The devil's own poison

The next day, I reflected some on D’s thoughts.

I hadn't thought about Son 1 using his student ID, but of course you are right. Gosh, I wonder if he remembers where he put it? (smile) As for the later argument, yes at some level Wife has to have some awareness of what she has become, and some awareness of why I avoid socializing with her. I think she must hide the first part of that -- what she has become -- from her conscious mind, or she would be unable to live with herself. The second part -- why I refuse to let her accompany Son 1 on school visits, etc -- she plainly understands. But like all things that reflect badly on her, I think she transmutes the knowledge (at least at a conscious level) into a feeling of persecution: if I think unpleasant things about her, that "proves" that I am an enemy -- that I am wrong. I don't think she can ever let herself acknowledge consciously the possibility that she might be wrong; and I think the reason for this is that her fundamental self-hatred and self-loathing are so intense that if she ever allowed the slightest crack in the dike then it would collapse completely and she would drown in the ensuing flood. It's a picture that makes me very sad, when I can distance myself enough from her vitriolic personal attacks on me to be able to look at it objectively. But I have given up thinking that I know the cure -- or indeed even thinking that there is a cure achievable by human hands. Maybe if she really wanted to change, she might be able to ... but I think that the very ailment makes that impossible because to want to change she first has to admit she is wrong and she can't do that. It is a vicious circle. Like the doctor says to his patient in a cartoon she cut out and taped to the bedroom door, there's nothing wrong with her that a little reincarnation couldn't clear up.

I only hope that she doesn't simply poison the minds of the boys towards the idea of a better school or a better life -- I mean, by hinting that if they go away it will be the death of her and then letting that notion worm its way into their hearts. Of course, Son 1 is more likely to be resistant to that kind of appeal anyway, and he is the first one on the firing line (so to speak). But that also gives her more time to work on Son 2, and I have deep fears about the level of damage she will do to him before she is done, using his native kindness and caring generosity to twist his heart into a pretzel around her. Sometimes I feel helpless to stop this; and it is all the worse because I have no idea how far she takes it when she talks to Son 2 in my absence. So I don't really know what to do to try to counteract it. All I can think to do is to be as consistent as I know how, to avoid engaging in manipulative whining on my own behalf and not to accept it when I hear it from the boys, to support the things the boys both do and to hold up my end as a dad. And then I hope that Son 2 will be able to see the difference between us. In the long run I suspect he will, but I also know that process can take decades of reflection and many hours of therapy. And again I feel very sad.

I have been to very few memorial services, so I didn't realize that they are as revealing as you say [in a letter I didn’t bother to quote]. But surely a person's character is revealed by the people around him. In the same way that organizations end up mirroring the person at the top, so you can see Tartuffe's peculiar preoccupations, his self-centeredness, and his total lack of internal discipline or boundaries in the lives of his children -- most of whom, in one way or other, have made complete train wrecks of their own lives. Looking at those train wrecks in turn, I have very little hope for their children .... The sins of the fathers are indeed visited on the children unto generations, not even as supernatural punishment but simply through the way we learn as children, by mimicking our parents. And once again I worry about Son 1 and Son 2.

Gosh this is turning into a depressing letter! Sorry about that ....

I don't know if Wife is consciously or intellectually aware that I have finally been unfaithful to her, but of course at an emotional level she can tell that there has been a profound shift. The loving support that she always expected from me -- that she assumed would be there regardless how she abused it -- is gone, and she feels its absence keenly. To anyone with a modicum of awareness, it would be obvious what this has to mean; combine that with the fact that she knows you and I are still in touch (sometimes several times a day) and the whole story ought to be plain to her. I do not know how much she has allowed herself to understand at a conscious level, however; sometimes she can be remarkably obtuse in that respect. And while I absolutely agree with you about the need for tact and discretion, if I were walking into a social event where I thought that everybody already knew about us there is no way I would be as bitter and reluctant as she is. It seems to me that it could only be a point of pride to be loved by someone so exceptional as you.

D’s reply was somewhat more religious than her letters often are, but she also spoke directly to my concerns about the boys.

There is so much to reflect upon concerning your last two letters. I realize that we are sinners, and I mean that in the most profound way; we can only be healed and re-created by God's mercy and grace (the theological language is unfortunate; I wish this could be said in words that are less tarnished with all the manipulation and destructiveness committed by the historical Church), but Augustine is correct when he asserts that our hearts are restless until we find rest in God. We long to be whole, to be productive, to be able to live rightly. Wife and the boys have the same yearnings, even if they are not religious or even Christian. As long as life endures, we can change and move towards God. That's the message of the thief on the cross, and we have the assurance of so many stories...lost sheep being found and rejoiced over, the conversion of many people who seemed to be lost.

