me!" Sometimes there might even be the added thought, "I can see how my defenses might be frightening the other person ... but it would be foolish for me to drop them as long as he/she is threatening me so directly and so maliciously. Therefore I won't drop my defenses until he/she drops his/her offensive weapons. That's only fair, isn't it? When I am no longer in danger, then I can afford to put down my shield."

The sad part, though, is that my shield looks like an offensive weapon to you. And your shield looks like an offensive weapon to me.

Over the years, my shield has included tools such as a loud voice; a sullen, sarcastic repartee; and occasional physical intimidation (although never physical damage). And I have to add that the physical intimidation (never harm) is something I have not used in over five years. More importantly, I have never used any of these tools in any interaction with you whatsoever unless I felt myself to be under direct attack intended to destroy me!

Over the years, your shield has included extremes of temper: cyclonic tantrums on the one hand, where you shouted, wept, and trashed the room you were in; and catatonic withdrawal on the other, where you sat for hours without a word or even a shift of position. It has also included threats of divorce, of ruinous legal action, and of kidnapping the children. I cannot speak for you, but it would not surprise me to learn that you have never used these tools against me unless you felt yourself to be under a direct attack by me.

My opinion is that I have never attacked you -- not once. I would not be surprised to hear it if you were to tell me that in your mind you have never attacked me. Obviously each of us sees the other one’s situation very differently from how we see our own. But that doesn’t mean that (for example) you are right and I am wrong. :-) Nor even the other way around. :-)

This looks a lot like the build-up to World War One: each nation was engaged in rational steps for self-defense, based on assumptions which seemed to make sense; but each nations's self-defense looked like aggression to others. On the other hand, appealing as that intellectual model may be, I don't especially want our marriage to replicate the Battles of Verdun or the Somme.

So what would it take to de-escalate? To back down? Even better -- wild fantasy! -- to start over from zero? Could each of us make a list of demands, in exchange for which we would be willing to start over? And is there any remote chance we could negotiate those two lists into something that we could agree on in common?

The alternative is probably to start singing Dulce et decorum est pro matrimonio mori. And I fear we are already very close, if not already there.

Anyway, this is the essay that Wife called an "ultimatum" to which she would have to comply in order to keep me from filing for divorce two days hence. Can anybody figure this out and show me a logic behind this reading? Or has Wife just left sanity completely behind?

For what it is worth, Counselor told her he didn't read it at all the way she did. He read it more the way I did. He didn't exactly call her crazy, but it was clear that he couldn't understand her point of view any more than I could.

Then I explained that I didn't know what my list might include. I gave a long, tortured explanation of why I don't feel safe trying to make things better as long as Wife is still in touch with Boyfriend 5 and his family, because she will feel chronically pulled in two directions. Counselor more or less told me to shut up and stop being stupid -- the fact is that I feel threatened by them, so why not just talk about my feelings? I told him yes, that's true -- but from Wife's point of view I have no right to those feelings. So if I just say those are my feelings, she'll cut me off completely and I lose.

At about that moment, our time ran out. We'll talk more next week. I think we accomplished nothing, truly, beyond explaining to Wife that I had not issued her an ultimatum. (Of course, she spent all day whining to Boyfriend 5 that I had done exactly that.) I think it would have been helpful to try to find out why Wife's reading of my essay was so neurotic. But that may have to be a project for another day.

Balance of terror

Wife still thinks I'm threatening her. Boyfriend 5 is encouraging her in this delusion, and proposing all sorts of things she needs to do while I am away from the house to "protect" herself. I'm supposed to go out of town on business next week, and Boyfriend 5 thinks that would be a great time for Wife to make all sorts of preparations. Can I afford to blow off the trip and stay at home?

Wife promises me -- "word of honor" -- that she doesn't discuss me with Boyfriend 5. Then she does so for hours. I haven't exactly rubbed her nose in it, because she would want proof before admitting anything; and proof is something I really don't want to give her. But she knows she is lying. She tells him so. This isn't just some innocent miscommunication.

I think I have figured out the underlying dynamic behind our marriage. It has to do with the fact that we interpret basic things very differently. We especially interpret each other's behavior very differently from the way we interpret our own behavior. This makes for disaster.

It goes something like this.

