Am I an umbrella?

In the previous post, I sketched out how our conversations – mine with D, D’s with Wife, and Wife’s with Friend – began the process of unravelling the week of D’s visit. One thread may be worth a little more comment.

In her mail that I quoted in the earlier post, D wrote in part:

I also know Wife won't break the friendship with me, particularly if she thinks we are involved. How could she possibly keep her eye on our relationship if she refuses to talk to me? It won't happen. And believe me, she hasn't begun to emotionally process the idea that you might be attractive to someone who is smart, physically well, and financially self-sufficient. For years, Wife figured you were incapable of love; you were "mechanical, all nuts and bolts," she used to tell me. Now she thinks that you are "more in touch with your feelings," but only because you hate Boyfriend 5 so much. The idea that you could actually love someone-and more importantly, be loved in return is a very new idea for her. It will change her view of you, and yes, cause her to feel betrayed by both of us. That's our responsibility to bear as well, and far more important than whether I threw away her father's pen.

My answer to her was a little puzzled:

I know that Wife has talked for years and years about my being "incapable of love" but I have never understood what she meant by it. How did she picture to herself our first year together, before we were married -- did that not look like love? How did she understand my decision to leave graduate school for her -- as duty? or cowardice? or what? Most importantly, how has she understood my relation to the boys? Is it not obvious that I love them and they me? In the last decade, I have often given Wife a pass on many of her other vices or character defects, even as they have grown ever more prominent, because I have given her credit for loving the boys and being loved by them ... and I have figured that counts for a lot. Has she truly never seen the same thing on my side?

More importantly, though, I am trying to understand how or why she will feel betrayed by our loving each other. I have written an essay on the subject of love and betrayal -- specifically, on the question "Why should I feel betrayed if my spouse has sex with somebody else? i.e., what sense does that make?" -- but the provisional conclusions that I came to don't seem to fit this case. If my love were a roof or an umbrella under which she felt she could take shelter from the storms of the World, then I could understand it: when you run to the one safe place that is yours alone and you find somebody else already there, you are going to feel pretty upset. But that can't be what is going on with Wife, can it? Surely I am a PART of the World, FROM WHOM she wants to seek shelter! Not so? In which case, why should it make the slightest difference who loves me, or whom I love in turn? If she feels about me as she does, why should she care? She might possibly feel betrayed by you, since you would be a friend who has made league with the enemy ... but no more betrayed than she feel now, over fountain pens! :-)

Am I misunderstanding something important here?

And the answer appears to be yes, I was missing something. D’s elucidation came only an hour later:

Hosea, if you are loved for any reason outside of history shared, you are loved for the security you provide. You know this; you simply don't mention it here, for reasons unknown. Wife loves you because you stay with her when she is ill and weak, holding her hand, talking to the medical personnel, reassuring her that everything will work out. You are the umbrella in her life; you are the one person who has never left her or torn her down in front of others or insisted that she is worthless and mistaken to dream of a better life. I have not read your essay, so I don't know what you said, but I know she would feel completely abandoned if she really thought that you no longer loved her exclusively. Story... I remember when Son 1 was born and how intensely she loved him; he was the center of her world. I also remember how betrayed she felt when he transferred his affection to you. She will never forgive him, because Wife has never felt that anyone, outside yourself, has really loved her. Of course, she also scorns that love, and has gone out of her way to deny and betray that love because she does not feel as though she is a person worthy of love. Therefore, you are a fool...or geek...or incapable of love...or hopelessly incompetent in some way if you do love her. Do you not realize that one of the greatest gifts we *must* give our children is the sense that they are loveable? That not only are they loved, but that they can leave us, love another, and be deeply loved in return? Surely you know that. It's knowledge that Wife does not have, which is why she both rejects you-and can't imagine leaving. It's not about the children, my dearest darling. It's about you. For all the wrong reasons and a love that is stillborn on her part by definition. Sigh* There is no happiness to be had here...there is only wilderness.

This mail also included an account of D’s most recent telephone conversation with Wife, one part of which made me sit back in amazement:

Finally, we talked a long time about the fundamental difference between you and her involving material possessions. She raised the topic, and I let her talk. She realizes that you don't care about material goods and she married you for them, at least in part. (Your academic success v. her more limited options also play into her understanding of why she married you. It's weird, because as a single man, you could have gone anywhere. Yet you married and went to the graduate school you actually chose because she could also attend. It's ironic, therefore, that she blames your academic skills and options for her marriage) Wife is clearly searching for an identity she has never found, and yet believes might be found though objects. I'm guessing that your intense desire for home and hearth was understood by Wife to mean you wanted a place, an elegant, well furnished home, to call your castle. Quietly, I think she is wrong. You do want family, and the insider/outsider division may indeed be important, but it's not dependent on property or a lavish home. It's relational; it's good books, long talks, games, jokes, activities with the children. It's not dependent on material possessions. Twenty-five years later, she realizes that all the material things she has collected mean almost nothing to you. And they are all she has to prove that she is a cultured person who has risen above her ignoble, if not illegitimate birth. Powerful material, Hosea. She feels illegitimate, the base born child of fourth rate heritage. No wonder she wants to grab both of us, spin us around and unlease her fury and despair.

Wow. Powerful stuff indeed, and I had never put it together that way.

I ought to have some idea of where this is going from here, but I frankly confess to none. All I can do is describe the scenery as I travel.