Adultery and betrayal? 3, Adultery as betrayal

This is part 3 of an extended essay. You can find part 2 here.

And now we can begin to answer why infidelity looks like betrayal. Or almost: first, we need to know what betrayal is.

I’m not really familiar with any recent literature on betrayal, so to look this up I turned to Google. And I found a very interesting article by Rodger Jackson, written back in 2000. Jackson starts by defining trust as follows: “Trust is a disposition on the part of one person (the trusting party) to extend to another (the trusted party) discretionary power over something the truster values (the “object of trust”) with the confident expectation that the trusted party will have the good will and competence to successfully care for it” [sic]. Jackson notes that the relationship of trust itself can be one of the most valuable “objects of trust” and then identifies two ways that trust can be violated: betrayal and abandonment.

For my purposes, the distinction between these two is almost incidental. It is the definition of trust itself that I find most useful. For one thing, it explains to me why I always feel so violated whenever Wife complains about me to her friends (or lovers). I have never understood this logically before, because I have thought that it is only reasonable for her to be able to discuss her feelings with her friends: if it so happens that her feelings include anger towards me (regardless whether I ever really did the things she accuses me of) – well, those are her feelings and she is entitled to them. But Jackson’s definition allows me to put my finger on another dimension of this. After all, there is an “object” here which I prize (i.e., value) and over which I have extended discretionary power to Wife: I mean my good name. When Wife complains about me to her friends, she drags that good name though the mud – or, in Jackson’s terms, she very dramatically fails “to successfully care for it.” [sic, as if I need to say so. Jackson splits his infinitives regularly and with abandon.]

Very well, what about the case of adultery? When Wife fucks another man (or a woman), is there some “object of trust” for which she is failing to care adequately?

There are a number of easy answers – easy, at any rate, to a sufficiently conservative mind – which turn out to be wrong or incoherent. For example:

• Could the “object of trust” be her body? Is that the thing which I value, and for which she is taking inadequate care?
  
  Well no, not really. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. In the first place, I don’t own Wife’s body. In the second place, I think I would get jealous of a lover even if her body were benefitted by the extra attention.
  
  I mean, suppose Wife’s doctor told me she was suffering from some rare disease where she needed to fuck a minimum of x times a day to prevent bad things from happening, and suppose x was a number I just couldn’t keep up with. Then it would be a medical necessity for her to fuck more often: fucking other men would become the means by which Wife cared successfully for her body, which I value. Would I therefore stop feeling that my trust had been violated? Wishful thinking! More likely I would still obsess over her “unfaithfulness” and “betrayal” ... even if it had been commanded on medical authority.
  


• Well, then maybe her virtue is the “object of trust”? Maybe that is the valuable thing that I fear is not adequately cared for when she fucks someone else?
  
  Sorry, that doesn’t make any sense either; the problem is that to say her “virtue” is the object for which she is failing to care – taking the word in the Victorian sense of “sexual virtue” which is the only meaningful definition in this context – begs the question. Wife’s “virtue” in that sense is only valuable in the first place on the assumption that adultery is a form of betrayal. Therefore we cannot in turn use Wife’s failure to guard her “virtue” as a reason to say adultery is a form of betrayal.
  


• It is a difficult question to answer. Note also that the very difficulty of the question gives support to the polyamorist position. For years, Wife defended her affairs to me by asking how they could possibly hurt me? What was there of mine that was the slightest bit damaged or injured? Then when I couldn’t answer the question, she took that as a license to continue. So did I, really – at least to the extent that I felt it would be completely irrational to ask her to stop when I couldn’t give a rational explanation of where the harm lay.

But that is not to say that there isn’t an answer.

Remember that the meaning of sex is couplehood: fucking creates a couple where there was none before; and remember that your emotions think this means a couple in which each partner puts the other one first, in which each partner is a home or refuge for the other from the storms of the world. So whatever battles you have to fight out in the world, whatever injuries you suffer, whatever wounds you nurse or scars you bear, you can always come back to the person you fuck to find shelter. There, at least, you can put down your weapons, strip off your armor, bind up your wounds and relax. There, at least, you know you are secure and you can relax. There you don’t have to be on guard, because you know that you are the center of your partner’s world, the number one priority. There you are safe and at home.

Only ... how do you feel when you come back to your home at long last, after a day that has beaten and bruised you, and you find a total stranger at ease in your living room, relaxing with his feet up, drinking your beer, eating your chips, and watching your television? Disoriented? Shocked? Violated? Betrayed?

Exactly.

If the one place that I could always find refuge from the slings and arrows of the world was with Wife – or, more graphically, in Wife – then what does it mean to me when I find one of her boyfriends there too? What has become of my refuge? And am I still the center of her world? Surely he must be too – and how can any world have two centers? Or more?

In the blink of an eye, everything has changed and I no longer know where I am.

This is why adultery makes the cheated-upon spouse so crazy: when you find out, it yanks all your security out from under you at once. Suddenly you are lost, and none of your familiar landmarks lead you back to safety any more. Suddenly you are homeless because some squatter has taken over your home and evicted you. Or at least you have to share your home, possibly for good. And nobody even asked you, or gave you the slightest warning in advance.

In my case, Wife nearly always tried to reassure me that she still loved me. “It’s just that I don’t believe you can only love one person.” But that never helped. I would just wonder, “Then what does she mean by love? Does she mean she’ll always take my side, no matter what? Not possible: because if I and her boyfriend ever fight (God forbid!), she can’t take both our sides even though she says she loves us both. Therefore love must not mean that for her. Therefore I can no longer rely on her as a perfect refuge, or a perfect home ... because some days, for some battles, she just won’t be there.”