1. One of us does something that hurts or scares the other one -- it hardly matters what.
2. The other one reacts with pain or with self-defense. Let's suppose it is pain.
3. The first one never had any idea that the first act upset the spouse, and therefore interprets the pain as an unprovoked attack. Response is some kind of self-defense.
4. The second one interprets the self-defense as a renewed attack -- not only was there an original attack way back in the beginning, but now there is this new one too! My spouse must really hate me or want to undermine and destroy me. This step therefore repeats step 2, but with greater intensity.
5. Repeat step 3, but with greater intensity.
6. And so on. For twenty-five years.

And all the while, each one thinks "My intentions are totally innocent, but that other person is a monster bent on destroying me!" This leads to the thought, "Why can't the other person see that my intentions are totally innocent? It must be because he/she is a malevolent beast who doesn't give a damn for me!" Sometimes there might even be the added thought, "I can see how my defenses might be frightening the other person ... but it would be foolish for me to drop them as long as he/she is threatening me so directly and so maliciously. Therefore I won't drop my defenses until he/she drops his/her offensive weapons. That's only fair, isn't it? When I am no longer in danger, then I can afford to put down my shield."

The sad part, though, is that my shield looks like an offensive weapon to her. And her shield looks like an offensive weapon to me.

Over the years, my shield has included tools such as a loud voice; a sullen, sarcastic repartee; and occasional physical intimidation (although never physical damage). And I have to add that the physical intimidation (never harm) is something I have not used in over five years. More importantly, I have never used any of these tools in any interaction with Wife whatsoever unless I felt myself to be under direct attack intended to destroy me!

Over the years, Wife's shield has included extremes of temper: cyclonic tantrums on the one hand, where she shouted, wept, snarled like a wild animal and trashed the room she was in; and catatonic withdrawal on the other, where she sat for hours without a word or even a shift of position. It has also included threats of divorce, of ruinous legal action, and of kidnapping the children. And it has included mountainous burdens of self-pity, neurotic levels of self-justification, and almost psychotic accusations hurled at me ... so far as I could tell, all out of the blue. I cannot speak for Wife, but it would not surprise me to learn that she has never used these tools against me unless she felt herself to be under a direct attack by me.

My opinion is that I have never attacked her -- not once. I would not be surprised to hear it if she were to tell me that in her mind she has never attacked me. I can't for the life of me think how else I would characterize a hundred incidents that spring easily to mind, but I suppose that too may be a mirror image situation.

This looks a lot like the build-up to World War One: each nation was engaged in rational steps for self-defense, based on assumptions which seemed to make sense; but each nations's self-defense looked like aggression to others. On the other hand, appealing as that intellectual model may be, I don't especially want my marriage to replicate the Battles of Verdun or the Somme.

So what would it take to de-escalate? To back down? Even better -- wild fantasy! -- to start over from zero? Could each of us make a list of demands, in exchange for which we would be willing to start over? And is there any remote chance we could negotiate those two lists into something that we could agree on in common?

The alternative is probably to start singing Dulce et decorum est pro matrimonio mori. And I fear we are already very close, if not already there. May God have mercy on us.

"Scared" no longer does it justice

This just gets worse and worse.

Boyfriend 5 is now telling Wife that he "knows intuitively" that I am going to try to hurt or kill her, so she needs to start carrying a taser and a concealed knife to "protect" herself with.

This is insane. Throughout this whole sordid business all I have tried to do is protect her from predators. And the very suggestion that I could be planning to hurt her is preposterous. She's the one who has (at different times) trashed the kitchen, the bedroom, and our old apartment when her depression got out of control; she's the one who has waved kitchen knives at my balls after chopping her way through every onion in the house; she's the one with the arrest record for domestic violence, for God's sake! And I'm supposed to be the one that is going to threaten her ... badly enough that she needs to carry concealed weapons ... all because Boyfriend 5 has some kind of intuitive premonition? Excuse me??

It's not that I discount all talk of premonitions. Sometimes they can be uncannily accurate. I talked about one in my previous post earlier today. But this one is so grossly and obviously wrong, that it leaves only two possible explanations. Either Boyfriend 5 is psychotic, or he is consciously and deliberately trying to manipulate Wife into ... well, into something. I'm not sure what.

