What a difference a year makes

OK, this is just silly.

A year ago -- longer, actually -- I found some quiz out there on the internet that rates how badly you suffer from each of the Seven Deadly Sins. Sounds like a hoot, right? So I took the quiz and posted my results here. The part that was a little embarrassing was how low I scored on Lust. It kind of made me wonder if there was something about me that drove Wife to all of her affairs in desperation, because she just wasn't getting any from me?

What a difference a year makes. In the fifteen months from then till now, I have come to realize that our lousy sex life had a lot more to do with Wife than with me; and with that realization I have come to see her affairs in a new light too. I also just re-took the quiz.

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Low
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	High
Pride:	Medium

The Seven Deadly Sins Quiz on 4degreez.com

Of course, maybe all this proves is that the quiz is too simplistic. But the contrast with last time sure caught my eye.

D's husband has had a stroke

I just got off the phone with her. She just heard the diagnosis. A couple of days ago she talked with him on the phone, having been back home the weekend before; on the phone he sounded very confused. One son is home for Christmas; D talked to him, then called again the next day and her husband was better. But not enough better -- she and her son decided that Husband should go to the hospital. She has been driving back home this evening (once she got off work) and just called me. The hospital confirmed it was a stroke.

She doesn't know what this means, but tells me she is sure her life has just turned a sharp corner. As a veteran of so many of Wife's medical emergencies, I have told her just to put one foot in front of the other but not to think too far ahead or make any long-range plans until she really has to ... and until she has more information about exactly what happened, how much damage there was, etc.

And she remarked that of course she has been planning to divorce him. But today, tomorrow, it may be useful that she can still sign forms as "Mrs." How long will that be true? How much does this change? We don't know.

Wow. "Turned a corner" indeed.

"Cheap K-Mart earrings" ....

Anyone who was reading last year will remember that Wife and I have very different attitudes towards Christmas presents ... enough so that we have fought over the subject any number of times.

Over the years I have tried to shield the rest of my family from my fights with Wife. But of course that's not her policy at all, so I'm sure they have heard plenty about this issue, ... plenty more than they ever wanted to hear, in fact.

And so, apropos of nothing at all, my father e-mailed me this little video today. All he said was that one of his old friends e-mailed it to him. No idea where it came from originally. He didn't add any other comment at all, but perhaps he didn't feel he had to ....

Thanksgiving Day

We spent Thanksgiving Day with my parents, and it was very pleasant. Lots of food -- lots of food! -- plus time to spend with my brother and his girlfrend, and just hanging out. For her part, D had a very restful and pleasant day as well, albeit with a neighbor and not her husband. Still, after last year's drama, that was certainly a good thing.

Wife started out the day still a little absent-minded. As we were getting ready to drive to my parents' house, Son 1 went into the back bathroom to take a shower. Wife and I were both in the adjacent bedroom getting ready, and Wife called my attention to Son 1 having stepped into that bathroom. All the same, a few minutes later as Son 1 was drying off, she headed blithely on into the bathroom to get some medications. I stopped her and suggested he would probably like privacy while he was drying off. (Son 1 is 13, and already his voice is changing and his underarms are furry.) She told me she didn't know he was in there. I reminded her that she had been the one to tell me he was in there, only scant minutes ago. She said she didn't remember.

We got down to my parents' house somewhere around noon, and dinner was still in preparation; but when it was finally ready, there was lots. Nobody went to bed hungry that night! My brother and his girlfriend were there, and they are always a lot of fun. Son 1 and Son 2 both piled onto my brother to wrestle with him, because he has always been a good sport about being an energetic uncle; his girlfiend and my mother traded off talking with Wife; and I seemed to spend lots of time discussing history with my Dad.

Late that night, as we were talking about other things, my father did ask me if Wife and I were divorcing, and I said yes. He nodded and didn't say a lot more about it.

I realize that most of the day was better to live through than to tell about, because pleasant and low-key times make for a boring narrative. But there has been enough excitement in my life lately that I am happy for low-key when I can get it. Something to be thankful for, I suppose ....

Eighth date: the home front

So what was happening at home, all the time that D and I were going to the movies, to the theater, to one restaurant after another, ... and of course all the time that we stayed back at the hotel in bed, whispering softly, kissing sweetly, caressing delicately, and fucking as if our lives depended on it?

I didn't get any horror stories of Wife falling asleep at the wheel (although come to think of it I didn't exactly ask). On the other hand, the boys were only in school two days that week before Thanksgiving Break kicked in, so I think the risk should have been minimized. But I did learn a few odds and ends when I got back.

The day of my return, Wife spent an hour and a half on the phone with Friend (who is, I am convinced, merely a role played by the same charlatan who spent so long claiming to be Boyfriend 5).

The day of my return, while the boys were home from school, Wife decided to make chocolate-chip cookies with them. She got as far as mixing up the dough, but never actually baked the cookies. "I ran out of time," she told me later. But then she didn't bake them Thursday morning, before we drove to visit my parents for Thanksgiving Dinner; she didn't bake them Saturday or Sunday,when we were home all day and doing nothing. Anyone who remembers the great saga of cleaning up the study will recognize that this is starting to look like many of Wife's other projects. When I got home from work today I realized that she hadn't baked anything, but there was visibly less dough in the refrigerator than there had been this morning. Aha, I see. "Baking with the boys" has come to mean "letting the boys make up cookie dough for me to scarf during the week." OK, got that.

And then she went to see an attorney. In fact, Wife was awake when I got home late, late at night, so that she could tell me what she had learned. The short version was, "You can't afford to divorce me, so you're going to have to learn to live with me."

Say what?

The longer version was that she had given this fellow some (inaccurate) figures purporting to be our monthly income, and she had gotten him to estimate child care and spousal support based on some other highly doubtful assumptions. Based on the outcome of this dubious calculation (garbage in, garbage out) she concluded that in case of a divorce, neither of us would have enough disposable income to continue to live in exactly the same neighborhood of the same city where we live today. And so she concluded that divorce is financially impossible.

That there are people on this planet -- and even in our state -- who somehow make do with these smaller sums she has in mind does not seem to have been a relevant consideration for her. She assumes that staying put is an overriding concern for both of us, so that anything which imperils that is financially unthinkable. I dunno, babe; I do have some financial priorities, but never moving for the rest of my life isn't at the top of my list -- even if it does kind of appeal to my native sloth.

Anyway, I'm not terribly worried. This attorney specifically says that all he does in family law is to give advice, not represent parties in litigation. I'm not sure where he makes his money, but apparently inciting expensive court battles ain't it.

