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.