Many people can’t take the shock and sense of violation; that’s why the discovery of adultery so often means divorce. In a sense, they decide they would rather be homeless than share their home with strangers. Maybe in a while they can make a new home somewhere else, with somebody else. For me, because I have stayed with Wife all these years, it has been different. I have stayed with her, knowing that I could never trust her completely to be there every single time, that I could not rely on her for my metaphysical security ... that I would always have to be just a little bit on guard. In one sense it is sad. In another sense, I guess the lesson that I would have to be a little bit on guard may have been oddly helpful. I have needed a low level of constant watchfulness to deal with her mental illness, which is usually cyclic but can burst forth in terrifying and unexpected thunderstorms. And I have needed a better self-reliance to deal with her physical illnesses, which have steadily robbed her of her strength and endurance and ambition.

But all of this is by the way. The important point is the most basic one. Adultery invites a stranger into the secret refuge that you thought was yours alone, the one place in all the world that you could always be at home. And that is why it counts as a betrayal.

Adultery and betrayal? 2, The meaning of sex

This is part 2 of an extended essay. You can find part 1 here.



At the most immediate emotional level, the answer is that I don’t want to be left out. If there is rapturous sex going on some afternoon – at any rate, if it involves Wife – I want to be part of it. Indeed, if I am honest with myself, I have to admit that my deep, deep fear of being shut out is even stronger than my anger or resentment at some other boyfriend being welcomed in. Sure, it upsets me to think of him fucking Wife, warm and secure inside her cunt, bringing her to orgasm once or several times. Sure, my imagination can fixate on pictures like this in a truly obsessive way, giving me no peace. But even worse than all this is feeling that I myself have been cut off from this ecstasy, shut out in the cold while such celestial glory is going on without me. That part, truly, is Hell on Earth.

Peeling back this onion a little farther, then, what is it that I am missing? Is it my own orgasm? My own physical release? Not at all. If that were all, I could solve the problem by masturbating, and everything would be fine again. But it’s not. Sometimes I may have to resort to that to keep from losing my mind, if I know that Wife is with somebody else, but it is no substitute and a damned poor consolation.

What this means, as an interim observation, is that sex is not a physical pleasure – or not only a physical pleasure. If it were, the orgasm itself would be the key; in that case, jacking off would be as good as fucking, and I would have no reason to care if Wife, like a latter-day Messalina, decided to fuck every last one of the Green Bay Packers so long as I got mine too. But that is absolutely not the case.

What else is there? I don’t know how else to explain it but to say that during sex – at any rate, good sex, not failed sex – we are there with each other in a deeper way than we can ever be otherwise. It is as if – bear with the image for a moment – it is as if Wife opens her aura or her shield when she opens her legs; and as long as I am between those legs, I am on the inside of the shield, together with her more truly than I can ever be at any other time. Whatever we decide to do at that time to gratify each other, her open legs are a sign of infinite possibilities, when we can touch each other directly, when we can communicate heart to heart and soul to soul. The reality doesn’t often live up to the promise, I admit; I have never claimed to be a demon lover, and (truth to tell) neither is Wife. We both suffer from all-too-human limitations in that arena. And yet the promise – the promise that is whispered to us by our sexual entanglement – is of ineffable joy, perfect communion, and no boundaries. It is a promise that all the stern and surly limits of earthly life are repealed. It is nothing less than a foretaste of Heaven – for if there is indeed a God who cares for men and if he indeed offers us some kind of celestial bliss after our time here on Earth, that bliss can only be a fulfillment of the promise whispered to us by erotic communion – the joy of eternal fucking with its perfect closeness, but without the awkward angles, the missed cues, the inept timing, the pinched muscles, my elbow on Wife’s long hair ... none of those petty and all-too-terrestrial failures than make real sex fall too often short of its divine and holy promise.

And then when Wife closes her legs again, it is over. The infinite possibilities are shut off. We are back in the world of communicating with words, which are poor, feeble substitutes for speaking heart to heart. When she closes her legs again, a frost settles on the two of us and the world goes grey and flat and cold. And we are back on Earth.

How can this be? How can simple fucking be a foretaste of Heaven?

We all know that sex can make people fall in love, and really I’m not saying any more than that. All I am describing is how it happens. After all, from an “objective” point of view the causal link between sexual passion and romantic love doesn’t make a lot of sense. Just because I have disported my body in such and such a way with that of some sweet young thing, why should that change how I feel about her afterwards? Well, it’s like this. The bliss, the ecstasy of fucking is so transcendent that – at its best – it far surpasses mere pleasure. It works directly on our spirits every bit as powerfully as it gladdens our bodies; like Plato says about wine, it softens us like fire softens iron or wax, (Laws ii, 666B-C) so we can be totally reshaped. And when it softens us, when it reshapes us, it molds us around the beloved. Sex at its best melts each of us around the other, making two individuals into a single couple.

What does it mean to be a couple, to be melted around each other into a single shape? It means that each of us is a home for the other, a refuge from the storms of the world, a place of safety. If I am to be a home or a refuge for Wife, or she for me, then each of us must be the other’s highest priority. I must know that I can trust Wife completely (and she me) ... because if I can’t relax and trust then I’m not really at home, am I? That is what home is. And so the meaning of sex, if I can phrase it so, is that it creates a couple even if there was none there before, a couple who give each other shelter from the world and who treat each other as their highest priority, and who treat all other claims as secondary. This, after all, is why the law cannot compel a man to testify in court against his wife; because the law understands that, whatever the man owes to the majesty of the law, that debt cannot be presumed to come ahead of the priority he owes his wife.