And I don't think Wife was quite expecting me to reply, "Wow. Well, we're going to have to do some hard thinking to figure out how we can each of us get by on these numbers ...."
__________

There was one odd postscript to Wife's visit to the attorney: she got lost trying to find her way back to her car.

I should explain that his office is on the main street through downtown, and that we have lived here for some 19 years. She had parked a couple blocks up from his office and walked down to it, because parking on that street is often at a premium. She didn't tell me how far away she had parked, but she made it sound like it wasn't far. But when she left the office, the sun was going down and she couldn't recognize any of the landmarks. She didn't know where she was, and she couldn't remember if she had parked up the street or down the street. So -- again, entirely on her own account of the story -- she wandered back and forth up and down the street looking vainly for her car, more and more lost and finding nothing. Her feet started to hurt, so she took off her shoes and walked in her stocking feet. Finally she saw a store she recognized; she went into the store and asked how to find the cross-street where she had parked. They pointed her in the opposite direction from the one she had been drifting; and when she went that way she found her car promptly and came home.

And of course I have to wonder if events like this one have anything to do with her sudden reluctance to divorce?

Eighth date

Last week I took a short vacation. I told Wife and the boys that I had to travel for work; then I told the office I was taking a few days off. I flew to a city where I often have business to conduct, and reserved a room in the hotel where I usually stay. And then I met D at the airport and we spent the next three and a half days in bed.

That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's not much of one. I arrived Saturday evening. D was already at the airport waiting for me. After not seeing me since the end of July, she was pretty much ready to tear my clothes off right there in the airport arrival lounge. Indeed, my routine of calling home right away to let them know I arrived safely was something she found very disorienting. Here I was saying "Hi there, how is everything at home? My flight was boring and uneventful, so I'm going to go get some supper now," while D was thinking, "Put down the damned phone and kiss me, already!" But soon enough we were at the hotel, peeling our clothes off, and falling into bed.

And from that point, our itinerary was pretty simple. It was already nighttime by then, so we fucked until we fell asleep, ... then woke up about 2:30 in the morning and fucked again, ... and then woke up in the early dawn and fucked some more. Late Sunday morning we pulled on our clothes to go out for breakfast, and then came back to the room until dinner time. (No, we did not stop long enough to let Housekeeping make up the room.) After dinner we went out to the movies and saw "Precious": a well-made movie, but not for the faint-of-heart. And then, back to bed ....

Monday, we stayed in bed till lunchtime. We went out for lunch, spent the afternoon wandering around the city talking, had a light supper at a local wine bar, and returned to the hotel for more sex.

Tuesday, I think we stayed in bed till dinner time. (Once again, Housekeeping didn't get to make up the room. Besides, the smell was getting pretty rich by then, so we would have earned a lot of smirks if they had.) After dinner we went out to a local (live) theater to see an original comedy, and then ... well, you can probably guess the rest.

Wednesday, we finally had to leave. We checked out of the hotel about noon, got some lunch, and headed for the airport. And after a lot of kissing, we found our ways back to our homes in plenty of time for Thanksgiving on Thursday.

It was an amazing vacation, possibly the most remarkable I have ever had. D was ecstatic, joyful, elated. As we left the room one evening, she murmured that her whole pubic area was "sparkling" as with little stars. And for myself? It was enormously gratifying, even though I can't pretend that I have the responsiveness of a twenty-year old any longer. I spent a lot more time with kisses and fingers than I might have as a younger man. But D, bless her, was delighted with all of it. Sometimes I think there is something miraculous about her passionate and abundant responsiveness -- I have alluded to this here and here, for example -- and I am always grateful for it.

We talked a lot too: about our love for each other, my marriage and hers, my work and hers, my life and hers, religion, poetry, politics, ... all manner of things. It was a time of deep sharing on many levels.

And I am sure Housekeeping had a hell of a job of it when they finally got a chance to clean the room.

"What were you thinking???" part 2

Fortunately, life is a series of anticlimaxes. After a few days, Wife got a Money-gram from Boyfriend 4 covering the missing money. And after that, his accounts were all closed.

I told the story to D, who was a little surprised that he sent us the money. (Truthfully, so was I.) Her comment was simply, "If he's not going to live more than another 18 months, what motive does he have to pay any of it back?" But he did pay it, along with plenty of apologies and some words about "oldest friends". So another drama over and done with.

I am writing this on my way home from another trip; I wonder if there will be any new dramas awaiting me?

"What were you thinking???"

Some time ago, Wife let Boyfriend 4 (not 5) put her name on his checking account ... the thinking being that it would make it easier for her to act as his executrix if and when his cancer kills him.

But Boyfriend 4 is financially reckless, and ran up a bunch of bounced checks. So this evening we learned that the bank had initiated a transfer from our main checking account -- the one out of which I pay all the household bills -- to cover B4's overdrafts to the tune of $967 and change. Wife protested a dozen times that she had insisted with the bank manager when this was set up that she not be responsible for B4's debts, and that the bank manager had told her she wouldn't be. But there it is.

I talked with Boyfriend 4 on the phone, after I calmed down a bit. He intends to close his account Tuesday, thus (so he thinks) making it impossible for this to happen again. And he gets his monthly disability check on Wednesday, out of which he promises to send us the money to cover the damages. I sure hope so, because I have checks out there waiting to come in, and I would sure hate to bounce them because we paid for B4's bounced checks. Meanwhile Wife is going to go into the bank tomorrow to try to get the charge reversed. I may take the time off work to go in with her.

I told Wife that if she can't get the charges reversed, this money will come out of the savings that her aunt left her; then any reimbursement from B4 can go to paying her back directly. I also asked for some acknowledgement of personal responsibility for this catastrophe. Everything she said in response was hedged around with qualifiers that made it not her fault, until I finally told her that I wanted to hear her say, "I'm sorry for having the poor judgement to let this happen." Even then she said "I'm sorry I let this happen," until I asked again for the whole thing this time. She finally said it, but unwillingly. And I said a number of unpleasant and insulting things in the process of it all -- but really!!

Later, as I was cleaning up the kitchen, she came out to ask me quite formally if she could excuse herself to go to bed; and I said, "Why not?"

Not a lot of yelling, really, although I did raise my voice fairly intensely at the beginning when I first learned the news. But I quieted down after that, and Wife never raised her voice. Still, I would not call it one of our better evenings.

I hope your day and evening were better than that.

Happy anniversary

A year ago today, I walked off of an airplane and into D's embrace. Nothing has ever been the same since that day, nor ever will again.

__________

“Your body is a temple,” you’ve been told,

And so it is – to Venus of the Foam:

An altar decked with perfume, incense, gold,

A shelter where Her doves can find a home.