There is no question that Wife will try and manipulate Son 1 and Son 2 to stay with her, but both boys have a strong desire to explore other ways of living; they will also want to study and to discover the intense pleasures this world, even with all its tragedy and despair, has to offer. You are right to realize that your consistency and balance are essential, as are your values and roles as father/mentor. I have hope and faith that all will be well. I also believe that beauty, music, and love are not optional components to a life well lived, and perhaps one day, your beloved sons can witness all three in your life. Surely your new-found courage and decisiveness are recognized, even if you do not comment on them.

I would be very surprised, indeed incredulous, if Wife did not realize that you and I loved each other. That said, people deceive themselves and hide from unpleasant realities on many levels. You are correct to appreciate the depth of her conviction that your love for her would withstand any unfaithfulness or betrayal on every imaginable level. Wife has an eerie inability to see you as fully human, or even capable of love. That conviction makes no sense when one knows you, and it puzzled me for decades. Only when I came to appreciate the depth of Wife's "self-hatred and self-loathing" did the pieces fall into place; you "cannot" love her because no one could possibly care or love her. That's unbearably sad, as you note, but it is also tremendously destructive; it is the devil's own poison. Such a belief denies God absolutely. I am very clear on this point, in part because I recognize that my own fragile sense of self-esteem also denies God and his overwhelming goodness, beauty and love. Only when you appreciate the significance of God's sustaining grace coupled with his demand that we make choices that honor ourselves and others can we begin to live as he desires us to respond to his presence and energy in the world.

Goodness...I'm not sure I've said much worth listening to this morning, but I know you will read my words in a few hours and I will feel a sense of your warmth; your arms around me, your loving kisses and embrace. You will forgive my failures, rejoice in my strengths, and share breakfast with me. There is a sweet consistency about the everyday, prosaic realities of life. I hear your clear voice, beautiful voice, in your words on the screen. How fortunate I am to know you and love you in return!

“You didn’t want your horrible ugly wife to embarrass you!”

The same evening that we discussed whether Wife should go to Tartuffe’s memorial service, there was a short coda which was much uglier. Very briefly: ...

Wife had registered Son 1 for an exam to get into the Honors program at our local public high school (in case he were to go there). The exam was to be given about a month after the evening we were talking. And the office made a point of telling Wife that Son 1 would need a photo ID to get in.

Wife: I guess you'll have to take him because I don't have access to his passport. [I had hidden the boys’ passports not long after Wife started acting very irrationally about her own, as described here.] Maybe you can tell me why I don't have access to his passport? I have just as much right to it as you do!

Hosea: In practical terms what difference does it make? Anywhere he needs it, we'll both be agreeing on it. Right? So he'll have it.

Wife: Yes, but I have a right to it!

Hosea: Rights are theoretical; let's stay practical.

... This cycle repeated for a while....
__________

Wife: I may not sign for him to go to boarding school.

Hosea: That's what your mother did to you. Don't follow her pattern.

Wife: Well why should I?

Hosea: Because you don't want to cut off his chances for a good education at the knees. [Of course Son 1 could get a good education at a public school too, but I was trying to appeal to Wife's academic snobbery.] I thought that whatever we fought about, we always agreed that our children's educations were the single highest priority. Are you telling me that's no longer true? That you are willing to sacrifice them so you can score some kind of points against me?

Wife: I just don't see why I should sign to send him to some school that I've never even seen. And you were very careful never to let me see any of those schools because you didn't want your horrible, ugly wife to embarrass you!

Hosea: Go see whatever you want. And it has nothing to do with embarrassing me. Son 1's high school applications aren't about me. They are about Son 1.

Wife: Yes, but I had a right to go see those schools.

Hosea: Meaning it's all about you and not Son 1?

Wife: No, but I had a right!

Hosea: Rights are theoretical. Let's stay practical and see if he gets in. If he gets in, then it really doesn't matter how, does it?

Wife: I don't see why he even has to go to boarding school.

Hosea: What? You want to keep him at home so he "doesn't forget where he came from"?

Wife: Yes!!

