Distracted

If my boss had any idea how unproductive I have become, he'd fire my ass.

A year ago I could still think coherent thoughts in a linear fashion about how my job fits into the larger picture in my company. I could see where things needed to be expanded and improved. I could contemplate what my next career step might be. I could collaborate in useful and interesting ways with colleagues from other locations. I could contribute ideas worth listening to.

That was a year ago.

And today?

Today I can sneak in an hour-long phone call to my newly-retained attorney while she explains to me how to file for divorce. I can look up interesting books on the Internet, or research high schools that might be good for my boys once they are old enough for high school. Occasionally -- too rarely -- I can even post to my blog. And I can write to D, think about D, miss D, spend long hours fantasizing about fucking D's brains out over and over.

But my actual work? Like, ... the stuff they pay me for? The quality of my work sucks, and I am months behind on some of it. Fortunately nobody has really caught on yet; or when they do notice, they blame it on the bad economy: "Oh, poor Hosea. The company had to downsize and now look at how much work he has ... you can tell he must have a lot because he is so far behind." People shake their heads and cluck their tongues sympathetically. And they don't seem to realize that -- mentally -- I'm not even there.

If I were told tomorrow that I was being demoted to emptying the trash cans, my big worries would be about the salary and the loss of privacy. It would mean I'd have to put in eight hours of work every day for my paycheck, which would seriously cut into my time for web-browsing, letter-writing, and sexual fantasizing. Only later would I realize that I ought to have been worried about things like a career track.

Just pathetic.

I sure hope none of you is actually my boss in disguise ....

Public and private, open and closed

Just a day or two ago, I was chatting with a friend who also has a blog -- ironically enough an infidelity blog -- and who had just gone private for reasons of security. (No, this is not D. As far as I know, D doesn't blog.) Anyway, she talked about all the reasons that going private was better -- reasons with which, under the circumstances, it was hard to argue. But I objected that if we were all private all the time, we could never meet other people out there with similar interests or stories. Somehow there is an inherent risk in making any kind of connection with each other, but life without those connections gets lonely fast.

I was reminded of that conversation today, when I was talking to D. I asked her about one or another of the social networking tools out there -- I forget if it was Facebook or LinkedIn or what -- and asked her if she ever used it. She was horrified, and I realized right away that it was a stupid question. D is in many ways an intensely private woman -- the thought of putting facts about herself (even the most innocuous facts) out where the world can read them is something she finds almost impossible to imagine. When I told her (almost a year ago now) that I blog, it took her a very long time to wrap her mind around the fact.

What seems so odd to me is that there can never have been a woman alive more devoted to what she calls "community-building": making friends, keeping in touch with friends, connecting with people regularly throughout the day or the week. And I have to wonder if there is something a little strange in this picture: ceaselessly keeping in touch with friends around the world, tirelessly keeping the lines of communication open ... and yet building and guarding high walls so that the wrong things can't be seen by the wrong eyes.

Is that strange? Is it paradoxical? Or is it like the "paradox" of a free society, that it actually takes a strong government to ensure enough safety that people can afford to live freely? Is it no more than the old adage that "Good fences make good neighbors"?

I don't know the answer, and I'd be interested in hearing other people's thoughts. But I do know that without some openness -- some publicity, some risk -- we would all sit huddled behind our own walls and never meet each other at all. And that would be really lonely.

Sex therapist says to snoop online

OK, this is a bit of fluff but it caught my eye. When I log out of Hotmail -- yes, that's the account you see on the sidebar of this blog -- I get dumped on the msn.com home page. This morning that page advertised an article by some popular sex therapist named Ian Kerner called "Why you should snoop on your spouse online." I don't know if Kerner is well-known, or if I should have heard of him before. (It will come as no surprise that in some ways I really need to get out more.) But it piqued my interest to see this published ... all the more so because I know several people in the infidelity blogosphere who have been through exactly this experience in the past year ... or who at any rate have been on the receiving end of some assiduous spousal snooping. And here we have a cultural avatar urging other spouses to do the same.

Of course, maybe I should be glad to see this -- after all, I was snooping on Wife long before I was doing anything snoop-worthy myself. I was never proud of it (and Kerner actually says that snoopers cannot claim the moral high ground); all I can say in my own defense is that whenever I got suspicious, there was always something behind it. He gives seven questions you should ask before you start checking e-mail accounts, and -- again, by the time I got suspicious that anything was up -- I could always answer every single one of them Yes. For what that's worth. Probably not much.

Anyway, the voice of the popular culture now appears to be in favor of snooping on your spouse online. Be warned.

Counseling 33

I got an e-mail from Counselor the other day, asking if I could come by and talk to him privately. So I did. Since I haven't been there for the last couple of months, he wanted to check my perspective on a few things.

What follows is written as a conversation, but the real conversation didn't go like this. What I am trying to do it to capture some of the themes we discussed, and this seems like the easiest way to do it.

Hosea: So, what's up? You asked me to come in ...?

