Counseling 19, Or was that mis-underestimating ...?

Then again, maybe I didn't underestimate Wife after all.

At any rate, she didn't mention the phone bill once in our session with Counselor ... nor did she raise any questions about me and anybody else, nor did she mention D except once (in passing) as one of the few people she talks to each day.

She did mention her state of health and exhaustion. She did talk about how tough it is to get me to understand when she needs me to do things. We discussed this subject for a bit and seem to have hit on a method that should work, when she has actual activities that she needs from me. ("Please send a check to Dr. X to cover the copying of my medical records.")

And she added, reasonably enough, that this doesn't address emotional needs at all; and that she feels like she is my last priority, after job and kids and bills.

OK, what can we do about this? I am willing to listen to suggestions, but I don't feel a lot of incentive to offer creative solutions of my own.

Well, Hosea, the problem is that you are always at work or taking the boys to their evening activities, and I fall asleep before we can spend any time together.

What do you recommend? Should we cancel some of the boys' activities? (I should note that D has pointed out to me quite emphatically that the claim of "no time" is bullshit. She says that we make time for what is important to us. And it is certainly true that I can't find anywhere in my schedule that I have time to talk to her for 1200 minutes in a single month, or write her several e-mails a day. But somehow I do it.)

No, no, ... we can't do that. I don't know ....

At this point, Counselor interrupted with a suggestion that maybe we could have lunch some time.

No, that won't work. (Notice how Wife is so good at finding reasons that things won't work?) Every time in the past when I have called Hosea out of the blue and suggested lunch, he always has a meeting.

Ummm ... yes dear. But that's because I haven't planned for it ahead of time. If you spring it on me, I've probably already allocated my day so it won't fit. If I can plan for it ahead of time, then lunch is more of a possibility. (Candor compels me to add that this is only part of the explanation. The other part is that I really don't look forward to having lunch mid-day with Wife, because we no longer have anything to discuss except her medical conditions. And that is pretty depressing as a topic of conversation. Of course, this is a symptom of the vast emotional distance between us now, and spending more time apart just exacerbates that. So I know it is a self-feeding cycle. That doesn't make me look forward to such lunches, but never mind.)

The upshot is that we agreed that this weekend we would schedule lunch out some time next week. And then we would see how it goes. Totally unremarkable.

I don't know if Wife is just waiting for later, but I think she would have sounded different, in subtle ways. So it is possible that she really didn't read the cell phone bill that carefully, or didn't process what she was reading.

Or that she understood but doesn't care, I guess ....