Hosea: Stop and think. Those were your mother's words about you. Do you really want to repeat her patterns?

silence

Hosea: Remember how you think about your mother, now that she is gone. Years in the future, when you and I are both dead and gone, is that how you want Son 1 to remember you? The same way that you remember her? Because if you break the cycle, break the pattern, then he will remember you with love and tenderness rather than with the hatred that you feel for your mother. [There is an argument that I may be spouting complete bullshit here, so far as any understanding of Son 1's psyche is concerned. But if so, I think it could have been useful bullshit.]

Wife: [in a very small voice] Do you really think that he will love me more if I let him go to boarding school?

Hosea: Yes, absolutely.

Wife: There's always college.

Hosea: Yes, but he needs this in high school. It is a special time in a boy's growth -- there is nothing quite like it. I don't know if it is the same for girls because I was never a girl; but those years for boys they really need mentors outside the home. [Again, this may be bullshit, although I don't think so; but I hope it proves useful.]
__________

Wife: And I still want my gun back. [You may remember the last time we had this discussion.]

Hosea: Really? Whom are you going to kill with it?

Wife: Nobody. I just want it back.

Hosea: Let's be practical. The only purpose of a gun is to kill somebody. Even in self-defense, the purpose is to kill somebody. And you can't be serious about wanting it for self-defense, not in our town. So you must what to kill somebody and I want to know who? Me?

Wife: Don't flatter yourself.

Hosea: Then who?

Wife: Nobody. But right now it is stolen property that has crossed state lines [neither of these is a true statement, but she thinks Boyfriend 4 took it with him when he left last time] and I want it back.

Hosea: And I just want to know whom you plan to kill with it ....

... And so the cycle loops around and continues ....

====================

I wrote all of this in a letter to D. who had just a couple of comments to add:

My goodness.

Son 1 only needs his student ID to get into the Honors exam. Imagine if the test administrators really required a passport to take the test; that action alone would discriminate against all the students from lower-income families who have no opportunity to travel.

The last argument you had with Wife was ugly; it was also absolutely predictable. She knew exactly why you never invited her to attend any of the schools with you and Son 1; she is horrible and ugly. If she refuses to allow Son 1 to attend boarding school, he will never forgive her, even if he did not want to go in the first place (which is not true). To close down the opportunity to attend any one of these wonderful schools would be unforgivable; she must know that on some level. That Son 1's attendance will also close the door to any intimacy between mother and son is, unfortunately, also true, but that will only become more pronounced; Son 1 decided long ago to have little emotional connection with his mother. I thought your comparison of Wife with her mother was appropriate, however sad and terrible. She will reconsider; your fury at being blocked on this issue will end any prospect for an amicable divorce. She would lose her health insurance and your lawyer would make short work of her desire to be a co-parent. You may have to remind her that the boys' education is of deepest significance to you. You will not shrug and move back; her numerous affairs are not as significant as the possibility that she will stop your sons from experiencing the kind of educational environment that so shaped you. Your old headmaster must be smiling from heaven, for to get such an affirmation of his life's work so many years later from one of his students is very significant.

Wife has no business with a gun. Ever. I still have nightmares about her killing me or you or both of us, and not even being able to explain why. I'm serious. She is not rational much of the time and her hatreds have twisted her thoughts. She has no 'right' to a gun given her past behavior. God in heaven.

And with that, it’s probably time to move onto the next post ....

Deciding about a funeral

Towards the end of February, we were notified about the upcoming memorial service for a long-time friend of my parents, a man I’ll call, with considerable charity, Tartuffe. For anybody who is keeping track, Tartuffe was the father of Wife’s Boyfriend 3. (I know I haven’t written a lot about him before, but he is the one I characterized as Elmer Gantry way back in this post here. I mentioned that his father was dying last fall here and here .) Anyway, Wife spent some time agonizing over whether to attend the service.

There was a logistical side to the question, because the service was to be be held in a city about four or five hours away from us. Wife is afraid to drive that far by herself, because she might get tired or disoriented. I wasn’t planning to go: I really think I have seen all I need in this lifetime of any of the members of that extended family, and I don't want the boys around them. My parents were going, but they live maybe halfway between us and this other city so it’s not as far for them. (And it would be rather out of the way for them to come fetch her.)

Why did she want to go? A couple of reasons: (1) Wife started off hating Tartuffe, but in the end she probably appreciated his particular brand of craziness better than anyone else. And (2) she figured this would be the last time she'd ever be able to see Boyfriend 3, because Ivy (B3’s wife) was so furious at the affair that she would prevent them ever meeting again. But Ivy couldn't very well interfere with a funeral. So the logistical question was how Wife should get down there. In the end, she called my father and asked for a ride -- with the thought that perhaps he could fetch her on Friday, they could all go to the service together on Saturday, and he could bring her back to our place on Sunday. He said he would have to talk to my mother about it.