Counselor: Yes. Where should I start? You know I have been beginning to try to get Wife to start the first steps of beginning the CBT work that I proposed to her. But she keeps telling me that she is so wrapped up in the conflict with you that she can't focus on it. What's your perspective?

Hosea: What conflict? The house is quieter than it has ever been. Of course that's because we never speak to each other except strictly functionally. But then, we really have nothing to say to each other. Also, what does the CBT have to do with me? I agree it is a great thing for her to do, but surely it is in order to benefit herself, isn;t it? I would assume that any benefit to our relationship is purely incidental.

Counselor: What is it you actually want from the relationship at this point? Wife talks like she really wants to turn the clock back, and recover some of what you had before.

Hosea: Frankly I don't think it is possible to turn the clock back. What is more, it wouldn't be the same -- if you could magically send us back 10 years, I think I would respond to things that I saw then the way I respond today; in other words, I would know that this behavior is going to end up leading to that so I would be less likely to engage with it (trying to make things better) and more likely to walk away in disgust. And really, part of the fundamental problem is that neither of us has ever understood what the other wants from a marriage, which means that turning the clock back wouldn't help. Or at any rate, Wife has never understood what I mean by "marriage"; I have to assume it is the same in reverse, just because these things usually are.

Counselor: She also says she feels very cut off from you, and very alone.

Hosea: She is very alone. She has basically no interaction with me -- which means she is right about feeling cut off from me, because I have basically disengaged all those parts of my emotional system that used to be plugged into her. The boys are both of an age where they are outward-looking and not inward-looking; plus, they now both attend a school that is five minutes' walk from my office, which means that they leave with me in the morning and return with me in the evening. On the weekends they have their own interests and don't spend much time with her. (Well, Son 2 will take his book and sit down on the bed next to her if she is spending the day in bed.) She has no friends or family. More exactly, she is on speaking terms with exactly one sister who lives far away, but with no other members of her (very large) family. And she has no friends in town (although we have lived here for almost twenty years) because her social skills have degenerated from marginal (where they were when I married her) to downright counterproductive. The only social life she does have is to spend hours on the phone with Friend and his cohorts, and I think this does her no good at all. In the first place, I think these people are fictional, and even Wife has started to have doubts; in the second place, I think they tell her exactly what they want to hear, which does nothing to break through the isolation and insularity that are such problems for her; and in the third place, they seem to be drawing her into a very dark place mentally or spiritually, from which it will become harder and harder for her to escape into reality.

Counselor: So what are you seeing her do?

Hosea: Most of the time, when I am home at least, she spends sitting in bed staring at the walls. Sometimes she sleeps. Often she just sits there. I don't know if it is the lupus, or the depression, or her headaches, or if she is just avoiding me, or what ... but she will sit there for hours upon hours, and often all day long. It's like she is just a dry husk of a woman, like somehow the outer shell is still there but the woman herself is missing. I often feel, in fact, like the woman you met when we first started coming to see you years ago has gone.

Counselor: Do the boys see it the same way?

Hosea: I have never discussed it with them. If Wife is sitting in bed staring, Son 2 will pick up a book and go sit next to her while he reads his book ... so he still tries to connect with her that way. But not Son 1. If Wife calls to Son 1 to do something for her, he doesn't even blink. He just doesn't hear her at all.

Counselor: He has tuned her out completely?

Hosea: Yes.

Counselor: One thing Wife has told me is that she feels very controlled, very afraid, over the issue of money. How is that being handled?

Hosea: Gosh, I thought the agreement we had to separate our finances would make things easier, not harder. As it is, I pay for any expenses that are just mine; she pays for anything that is just hers; and we split common expenses 80/20. From my perspective this has been great, because I no longer have to peer over her shoulder every time she goes shopping. She can buy whatever she wants, so long as she can pay for it. As for common expenses, either of us has the right to challenge something that the other one bought as a "common expense." She has never challenged me, because when I buy anything questionable I just pay for it all by myself and don't even submit it to her to share. She has submitted everything she has bought to me, and so there have been a few things I have challenged. But in general I think it has made life a lot calmer and quieter.

Counselor: Of course you realize that what you have just described is more like living as roommates than it is like a marriage.

Hosea: I realize that. Let me ask you, though: what does it say about a marriage when the shift to living like roommates creates so much more peace and harmony in the house?

Counselor: From what Wife tells me, I think she really misses you.

Hosea: What, because I don't yell any more? I guess even that is a kind of togetherness, even if it is a bad kind.

Counselor: Maybe. But seriously, I think she misses the connection. It's almost as if she feels really bereft without you.

Hosea: She hides it well.

Counselor: I guess ultimately the question is, What do you really want? Where do you want to go from here?

Hosea: [I had to think a minute. I wasn't about to tell him that I am already working with an attorney, because I see no reason to give any kind of advance notice for that sort of thing until I am closer to being ready. So instead I said, ...] I don't know. I do know that I have tried to imagine what the future looks like, based on the status quo right now, and I can't for the life of me picture it. I just can't create any kind of scene or image in my mind of a future.