Could he be trying to persuade her to kill me, "in self-defense"? How would that benefit him? I suppose it would mean she no longer had any ties keeping her here, so she could take the kids and run away to be with him. It would also mean that she was a fugitive from justice, which would put her permanently under his control through threat of exposure. And it would mean that once she left the United States, she could never return for fear of being met at the airport by federal marshals. The forced deracination would disorient her all the more, and make her more helpless and dependent on him. This is all possible, but somehow it looks kind of far-fetched to me.

If he doesn't want her to kill me, then what could it be instead? I'm not sure I can think of anything. I mean, I could make something up, but I can't make any of it make any sense. So I really don't know what's in it for Boyfriend 5 (other than the sheer joy of causing trouble, I guess). But I am really getting more and more frightened.

Or maybe he's just psychotic. That might be a simpler explanation, actually.

Angelic voices in the office?

I spent the day at work with a guy I usually see on business maybe twice a year. It just so happens that this week is one of those times. And over the years we have talked about a lot of things besides business. I was one of the first people he told when he decided to divorce his wife. We've also talked about how we understand (or don't understand) the role of prayer and providence in our lives ... or the role of "chance" if you want to call it that. Last year I started to tell him something about Wife's mental illnesses, which is a topic I had (till then) rarely discussed with anybody. For people who only see each other twice a year, it is an odd kind of friendship and I don't know how to account for it without sounding a little odd in my turn. I mean, there was really no "reason" we should ever have met in the first place; his company just assigned him to manage my company's account "by chance" a couple of years ago when the former guy was unavailable. And the friendship has grown from there.

Why do you care?

Well, he told me this morning (as we were in the middle of a bunch of paperwork) that he had had a premonition when he got on the plane to come out here and see us. His premonition told him, "You know that stuff Hosea was telling you last year when you were out there? It has gotten a whole lot worse recently. Ask him about it." He asked, and over lunch I ended up telling him all about Wife and Boyfriend 5. (OK, maybe not all about. We didn't have that kind of time. But plenty.)

He related this to a lot of experiences he had had with his ex-wife. And then he said three other things. The first was that sometimes people are dropped into your life at a specific juncture to tell you something you need to hear right then. The second was that he would add me to his nightly prayers. And the third was that he didn't see any obvious solutions for me right away ... but I should tell as many people as I felt comfortable telling, to get as much advice as I possibly could.

I have to think about that. I haven't told many people: our marriage counselor, this guy, ... who else? I guess I mentioned it briefly to Boyfriend 4, but not the latest stuff. Nothing about money.

I am not sure how to go about this. None of this is something that it is really natural to bring up in conversation, and I think I would feel pretty awkward dropping it out of the blue into a discussion of something else. That's one reason I started an anonymous blog in the first place.

Or wait, ... there's an idea. Maybe I can point people to the blog itself. Some of them might catch on that there's a reason I did so. Even if they just leave comments on the blog and don't realize it's me, that could be a start.

I'll have to think about this. I'm not sure that it is a great idea ... it sound more than half foolhardy, in point of fact. On the other hand, someone once told me that sometimes people are dropped into your life at a specific juncture to tell you something you need to hear right then ....

I guess I failed

You can all read my post from earlier today.

Well, it turns out Wife did pay this bill. With our credit card.

Can anyone give me one good reason why Wife doesn't get distrustful as soon as money is mentioned in this picture? Hasn't she ever heard of all those Nigerian banking scams?

Can anyone give me one good reason why Wife doesn't see this for an elaborate con?

Is it just that she is thinking with her cunt instead of her brains? Or what? Wife actually used to be pretty smart and pretty canny -- what the hell happened to her?

I am so upset I can hardly see straight. I don't know what to do or where to turn. I guess the first step is to go get a drink: it won't help me think any more clearly, but there are times that a little less sobriety is definitely indicated, and I think this is one of them.

I know that there isn't anybody out there reading this blog. I know that I'm talking to a blank wall, and that all I get out of the exercise is that it makes me organize my thoughts to write them down. And that is some help, somehow.

But all of you who aren't really out there ... can you send me some advice anyway? Comments appended to the post would be fine. Or e-mails to the address on my profile. Anything.

I am really troubled here.