But then she told me that she was reconsidering ... maybe she didn't want to go after all.

Hosea: Really? Why not?

"Well," she said with some asperity, "I hadn't realized that Boyfriend 3 had told his father all about the affair, and that his father had told your father all about it too."

Hosea: Mmmm?

Yes, well apparently all my father had said was that Tartuffe had always had a lascivious imagination and that my dad assumed in his later years he got carried away with it. This is a really vague, nebulous, almost meaningless statement, but it is the sort of thing my dad says when he is trying not to say something else. And then apparently my father had gone on to say that Ivy was still very jealous of Wife.

Hosea: Really? That's all?

I reminded Wife that she had told me almost identically the same story some four years ago; so it sounded to me like nothing in particular had changed between then and now in terms of who has told whom what.

Wife: [in a stage whisper] And I'm sure you've told them all about it too.

Hosea: Huh? I asked. What are you getting at?

No answer.

Hosea: OK look. It sounds to me like nothing has changed in the last four years.

Wife: [sullenly] Well I never knew before today that your dad had heard about Boyfriend 3 and me.

Hosea: Oh come on, you told me the exact same story nearly word for word, years ago. So yes, of course you knew all about it. And you have enjoyed my parents' hospitality plenty of times since then, like at Christmas, or earlier this month when we went down to visit. So if nothing has changed since then, and if it was fine then, why not now?

Wife: [still bitterly] Yes, I went down for Christmas. And all they wanted to know when we were down there is why we were splitting up. I just told them we didn't seem to be able to get along any more.

Hosea: But of course. If you introduce a topic of conversation [I know from things my father has said that she was the one to bring up the subject of divorce] then it is only reasonable to expect people to ask, "Oh really? Tell me all about it." That's just polite, and if they hadn't asked you'd be complaining that they didn't care about anything you said. So anyway, what is the big difference between then and now, as far as holding up your face in front of my parents is concerned?

She said she didn't want to talk about it any more and stalked off to the bedroom.

When dinner was on autopilot for a few minutes, I ambled back to rejoin the conversation and proposed a different way of looking at the situation. "If you are worried about people talking," I said, "you'll never stop them talking by staying away. They'll still talk regardless. All you achieve by staying away is depriving yourself of the chance to be at Tartuffe's memorial service. And you probably felt more kinship with his odd perspective than many people did. (She made an affirmative noise.) So where is the sense in your staying away? I mean, do what you want either way; but I don't think the things you are talking about have much bearing on it."

Rather than answering, she launched in a different direction by saying, "I also don't know what your father meant when he told Ivy that after all the changes I've gone through lately I'm no threat any more."

Hosea: [thinks to self: Gosh, I have a really good idea what he meant! But it would have been gratuitously unkind to say so. So instead I said, ...] I have no idea what he meant. I'm lousy at reading minds. Did you ask him?

Wife: No, I just assumed he meant that I no longer have the charm or looks or sparkle or intelligence to catch a man's attention any more. It's nice to know [she added, pouting] that I've become a devoted spinster.

I wasn't sure what to say to that, and pretty soon it was dinner time. After dinner, as she was settling into bed, I thought of something else.

Hosea: You know, you told me once long ago that my father had said things to you that made you think he knew about you and Boyfriend 1, too. And that was many years ago. So it really doesn't seem like you have anything to worry about here.

Wife: Oh sure, she said. Why don't we just haul all of them out?

Hosea: Huh? I'm not sure what you mean.

Wife: You know, your father also accused me of sleeping with your brother! [What is that supposed to prove???]

Hosea: I don't know what you are getting at. I'm just saying that maybe you are worrying over something which is a non-issue. I mean, it seems like whatever you are worrying about that would keep you from attending, that horse ran out of the barn years ago. It's probably pretty silly to worry about locking the door now.

Wife: [deep sigh] Well, Boyfriend 3 promised me that he wouldn't tell anybody.