Counselor: Does that mean it's all over? Because that would be one alternative ....

Hosea: [I thought to myself, Yes you've got that right. But all I said was, ...] I don't know.

A grumbler or a grumble

This morning I took Son 2 to an athletics class he has attended for years. He was sour and grumbling about it before we left, but often that's just a sign of waking up slowly on the weekends. Only he persisted in being sour and grumbling about it afterwards, which is not so common.

As I write this, I realize that maybe there is just something else wrong right now, something outside the class. Maybe, as D has suggested, Son 2 has picked up on the very shut-down dynamic between Wife and me, and is responding emotionally to what must be a very threatening situation.

But what worries me is that Son 2 may be learning Wife's habit of complaining about everything.

There are plenty of times he is still chipper and happy. He's bright and has a delightful and zany sense of humor. And there are times that he reminds me so forcibly of myself at that age that the resemblance is uncanny. His voice even sounds like mine did; and the long, drawn-out bizarre ideas are familiar too.

But when he starts his long tired whinings he sounds just exactly like Wife.

Less viscerally, it is just that I think I see the possibilities for depression (not surprising since both of his parents suffer from it), and I think he sometimes assists the growth of a depressive outlook by focussing on what he hates about a situation instead of what he likes about it. And this focus is in some ways a choice. Yes, of course depression has a biological and chemical aspect as well. There is no doubt about that. But it is also true that you can choose to talk yourself into a depressive state when you weren't feeling bad before, just by what you choose to focus on. I've done it myself, and I've watched Wife do it, so I know it is a risk. And I bring it up now, not by way of criticizing Son 2, but because I wish I knew some way to teach him how to find the nuggets of joy in even very bleak situations; or more practically (since "bleak" may be a little extreme to describe our lives most of the time), how to find a way to get through even situations that he doesn't much care for, and how to see the things in them that can be pleasant.

This is a survival skill. I honestly believe that one of the reasons Wife has decayed into the merest shell of a woman these days is that she has chosen so resolutely to focus on what makes her miserable. She may not have been able to help being born with a depressive genetic pattern, but she has also done nothing to struggle against it -- nothing to prepare her to see unexpected grace when it flits by, nor even to strengthen a kind of stoical doggedness. The story that she tells herself about her life is a story of passive victimization by one bad thing after another, to the point that she can't see anything else. It is a hell of a way to live. And I don't want it for Son 2.

The whole direction where this kind of life leads is captured nicely in a scene from C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, and I think one does not need any kind of religious faith whatever to play along with the story and see where it goes. The spirit of a grumpy old woman -- for the time being assigned to Hell -- is visiting Heaven on a vacation (it's a story) and can't leave off griping. The narrator (himself only a visitor) and one of the denizens of Heaven are discussing her:

"I am troubled, Sir, because that unhappy creature doesn't seem to me to be the sort of soul that ought to be even in danger of damnation. She isn't wicked: she's only a silly, garrulous old woman who has got into a habit of grumbling ...."

"That is what she once was. That is maybe what she still is. If so, she will certainly be cured. But the whole question is whether she is now a grumbler."

"I should have thought there was no doubt about that!"

"Aye, but ye misunderstand me. The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble. If there is a real woman - even the least trace of one - still there inside the grumbling, it can be brought to life again. If there's one wee spark under all those ashes, we'll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear. But if there's nothing but ashes we'll not go on blowing them in our own eyes forever. They must be swept up."

"But how can there be a grumble without a grumbler?"

"The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing. But ye'll have had experiences ... it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticising it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, may embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticise the mood, not even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine...."

As I say, it's a hell of a way to live.

Parental love as manipulation

The other day, D sent me a link to this article about parenting in the Times on-line. She commented that it was pretty much obvious, common-sense stuff, and that she couldn't imagine anybody thinking anything different. But somehow that sounded to me like an oversimplification.

In one respect the article poses a big challenge: explaining each situation and imagining it from the child's point of view work well enough much of the time with some children, but there are other children for whom they work less well and even the most cooperative children have occasional bouts of misplaced stubbornness. What is a parent then to do? Well, there are still a variety of options open, but I expect that the "experts" who recommend the withdrawal of affection do so in order thereby to avoid having to recommend a swat on the tuchus. And for what it is worth, I expect that when Albert Bandura said (as the article quotes him) that unconditional love would make a child unlovable, what he must have meant is "unconditional pampering" -- which is quite a different thing.

Of course the real answer is that it all depends: on the child, on the age, on the circumstances, on how often this or that technique is used, etc. A rare and well-timed swat delivered during the early years only will have a different psychological effect from interminable physical abuse up to the age the child leaves home; likewise, I assume that Mom stalking off once or twice in a huff will have a different effect from long-term emotional manipulation. (My own parents used both of these techniques at one time or another, but I never once doubted that they loved me and my brother unconditionally.) One thing I have had to remind myself over and over again is that child-rearing may be the hardest job in the world, but it is very rarely a "one-strike-and-you're-out" endeavor. There is often (maybe not always) room to pick yourself up and try to be better next time.