Have I mentioned that the new boyfriend scares me?

I know this is getting old: I've whined about it here and here and even here. But the sense of foreboding won't go away.

Wife happened to mention in an IM this morning that Boyfriend 5 is going to have his electricity shut off unless he can get something squared away with the bank, and without electricity he'll die. Plus without electricity he won't be able to IM with Wife all day. The electric bill is "only" $84.00 but once they shut off the power it will stay off for a month because the country he lives in does things that way, and besides at that point the bill will double. And he usually would hit up this other friend for money, but that friend is out of town, and, well, ....

Wife was all set to pay this bill with one of our credit cards. I think I stalled her. But every reason I can give her for being suspicious of this story -- and I hope you can think of a dozen without spending more than a minute at it -- just convinces her more and more that I am a mean and oppressive brute without an ounce of conscience.

What do I do now?

Talking all morning

Wife and I spent a couple hours this morning talking, before we got up to deal with the day. We came up with a few interesting ideas.

The first one hit me as I opened my eyes: the reason Wife finds me so boring is that we spend no time together. Oh sure, there are the hours we are asleep. But in terms of interactive time, there is probably (all in all) less than she spends IM'ing with Boyfriend 5. What is more, the time we spend together is very low-Quality time because we spend it planning who will drive which boy to which commitment, or discussing what this particular charge on the MasterCard is, or talking about the housework that has yet to be done. If those were the only things I had to discuss with somebody, I'd be bored too.

Back before we had kids, Wife and I used to spend a couple of hours every night talking together; and we often said we couldn't imagine how our marriage could ever function without that time. Of course once we had kids we could no longer find that kind of time, so it should have been no surprise that we started to drift apart. Then the few times we have squeezed out time for ourselves, we haven't known where to start and we have just repeated the low-Quality conversations we have when the kids are around: who will help drive on the next field trip, when we should upgrade the computer, and so on. But that doesn't make for a marriage so much as it makes for a business partnership whose object is to run a household.

I reminded Wife that way back when we first met, we were really in love. She mused that that may have been our best year. Well, I answered, in one sense it had to be -- the sparkle and charm and inner peace that come from newly falling-in-love always fade into something else. You can never keep that forever. I thought this was a mundane truism, but Wife started to cry. She said if that were true then her whole life was destined to be bleak. Why? Because, she said, she needs that peace so desperately; she needs it like a drug to ease the pain that her mind is in all the time; and she can't get it any other way than by falling in love.

Attentive readers will remember that I said something like that a couple of months ago, specifically in the context of Wife's sex life. But she was making a far more general point. OK, I said, but even if this is true your life doesn't necessarily have to be bleak -- there are a couple of options. One is that you can keep falling in love with new people over and over. Another is that you can find some way to treat the underlying pain. Both are possible. And hey, hang in there -- I still love you.

I wonder how much this discussion will matter to Wife later? By the time she described it to Boyfriend 5, it had become all my idea: Hosea thinks I use you like a drug, Hosea thinks my real problem is my inner psychological pain, Hosea thinks that I am addicted to falling in love because it is an anodyne for me, ... but of course I don't think any of those things at all. As usual, Hosea is full of it. I wonder if she remembered the truth and was just lying to Boyfriend 5 because she was ashamed to confess this was her own idea, or if she had already changed her own memory of the conversation so that it registered as one more time I was picking on her? And will she digest and assimilate the idea, maybe using it as a basis for future decisions, or will she tuck it away in a cubby-hole and ignore it? No way to tell for sure, I guess.

Even then, the conversation wasn't over. I asked Wife why she was so passive about so many things. Time and again, she will sit still and wait for me to make basic decisions for her. Then she will resent that I boss her around, of course, ... but why doesn't she make her own decisions in the first place? I'm talking about simple things here, like getting out of bed to eat breakfast if you are hungry. The decision between getting up and eating or going back to sleep isn't exactly a dilemma worth of Hamlet; but Wife will lie abed even though hungry until I tell her it is time to get up. Not every day, to be sure; not all the time. But that it happens at all concerns me.