A holy font to bless me is your kiss;

Your neck, a tower calling me to prayer;

Your breasts, an ikon of the Queen of Bliss,

Whose glory shines about your rich black hair.

So loving you, my prayers to Venus run,

That She might sanctify our path as right:

To walk together underneath the Sun,

And love each other in the honest night.

Thus tangled on your honeyed bed we lie,

Envelopped in the musk of sanctity.

Like father, like son

Son 2 went into a major fury this evening. It was over his chores -- specifically, in this instance, cleaning out the catbox. At the point that he announced he was done, I showed him there was still a lot to do; then I insisted afterwards that he sweep up the spilled cat litter, and pointed out (a couple of times) where he had missed it. I understand that it is a nasty job, but it has to be done; I also understand that from Son 2's perspective, it was really annoying to have lapses called to his attention. Anyway, he blew up: his face was red, his neck was bulging, he was shouting and slamming doors. Wife went to talk to him, but I tried to redirect her. My most immediate concern was that I wanted to avoid her saying (as she has in the past), "Yes, I know Daddy's an ogre -- he's like that to me too and there's nothing to be done about it." But once I had slid her into a different room, I also realized that what Son 2 truly needed more than anything else was to be left alone. Solitude -- time and space to himself -- was what he needed to settle down. And of course I realized this because I recognized absolutely everything he was going through. That could have been me, when I was eleven years old, almost exactly.

Sure enough, he went through exactly the stages I would have expected. For a long time he sat alone in his room; then he came out and buried himself in a book in the living room while I started dinner. At one point he came into the kitchen and announced very matter-of-factly that he had decided he would make himself enjoy dinner whatever it was, so that he could get over his grudge against me. And in fact the boys both liked dinner: it was a nacho casserole, so it tasted heavily of salsa, cheese, and refried beans. Anyway, by the time dinner was over, Son 2 was curling up affectionately on my lap; and as he went to bed he sang out a merry "I love you, Daddy." All better.

It is interesting watching him from the outside, and remembering what it was like to be him.

"I was afraid of dying without being loved"

Two weeks ago, D nearly died from a blister.

OK, I know that sounds crazy, but let me explain. Some parts of her lymph system don't work very well, especially in one leg. And she has been walking to work lately as part of a project sponsored by No Impact Man (Colin Beavan). So she got a blister from all the unaccustomed walking; it got infected; and there was no lymph system in her leg to fight the infection. All of a sudden, her leg was "twice its normal size, covered with red welts, cracking around the scarred areas and hard to walk on." She went to the doctor, who gave her some tests and a stack of antibiotics, and who thoughtfully told her that -- had she not come to a hospital -- she would have had "hours to live."

When she wrote me about this, she did everything in her power to downplay it; at one point she wrote as if her biggest worry were that the leg looked unattractive. Meanwhile she spent the week "at home" in the house she owns with her husband, taking time off work until the doctor said she was well enough to resume her duties. Even then, she was a little cagey about what had happened to her.

But as she sat at home, she got more and more and more depressed. Her husband is in poor health and spends all his waking hours on the computer because he works from home. Then he falls asleep in his chair for hours on end. The children are away at university, and D didn't call them to fill them in. She notified her employer of what had happened -- that she had nearly died -- and got not a single word back: not a "Get well soon," not even a "Thank you for letting us know and we've made arrangements to cover your work while you are gone." Her boss told her colleagues that she was on vacation -- a totally unannounced vacation -- and left it to her colleagues to sort out among themselves who would handle her work. I wrote her e-mail after e-mail telling her I was worried about her, but she kept insistently turning the conversation towards what was going on in my life, instead. And all the time she got ever more depressed.

The next weekend I called her. Her doctor had pronounced her officially on the mend, and discharged her from further treatment. She had left her home (I mean the house where her husband lives) to go back to the little duplex from which she commutes to work every day, ... which meant she was out of her husband's earshot. I found an excuse to leave my house on some errand, and rang her up. The conversation was awkward and difficult, with silences in odd places. I asked if there was anything I could do, but it was obvious that her answer to this was -- for the moment at least -- a non-starter: what she wanted desperately from me was that I be there, by her side, supporting her through all this. And the fact remains that we live far, far away from each other and each of us is married to someone else. It's a bit of a complication.

It wasn't until the middle of the next week that she finally sent me an e-mail that spelled it all out:

Yesterday I wept and wept, and could not stop crying.

I tried to tell you on Sunday, but I wasn't clear and honestly, I did not understand why I couldn't write you anymore. Even when I've been depressed in the past, I always wanted to write you. Not this week. What was wrong? It certainly wasn't anything you said. It was me. What happened last week was a turning point. But what exactly did it teach me?

Hosea, I wasn't afraid of dying. But I was afraid of dying without being loved. I was deeply afraid that I would die without anyone being there or caring on a significant level. If I died, you would not even know for several days and then life would go on for you almost unchanged. Neither of my children even knew I had an infection; my husband was busy working, and my colleagues were either kept in the dark or were callous and silent. My family did not know for a week that anything happened; my brother still hasn't called. It's the lack of love, the sense that no one truly cares, that has sent me into some sort of existential crisis.

I realize I cannot work in a place that so disrespects me. I work with wonderful, dedicated and talented professionals, but the administration subtly divides us; we are always looking around and wondering if someone isn't pulling their weight and thus making our jobs that much more difficult. Nothing is ever done; excuses are made every day for behavior that is unacceptable and appalling. I can't stay.

I realize anew how difficult it is to live alone and have no family nearby. Unlike my friends here, I don't have children nearby and a church community to lean on while I do this job. My husband cares, but he is either depressed himself or preoccupied with work; our relationship has ended on every significant level. You love me, but the ties that bind you to Wife seem unbreakable and as of yet, unaltered. Most of the time, I can deal with the distance and separation, but last week, it just seemed to add to my sense of meaninglessness. The usual things that have sustained me in the past have been buried under an avalanche of work and more work, and always, I doubt my professional competence. I can't live like this anymore.

I am not sure how to move forward. I don't want to leave those friends I have made here, but I know I almost surely have to move far away. I am scared to start over and break new ground, but I have to find a supportive community. I love you dearly and completely, but I know I have to see you more often, and I have to be able to contact you when I need support. I can no longer say it doesn't matter or that I can live without security...not financial, but of the heart.

This was a tough letter for me to answer, for at least two more or less conflicting reasons. On the one hand, it shows D's customary eloquence, an eloquence that I can hardly resist or even imagine resisting. But on the other hand, ... well, look at what she says. Her children didn't know she was sick, but then she never called them to tell them. Her colleagues didn't know, because the administration at her work is psychopathic and lied about what was going on with her; but she knows they are psychopathic, and so she knows that the only way to get word to her colleagues is to go around the administration. She doesn't have a church community, it is true, but that's because she recently left the church community to which she had belonged for a long time. All of these points are ones where she has some measure of control or influence; and in all these cases she made choices that distanced her from others.