I also spent some time thinking about Wife's mother, and how she raised Wife and her sisters. The thing is that Wife's mother certainly used affection as a tool; but she was also highly inconsistent in giving rewards. She once told ... somebody, I forget who related this story ... that it was almost physically impossible for her to say anything nice about anybody while that person could hear her; but she could praise to the skies somebody who was safely out of the room, ending her encomia with "Why can't you be more like that?" This meant, for example, that each sister thought that she alone was uniquely despised and the other two were the spoiled apples of their mother's eye. On the other hand, Wife's mother would also confide little secrets to each daughter and make her swear not to tell the others. The message seemed to be, "You are a singular disappointment to me and I wish you had been more like your sisters; but in spite of all that we share a special bond that means I can trust you with this secret when I can't trust the others." I have to add that when those secrets (some of them) finally saw the light of day, they contradicted each other: she told this daughter one thing and the other the exact opposite with no apparent qualms. But by then the damage had long since been done. It made for some difficult family dynamics.

Now it has also been documented that inconsistent reward is often more motivating than consistent reward: the child (or rewardee) will work double and triple hard to force a reward. So I wonder if this could account for Wife's strong beliefs about, e.g., housework (that it is a moral imperative, that it has to be done exactly like this) ... combined with a bitterness (because of the inconsistency, and because of the withdrawal of affection) that whispers to her "You may know this has to be done, but you'll be damned if you're going to do it." And I wonder, come to that, if it could account for much of the resentment and distrust that Wife seems to feel in any long-term close relationship.

Maybe not. Maybe I am just making this a one-size-fits-all theory.

I sent some of these musings to D. She had a number of comments on the general issue of parenting -- unlike me, she does not think it is the hardest job in the world -- but then she went on as follows: "I don't know quite how to react to Wife's stories about her mother. You just have to break free from people who are irredeemably evil, and it always seemed to me that Wife almost enjoyed the uncertainty and constant criticism she received from her mother. Perhaps if she had sought out loving parents, people like your mother, to learn from and emulate, she might be very different today. A powerful teacher and model can truly shape a life, even one as broken and damaged as Wife's. She was given so many chances... a good mind, a great college education, a loving and true husband, beautiful and gifted children, and financial resources beyond anything she dreamed of as a child. It has all been seed on rocky soil, or thrown into weeds. No genuine compassion or sacrifice or love for God or others has developed to improve the world and bring joy to herself. It seems unbelievably sad, and a genuine tragedy."

A genuine tragedy, indeed.

I think I've been hacked

I went to sign into my blog this evening and couldn't. My password didn't work.

Ulp?

I started to go through the "reset password" steps, and so I had to log into my e-mail. As I was doing that, I paused to realize that the last couple of days I have gotten an odd message from Hotmail in the middle of reading my mail, asking me to refresh my screen because I was logged in on two different computers at the same time. I knew this was impossible and therefore just refreshed my screen and forgot about it. But now I remembered.

A few minutes after that, I remembered that a couple of days ago I saw a remark on Wife's blog, to the effect that se had just recently learned ... "never mind how" ... that I have been in constant touch with D for months. Here I had assumed that she had gotten one of the boys to peek over my shoulder while I was writing an e-mail to D, and then had surmised that if I was writing once I must be writing a lot.

But it is also possible that she hacked me.

I really don't think she has the computer skills to do a sophisticated job of it. Far more likely is that she found some scrap of paper from back in 2007 when I first started the blog ... a scrap of paper that I thought I had destroyed, with my userid and password. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Maybe that's not the right explanation, but better safe than sorry. Her remarks in her blog did not sound like she understood that D and I are lovers ... but at the moment I am not sure of anything. As I say, better safe than sorry.

I have changed passwords (obviously!) on both the e-mail and the blog. And the blog is now private. Maybe later I can go public again, ... but not right away, I think.

Can adulterers ever trust each other?

So, a group of us were sitting around the other day, eating pizza and talking about stuff, and a question came up, "What happens when two people have an affair and fall in love with each other, even though each one is already married to somebody else? Can they ever be secure with each other? After all, each one knows that the other has been unfaithful in the past; each one knows that the other has lied to a spouse in order to spend time with a lover. Now that they have found each other and are swooning with passion over each other, can they trust in each other's fidelity? And, if not, does that blight their romance forever?"

It's an excellent question.

For my part, I answered with a cautious and qualified Yes. "Cautious and qualified" because of course it's not as easy as innocent trust. Once you've had the experience to know better, you know there is always room for a question. But I don't think that means you have to give up on trust. It may mean a subtle shift in the definition of the word "trust" however.

What I said to my friends at the time wasn't very well fleshed out, but I was thinking more or less as follows.

Once you have had an affair, you know from the inside that the whole question of sexual fidelity isn't as easy or as clear-cut as people like to make it. It just isn't. And you also know, deep down, that it's not just because your spouse is a rotten human being and you have finally, by miraculous chance, found somebody better. That might or might not be true -- I mean, your spouse might in fact be rotten, or on the other hand might have many fine qualities. But either way, infidelity is somehow about more than that.

