Scene: Dinner has been cleared away. The boys are playing in the other room. Wife is taking her nighttime medications and getting ready for bed. Hosea is sitting on the edge of the bed reading the paper left over from the morning.
Wife: So, how is D doing these days?
Hosea: Hmmm?
Wife: How is D?
Hosea: D Who?
Wife: You know, ... D [last name]. How is she doing?
Hosea: I don't know .... [looks puzzled]
Wife: Well I opened the cell phone bill today, and I can see that you've been texting her several times a day all month. So you must know how she's doing.
Hosea: [thinks to himself] Damn, I'm getting sloppy. I could have hidden that bill way better than I did. And it's typical that Wife would exaggerate a number like that ... no way have we had a chance to text each other that often. [says out loud] I text a lot of people. Honestly, at work it is the best way to get a quick answer out of somebody who is stuck in some interminable meeting.
Wife: Well I know I saw her number, and I know I recognized it. I could go get the bill and show you.
But at this point, Wife is already lying down and she doesn't bother to get up. Hosea just grunts but doesn't say anything more, and after a while Wife rolls over and drifts off fitfully to sleep. By the next morning, all cell phone bills for the past year have been mysteriously moved somewhere else ....
____________________
The real answer is that for most of the last week, D and I were fighting. You remember that last week I decided to back off from full-scale war with Wife, hoping that maybe we could talk through some kind of "kinder, gentler" divorce instead. I was planning to write D about this, but it was going to take a little time. The counseling session was on Thursday, and I spent Thursday night writing it up for you folks. I was going to adapt that version for D Friday night, but she beat me to the punch. She had been reading Wife's online journal, which contained a stray reference to the appointment with Counselor; D jumped to the conclusion that I had deliberately hidden this appointment from her "for reasons unknown" and raked me over the coals for dishonesty.
I don't suppose that most people show their best side when under attack. I know I don't. In any event, I responded by getting quiet and logical, and by sending her the story I wrote you with minor adjustments. I will add that it did not even begin to mollify her. I won't bore you with the whole litany of "he said ... she said" after that, except to say that a lot of harsh things ended up being said on both sides. As D said later, when it was all over, "We really need to not get mad at each other, because -- when we do? -- we don't fight fair. Either one of us. This was really bad."
It was really bad. What finally helped, after several days of ever-less pleasant e-mails, was to pick up the phone and talk to each other. Somehow it is possible to write snotty, stabbing, vindictive things in e-mail (and to feel richly justified and self-righteous about doing so) when you could never possibly bring yourself to say the same things viva voce to someone you genuinely still love. So when D (bless her heart) finally asked me to call -- and then immediately followed up by begging me to call because she needed to hear my voice -- I called, and we resolved it all over the phone. In the end, it wasn't about any of the things that she had said in her letter, or at any rate not in any kind of dull, plodding, literal way. What was really going on was that she felt terribly insecure because we haven't seen each other since summer; so if now I was "back in counseling with Wife" (never mind that it was only once), and if I was "not divorcing Wife" (or at any rate not filing legal papers this instant), ... she was fearful that I might be planning to leave her. Of course I'm not -- you all know that. But virtual relationships are difficult for D. She needs the physical presence of friends in her life: their faces across the table, their voices in the air ... and (where appropriate) their bodies in her bed. Sometimes she blames this condition, a little humorously, on being a Catholic and believing an "incarnational theology" but I am certain it is the other way around: the need must have been rooted in her long before she accepted the Church.
Anyway, I managed to assure her that I'm not making plans to leave her, and we are back on track. So when can we meet again, come to think of it ...?
D also told me about her most recent trip "home" to the house she owns with her husband. It was his birthday, so she dressed up a little on the fancy side in case he wanted to celebrate. When she got there, late in the day, he was still in his pajamas. (He does all his paying work on-line, from home.) He hadn't bathed in several days. For that matter, she added meaningfully, he hadn't seen a dentist recently either. So she went out to the store, bought some groceries, and fixed him a nice dinner in. No problem ... except that she spent the rest of the day thinking about it. She told me later that the weekend left her very quiet and thoughtful.
It seems like everybody I know is "thoughtful" these days, in one sense or another.
Puritanism
6 hours ago
12 comments:
Well, I have nothing of interest to say. But it is quite the dilemma for you, friend. I always imagined that the life of a married man having an affair would be particularly difficult. That's not to say that it is not for women in that situation. But... we women tend to be a bit more high maintenance than men and juggling two would seem to be an impossible task.
I hope that your path improves with time. In the meantime, keep writing if it helps. I will keep reading and try to remember to stop in more often.
Kyra, dear heart, it is always a pleasure when you stop by.
You may be right about women being a bit more high-maintenance than men; and even if you're not, it's certainly true that Wife and D are both fairly high-maintenance. (That's less true of Wife as she has retreated into being the merest shell of a woman, but historically ....) I think you and I have both chuckled over this propensity I seem to have for being attracted to high-maintenance women. :-)
But I am learning. One of the things I have learned -- and it didn't really crystalize until we deconstructed this particular fight -- is that when D blows up at me for something the correct response is not to engage at all but to step back and ask, "Where is this coming from?" And that's because the words she uses are not always very direct. (I bet you have noticed this too.) She will talk around something sensitive rather than saying it directly; and if she shows anger to me it is probably a shield to cover fear and deep insecurity. So I should just disconnect completely from the words she is using, and try to ask instead, "Why are you feeling insecure?"