And then there is me. I am, after all, why she left her church community ... because she couldn't honestly participate in the life of her church while committed to an affair with me. And I get that she wanted me there, more than anything. I get that I have a major importance in her life -- as she has, truly, in mine. Only, ... my life is here. What is more, I have told D more than once that -- even if Wife were to vanish into the mist -- she should not expect me to marry her, or not any time soon.

So I didn't really know what to say.

While I was dithering, we talked on the phone again; and by this time she was in a much better frame of mind. I tried to suggest to her, oh so cautiously, some of what I said above -- that really, she had to own a certain amount of the isolation that oppressed her so. She admitted this, and said that she just didn't feel comfortable asking people for help or support. OK, I understand, it can be embarrassing. But this is what your friends and family are for, dear heart. And it is hardly fair to bemoan other people ignoring you if they have no way to know what is wrong. She agreed a little ruefully, and admitted that her children had been really unhappy with her when they learned what had happened, and that she hadn't let them know. There, you see? We all really do love you, so get over this insecurity already! You're in your fifties, for heaven's sake.

D seems back to her old self now. She is back at work, e-mailing me about the ups and downs of each day. But when she gets upset or something goes wrong, she retreats and can be reluctant to speak up. I'm going to have to pay close attention to this ....

Wife in tears, part 4

When the boys and I got home this evening, Wife was folding laundry and crying. Dinner was on the stove, bubbling away unattended. After starting the boys on their evening chores (and homework), I asked her what was wrong.

"It ... it just all hit me today. Everything that is happening with us. And it's just too much."

"What's too much?"

"I tried to get the laundry all done today so you wouldn't yell at me about the boys having no clean clothes; and I put dinner on early but it is taking forever to cook, so now you'll yell at me for dinner being late. And I just can't do anything right."

I wasn't quite sure what to say to this. We talked desultorily for a bit, with a couple of barbs thrown back and forth for good measure. Then Wife went out to the kitchen to finish dinner.

After dinner, we talked some more. Wife said she had been crying ever since her psychiatric appointment this morning, as she tried to unpack for her doctor what was going on for us. But she still didn't understand it. At one point she said, "You don't love me and you don't like me. There's nowhere we can go from there." At another point she said, tremulously, cautiously, like a real question, with no defiance but genuine confusion in her voice, "What have I ever done, in all the years we have been together, to hurt you so badly?" Or again, "Maybe you are right that I just can't maintain any relationships of any kind." And all the while, tears were beading under her eyes and rolling slowly, reluctantly down her cheek.

I didn't say a lot; and when I did, it wasn't much to the point. I didn't know what to say. When she suggested that the first few years of our marriage were the happiest, I gently demurred (thinking again of "Stiletto"); when she accused me of not liking her, I asked what I am supposed to do about that. But mostly I just listened and did not get too wrapped up in her version of the story.

The other thing I did not do was to get too emotionally wound up in the situation. I mean, a woman's tears will do terrible things to me -- no doubt about it. And in years past I would have dropped everything to dry them. But today, I just sat and watched and listened. I didn't change any of how I felt, nor any of what I see for the road ahead. And that may be (in some ways) the saddest part of all.

Just before she fell asleep, Wife asked me please to be kind to her: or at any rate, if we have to divorce, please not to go out of my way to be mean and spiteful. I agreed, of course. And she fell asleep.

I need to do the same thing pretty soon. I wish I had something insightful to say. But I think the situation is starting to consume her, and I think she is scared.
____________________

Update added the next morning: There was a part of the conversation that I meant to include, but by the time I wrote this post last night I was too tired to remember it. At one point in the discussion, I said -- for what must have been the hundredth time -- that I found it really hard to understand why Wife was taking this so hard, since she had been the one who for years kept threatening divorce, offering divorce, speaking about divorce as a foregone conclusion ....

And she said, "Didn't you understand that when I said those things, what I meant was that I was begging you to love me? To be kind and affectionate to me? Didn't you get that?"

No, I never understood that. I'm going to have to think about this for a while.

"Hosea ... smash ...!"

I'm not sure I can write about this evening. It makes me look far too bad, even for an anonymous blog, among friends that don't know who I am.

Suffice it to say that, after all these years -- all the antidepressants, all the settling and stabilization of middle age -- I still have a temper that can go off on no notice over something trivial and stupid. I can still blow up without warning. And I don't even realize that it is something I can (or ought to) control until it is over and the damage is done ... I mean, the thought just never occurs to me. I am too into the rage of the moment. No matter how childishly stupid and asinine I am being, no matter what innocent bystanders are getting the brunt and having to deal with it.

Some days I think that everything Wife has ever said about me -- every low, mean hateful, squalid accusation -- is probably true. I'll go sit in the corner now. If you see the gendarmes out in the street, tell them where I am and have them run me in for being an ill-tempered, uncontrolled, infantile, moronic jerk.

Thanks, my family and I all appreciate it.

Hosea and Wife's soundtrack: a meme

I read this meme over at Kyra's blog months and months ago, and I thought, "That's really cool but I could never do that. I don't know enough music." And it's true that I don't listen to music nearly as often as almost everyone around me, so my repertoire of songs to draw from is smaller than most people's. Nor do I think of my life in terms of a soundtrack, typically. But the idea never quite went away, and I found myself chewing it over. And in the end, I came up with three songs that I thought could express the arc of our relationship. We have been together for over a quarter century, after all, so the tenor of the relationship -- and then marriage -- has changed with time. And there are some aspects of that change that get reflected in these three songs.

Of course I should emphasize the words "some aspects." Obviously there are many sides to any long-term relationship, and these could be reflected in a lot of different songs. There were times when the boys were young that you might have said our relationship was characterized by "Baby Beluga," but I don't think that is quite the kind of song that Kyra had in mind in this meme.

Let me start off with the formal statement of rules, a paragraph which I have quoted from Kyra's posting in its entirety.

The Rules:
Write a post about the soundtrack of your life. Please include somewhere in the body of the meme "This was started by Kyra (last refuge of the lonely housewife)"... I want to google to see how far and wide this meme travels.