But if infidelity isn't always about escaping from somebody rotten, then what are you supposed to think about your partner, or your partner about you? I mean, as long as you can pretend that it is all about getting away from an ogre at home, your partner can relax. Sweetheart, I know I'll never have to worry about you going behind my back, because as long as I'm not an ogre like your spouse you'll have no desire to. Right? But of course that's too easy. So what then?

Naturally when the endorphins first hit, I risk getting swept away by True Love again, wanting to bond with my new partner, wanting to make everything perfect. That's as it should be. And because sex is like that -- don't ask me why but it just is -- that first rush of True Love makes me want there to be nobody else in the world for her (or him, as the case may be). I want to be the center of her world. And so it is easy to find myself feeling that "making everything perfect" has to include my partner not fucking anyone else besides me. (Never mind that this might not make a lot of sense if I and my partner are both still married to other people. Emotions don't have to be logical.)

But at the same time I also know from introspection -- better than a strictly faithful spouse might -- that it is really, really tough to get an A+ on this kind of exam. If it were easy, I wouldn't be having an affair in the first place, right? And it doesn't take long for me to figure out that if I find it tough to get an A+ on this exam, then she might find it just as tough.

The answer, I think, is that while I may expect and crave both love and honesty from my new partner, and she from me, we also have to cut each other a little slack. To demand perfect fidelity from our new loves now runs the risk of being unrealistic. And likewise if they demand it from us. This does not mean that we give up wanting it. Nor that we give up striving for it. But we have to be tolerant of failure to meet it. That means being willing to separate the statement "You fucked someone else" from "You don't love me."

Worse yet, I'm not just talking about our histories in the past. I'm not just talking about the sex we had with that partner back before we knew that it was True Love At Last with this one. Because despite all our best intentions (today's best intentions), something might happen tomorrow. We all know it can. I'm not saying we should give up and not even try. I'm not saying that libertinism is the only answer -- not at all. Not libertinism, but patience and tolerance.

Oh, ... I talked about redefining the word "trust". I think the important part there is to be able to trust that your partner still loves you unabated. If you have that trust, then the details may be a little less important.
____________________

So far pure theory. In fact, I've had a couple of these discussions with D. Now, D does not treat sex casually, any more than she treats air and water casually. Back when she was still talking to Wife on a daily basis, Wife would sometimes complain about our (lack of) sex life and wonder if I were seeing somebody on the side. And D and I would chuckle over Wife saying casually, "Of course I wouldn't mind if he did" ... partly because we both know that self-knowledge has never been Wife's strong suit, and partly because D's comment on that was always, "Darling, I will never be that generous. I want you all to myself." This meant, among other things, that D was very, very upset about the few times that Wife and I did actually fuck (see, e.g., here). I finally had to say very plainly that I wouldn't rule out sex with Wife so long as we were married, but it didn't mean at all that I don't love D. [That was then, this is now: I can no longer imagine sex with Wife under any circumstances whatever.]

D for her part has done everything possible to persuade me that I am now her one and only. What is interesting is that I haven't asked. OK, I realize she's not fucking her husband ... if they still had a satisfying sex life, she would never have fallen for me in the first place. (Or not the same way.) But she has made a point of reassuring me that, even though she and I see each other so rarely, she's not seeing anybody else either ... even though she could. And I guess my opinion here, in line with some of my theoretical musings above, is that it's nice to know but I am not very worried. I know that she loves me -- that much is palpable. If she were fucking somebody else too, it certainly hasn't diminished the passion in our relationship one whit. And so I refuse to worry about things over which I have no control and that don't affect me.

Don't get the idea, by the way, that I must be fretting or I wouldn't post about the subject. Mostly I was thinking about this discussion I mentioned above. But I realized that it is a real-life question, too, because it is one that has come up ... so I figured I'd add in my discussions with D purely as an example.

It really was a good question.

The evils of rye bread, or, What the hell am I waiting for?

This will be short and to the point.

I have said that Wife and I hardly fight any more -- because we more or less ignore each other -- and that's true. But also the fights we do have are a lot shorter than they used to be. And I find that my own style has changed -- depending on your point of view, I am either more belligerent or just less tolerant of bullshit.

Tonight, for example, I was caught short of time for making dinner so I heated up a Moroccan stew from last week, boiled rice to go with it, and presto – ready to eat. Well the boys complained. "Not zucchini again!" I reminded them that they had more or less liked it last week and in any event that was what I'd fixed. Wife made some kind of sideways comment -- I don't even remember what it was -- and then inserted a whole series of complaints about the fact that I have been buying rye bread in addition to whole wheat lately, to get a little variety. (Wife hates rye bread.)

Update on Tuesday, September 8: I now remember what she said that set off the conversation below. She commented on the ingredients she saw in the refrigerator that I had bought for a dinner later in the week, and told the boys that would be "even worse than the zucchini" ... thus setting the meal up for failure before it ever happened. Back to the original post now.