I had better explain what I mean by talking about the meaning of sex, because clearly sex isn’t like this all the time, nor for everybody. Sex can be a lot more mundane than all that. It can be a physical drive, or energetic recreation, or just plain fun. We can fuck people we never intend to see again, let alone shelter from the world. We can fuck people we would never dream of sheltering from the world because they are too dangerous to be around – but who are still really, really hot in bed. Nor is sex always the same to both partners: a good friend of mine in college became suicidal during her sophomore year when she lost her virginity to some guy and fell for him hard, only to realize that he was working his way systematically through her dorm and had seduced her just because it was her turn.

What I am talking about, though, is what the ecstasy of good sex – at its best – whispers directly to our emotions, bypassing our heads completely. It doesn’t always happen, and some people seem to be more immune to the whispered promises of erotic bliss than others. But it is always a possibility.

And in a sense, it is a little more than merely a possibility. “Meaning” is a funny word to use in this context, after all, because we are used to thinking of meanings as arbitrary. If we all agree that a word should mean something new, then it means something new. The word gay used to mean “happy”; the word intercourse used to mean “conversation”. When enough people agreed on a new definition, the definition changed because the correlation of a word and its meaning is fundamentally arbitrary.

So it is logical to ask whether the correlation of sex and couplehood is also arbitrary. If couplehood is the meaning of sex, and if meanings can be changed by mutual agreement, why can’t we just agree to redefine sex as recreation or exercise or a short-term hobby? The short answer is that many people do exactly that. The longer answer, though, is that it is not quite so easy after all. The critical difference is that words are tools of the intellect; therefore, an intellectual agreement is all it takes to change their definitions. But sex speaks directly to the emotions without any intermediary; therefore it would take a reorientation of the emotions to change the meaning of sex. I won’t say such a reorientation is impossible; but you can’t do it just by deciding to. This is why the single biggest danger in an affair is the risk of falling in love: you go into the affair telling your mind that the fucking is purely recreational – just for fun. But your emotions aren’t in on the plan; they never got the message that this wasn’t serious, that it wasn’t for ever. And so when your emotions feel the bliss, the transcendent ecstasy of fucking, they react the way they think they are supposed to – by melting like wax around the shape of your partner. Soon, all you can think about is the beloved; soon, every waking moment is spent obsessing about him or her; soon, you can’t get enough of each other, in secret or in public; soon, your need for each other makes you reckless of the dangers, and you almost can’t care about the peril of discovery any more. Soon, you are in love.

The other big danger in an affair is jealousy and possessiveness. But if the meaning of sex is couplehood, you would expect exactly that. You may go into the affair believing (intellectually) that it’s purely recreational; so of course your partner in the affair should be free to pursue other amours as well. It’s all just good, clean fun – right? But the more often you fuck this partner, the more your emotions expect the two of you to form a couple. At that point, your mind may tell your partner, “Sure, go enjoy yourself with as many other lovers as you like”; but (despite your best intentions) your heart can’t want that. What your heart wants is for you to be the center of your partner’s world, your partner’s highest priority and reason for living. Nothing else will do. (This point is made, with a lyrical eloquence I cannot hope to match, in an essay found here.)

Everyone’s mileage is a little different. Some people find it easier than others to stay uninvolved. And there are tricks or techniques you can use to hold love at bay while you focus on fucking. But it is always a possibility; it is always a risk. The promise of eternal couplehood that fucking whispers to our emotions is the kind of promise that our emotions want to believe implicitly; because this is the meaning of sex to them, and so it is what they live for.



You can find part 3 here.

Adultery and betrayal? 1, What is the question?

This is really less a blog entry than an essay. I have tried to keep it short and informal, but there is no disguising that it is a pure “thought piece” rather than any more mundane kind of narrative. My only excuse for working it out far enough to write it – and then for posting it here – is that it addresses a question that has genuinely puzzled me over the years. Indeed, it was a misunderstanding of the very issues raised here that befuddled me so badly when I tried to think about sex and infidelity way back in the prehistory of my relationship with Wife. I have described elsewhere how I thought I should believe one thing, and then I found out in practice – to my genuine amazement – that I felt very differently. The reason I was confused is that I didn’t understand the things I finally figured out in late June or early July of this year, and that I explain in the course of this essay.

To help articulate the internal structure of the discussion, I have broken the essay into three parts.



What is it that makes infidelity a betrayal? To put it another way, why should we call it “infidelity” at all when someone in a marriage fucks someone outside the marriage? What is it about sex that makes this an instance of breaking faith?

That everybody sees it this way is hardly in question. Nobody seriously questions what the word “infidelity” means, nor the shorter and simpler “cheating”. There are blogs – many of them – written by unfaithful spouses to chronicle their amours. I enjoy reading these blogs so I hope none of the authors takes this wrong: but it is clear to me that they all accept that what they are practising is infidelity, unfaithfulness, cheating. They all accept that there is some kind of apparently legitimate claim which their spouses have over them to prevent them from fucking other people, and which they have deliberately chosen to flout for one reason or another. Even Wife, when she professes to be mystified by the “prejudice” that one “cannot” love more than one other person romantically at a time, is plainly defensive rather than genuinely puzzled. She knows that by fucking other men she is implicitly inviting a judgment, and that it speaks against her. All her answers – the justifications, the accusations, the proud declarations of freedom from social convention – are so much noise designed (I think) to distract her own attention from the voice of this judgment, because she really can’t stand to hear it.

But what is so special about sex? I don’t care if Wife takes a friend for an afternoon of shopping for shoes (so long as the bill isn’t too high); in fact, if she invited me, I would actively look for an excuse not to go. Why do I care if she takes a friend for an afternoon of rapturous sex? It’s not the same, but why not?