With that said, here are the three songs I can think of, as they line up with three different phases of my long involvement with Wife. I think it will be the most instructive if I list these in reverse-chronological order.
__________

So today, I have to say that I am pretty much fed up with ... well, almost everything. You've read me whining over and over in this vein. Musically, I think that's pretty well represented with this song:

"Get Over It" by the Eagles

I turn on the tube and what do I see?
A whole lotta people cryin' "Don't blame me."
They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else
Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves:
Victim of this, victim of that,
Your momma's too thin; your daddy's too fat --

Get over it!
Get over it!
All this whinin' and cryin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it! 

You say you haven't been the same since you had your little crash
But you might feel better if I gave you some cash
The more I think about it, old Billy was right
Let's kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight
You don't want to work, you want to live like a king
But the big, bad world doesn't owe you a thing -- 

Get over it!
Get over it!
If you don't want to play, then you might as well split
Get over it, get over it! 

It's like going to confession every time I hear you speak
You're makin' the most of your losin' streak
Some call it sick, but I call it weak 

You drag it around like a ball and chain
You wallow in the guilt; you wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin' everybody down
Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass 

Get over it!
Get over it!
All this bitchin' and moanin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it! 

Get over it!
Get over it!
It's gotta stop sometime, so why don't you quit
Get over it, get over it!
__________

Of course, there were years and years before I got to the point of being fed up ... years when I rode Wife's emotional roller-coaster up and down, when I loved her deeply and passionately and then reeled from the pain of one of her tantrums, or betrayals. That time -- call it the earlier years of our marriage -- could probably be summed up this way:

"Stiletto" by Billy Joel   

She cuts you once, she cuts you twice
But still you believe
The wound is so fresh you can taste the blood
But you don't have strength to leave
You've been bought, you've been sold
You've been locked outside the door
But you stand there pleadin',
With your insides bleedin',
'Cause you deep down want some more

Then she says she wants forgiveness
It's such a clever masquerade
She's so good with her stiletto
You don't even see the blade

She cuts you hard, she cuts you deep,
She's got so much skill
She's so fascinating that you're still there waiting
When she comes back for the kill
You've been slashed in the face
You've been left there to bleed
You want to run away
But you know you're gonna stay
'Cause she gives you what you need

Then she says she wants affection
While she searches for the vein
She's so good with her stiletto
You don't really mind the pain

She cuts you out, she cuts you down
She carves up your life
But you won't do nothing
As she keeps on cutting
'Cause you know you love the knife
You've been bought, you've been sold
You've been locked outside the door
But you stand there pleadin'
With your insides bleedin'
'Cause you deep down want some more 

Then she says she needs affection
While she searches for the vein
She's so good with her stiletto,
You don't really mind the pain
__________

OK, well in that case it is fair to ask -- as several of you have -- why I ever married her in the first place? And of course the answer is that I didn't see it coming. Sure, I could tell Wife was going to be high-maintenance. But remember that long ago I did love her. Long ago, I did see something powerfully attractive in her. Long ago, before we were married, she looked like this:

"Witchy Woman" by the Eagles   

Raven hair and ruby lips
sparks fly from her finger tips
Echoed voices in the night
she's a restless spirit on an endless flight

woo hoo witchy woman, see how high she flies
woo hoo witchy woman she got the moon in her eye 

She held me spellbound in the night
dancing shadows and firelight
crazy laughter in another room
and she drove herself to madness with a silver spoon 

woo hoo witchy woman see how high she flies
woo hoo witchy woman she got the moon in her eye 

Well I know you want a lover,
let me tell your brother,
she's been sleeping in the Devil's bed.
And there's some rumors going round
someone's underground
she can rock you in the nighttime 'til your skin turns red 

woo hoo witchy woman see how high she flies
woo hoo witchy woman she got the moon in her eye

__________ 


 Good night, all ....

Happy Halloween

Wife in tears, part 3

This is still more drama from last week, but I hardly have the heart for it. This fight was about food. I traditionally make dinners, and a couple of months ago I started trying to vary my repertoire of dinners ... a repertoire which had gotten very stale over the years. Among other things, I started introducing a lot more vegetable dishes and cooking fewer meals that centered on greasy meat.

Well one day last week Wife came completely unglued about dinner. This is the same woman who for years has told her vegetarian friends, "Well I used to be a vegetarian before I connected with Hosea, but he refuses to eat anything except large hunks of meat." Only now that I am doing something just a little different, it seems that I am a tyrant who doesn't care if my family starves because "everybody hates" these meals (never mind that I see the boys taking seconds) and I "never fix anything with any protein in it any more." And so on, only there were tears and a lot more shrieking.

Oh hell, forget it. It was plenty dramatic at the time, and that's when I told myself I should add it to the "Wife in tears" series. But I can't even remember what was said, ... or care much, either.

I think Wife must have been under a lot of stress last week, because so many things seemed to set her off. I asked her to handle all dinners this week. More work for her, but maybe less screaming.

On lying, part 6

The other day, I was reading an essay by Leskek Kołakowski on lying. Kołakowski, of course, grew up in Communist Poland, so one of the kinds of lying that interests him is political lying. But as I read along paying maybe half-attention, I suddenly lit upon two paragraphs which I think may be tremendously important in understanding Wife.

I have written before of my frustration with the casual way that Wife treats the truth. Now of course Kołakowski's political explanation per se is not appropriate here, because Wife grew up as an American. But she grew up as (in effect) an only child of (in effect) a single parent; and her mother – who was far the dominant influence in her early life – played pretty fast and loose with the truth herself. What impact would that have on an impressionable child? This is exactly the topic Kołakowski addresses, even if indirectly.

"When we turn to the kind of lies told in politics, however, there is an important distinction to be made. Lies in politics are a frequent occurrence, but in democratic countries freedom of speech and criticism protects us from some of their harmful effects; the distinction between truth and falsehood remains intact. If a minister disclaims knowledge of something he knew perfectly well, he is lying; but whether or not he is found out, the difference between truth and falsehood remains clear. The same cannot be said of totalitarian countries; in particular it cannot be said of communism in its heyday, the Stalinist era. There the distinction between the true and the politically correct was entirely blurred. As a result, people half came to believe the 'politically correct' slogans which they had been mouthing, from sheer fear, for so long, and even political leaders sometimes fell victim to their own lies. This was precisely the aim: if enough confusion could be caused in people's minds to make them forget the distinction between truth and political correctness, they would come to believe that whatever was politically correct was thereby also necessarily true. In this way an entire nation's historical memory could be altered.

"This was not merely an instance of lying: it was an attempt to eradicate altogether the very concept of truth in the normal sense of the word. The attempt was not entirely successful, but the mental devastation it caused was vast, particularly in the Soviet Union. In Poland, where the totalitarian regime had never attained its full potential, the effects were milder, but still deeply felt."