When dinner was over I motioned her into the bedroom, closed the door, and then said: "Listen. You undercut me in the area of food at every turn. If I make the same things I always make, you complain about dinner being boring. If I make something different for a change you complain about that. But you need to set a good example for the boys -- as it is, they figure that if you get to whine about the food then it's OK for them to whine about it too. And it's not. So you are not going to complain about the food any more. That's over. As long as I am doing the grocery shopping and I am cooking the meals, you are going to be pleasant about whatever I fix. Or if you don't want to do that, then you are free to find room in your monthly budget to buy your own food and fix it yourself. I'll still feed the boys, but we'll give you a special shelf of your own in the fridge and you can have what you like. We won't eat your food and you won't eat ours. Those are your choices."

She responded by ringing various changes on "Why do you get to decide what we eat?"

Because I do the shopping and the cooking -- if you ever bothered to do either one, then you could buy and fix what you like.

"Everybody else in the house hates rye bread so why do we have to eat that and nothing else?"

I buy several different types of bread; and in fact Son 1 is merely indifferent to rye and Son 2 likes it as well as I do.

"No he doesn't -- Son 2 likes dark rye with cheese; other than that he hates rye. He's told me so."

Sure he's told you so ... because he figured out years ago that it's his job to look after you emotionally, so he just doesn't share his more general opinion with you. He tells you what he thinks you want to hear.

"Maybe he's just telling you what you want to hear!"

Well no, because I can watch his face and see him truly enjoy a lot of different foods. It's not about his words. Have you ever even seen Son 2's face?

Then she said something -- I forget what -- that led me to suggest to her there was another option besides buying her own food. She could find the money for an apartment.

"Why should I move instead of you?"

You'll pay the mortgage with what, exactly?

"If you divorce me you'll owe spousal support. And don't think you'll automatically get the boys, no matter what D has been telling you!"

D? What does she have to do with this?

"Oh, don't think I didn't see the two of you sitting close together staying up late when she was here ... talking together about me. I'm sure she told you that you'd automatically get the boys, but you'd better not believe it."

Actually I don't think anything is automatic once you step into a courtroom. Why? Do you think it's automatic the other direction?

"Well ...."

Because I assume that once you step into court all bets are off. I take nothing for granted there. You might want to think about that before you get too cocky.

Pulling the discussion back to food, I reminded her again that she could always do the shopping if she wanted to.

"Yes, and then you'll go over the receipt line by line to decide if you want to pay your share or not."

That's true, because I don't want to pay for the next time you buy five pounds of broccoli that we will never eat before it rots. But you have the same privilege when I shop.

"So I could refuse to pay for the rye bread if I want?"

You could. I don't know what I would do next, if you did. And so I might suggest that you think for a while if that's something you really want to do, before doing it. Anyway, that's all I had to say.

And I stood up from the bed and walked out.

I have admitted to you all that the Judith Wallerstein book spooked me, and that I became very quiet and thoughtful when I read that if you can choose and your kids are in pre-adolescence (as ours both are) then maybe you want to think about staying together "for the sake of the kids" just another few years. But then we have a night like this and I just can't believe that I would ever have any doubts about moving forward. I am certain that when Wallerstein talks about staying together during these years to preserve a stable atmosphere, this atmosphere is not what she has in mind.

I probably am becoming more belligerent. I know I am becoming more intolerant.

What a mess. I hope your day is better than that.

Am I an exit strategy?

Last night, Kyra demonstrated once again why I am so fond of her and value her so highly as a commenter, by responding at length to my post "Discovery" from last week. (It sounds like I am being sarcastic, but I really mean it. I love to get comments that make me think, regardless whether I agree with them.) In her response, she made three related points:

1. It is totally incredible when D claims that her husband's discovery of our affair was "out of her control," and in fact it would never have happened without reckless behavior on D's part.


2. D appears to be moving me into position to be the next "Mr. D," by manipulating both my own plans and my external circumstances.


3. D is really, really pretentious.

Of these points, I think the first and the third are fairly easily dealt with. The middle one is more serious and requires more thought.
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Whether the discovery was really outside of D's control is to some extent a matter of perspective. Certainly her failure to do basic things like password-protect the Word-files in which she composed some of her letters to me would count as recklessness if you or I did it. But I actually believe D when she tells me she has no idea how to do such a thing, and didn't know it was possible. A more serious question is why she didn't simply delete the files from her computer after she had succeeded in copying them into her e-mail, but I think she simply doesn't think carefully about data security. I mean, she knows enough to delete all text messages from her phone; but the rest of it is an area that she has long simply put out of her head. Her husband has always handled all of the family's IT needs, and D more or less assumes he can do anything if he sets his mind to it. So I think she is at any rate speaking sincerely when she says that so far as she knows,

To this it is fair to reply, "How nice that she's sincere. I'm sure that's going to be a great big whopping consolation to you when her husband suddenly morphs into a psycho stalker of the kind we see from time to time in the infidelity blog world." Or, more generally, "It is possible that she is sincere as far as that goes, but it is also immaterial because her technological cluelessness (if not carelessness) nonetheless puts you at risk." At a theoretical level, this is certainly fair. We have all known people for whom discovery worked out really, really badly. But in this case I think there are a couple of extra details that make the overall picture less threatening.