You can find part 2 here.

Counseling 7

Yes indeed, a week has gone by and it's already time for another session with Counselor. Compared to last month, I'm really not posting much these days.

We've spent the last week getting ready for the start of school (for the kids, that is). Wife mentioned that she has been feeling a lot of anxiety about it, especially as Son 1 is moving to a new school for the first time ever. New schedule, new location, new people, new classes, new rules ... the works. Counselor asked Wife if she has expressed any of this to me, and how did I react? She said no, for the most part she didn't say anything. She had tried to mention it once, and I waved it off airily as a silly thing to worry about. Of course everything would be fine.

How did this make her feel? Like I was ignoring her. Like I was paying no attention and didn't care. So of course she wasn't about to speak up again.

And she's right. Anybody would feel like that if their worries were just waved away out of hand. And I'm sure that's exactly what I did.

For my part, I suppose I can add that I think she has been worrying too much. I think Son 1 is adaptable, and no school expects everything to be perfect the first day, and in general I have a lot more confidence than Wife does in the ability of things to work themselves out. Sure we'll hit bumps in the road, but we'll pick ourselves up and move on. So when she worries that the school won't let her pick him up in this parking lot as opposed to that one if she's 5 minutes early, I think it is a little over the top.

But that doesn't give me any right to ignore her. Saying "You know, sweetheart, it's going to be OK"? Sure, fine. Saying "That's silly"? I think that would get on my nerves if the tables were turned. Why wouldn't it bug her?

This is why I always get a little nervous when I read women writing about how their husbands ignore them, stare straight past them, or otherwise have no notion what is going on with them. It's not that I think they are wrong to complain, or to want something better and richer in their marriages. Heavens no! It's just that some days that husband is me. I am as capable as any other guy of getting caught up in what I'm doing in the moment, and of assuming that if something doesn't bug me then it shouldn't bug anybody else. There's no excuse for it, but that doesn't make it untrue.

Today in Counselor's office I told her I hadn't meant to ignore her. I told her some of the reasons I have for thinking that this big transition will all turn out OK. And she said she hadn't meant to complain because the particular incident seemed so trivial, but she felt better for my saying so.

But how many times has this happened that she has forgotten all about the event -- because by itself it was trivial? And how many of those times has she forgotten the occasion but remembered that she felt slighted, or unseen, or ignored, or unloved? And how many times does it take before the total weight of them all builds up into a situation where she feels like nothing she ever does will make her visible to me, ... even though all the while I think everything is fine?

I bet in 25 years there's been plenty of time for all that to happen.

And I am sorry. I guess saying so today counts for one. Just 19,999 more instances to go ....

Six-Word Memoirs

Wife and I started talking about six-word memoirs this morning, and I asked her if she thought she could summarize her life -- or what is important about her essence -- in six words. At first she wasn't very engaged in the subject, and said, "No, probably not." But I played around with the idea, and then casually added that what is really important about any one of us might be something we don't a lot want to hear. At this she smiled a bit and said, "Oh great. So I guess mine would have to start off, 'Deceitful, conniving bitch ...'" I said absolutely nothing -- I guarantee it! -- but cocked an eyebrow at her. I guess it could have meant either "Are you sure you want to say that?" or else "Go on, how do you finish it?"

After a few minutes she added with decision, "... but good mother." I think my only comment was, "Well, that's six words."

I tried this exercise with myself, too. So far the best I can come up with is "Talks loud, laughs louder, thinks silently." But that's probably too pretentious and therefore will end up missing the mark. I have said before (try here and here for starters) that I'm every bit as capable as anybody else at telling myself comforting stories to make me feel good. This may be one of them.

But Wife's wasn't, for sure. I've got to admit that.

You expected them to accomplish ... what?

I haven't been posting much lately, and I was kind of having trouble thinking what to write about next. Then Wife handed me a topic on a silver platter. She asked the boys to clean out their toy chest.

Now, I should explain that this toy chest sits next to the dining table, because it is such a small house. And it has been years since we last went through it trying to find things to throw away or donate to somebody ... anybody .... Therefore it is literally spilling over, which does add to the inconvenience of seating somebody at that end of the table. So it wasn't a bad idea to start with. Heaven knows, it would make the house look less cluttered (if not by enough). What's more, unlike asking the boys to clean up their room, the toy chest is a confined, finite problem. There's a clear beginning and end. It would seem hard to go wrong with a task like this.

Wife, though, seems in cases like this to have a special gift for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And I knew she had managed exactly that when she IM'ed me at work -- at the end of the day -- to complain with surprise about how little they wanted to discard.

I didn't say a word, but my thoughts went like this: Let me get this straight. You are surprised? That must mean you didn't see it coming. But weren't you sitting there with them helping them make the decision about each toy one at a time? No, I guess you couldn't have been or you wouldn't have been surprised at the end of the day, which is apparently when you finally found out what they had done (or not done). So that must mean that you told them what to do and then walked away and expected them to do it -- just do it -- to the standards that you would have used had you been doing it instead. Now babe, try to remember that these are two little boys we are talking about here; they aren't even teenagers yet, for heaven's sake. And as for being able to carry out a task like this on their own, ... well I don't trust highly-paid professionals in my office to carry out seemingly simple tasks on their own if the tasks aren't inside their specialty. If I want feedback from them that makes sense or is useful to me, I have to be in the room with them and walk them by the hand through what I need from them. And you expect two pre-teen boys to be more reliable than that? That would be ... why? Without sitting there between them to facilitate, or manage the activity, you expected them to accomplish ... what?

