I need a mission statement

D lent me a copy of Judth Wallerstein's What About the Kids? I have started reading it, and one topic she discusses is how much to tell children about why you are divorcing. Of course, she points out that different messages are suitable for different ages; but she urges being simple and truthful within certain basic limits. ("Mommy has been banging the Green Bay Packers" is probably out of line; "Mommy is in love with somebody else" is OK.)

So naturally I started trying to figure out what I will say, and I realize it is fairly nebulous. I mean, I can give an answer that takes twenty-five years to say; and in a pinch I could probably boil it down to twenty-five minutes. But any really simple reason is going to suffer from the drawback that one could honestly say, "That's problem [whichever one I pick] has been there unchanged for years. Why now?" And I don't really want to answer "Why now?" by saying, "Well, Mommy got a bit of an inheritance from her Aunt, which will start the ball rolling for her financially; and real estate is in the toilet so the house is worth bupkes and I might be able to hang onto it in a pinch instead of having to sell it." Somehow I would like to sound a little better than that.

So yesterday I realized what I need. I need a mission statement.

Ironically, Wife may have been helping me towards one this morning. We sat down and started talking, ... and we talked for a good three or four hours: nothing special by the standards of the old days (in particular, pre-children) but probably the equivalent of three or four months' worth of communication right now. The conversation meandered all over the place. But one of the threads in it started when Wife said she was still "working hard" at trying to "save our marriage" even though she feels like it is "hanging by a thread." The "working hard" seems to refer to some therapeutic work that she has started with Counselor in my absence. (He proposed some exercises in CBT.) But the "save our marriage" part interested me, and I asked her what that would look like. What does she think that a good marriage would look like?

Her first answer was predictable: she wants more respect from me. This is her single most common answer to that question. But I said that's a purely abstract answer, and it's not something that can be handed to anybody on a plate. What would it take to get there?

The first thing she articulated was common decision-making. I said we already have that; indeed, dividing our finances makes it more likely that we will consult each other on big decisions rather than doing something unilaterally; because without the other partner's buy-in, a unilateral partner risks having to pay for whatever-it-is all alone.

The conversation meandered for a while, but the second thing she articulated was sex and physical affection. Here I had to be a little blunt. She hs been very cruel over the years about not enjoying sex with me, and I explained that I have learned it's a no-go. She doesn't really want it, or at any rate not from me. In fact, I really wonder if maybe she can only enjoy sex with new people, and I said as much. In any event, I said that I assumed that the prospect of sex between us was a non-starter. (I avoided telling her how disappointing I, too, have found it; I certainly didn't explain that sex with D is way more enjoyable.) She started to say, "Well since physical fidelity is so important to you that means I can't supplement with anybody else, so I'll have to get used to complete celibacy." But I interrupted that physical fidelity was a big deal to me in the past. It's less of an issue now. The way I put this was to say that if she always needed new people, then it made no sense for me to insist on physical monogamy. What I did not say, though I thought it, was that at this point I really don't care what she does with her body any more. But I didn't think that would be productive. She added, "Of course I wouldn't insist on physical monogamy from you; would you want somebody else?" I rolled my eyes and said, "Just what I need in my life -- another woman and more complication!"

But I am losing the thread here. When I asked, "OK what do you want from our marriage besides shared decision-making and physical affection?" she reverted to asking for respect. But sweetheart, that is an abstract request. What does that look like for you? What do you want concretely? Also, remember that you aren't in a bubble here. You aren't a completely passive victim but rather a part of the dynamic, and the way I treat you has a lot to do with the ways you behave. What would it take from you to get what you want from me?

She didn't answer the first two questions, but she turned the third one back on me: give me a list of what you (Hosea) want from me (Wife) before you will respect me. And that I could answer: the first thing I want is for you to stop asking for lists.

See, what I have wanted all along is a wife, a partner, not somebody who runs errands. So it has never been so important to me which tasks Wife does or doesn't do. It has never been about the tasks. I have always been willing to be flexible about what she does or doesn't do. It has always been the how that matters to me: is she doing ... well, whatever it is ... because she feels like contributing, because it just now crossed her mind that this might be a good thing to do, because it would help out the family, because gosh -- we're all part of this together and why not? Or is she doing it resentfully, because it is a chore that has been assigned to her by someone that she feels she has to treat as a boss? Because if the second answer is the right one, I'd rather she didn't do anything. I would rather she sat in bed and didn't lift a finger than that she pitch in resentfully. Some months ago I wrote a post about housework, and some of the comments I got back were from people who thought I was complaining that Wife doesn't do enough work around the house. Well, in fact she does almost nothing, but that wasn't what I was trying to say and it just goes to show how ineptly I expressed myself. What I was trying to say is that I want her to want to contribute to the rest of the family, and I also think (by the way) that she would be happier if she did so. Busy people are often happier than idle people. But the key is that I wished she would want to help, because that would mean that she felt like she was a partner. That she felt like we are all in this together. That she was a wife in truth, meaning a peer, and not merely a drudge.

For this reason, as I say, I have never cared about the individual tasks all that much. When she has asked me, "What do you want me to do so that you will respect me more?" I have in the past listed this or that thing that needed to be done. But what I tried to explain today was that, as far as the love and respect were concerned, those were always just examples. It wasn't that I would respect her if she ... oh, I don't know, fixed dinner once in a while or ironed my shirts or whatever. I tried to say today that if she took one of those lists I created years ago (in answer to her questions even back then about respect) and did everything on it but in a mood if subservience or resentment, I wouldn't be satisfied because it would not have been what I really wanted. And conversely if she did none of the things on the list but somehow did something else (even something totally selfish) so that by the end of the day she was radiating happiness and enthusiasm and self-confidence and was willing to be a full partner claiming an equal status ... why in that case I would cheer and say, "Yes, that's it exactly! You've got it!"

In other words, I said, whenever I have said that what I want or need from you in order to respect you is this or that, it's like those paintings of people made up entirely of dots. You could erase any one of those dots and not miss it. You could erase half of them -- even all of them -- and replace them with different dots, and the picture would still be there. Because the individual dots aren't important. The picture is important. If you want to be part of this marriage, please live the spirit of the marriage; don't obsess about the damned tasks and chores. Yes, they need to be done. But they have absolutely no bearing on the health or sickness of the marriage itself. Please see the picture and don't obsess about the individual dots.

She said she didn't get it.

More to the point, she acknowledged that I have said things more or less similar to this before, and she didn't get it then, either. That in fact, over twenty-five years, she has never gotten it.

And this may be my mission statement: that I have finally figured out that Wife does not understand -- and has never understood and may indeed be incapable of understanding -- what I mean by marriage and partnership. And therefore that the marriage has always been in nomine solo, and it's time for us to cut the crap and get it over with.

Just a thought.