Custody and revenge

Part of my discussion with Wife the weekend before last consisted of my trying to position the conversation about our separation so that I could get more time with the boys by agreeing to store some of Wife's piles of useless junk. As I reported back then, this offer on my part (though I never phrased it quite that baldly, I think) caused D to panic. I gave some of her remarks in the post linked above, and my reply was kind of long and pedantic. But in particular, I replied to her question ".... In short, what do you get out of this arrangement besides more responsibility and the pleasure of the boy's company?" as follows:

It is not just the pleasure of their company, delightful as they can be. I am also taking to heart your remarks about the toxicity of Wife's influence, and therefore am trying to reduce the amount of time they spend around Wife to an absolute minimum. I think it may be one of the best long-term services I can do them.

Some time later I re-read that, and it smelled intolerably smug to me. Also, I know that when she gets into a panic, D is particularly intolerant of self-righteousness and self-congratulation. So I sent a follow-on note a while later that ran:

Reflecting on our conversation on the phone, I realize that I was mistaken in something that I wrote. Specifically, I said, with respect to my custody goals, ... [and then I quoted the line immediately above]. But of course my goals have very little to do with suggestions of toxicity, yours or anybody else's. They are, rather, purely vindictive, motivated by a desire for revenge. And as such, they are also likely to get in the way of any rational solution. A rational solution doesn't have to be nice or kind, but it cannot be motivated by passion. (sigh) Oh well.

For what it is worth, D replied to this second statement far more mildly than I had anticipated, a sure sign she was recovering from the alarm she had expressed earlier in the weekend.

I realize you may have written that when you were depressed, but I might reconsider in the light of day. I'm not doubting that there is a measure of vindictiveness in your wish to keep the boys with you. But it's small.The idea that revenge lies at the bottom of your desire for primary custody is absurd. Wife is unable to provide discipline or affirmation. She is passive and dependent. She is often ill and weak, and unable to provide basic supervision or care. She is inconsistent at best, and frankly, an inconsistent parent can be more difficult for a child to understand than a overly harsh parent. Her behavior, particularly towards Son 2, has been inappropriate and sexually charged. She is their mother, and she does love her children. But she has genuine limitations as a caregiver. Hosea, almost none of what we do is "purely" anything. It's always a measure of good motives and less honorable ideas. It's important to recognize your real desire for revenge. But it's even more important to sift through these matters carefully, aware of your strengths and goodness. The research is very clear; even one good parent who truly cares, and loves their children with insight and thoughtfulness, can cancel the deficiences of a poor parent. You are that good parent. It's important that the boys get as much from you and your friends and family as possible.

We agreed to settle on "mixed motives." But sometimes I wish I couldn't see myself so well, because there are times (like this) when I don't much care for what I see ....

Wife in tears, part 2

Tuesday of last week, I worked till almost 6:00 pm; I was reviewing a draft document written by one of my employees, and I wanted to finish it up because it had been sitting on my desk way too long. So anyway, along about 6:00, Son 2 and I left the office; and as we were walking to the car, I called Wife on my cell phone to say we were en route.

She picked up the phone on the first ring, and I heard an deafening, inarticulate shriek. Of course this worried me, and I asked her what was wrong. I got a torrent of words that came out so fast I couldn't understand them. I asked her -- through the shrieking -- to repeat it: what was wrong? On the third try, she finally slowed down enough that I could understand her. This afternoon she had tried to balance her checkbook for the first time since we separated our accounts at the end of July -- and she couldn't make it balance. She was beside herself: weeping, wailing, moaning. I talked to her for several minutes (many minutes) and reassured her I would help her with it -- maybe tonight (if she could stay awake) or maybe on the weekend. I repeated -- over and over -- that it would turn out all right, that I had total confidence that we could solve this. I refrained from using any affectionate pet names to help calm her, such as I might have done in earlier years, because somehow they seemed out of place; but otherwise I was as comforting as I could be. There's no way the world will end over one unbalanced checkbook, and there's no way we can't find the problem and fix it. Just put it all away right now, and we'll tackle it together. It will be OK.

During all this time, Son 2 and I were standing in the parking lot of my work. When I finally got off the phone, I opened the car for Son 2 (who was looking a little impatient) and said, "I'm sorry you had to wait. Mommy was pretty upset."

He replied, "Ya think?" [It's an expression he picked up from D, ironically, after her two visits to stay with us.] Then he added, "You only told her, 'Relax, don't panic, everything will be all right' about fifty times ...." But he wasn't mad. He was just playing at being long-suffering, and perhaps teasing me just a little. He chuckled and added that of course he hadn't really counted how many times I had said it, but was just making a point. At any rate it seems that he wasn't panicking.

I often worry about Son 2, in particular, getting sucked into Wife's craziness because he is sensitive and because he has long seen Wife's well-being as his personal responsibility. I have to remind myself that he is also capable of being totally dispassionate about it all ... and that he is getting more so all the time.

Out of the mouths of babes

Son 2 and I were talking last night over dinner, and somehow the conversation turned to hangovers. (Don't ask me why.) Son 2 wondered if I had ever had a hangover and I admitted that yes, well, over the years I've had a few ... not a lot but a few. Son 2 started to say that he was never, ever going to have a hangover, and then qualified it by saying that maybe in college he would. (He is 11 years old, so the whole concept is a little theoretical at this point.) I wanted to demystify the subject for him a bit, or at least deromanticize it. So I explained that basically a hangover is just like having a headache at the same time that you feel queasy in your stomach. Nothing special other than that. He said "Oh," with what sounded like a smidgen of surprise and disappointment that it should be something so commonplace.

To emphasize how dull and ordinary this is, I added, "And there's nothing special about a headache or queasiness. Your mom can feel that just by being sick -- you know she gets those symptoms a lot because of her illnesses."

And Son 2 lobbed back, "Mom can feel that just by seeing HAPPINESS."

Wife in tears, part 1

The assumptions I made Saturday about how smoothly my conversation with Wife had gone proved to be a little overconfident. At the time, I thought I had gotten at least to the point that she could envision a more-or-less weekend custody arrangement.

Then Monday she called me at work to say -- in an obviously tearful voice -- that she "just couldn't live with" an arrangement that meant she saw the kids only on weekends because it would make her just an adjunct to their lives.

I asked, Do you want to work it out right now?

No, we can talk when you get home.

Because if we have to discuss something complicated during the day, I'll ask you to send me e-mail.

When you get home is fine.

OK, we'll talk about it when I get home.

But then, very unwisely, I couldn't resist a parting shot. "Remember though, my point over the weekend was that you don't spend that much time with the boys now. If that was a problem for you -- if you wanted to be more than an adjunct to their lives -- then I would have thought that you would have done something about it before now. The plan that has you see them on the weekends is a plan that gives you as much contact as you have today. So yeah, if you want to we can talk about it when I get home ...."