But this is how Wife is, when it comes to her expectations of other people. Other people will naturally read her mind and do things the way she thinks they ought to be done, without her having to put herself out about it. Then when they don't she takes it personally. She gets truly, deeply offended when the boys goof off, or drop their chores in the middle to go have a squirt gun fight, even if it has been hours since she checked up on them. She understands this as "deliberate defiance" and "deliberate disrespect" and she takes it as a sign that the boys hold her in contempt. Then she lurches to the other extreme and assumes she has to hover over them, which usually involves screeching at them as she hovers. The boys yell back, or cry, or turn sullen, and everybody is miserable.

After an hour or a day of this, I come home from work; and Wife vents to me about how disrespectful and lazy the boys are. When she does, it is all I can do to keep from saying, "Gosh, dear, they are never that way for me. I find them to be remarkably helpful and cooperative as boys that age tend to go; and while they will josh and tease ruthlessly, I encourage that and would never dream of calling them disrespectful." I have stood up for them in the past, and at this point the boys know that Wife is going to be over the top in this area so I don't think I have to make a point of it each time. This is just as well, because saying what I think inevitably generates the defiant response "Well then why didn't they _____ [fill in the blank] like I told them to, instead of playing with squirt guns all afternoon?"

Don't be misled by the question mark on the end of that sentence. It's not a question. There is no desire for an answer, for any transfer of information. I know this because the times that I tried to answer it as if it were a question, I stepped on a land mine. I tried to suggest: if you want the boys to take on a big project, you have to be there with them. You have to help -- or at least facilitate -- every step of the way. It has to be all of you ("us") who are doing this project, not just them ("you"). And you have to give them the illusion of a certain amount of independence without the reality. This means working with them for a while, then walking away for ten minutes after leaving very explicit instructions for about five minutes' worth of work. Then come back and check how it is going. Repeat as needed. Change up the order. Stay engaged. But don't check out, and don't lose your temper.

Whenever I gave this advice (before I learned not to), she found it patronizing. I never meant it to be. I don't know if it was ... or if somebody else would have felt that way, at least. I kind of assumed that anyone who knew all this stuff inside and out wouldn't be having the troubles she had. Invariably she would also be able to find at least one thing I said in my general inventory of advice that she had actually done that time. This would mean that she could always crow, "Well I did that! And they still didn't do what I told them to! So obviously you aren't any better than I am at managing them, and you shouldn't go around claiming to be Superdad and telling me that I don't know anything. You already undermine me enough, you know. That must be why the boys have no respect for me, since obviously you don't have any, either ...."

Yeah, I know. You don't want help, and any claims to the contrary are so much rhetoric. You don't want help because help is impossible ... after all, "help" implies getting you to do things differently than you do them right now, which implies that the way you are doing them right now is less than perfect, which implies that you are Wrong! And woe betide the man who dares to claim that you are Wrong about something. That's unpleasant country to find yourself in, and nobody wants to go there. Therefore help is impossible. Sigh ....

Counseling 6

I just got back from a business trip over the weekend, so I have been tired and crabby and haven't felt much like posting. Also, things have been pretty quiet on the home front. Boyfriend 5 has been offline for most of a week, for some reason, so Wife hasn't had him relentlessly jiggling her arm. Things have been almost "normal" ... whatever that means any more ....

But we saw Counselor again today, so I should try to capture the salient points of the visit.

I think the gist of the visit is that we speak two different languages or live in different worlds, although that may not exactly be news. One way to summarize most of the discussion would be to boil it down to a long series of exchanges where Wife opens with "Hosea said X" and I reply with "But that meant Y." Some concrete examples: ....

Wife: The morning after Hosea got back from his trip, I cuddled up with him and whispered that I thought we still had the chance to make our marriage anything we wanted it to be. He grunted and said "I don't know." That proves that he has stopped caring about me and us.

Hosea: Did I say that? OK, fine. Why should I think we can make it "anything we want"? For 25 years, I haven't thought it was all that bad; frustrating in spots, but plenty of couples have other troubles. And in all that time, you have continually described the marriage as on the brink of catastrophe. The things you ask me for are things that I think you already have. If we see things so very differently, despite all the marriage counseling we have already been through, why should I think that will suddenly change? And if it doesn't change, then how can we really make our marriage "anything we want"?

Wife: Hosea has given up on the marriage. Before he left on his business trip, he asked me if we have anything left to salvage and said that to him it looked like the whole marriage was over.

Hosea: Ummm, ... not quite. I said that if you continue to believe I have injured you in a hundred ways, doing things that I have never done, and if you persist in refusing to see that you are pounding on an open door when you ask me for respect and consideration that I am already giving you ... well in that case I don't know what else I can possibly do to satisfy you. And so in that case, yes, maybe we really have no other choice but to concede that it is impossible for us ever to live on the same planet; which is the same thing as saying that the marriage is over, even if we continue to live in the same house and file a joint tax return.

Wife: Hosea has said to my face dozens of times that he has no respect for me.

Hosea: Not quite. It is true that there are a lot of things that you do for which I have no respect. But that's not the same as having no respect for you yourself. You are more than your actions. You are a human being, with free will and an immortal soul. When I criticize those actions of yours that I find sordid, it is because I respect you yourself enough to hold you to a higher standard. How dare you do XYZ -- you are better than that! If I just let it go because I thought you were incapable of acting otherwise, that would be disrespect.

Wife: There is no point telling Hosea when he says something that hurts my feelings, because he'll just say I'm being ridiculous. He just doesn't see it.