Hosea: Oh, but you're not angry about that, are you? Having people talk about you when you have an affair pretty much comes with the territory. Besides, it looks to me like a pretty good example of a "natural consequence" like we are always trying to teach the boys. You know, if you do this there is a good risk you will experience that. So you had your eyes open to the possibilities when you walked into the affair in the first place. [In fact, I don't for a minute believe she was aware of the probable consequences when she fell into bed with Boyfriend 3. I think Wife is very bad at forseeing the consequences of her actions. But I wanted to plant the suggestion that she had in fact been smart enough to see that far ahead, in order thereby to plant the suggestion that she isn't really angry or bitter. It sounds far-fetched, but I'm not convinced it was entirely a fool's errand. Moving on, I used the following analogy ....] It's like if you are late for something so you decide to speed down the highway. You know that if you speed, you run a certain percent risk of getting caught by the sheriff and getting a ticket. So if you are caught you aren't mad at the sheriff ... because you knew from the get-go that it was a possibility. And it is the same thing here, with facing the consequence of being talked-about. You knew that was a chance before you started up in the first place.

Wife: Well, I thought the benefits outweighed the costs, but I was wrong about that. And that's what I regret the most: that I lost a really great friendship in the bargain.

Now, personally, I'm not sure I see how that particular friendship could possibly have stayed out of bed forever, because both of them were needy and insecure, and both of them had weak or missing personal boundaries. But again, it would have been unkind to say that. What I said instead was, ....

Hosea: I think that's another one of these risks of any affair, again like getting a ticket when you are speeding. Certainly nothing to be angry about. But just one of those things. Heck, you’ve read a lot of literature. You must have read hundreds of works where making a friendship sexual ruins the friendship. So you must have known it could happen. ["Hundreds of works of literature"??? Where the heck did that come from? Sometimes these things just pop into my mouth and I say them even if they make no sense. But she didn't bat an eye.]

Wife: Hmmm. Well, I hear Ivy is still doing Weight Watchers, so at least I would have the sweet revenge of walking in wearing a size 6. [I think I have mentioned that Wife used to be very heavy.]

Inside I thought, My God you must be kidding. You look 80 years old, and not even an attractive 80. You looked way better a hundred pounds heavier than you are now. But what I really said was, ...

Hosea: Gosh, is revenge that important to you?

Wife: Well, Ivy accused me of a lot of things that weren't true.

Hosea: Of course she did. [I don't know if she did or not, but it hardly matters in this context.] But that's just what you would expect her to do. If you were writing this situation up in a novel, that's exactly what you would make the Ivy-character do. So you can't possibly be mad at her for that.

Wife: Hmmm. I need to sleep.
____________________

P.S.: In the end, the weather was inclement enough that my parents decided not to make the trip, so the whole discusion was moot. Life is a series of anticlimaxes.

Running away from dinner

This story dates from the beginning of February. It is one of the ones that I have had backlogged for a while. I’m not sure any more why I thought to post it; it’s just depressing, self-centered, and whiny. It may have the minimal advantage of setting up a couple of my later posts about the boys. Still, you probably want to skip it.

This spring, Son 1 will graduate from the eighth grade. I think I have mentioned that our local public high school is pretty good, but we have also been looking at private options. So anyway, one day at the beginning of February, Son 1 and I had visited one of these schools. We got home about 4:00. I was exhausted by that time (maybe from getting to bed late the night before) and fell into a nap for an hour. But first, I asked Son 1 to spend some time working on the short-answer section of his application to the school we had just visited. When I got up an hour later, he was playing computer games and had not touched the application. I shooed him off the computer and came out to the kitchen. Wife was just putting the dishes in the dishwasher so I could make dinner (why does she always wait till the last minute?) and Son 2 was trying to ask her a question about his math homework. I looked at the problem and he was approaching it in a bizarre way; so I showed him how those problems are normally done, and he got huffy and sarcastic with me.

I assembled the ingredients for dinner. After a few minutes I checked back in the study -- and Son 1 was again playing computer games. "But I did what you asked!" This turned out to mean he had written one sentence on each of the short-answer questions. They left room for a paragraph, and I told him to write more. Back to making dinner. Next, Son 1 was in his room reading comic books. "But I wrote more!" Well what about checking online to see if you have any homework from today that will be due tomorrow ... homework that you missed hearing about by not being there today? Go check. Back to making dinner. A few minutes later he hadn't budged from reading comic books, and I had to insist.

Meanwhile, Wife was having great trouble getting Son 2 to focus on his math. Indeed, she was saying many of the same things we have to say to Son 1: write neater, show all your work, don't do it in your head. I tried to second these injunctions while chopping carrots and assembling the carrot pie I had planned for dinner. Once the pie was in the oven -- and I had checked on Son 1 once more, who was doing something else to blow off his work (I'm losing track) -- I sat down to try to help him with one problem that seemed especially difficult. But Son 2 was too upset or too mad -- I'm not sure at what -- to pay any attention and finally I suggested he take a break. He came back a few minutes later and finished the problem, but his face bespoke cold fury.