OK, it was a vindictive and stupid thing to say.

When I passed this story on to D, she let me know this in no uncertain terms:

I feel like frigging Myrtle, about to run into the street and get hit by Daisy [all from The Great Gatsby]. I have had the day from hell, not purgatory, and you have been kind, extremely so all day long. I'm still going to scream, "Stop! Hosea, think!" I'll probably deserve to get run over.

Hosea, it is absolutely imperative that you get as much time with the boys as possible. If I were you, and the stakes were this high, I would avoid gratuitous personal attacks on Wife. So you really expect her to think of herself as an auxiliary parent? Is she going to sit at home and think, "...gee, Hosea is right. I do very little for the boys; if I accept his arrangement, I'll be able to see them for as much as I usually see them, and since that's not very much anyway, I'll be content." I don't think so. I think she will remember the spankings you used to give the children and think of them as abuse; she will recall all the times she bragged about how talented and smart the boys are and how much she contributed to their education. She will realize that there is nothing -- literally nothing else but her role as their mother to give her life meaning, and she will fall apart. You will not gain custody of the boys by reminding her that she is useless and that her role in their life is very small. You must think about what your attorney said about custody matters and you need to depersonalize it. It is rational to argue that your ability to provide transportation and supervision of their homework after school means you should have them during the week. It is rational to argue that her diminished health means you should have primary custody. It is hopelessly subjective and unkind to build your argument for custody by accusing her of not spending time with them anyway, (sub-text: you are a bad mother) so she should just give them to you. After all, she thinks you are also going to keep the house, so you get it all. Sure this is slanted and unfair. It's emotional stuff and you are pretending that you are being impartial. Not so. Re-think.

Re-read the books I gave you. Contact your lawyer. But do not belittle her parenting skills if you want to achieve an amiable divorce. Please walk around this issue again. You wanted to be kind and generous; I argued that it was extremely difficult to compassionate after you have experienced years of humiliation and denigration at her hands. Just think again, with your heart and feelings fully engaged. I know you can approach this from a different direction, and if you can't, ask for help.

God in heaven, I hope you will forgive my saying all this.

In the event, Wife and I have not picked up the conversation at all since that point. I deserved the smack upside the head, no doubt about it. I deserve another one for not going out of my way to bring the subject up again as soon as I got home, specifically to reassure Wife on this point. But it seems like there is always more.

Starting to talk ... barely starting

Saturday morning, Wife and I started talking about what things should look like when we separate. It was a meandering conversation, one that from emotional topics to practical ones and back again with no particular pattern. And it didn't get very far. But it was a start, and I think that is worth while.

On the emotional side, Wife kept coming back to saying, "I thought you would always be there for me. I thought you would never leave me for the rest of my life." At these times she would start to cry.

All I could say to that was, "How strong did you think I am? You spent so many years pushing against me, kicking at me, tugging away from me ... did you think I could continue to carry you forever and not drop you? Did you think I could carry that burden forever and not break under it? I guess in a way that is flattering, but I'm not Superman ...."

On the practical side, we came to no agreements but at least put a couple of topics on the table. None of these issues can be resolved at a single blow, however. My general approach to complex, high-conflict issues is to stake out a general position on things like custody or the house, ... then let her rail against it for a while, ... circle around, ... remind her that if we can't come to an agreement we'll have to go to court at which point neither of us gets what we want, ... and then drop it. Hours or days later we can pick it up again and there is a chance she will have shifted herself to a slightly more reasonable starting point. During the discussion Saturday, for instance, it looked like there was a chance that I might be able to get more time with the boys if I agree to look after some of her stuff. Is the stuff mostly worthless junk? Of course. But if I can get a better custody agreement that way, it might be worth it.

It is also very important to her that we not sell the house right now, so that the boys can still live in it. Her first position on this was one I didn't much care for -- viz., that she should stay in the house with them while I pay for it. Sorry, but no; I told her that I would rather go to court than accept that solution ... and I have been assured by several people that going to court means the court will order us to sell the house and split the proceeds. (In this market, that may be pocket change.) She wailed about this for a while -- how heartless I am, that I want to deprive the boys of their home! No, I said, there are several options that allow them to stay there: you could scrape together the cash to buy me out (and then work out a way to make the mortgage), or I could stay in the house with them. The only one I have ruled out is paying you to stay there. Well, after several hours she circled back to this topic with the thought that she might be willing to accept my staying in the house with the boys if she could still retain 50% title, so that in the future we could sell it at a profit. I said let's talk some more later.

Another example of "circling around": she started by asking for the kids Wednesday evening to Thursday morning and then all weekend (Friday night to Sunday night). Since then, D has assured me that is a pretty normal division of time; but on the spot I responded by offering her Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday. That went nowhere, and we bickered for a while. It would sound like there is not a lot of way forward there. But she is also really afraid of living in the kinds of neighborhoods she'll be able to afford -- her assumption is that she'll only be able to afford poor neighborhoods with lots of gang activity. (Wife also suffers from strong racial prejudices that she staunchly denies ... but that all her friends see and just shrug their shoulders at. Anyway, these prejudices affect her view of where it would be acceptable to live.) So after we wrangled for a bit I dropped the issue and we talked about something else. And a couple of hours later, she came back to say that if I could look after some of her stuff, she might be able to look for an apartment in a small town about 20 minutes away, a town which is cheaper and -- for the money -- nicer. This small town is close enough that we could still keep actively in touch; but it is far enough that she really couldn't ask to have the boys for a week night on a regular basis, because it would be inconvenient to get them back to school the next morning. Which means that in a roundabout way she has dropped the demand for Wednesday without actually having to concede anything explicitly.

We further agreed that any arrangements will have to be somewhat flexible: so that I can take the boys if she is sick, or she can take them if I have a business trip, or neither of us insists on "our"time if there is something special happening over a weekend somewhere. After all, more and more the boys will want to spend time apart from us both.
__________

The conversation resolved nothing, but I was fairly pleased by it. At least it opened up some topics so that we could explore them a little farther. But when I described it to D on the phone that afternoon, she got very quiet and withdrawn, the way she usually does before some kind of meltdown. I asked her what was wrong -- and had to push considerably -- and finally she said that if I kept the house and kept Wife's stuff, then I could never afford to visit her. Well that's silly, and I tried to persuade her that we were talking about apples and oranges here and that I was trying to make concessions in areas I didn't care much about in order to sweeten the deal in areas where I did. But when we ended the conversation, D was still quiet.