Wife passed this off as a form of suicidal depression. Maybe it is, but what then can we do about it? I mean, this is pretty basic stuff. What would you do, I asked Wife, if I were to die? She whirled around to look at me and almost screeched the answer, "Die too!" Huh? Is this the same woman who tells her boyfriends how much she hates me, how she only sticks with me for the sake of the kids, how she'll be out of here one and a half minutes after the younger one leaves for college? Is it the same woman who admitted to me a few weeks ago that when I have to travel on business, "maybe 10%" of her mind wishes my plane will crash and kill me? If I die, she'll die too? How does this make any sense? No, she went on, of course she would realize it was her duty to hang in there and raise the children, to make their lives as stable as possible in the absence of a father, to collect on my insurance [nice touch, there!] and so forth. But, she concluded, she would simply want to die too.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the more we talk, the less I understand.

Counseling 1

Well we had our first visit with the Counselor today. Wife was 15 minutes late for a one hour meeting. Then when she arrived, a couple of innocuous remarks of greeting on Counselor's part led to a 15 minute discussion of some other issues Wife has going on. So it was only after half our session had elapsed that I got to explain about Boyfriend 5.

I gave a thumbnail sketch of the situation. I explained that Wife has never met Boyfriend 5, that they live far away, that there are in fact three of them, and that she has "strong emotional bonds" with all three. I never used the words "relationship addiction" but I did explain that I thought Wife might be using the rush of delirious joy that someone feels when first falling in love as a way to self-medicate her depression. I also explained that she says she feels bad about hurting me, but that she is driven by needs that she has never been able to explain. Counselor asked how I felt about the situation, but I wasn't able to give a very coherent answer.

Wife, for her part, said she doesn't want to leave me, but she wants to keep both relationships; that with me (and our kids) and that with Boyfriend 5. She explained that she loves me, admires me, and relies or depends on me. She said further that she wouldn't consider leaving unless I gave her an ultimatum and insisted that she choose them or us but that she could not have both. In a case like that, she said, she would feel cornered and would respond irrationally, like a wild animal. Finally, she gave me some inkling of what the needs are that she can't get filled by me.

1. She wants to be understood. She and I have always had bad communication problems, and Boyfriend 5 understands her instantly and intuitively.
2. She and I have always had a lousy sex life.

It wasn't a long meeting, as already noted, and we'll meet again next week. But for now, that's at least something.

"Mom always gets hysterical when she's lost"

I think I said that Wife had taken the kids to a sporting event. Afterwards everybody was going to go out for pizza, but Wife has no sense of direction and got completely lost.

She called me at home on her cell phone, shrieking about how she was lost and it was the direct personal fault of this person and that person and especially the other person too. Son 1 had gone off to the pizza parlor with another member of his team; Son 2 was in the car with Wife, crying. And I was supposed to fix it.

Really this was easy. I told Wife to come on home. Son 1 was really the one who needed to be at the pizza fest anyway, and he was already there. Then I called the coach and asked him to make sure somebody else brought home Son 1.

But I was a little worried about Son 2. I know that when Wife is upset she can yell for hours about what everybody else did wrong to put her in this pickle, and Son 2 is very sensitive. What's more, the night several years ago when Wife blew up so badly that she was arrested ... Son 2 had woken up and tiptoed out of bed, and he saw the whole thing. Of course he kept silent until the police had driven away, but years later he mentioned it to his brother so I know he remembers.

So when they both got home I wanted to talk to them a bit, to make sure Son 2 was OK and to try to encourage Wife to be a bit less self-righteous. I understand she was scared -- scared of getting lost, scared of losing Son 1. But I was hoping she could ground out the frantic energy rather than letting it make her crazy. I asked Son 2 how he was doing, and by this point he was quite chipper. I mentioned that the reason Wife had been shouting and screaming so much was not that anybody did anything wrong, but that she was scared because she was lost. And Son 2 said nonchalantly, "It's OK, Mom always gets hysterical when she is lost."

Wife herself was a little harder to calm down, and I think she is still seething on a slow simmer. But for the most part I think she is getting over it.

All the same, I do have to wonder: if Wife finally leaves me for Boyfriend 5, is she still going to call me on her cell phone when she gets lost in traffic? For decades that has been pretty much her only strategy to get out of this kind of a jam -- since before cell phones, in fact. But is another boyfriend going to have any idea how to deal with her? Or will she keep calling me because she always has?