In the first place, Mr. D really is the salt of the earth. Unless he has changed dramatically since I last knew him, he is one of the last people I would imagine becoming a psycho stalker. Yes, anybody is capable of anything if sufficiently provoked. But I think D is not far off the mark in estimating that her husband's reaction, whatever it is, will not be violent or destructive.

In the second place, how much can he really do? He can divorce D, but she wants a divorce anyway. He can tell their children and friends, but that has more consequences for D than it does for me. (And what she really fears, I think, besides looking into his eyes and seeing the hurt look back at her, is having him tell their kids.) But he won't hunt me down to try to kill me -- not only because he's not that kind of guy, not only because his health isn't good enough, but because we live so far away from them. He is unlikely to try any dirty tricks at a cyber-level. But he could tell Wife. I think that is really about the only weapon he has that he could deploy against me, and how bad would it be? It's not like Wife will have any room for self-righteous indignation. Indeed, she has already told me several times that "of course" it is "fine with her" if I want to go out and find somebody else to fuck, seeing that we're not fucking each other. I think she would feel a little different about the reality -- and I think she would feel a lot different knowing that it was D, of all people! -- but I don't think it would make a big difference in our day-to-day lives. We already move through the day interacting as little as we can possibly get away with, as if we were both in little plastic bubbles that kept us incommunicadi. Would she move to divorce me? Maybe, although by that time I might have beat her to the punch. Would she tell all our friends about what a shit I am? Hell, she does that now, even if she has to make up the list of horrible things I have done. What's the difference? About the only credible threat Wife could make that would really upset me would be to tell our boys. And there, honestly, I think I can fairly safely blackmail her (if you want to use harsh names for it) by reminding her that there are a whole lot more really discreditable things I could tell them about her than she could ever tell them about me. So maybe we can both just back away from that ledge.
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As for being pretentious, I guess I'd agree in a qualified way but add that it doesn't bother me all that much. For one thing, I get that a lot too. (smile) Also, I am willing to call her on it. Usually it gets particularly thick when there is some emotional issue that is bugging her, but that she is afraid to bring up in so many words. But my reaction when she starts hiding behind too many abstractions is just to look at her blankly and say, "I have no idea what you are talking about. I thought we were talking about us; how did Plato and Anselm get into the discussion?" It makes her nervous when I say this -- she introduced Plato and Anselm, after all, because the original topic (whatever it was) made her nervous -- but she'll take a deep breath, speak very slowly, and try to spell out what is wrong. So I have a method for handling it, and that's good enough for me.
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But the question whether D is deliberately manipulating me into becoming the next Mr. D is a more serious one, and it deserves to be taken a little more slowly. In the first place, it is completely true that I have changed more in the last twelve months than Wife has, and that these changes have a lot to do with my affair with D. It has even occurred to me that my decisions right now may be suspect, because at some level I may be thinking with my dick. (I discuss this possibility at considerable length here.) The reality is probably a little more complex -- or at any rate, that's the conclusion I came to a month ago -- but that there is a correlation of some kind is undeniable. And honestly, this realization has made me slower and more circumspect about proceeding with the divorce. I find that I am always stopping, reconsidering, dithering, delaying. What about the impact on the boys? For that matter, which impact is the most important: the impact of divorce on young adolescents, or the impact of staying together when we have no respect for each other and virtually no communication? I don't know the answers to any of these questions and I worry about them. And yes, the possibility that my judgement may have been warped by seven dates' worth of ecstatic orgasms with D has certainly crossed my mind.

It is also true that D has expressed considerable insecurity about her place with me, over the months: I've talked about it here and here, for example. And the more insecure she gets, the more demanding she can get about questions like when we are going to see each other again (such as here and here). Alternatively, when she is in a good mood and feeling expansive, she'll make remarks about the future as if we were going to be together for a good long part of it. But if I make any noises which call this picture into question, she gets flustered and insecure. Once several months ago she was exploring some new career opportunities, but all of them happened to be in the same part of the country where she is now; none of them were anywhere near me. She apologized for this, and asked haltingly if I could forgive her for looking into them, because they really were good career opportunities, and her interest in them didn't mean that she didn't love me. I almost chuckled, and said by all means she should look into them; after all, I hardly thought that our relationship was at a point where geographical proximity to me should be her single most important criterion in choosing a job. At this she got very quiet, which I always know is a danger sign. Only instead of backpedalling and apologizing, I made a point of explaining -- as kindly as I knew how -- that if [this was before I had graduated to when] I ever left Wife, I was not thinking as far ahead as remarriage and in fact I could not see that far ahead. So she would have to act on the assumption that I would not remarry. If that changed later, then it did ... but don't make plans on it. It took her a day or so to assimilate this, but in the end she did.