The next morning I got a follow-on e-mail from D which expanded on her fears. It ran in part:

As I see it, you will not be free to build a relationship with me, or with any woman in the years ahead. You will be trapped by a mountain of things you neither want or use, but they are yours to care for and store anyway. You will spend more for your storage locker than you will on travel during the year, and that doesn't even begin to deal with the house and garage. You will have a large mortgage, alimony payments, credit card debt from her past purchases and likely, at least one tuition bill. There seems to be no 'starting over', no freedom gained at all. Of course, I realize that you feel sorry for her and your compassionate nature recognizes her sadness, but I wonder how guilty you ought to feel; you will be left with staggering debt and you will be the primary caregiver for your children. You certainly did not sign up for this deal; you hoped and worked for a relationship that offered some genuine love and support. Instead, Wife violated every precept of decency and now wants to take away any opportunity you have to build a new life. I am deeply apprehensive. You reassure me that you will be able to afford to see me, but I'm not convinced; you haven't done the financial calculations and my head for figures (simple calculation is the only math I do) tells me you are being optimistic at best. More seriously, there is no way to adjust our relationship, and you never mention moving beyond brief visits in cities far away. Perhaps this is because you have never been very good at planning for the future, but without growth and challenge, the relationship between us will remain on the edge of your life. I'm not sure how satisfactory that will be for either of us. It certainly doesn't build community or family, and that's always been central for me. For example, say you had the opportunity to join me in [another state]. Let's assume we were both able to find work and the boys were able to go to a good school and receive an excellent education. Under the arrangement you have now, there is no way any such arrangement could work. It's not a matter of custody; the boys could fly and see Wife on a very regular basis. But you would have custody of her property, and it's like Jacob Marley's chains, forged over a life of greed and extravagance. You will remain in the city where you are now, caring for them even if the boys attend boarding school and are far away. I'm not convinced this is viable, at least not if your happiness matters.

.... In short, what do you get out of this arrangement besides more responsibility and the pleasure of the boy's company? The last is a vital and all-important consideration, but I might want more. I know I want more. I'd like the opportunity to spend some genuine time with you, living a regular life and sharing meals and daily activities with you. I want a regular and exuberant sex life. I'd like the boys to see a loving relationship, and I'd like them to realize that change is inevitable and often a good thing. That doesn't mean I want to live with you permanently, or anything of the sort. But I'm worth more than a week's vacation here or there. Any woman you cultivated would want more of your time and energy. You are loving, kind, humorous and great company. You might open the possibility of that being returned in your future life.

Wow. Well, there are several possible answers to this, some of them kinder than others. Among them: I'm not suggesting any of this out of any feeling of guilt; nobody has any numbers in the first place, so it is specious to talk about even "simple calculations"; nobody ever said any of this was cast in stone; and I'm not planning to marry D. Fortunately she ended her letter by explaining very clearly that this was her own, personal, emotional response to what I had said, and that it was absolutely not any kind of request for me to change course by an inch. But my pushing her about why she had become so quiet had forced her to unpack her own feelings, and here they were.

We talked some more over the weekend (mostly by e-mail, actually), and D calmed down. I thanked her for letting me see it from her perspective, and I reminded her that nothing has been agreed and nothing is cast in stone. And she relaxed some. There is still a long ways to go, however.
__________

There is more ... the follow-on to this conversation has been trailing through the week ... but I think it belongs in another post.

"Is this just a mid-life crisis?"

Thursday evening I worked late, collected Son 1 from his soccer game (they won 3-0), drove home, and we all had dinner.

After dinner, Wife and I talked a little more -- very lightly, but even talking that lightly is a big change from the silence recently. She said that the trip to see Boyfriend 3's dying father [Tartuffe] yesterday was really "intense." I asked about this, because it seemed to me that except for half an hour with Boyfriend 3 at the beginning of her visit, and twenty minutes with my parents at the end, she was alone for two hours with an unconscious, dying man. There are ways that could be intense, but I wanted to know which ones she had in mind.

Piecing it together (although this was not the order of the conversation), it seems that a lot of her reflection started with seeing Boyfriend 3, and with them sharing their regrets for their affair (as I mentioned yesterday); then after he left, it seems like she spent time pondering the turn of events which meant that that affair (and others like it) had led us to making plans to split up.

Once again she started crying, commenting that -- as I know -- she doesn't deal with change very well and our divorce will be a very big change. She also said plainly -- for the first time that I remember -- that she is really frightened by this looming change. I think this is valuable because I think it is true, and Wife says all too few true things. So part of why I have the patience for this kind of conversation, even though we don't really "accomplish" anything in them, is that I preserve a hope that even now she can find her way to seeing the truth instead of hugging so tightly to self-deception.

When she elaborated on why she was frightened, she listed two fears in the following order: that it will mean a drastically lowered standard of living, and that it will mean she will see the boys less often. Later on, as we continued to talk, she said that the single hardest thing for us to work out would be the finances because the cost of housing is high. I said that's trivial -- if we have to, we can sell the house and each of us take a one-bedroom apartment; that will be cheaper than the mortgage plus an apartment. She still demurred, so I pointed out that we could always move to cheaper towns in the area -- the kind of town Wife has always looked down her nose at. She was quiet for a long time after that.

There was more. She wondered out loud whether maybe we were both just going through "mid-life crises" and were getting bored with a marriage that was "basically good." (I don't even bother trying to reconcile remarks like that with the other vile things she has said on other occasions.) I said I don't know what a mid-life crisis is. She said it is when you have to give up your youthful dreams for your life, and you worry about becoming less attractive and having to spend the rest of your life with the same mate, so you think about changing for somebody new. I rolled my eyes and said that the last thing I need right now is another woman in my life -- which, if you interpret it in the fullest possible context, is probably even true. After all, I've already got D in my life ... why would I need "another"? (smile) I also explained that, as a youth, I had never been able to envision the future very well; so my youthful dreams for my life were pretty inchoate. And I reminded her that we have gone over some very basic reckoning. A marriage typically involves mutual fondness, common property, and sex. But our mutual fondness has been battered by years of fighting; we can't agree on how to spend money (or handle property); and our sex life (which was unsatisfying in the past) is now clearly dead. So if this is "just a mid-life crisis," then what exactly is left to rebuild on?

All she said was, "I know. I come to the same answer every time I think about it." But of course it frightens her.

Then it was time for me to chase the boys into bed, and Wife turned in. As I was trying to get him to brush his teeth, Son 1 asked us if we thought he could be a lawyer. We both said yes, if he wanted to he would be an excellent lawyer. This made him happy, and he started to talk about how much money he could make as a lawyer. I told him yes, all that is very, very possible ... but I still made him brush his teeth.

Good night, all.