Hosea: That's absolutely right -- I just don't see it! At the time that I say whatever it is, it never once occurs to me that it could hurt your feelings because to me I am saying something totally innocuous. But that doesn't mean you can't explain it to me. It doesn't mean that I cannot be made to see it. Only you have got to open your mouth and tell me. If you want me not to trample on your feelings, you have got to help me out here by letting me know when I do it and not just storing up resentments in your bosom for 5 years ... or 25. The next time this happens, say, "Hosea, when you said that just now I felt ...." Use those words! That will be my cue that I have to stop and listen to you. And if you use those words, I really will try to understand what you are talking about and how you can take offense at something that seems so neutral to me. But you have got to communicate with me.

The thing is, I do still love her. That's the biggest reason why I am still here after all these years. I do still care deeply what happens to her. I do still want to protect her from hurt with every ounce of my strength -- even if the hurt comes from me. And I desperately want to believe that we can make it all be all right ... that we can wave a magic wand, even if it takes a hell of a lot of work from us both, and have things be finally perfect.

But I can't do it all by myself, babe. You have got to do some of the heavy lifting. And that is why I get so listless and pessimistic about our chances. Because for 25 years you have resisted doing that heavy lifting for fear that changing your perception ... conceding that maybe you aren't under chronic attack ... will destroy you. I think it is the only way to live a real life, but I know you disagree. And I don't know what to do about it.

Of course I hope that it gets better. We'll see.

Why do I read the blogs that I read?

The other day I finally figured out how to add a blog list to the left-hand margin of this blog you are reading now. OK, this should have been obvious to me long ago, I guess, but I never claimed to be a technical wizard. Anyway, I started adding links to a few of the blogs that I read at all regularly.

And after I added the first two or three, it struck me that there was something very unusual about the list. They are all (for the time being, at least) infidelity blogs; that part is not so strange. What is a bit peculiar is that they are written by the unfaithful partner in the marriage, or else by someone acting as a free agent, if you will. I think that my own blog is the only one I read at all regularly that is written by the cheated-upon.

Isn’t that strange? I mean, blogs written by car enthusiasts are typically read by other car enthusiasts; blogs by travel buffs are read by other travel buffs; I suppose that blogs by left-handed Carpathian goatherds are probably read primarily by other left-handed Carpathian goatherds. One of the great things about the Internet is how it can bring together people with common interests, and all ....

So what gives? I have been mulling this ever since.

I’ll admit right off the bat that one of the things I like in these blogs are the salacious stories. It hardly matters which of them are fantasies and which really happened, because they are all fun to read. My own fantasies would look pretty dull by comparison.

But I also enjoy the company of the authors, if you will; or at any rate the sides of their personalities – their voices – that come through in their writings. I recognize a lot of the frustrations they feel in their marriages; sometimes I have the same frustrations, sometimes I have lived through the same issue from the other side. And whatever they may or may not tell their spouses, they sound – in their writings, at least – refreshingly honest and free of humbug.

When I read posts by other cheated-upon spouses, however, the story is very different. (Is there a shorter word, by the way? “Cheated-upon spouse” is the shortest term I can think of, and it is unspeakably clumsy.) Articles posted by the cheated-upon seem to be most commonly angry and self-righteous; often vindictive, sometimes desparate or maudlin. I even understand why, but for heaven’s sake who wants to read that?
I also think that wallowing in one’s own anger, self-righteousness, victimization, or whatever is bad for the author. Despair and a sense of victimization encourage you to feel helpless; pretty soon you are sitting in a corner weeping uncontrollably and shrieking at shadows. Anger and self-righteousness encourage you to lie to yourself; pretty soon you have convinced yourself and all of your friends that the reason your spouse cheated is that he or she is a morally worthless scum, totally unworthy of a shining moral exemplar like yourself.

And of course that’s all bullshit. Name any transgression that you like, and in five minutes I can pull five people randomly off the street, any one of whom would be capable of committing it under the right circumstances. It is true I haven’t cheated on my wife, or at any rate not yet. But all this proves is that I am too timid to carry it off, or too socially inept, or for a hundred other reasons it just hasn’t seemed like the thing to do at the time. God knows that it doesn’t prove any moral superiority on my part. For that matter, my biggest indictment of Wife isn’t even that she cheats, but that she hides it and lies about it ... especially to herself.

And this brings me back to what I find so refreshing about the infidelity blogs that I read. The authors don’t claim to be moral exemplars, but at least they aren’t cowards. They know what they are doing; they know why they are doing it; they know it might be wrong, but they are prepared to deal with that when they have to. They may have to mislead their employers or their spouses for practical reasons, but they won’t lie to themselves or their readers, even when it makes them look bad to tell the truth.

If they’d have me there, I’d eat at their table any day of the week.

Memo to self: In the future, try to keep your posts less angry, self-righteous, and whiny. For heaven’s sake, who wants to read that?

Speaker for the Dead

I'm on a business trip this week. I thought that would give me a lot of time to get caught up writing posts I have thought about but not committed to text yet. So far it hasn't worked out that way.

In the meantime, though, to beguile the hours on airplanes, I have been reading Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead. When Wife's good friend D visited us, she strongly recommended it as a meditation on The Other. (That's a big theme in her life.) OK, it is that ... but what I see in it is far more basic, and has a lot to do with the themes of this blog. One thing the book traces in a lot of detail is the absolutely poisonous consequences of chronic lying, and the painful healing that is made possible only by speaking the truth for all to hear.

I want Wife to read this book. I'd recommend it to others too, but in particular ....

Counseling 5

Not a terribly exciting session, but that can be a good thing.

We talked about this conversation, and Counselor expressed approval that we had come to at least one agreement -- viz., to keep living under the same roof somehow as long as the children are growing. He also agreed that this agreement should lower the level of overall stress, because we won't each of us be worried that the other is about to launch a pre-emptive strike.

