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.