One of the things I have gotten out of the years with Wife is a better ability to deal with certain kinds of very difficult situations. And now I feel like I am learning still more. That's not a bad thing.
And I think we'll get a chance to see each other next month ....
Hosea, it is an interesting thing, and I think common for women, to not be direct. For some reason there is some desire to just be instinctively understood, without the need to spell it out.
I've always been kind of annoyed with that propensity among women, gives me a bad name. I try to be incredibly direct. If I want you to do something for my birthday, I will say so. I will not say "Oh, no, don't bother with doing anything for me." and then make you pay when you didn't do something over the top for it.
But, then again, I am extremely low maintenance. Like, it took me literally 20 minutes to get ready this morning. And that's just one aspect of my low maintenance side.
I think the interesting question is this: why are high maintenance women appealing to you? I wonder if I am missing something in the male psyche, because I always assumed that I would have great appeal as someone who is low maintenance. So, just curious.
And as for learning. Well, I suppose there is a point in time when we stop learning. If there is, I don't want to reach it.
Excellent questions, and I am not sure I know the answer.
Regarding high- vs low-maintenance, I think there is a difference between what makes for a good long-term partnership and what makes for an exciting romance. Long term, there is no question that high-maintenance becomes a real drag. The problem is that so very often we make long-term commitments (like marriage) for short-term reasons (like romance). And in the short term, high maintenance can be truly exciting precisely because it is risky. If you are dating a high-strung woman, you have to focus and pay complete attention ... and sometimes hold your breath a little ... because one false step can trigger fireworks. But people also climb mountains or race cars for fun, and an error of no more than an inch can be fatal in those hobbies too. So I think at some level this may not be a lot different.
I think I first noticed this attraction in college, although it took me some years to understand it in this form. But I remember one girl (never a girlfriend, alas ... I was too shy) who fit the model perfectly: she was incredibly smart, strongly opinionated, and merciless to people who fell afoul of her opinions. And I kept wondering why I found her so outrageously attractive when talking to her was like tip-toeing through a briar-patch ... or a minefield. At a physical level she wasn't any prettier than a dozen other women, but still ...!
I'm not sure what the answer is. Maybe there is something to be said for the old Indian custom of arranged marriages, where the parents of the prospective spouses work it all out soberly, taking the long view, because their judgement isn't clouded by effervescent hormones. On the other hand, I kind of think that for such a system to work it ought to take a very relaxed view towards adultery: so that you raise your kids and buy your house in partnership with A, but you quench your thirst for delirious passion with Z (until the relationship explodes), and then Y (until that relationship smashes against a lamppost), and maybe X (for a while after that), ... and perhaps more, backwards through the alphabet. Oddly enough, I don't think that any traditional system of arranged marriages really works that way .... :-)
Oh, ... D has another explanation.
I posed this amusing observation to her, that I seem to have this thing for tightly-wound, high-strung women, and isn't that funny?
Her answer was to smile and say, "Oh I see. And meanwhile you are completely laid-back, relaxing in the shade, not a care in the world, never the slightest bit tense or exercised or anxious or anything like that. Have I got that right?"
I think she was laughing at me .... :-)
That last bit makes me laugh.
And BTW, awfully brave of you to ask that question of a high maintenance woman ;)
Hosea (and Kyra)
I'm curious as to your respective criteria for defining a high-maintenance woman.
Janeway, the only explanation I have is this: easy to please, easy going, not demanding, straight-forward, enjoying of small pleasures.
I'm the lowest maintenance woman I know. I could go on about why, but I think the above sums it up. Oh, and I can be ready to go in 20 minutes and I'm not "Sally" from "When Harry Met Sally" when it comes to ordering food.
Janeway, good to hear from you!
There are probably a lot of factors that fit together in my mind to make up the concept of "high-maintenance" and I haven't gone to the effort to disentangle them all. But I think the heart of it, for me, is embedded in my remark above: "one false step can trigger fireworks." So I think of the girl I knew in college who picked up on some poorly-thought-out opinion that I had uttered in order to make conversation, and replied immediately "Oh, you can't possibly think that; after reading ... [fill in the blank] ... there is just no way that can be true." Or of D, some of whose tirades (in response to ill-chosen phrases of mine) I have reprinted here. Or of Wife, whose cyclonic tantrums I have also referenced.
I'm not sure if this is any help.
Hosea and Kyra,
Kyra's definition sounds to me like a low maintenance, rather than high maintenance, woman. I consider myself very low maintenance myself, and I was curious to see how another woman would characterize a high maintenance woman.
After spending three decades in a marriage in which I was the low maintenance partner, my conclusion is that men believe that women who aren't a challenge (i.e., they're low- rather than high-maintenance) are not worth the effort.
Janeway, yes I was defining low maintenance and meant to say that high maintenance is opposite.
I think you're onto something. Can I change to high maintenance? I'm not sure I can. I think it's rooted in my upbringing... The third daughter of a high maintenance woman, I couldn't afford to be anything other than low maintenance. But if it is as you say (and I think it may be) then we low maintenance women get screwed all around, don't we? And not in the good way.
Kyra,
Yep.
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