We also talked about this argument, and about my request that Wife give me some verbal flag I can use, so that she knows that I am trying to convey data and not a criticism. She suggested "By the way, I don't mean to criticize but ..." Personally that sounds to me like it is guaranteed to be the opening of a stinging criticism, but I didn't argue. If those are the words she wants me to use, I'll use them. And we'll see how it goes.

More discussion about how we felt about all this, and how it related to our childhoods (sigh) but nothing terribly useful. The useful work was all done in our talk over the weekend, I think. This session with Counselor was more like follow up ....

A sabbath, at last

All in all, notwithstanding a couple of trivial arguments, it has been a good weekend.

Wife and I talked for a long while on Saturday, partly about whether there is anything in our marriage left to salvage (see, e.g., my discussions here and here) and partly about what it would take on our parts to salvage it if we decide Yes.

• On the one hand, Wife said that I have become a lot more distant and less affectionate in the last little while -- I no longer say "I love you," I no longer cuddle with her, and so on. She wasn't sure how long this has been true, but guessed that maybe it has been two weeks or a month. (Readers with a calendar can see that tomorrow it will have been exactly three weeks since Wife paid Boyfriend 5's electric bill.)
• On the other hand, Wife said that she still loves me. This is the same woman who chats with Boyfriend 5 about whether she should phone a divorce lawyer right now, to get the jump on me, but it could still be true. Anyone who tries to track Wife's true feelings by listening to the things she tells people will get whiplash right quick.

For my part, I proposed several things:

• I think the reason that is most likely to impel one of us to file for divorce in a hurry is fear that the other one will do so first. If we could agree not to threaten each other with maneuvering behind the other's back, I think the threat level would go way down.
• I explained that there could be several different kinds of marriage available to us: one where everything is all "fixed", a "minimalist" marriage in which we keep a healthy household for the children but otherwise go our own ways, and maybe others as well. And of course if none of those works, divorce is still an option.
• I said that I think "fixing" anything in our emotional interactions will be very, very difficult because we have to explain so much. So we may give up and opt for the "minimalist" marriage instead. I think Wife thought I was saying it was too much work for me; in fact I meant that in twenty-five years it has always been too much work for her to lay down her persecution complex and see the world as if I were not always attacking her.
• Finally, I urged that a basic starting point -- from my perspective -- had to be the assumption that both of us are willing to undergo significant trouble in order to fulfill our duties to the children. That doesn't mean always giving them what they (think they) want -- to raise children in a healthy way requires saying No far more than Yes. But it means giving them the basic security that they could never have if we split apart. Wife's first response was that of course it is not her desire to harm the children, and I told her that wasn't good enough by a long shot. I was asking about her will (not just her desire). What is more, I wanted to know not just that it is not her will to harm the children; but more importantly that it is her will not to harm the children ... and that she is prepared to carry out this will even at the cost of personal unfulfillment and personal unhappiness. Because without the assurance that we both believe this, we share no common ground as a starting point.

After chewing over that last point a lot, we both agreed to it. And that made me breathe easier. After all, it is obvious that fulfilling our duties to the children means not divorcing -- not unless conditions become somehow totally intolerable. If Wife agrees to that, then there is less chance that she will maneuver behind my back to file papers.

But can I believe what she said? I would like to. I told her that there were a couple of things, however, that would make me believe it was all talk on her part. She held her breath a bit at this point, because I think she expected me to say she had to give up Boyfriend 5. But what I said was that I couldn't tolerate her giving money or other tangible presents to Boyfriend 5 ... or to any other romantic friend. If she does that again, I will have to assume that she doesn't mean to make anything better and is just playing me for a chump; and in that case, I will figure I need to separate our assets as soon as humanly possible. But as for having boyfriends at all .... Well the truth is that I think it is bad for her psychologically and spiritually on a lot of levels. But I also think that doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is no good at all; and if she gave up Boyfriend 5 because I said so, it would be (in her eyes) just one more time that I am controlling her life. More likely, she wouldn't give him up at all, and the ensuing conflict would poison any attempt to fix things between us. So I said that -- if we want more than a "minimalist" marriage -- then one day we have to deal with the question of extra-marital affairs, but not now. Let's handle the more basic stuff first.

She agreed to send no money or gifts to Boyfriend 5 or any future romantic friend. This alone was worth the whole conversation. I even think she meant it. I fully anticipated that Boyfriend 5 would push back hard when she broke the news to him, but he does not seem to have done so; either he is more subtle than that, or he may be a sliver more honorable than I have given him credit for. Anyway, it was a good conversation.

And the rest of the weekend was a good weekend. That afternoon we cuddled for a couple hours; this morning we actually fucked for the first time in ... gosh, I've lost count. A long time. We puttered around the house, we helped the kids clean their room (more or less), ... we didn't "accomplish" a whole lot if you measure it in terms of visible work getting done. But we weren't snapping at each other, and we weren't always tense. We were relaxed and comfortable, and it was a pleasant change. In that respect, it was a true sabbath. And it was good.

Another boilerplate argument

We had an argument yesterday morning, Wife and I, which was too trivial to report except that it is significant as a type: it is another one of these arguments that recur, over and over, in almost exactly the same form each time.

Son 1 was supposed to have done something that Wife had told him to do a couple of times. I don't even remember what, but he hadn't lifted his butt out of his chair yet so I told him he had to get moving He sighed, "All right, but Mom never said I had to do it. She just suggested it."