It is true, in the third place, that D can get very emotional when she starts feeling insecure. This means that she can get very intense on the subject of our long-term future together, because she has so much invested in me that the thought of losing me is very upsetting to her. And you all know how attracted I am to intense, type-A women. (See here, for example.) Something kicks in when D gets like that, some urge to look after her. And yes, it does attract me. I am now more aware of it than I used to be, in large part because of advice and suggestions that I have gotten from readers. So I am a little more cautious than before. But yes, this is a factor.

It is also true, finally, that I know D is capable of being very devious and deceptive. She says she is not proud of it, but there it is. It is certainly something she is very good at. The first couple of times she was able to get away from work for one of our dates, I asked her what she had told them as a reason. But after the first couple, I stopped asking because in a sense I didn't want to know. Her stories were always very good: solid, believable, consistent with her travel plans, ... and totally bogus. And she always carried them off exquisitely. So as I say, after a while I decided I didn't want to know any more what explanations she was giving. I completely understand why she needed to make up stories -- most employers wouldn't give her time off if she said, "I want to go spend three nights in a hotel in another state while my boyfriend fucks my brains out." But somewhere in the back of my head, a voice was repeating softly, "If she lies to them, then one day she will start lying to you." And so I have tried not to put myself in a position where that would be a really bad thing.

So where does all this leave me? Am I being manipulated? I guess in order to answer that, my first question has to be where exactly is the dividing line between persuasion and manipulation? There is no doubt in my mind that D would like to persuade me to be her exit strategy; but persuasion, if it is above board, doesn't have to be a bad thing. More troubling is the question, What if D were to act in a plainly manipulative fashion but then I really and truly did change my mind (for good) as a result? I'm thinking of Much Ado About Nothing, in which the friends of Benedick and Beatrice plainly manipulate them into falling in love, and yet in the end they are happily married. It's possible that by shifting my position on divorce, I am coming round to the right position after all; and in that case, what does it matter how I got there?

Hmmm. Time to stop thinking so hard. Maybe I need to make this simpler. I have in the short run told D that there is no way I am going to remarry any time soon after a divorce. It is well known that people make bad decisions after stressful events; so for this reason, I have categorically refused to make any decisions about remarriage for at least a year and day after a divorce goes through. D says she fully understand that I'll need time to "heal" because my marriage has been so painful. I have also read that the impact of divorce on children goes sharply up when they have to start dealing with new romantic interests in the lives of their parents; but I haven't mentioned that part yet.

On the other hand I have left open the possibility of seeing her during that time. Of course I'll want to see her anyway. I don't know how the boys would react, so maybe I should wait for a break from school and then send them to spend the week with their grandparents.

What else? I'm not really sure. I know it is an issue. It is certainly one have been trying to keep an eye on. At the same time, I am trying to avoid outright paranoia. It can be a difficult balance to maintain. I am trying to be as transparent with her as I can bring myself to be ... meaning that I only leave stuff out if it seems gratuitously unkind to bring it up. I even think she is trying to be transparent too; but I remind myself that transparency is not the easiest of tasks, and that she is very good at being opaque. In short, I am trying as hard as possible to keep my eyes open. It seems the best middle ground.

Meanwhile, I am grateful for the concern ....

Don't ask what the world needs

I have been reading more of Judith Wallerstein's What About the Kids? and have honestly found it kind of raining on my parade. One chapter is entitled something like "When is the best time to divorce?" [I may not have quoted that quite right ... I left the book at work this evening rather than risk bringing it home.] Anyway, she is non-committal about the best time, but pretty clearly says that the worst time (or one of them) is when your kids are pre-adolescents: 11, 12, 13 years old. In fact, she goes on to say that of course most people don't get to choose when to divorce: it is forced on them by circumstances, or by the other spouse, or whatever. But if your divorce is more or less optional -- or at any rate, if you have any say over when it happens -- and if your kids are in this age bracket, then maybe you should consider staying together "for the sake of the kids" for at least a few years.

Both boys are more or less in this age bracket, so naturally I was struck by this point.

I have spent the rest of the day mulling. Am I doing something fundamentally wrong or selfish by pursuing a divorce at this time? Will I ruin the lives of my children? It's a great way to spend an afternoon, let me tell you.

So tonight, once everybody was in bed and I had written my nightly letter to D, I went out for a walk. I wanted to mull some more: which choice is right? You could call it thought or prayer, I'm not even sure which it really was. But I wanted to know.

What I found is that I can imagine a dozen scenes involving a divorce; but I cannot for the life of me imagine what it would look like to stay married. I tried to imagine those scenes, and came up with literally nothing.

Does this prove or settle anything? Maybe not. It does seem to show that the divorce is already complete in my mind, but by itself it says nothing about what to do next.

But then I remembered this line that John Eldredge loves to quote (in, e.g., Wild at Heart): "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

By that criterion, it's easy ....