I have no idea what Wife told him. I know that sometimes their communications don't seem to work too well. So I thought that Wife should know what he had said. Maybe she had said something totally unambiguous, in which case Son 1 was just being stubborn. But maybe she had said something that was genuinely capable of misconstruction. I didn't -- and still don't -- know which it is, and I had no desire to second-guess, or backseat drive. But I know that, had it been me, I would have welcomed feedback as additional information. So I took Wife aside for a moment:

Hosea: I told Son 1 to get it in gear and start doing what you said. By the way, just so you know, he says he thought you were just making a suggestion.

Wife: That's ridiculous. I specifically said to him 'Son, get up right now and go ...'

Hosea: Please don't tell me what you said to him. I don't need to know or want to know. So don't tell me.

Wife: Well, but I .... Oh, whatever.

I could tell that Wife had her nose out of joint after this discussion, so a while later I asked her about it. We discussed it for some minutes, and I realized that she understood my remarks -- short as they were -- to mean almost the exact opposite of what I had intended. This is truly remarkable. Let me repeat the exchange now, from each point of view separately. Text in italics represents words that were never spoken, but that each of us (in turn) understood as having been implicitly present, or assumed, or naturally entailed by the things that were said.


Here is what I was trying to say:

Hosea: I told Son 1 to get it in gear and start doing what you said. By the way, just so you know -- in other words, this is purely impersonal data that has nothing to do with whether you know how to parent him -- he says he thought you were just making a suggestion. As I say, this has nothing to do with your competence as a parent; but since nobody can ever be 100% perfect all the time, we all need feedback to see if the results we are getting match what we wanted to get. Then if not, we can do something about it. This is just that kind of feedback.

Wife: That's ridiculous. I specifically said to him 'Son, get up right now and go ...'

Hosea: Please don't tell me what you said to him. I don't need to know or want to know. After all, if I know what you said, then that sucks me into the discussion "Did you say the right thing?" "How would I have done it differently?" And that is going to make you think that I am second-guessing you as a parent. Once that conversation starts, anything I say (even if it is an idle suggestion meant to help) will sound like I am accusing you of not knowing your son. And that is not what I mean at all. On the other hand, if I don't even know what you said, it is logically impossible for me to judge whether it was right. If I don't know what you said, then it is possible that the words you spoke were 100% perfectly suited to the situation. And in that case the problem is that Son 1 is being stubborn ... which we both know he can be. In other words, if I don't know what you said, then there is no possible way you can feel like I am criticizing you, because I would have to be crazy and stupid to criticize you without knowing the facts. Since I know you already think I criticize you all the time -- though I can't imagine why, but never mind that -- we will get along better if I don't dump any more fuel on that fire. And the fire cannot possibly be fueled if I don't know what you said. So don't tell me.

Wife: Well, but I .... Oh, whatever.


But here is the exchange as Wife understood it:

Hosea: I told Son 1 to get it in gear and start doing what you said. By the way, just so you know, he says he thought you were just making a suggestion. In other words, once again you failed in the most basic parts of your job managing your son. I don't know what kind of lame-brain you are, but obviously you can't even give him a simple order without garbling it all up so it comes out sounding like some namby-pamby suggestion. Talk about useless!

Wife: That's ridiculous. I specifically said to him 'Son, get up right now and go ...'

Hosea: Please don't tell me what you said to him. I don't need to know or want to know, because it can't possibly matter. We both know you are a completely inept mother, and your pathetic attempts to defend yourself are just laughable. In fact, a defense is not only impossible, it is unneeded. I can settle in my own mind what went on without any input from you: I am quite capable of serving as prosecutor and jury and judge all at once, and a defense attorney would just muddy the waters. Basically I think so little of you that nothing you could ever say by way of explanation or excuse could ever redeem you in my eyes. So don't tell me.

Wife: Well, but I .... Oh, whatever.


If this is how Wife hears me, maybe this is part of why she insists that I am always criticizing her when by my lights I bend over backwards to avoid criticizing her. I don't know whether she understood any better after our discussion, but I found it enlightening. I just wish I knew what to do about it. The fact is -- and this much I have known for decades -- that if she didn't expect to hear criticism, she wouldn't hear nearly so much criticism. She replies (when I say this) that the reason she expects criticism is that I have criticized her so often in the past. And that runs the conversation in an endless loop, because I insist that I have done no such thing and that if she didn't expect ....

And so on. Pointless, ain't it?

A question for my readers ...

This is something I have been mulling for a while now.

I have said lots of times (most recently here) that Wife and I see things differently: when I try to be helpful, she sees me as bullying, or whatever. When Wife's good friend D was in town, D talked about how very hard it is for any of us to understand ourselves and our own motivations. And sometimes (such as here) I get a notion that my posts might sound pretty off-putting to somebody else.

Obviously none of you is here, in the house with us. None of you can see how Wife and I interact on a daily basis, to form your own opinions. All you have to go on is what I write -- and while I don't try to pretty up my part in any of this, obviously you are going to hear my side of things. But sometimes people can reveal a lot more than they think they are revealing in their writings. For all I know, you could be reading these pieces where I go on and on about how right I am about something, and you could be thinking, "What a schmuck! I can see exactly why his wife gets so sick of him."

So here is the question: Based on what I have written, can you see places where I am kidding myself? ... where I am lying to myself to make myself look good? ... where I am blind to how I must look to somebody outside my own head?

If yes, please tell me. I don't expect to like the news, but I need to hear it.

Of course I realize I have stacked the deck, because all you have to go on are my own posts. On the other hand, if there is something even there that screams to you "Hosea is an asshole," then whatever it is must be pretty dam' obvious to everybody but me. And in that case, as I say, I need to hear about it.

Thanks.