And I just felt like giving up. I have told you before how sometimes I despair of being able to convey basic attitudes that I took for granted at that age – simple-minded, superficial shit like trying to please the teacher or tackle my homework diligently. I’m not asking for anything profound or fundamental here. These aren’t going to make them better or more moral people, heaven knows. They won’t improve their lives in fundamental ways. But it baffles me how to work with them if attitudes like that aren’t kind of assumed at some level, as a kind of common language. Don't all kids want to please their teachers? I mean -- OK, I know that's a dumb question. Of course the answer is no. But it seems so simple. It's not like it requires any deep soul-searching or internal striving. I took it for granted when I was a kid, absolutely unstated. And I have no idea how to convey it. So I figure I can't. I know D tells me that the boys will learn all the most important values just by living with adults who practise them. But sometimes, like this night, it is hard to feel that; and the picture that unrolls in my mind instead has me butting heads with them in increasingly fruitless ways until they leave home -- having acquired whatever they have acquired in the way of life skills -- and go off to live their lives however they live them, it making in the end almost no difference that they were my children instead of somebody else's for all the good that I was able to do them. I don't say this picture will be the truth; but I do say that sometimes it is what plays on my internal movie screen.

So I felt, as I say, like giving up. And in a manner of speaking I did just that. I made a salad to go with the pie; then when the pie came out of the oven I put on my shoes and a jacket, grabbed my walking stick, and told the family to sit down and enjoy dinner while I went out for a walk. I figured that Son 1 was mad at me for my badgering him to get something done all afternoon; that Son 2 was mad at me for ... well, whatever it was about the way I tried to help him (I'm still not sure); and that Wife wouldn't miss me, just on general principle. And I was so tired of having people mad at me, so tired of having to be stern about anything. So I went out walking for an hour and a half.

When I came back, Wife was already asleep. The boys were up, but it was time for them to get ready for bed. I booted up my computer, checked my mail from work, and wrote a letter to D. And I had a little salad and pie as I wrote. It wasn’t bad, actually. Meanwhile, I know that I shouldn't have run away from dinner. I know that. In the first place, probably nobody was as mad as I thought they were; and in the second place, I belonged there regardless. I just didn't feel up to it at the time.

Throwing a lifeline

I talked with D on the phone Friday afternoon. She told me some of what is going on at her work (deranged, psychotic, dysfunctional ... somehow none of those serene, cheerful adjectives quite seems to capture it) and then we started talking for a bit about our last series of e-mail conversations. With no prompting on my part, D freely admitted that she was being clingy, insecure, possessive, neurotic, demanding ... and that all these things made her completely unattractive. I mumbled because it didn't seem quite nice to say, "God yes!" and yet it was hard to argue with what she was saying here. But then she explained some of what lies behind this unpleasant behavior.

Did I mention that her workplace is deranged, psychotic, and dysfunctional -- and that's on a good day? (In fact, a couple of days ago I sent her this link, because most of the points mentioned in the article match one-for-one with stories she has told me about her job.) She has also been working crazy long hours, getting four hours of sleep a night and then doing nothing but work. Her life it totally out of control right now. And she explained that she has been looking to our relationship to provide some kind of ballast or balance for her. Because her work life is so stressful, she has pictured this to herself as fantasies of living with me happily ever after. Last fall I posed the question whether D sees me as an exit strategy; the answer appears to be "Yes" except that the exit in question is from her job and not (necessarily) her marriage. But as a result she has gotten despondent over not seeing any prompt and decisive steps on my part towards divorce; she has assumed that this means I have definitely decided to stay with Wife forever and ever, and so she can't lean on me.

I gave her several answers to this. One was that I simply dither over big stuff. I'm not always prompt and decisive. Another was that she's a long way away so she can't see the little stuff that goes on ... little stuff which convinces me that the marriage isn't forever because neither Wife nor I want it forever, only it's just not clear when we'll dismantle it. And a third was to ask who the hell appointed her Project Manager for my divorce, or else how had she gotten it into her head that I was responsible to report back to her anyway on what progress I was making? (I was marginally nicer about it than that, but only marginally.) She acknowledged the fairness of that last response, and said the other two were helpful in giving her a better sense of what was going on.

But then she added a remark which may have saved the whole phone call. She said all she really needs, in this swirling tempestuous chaos where she works, is some fixed point to hold onto. Fixed point? Sure. For example, this had been a bad week; but the very fact that we were talking on the phone at all helped her put the week back into perspective. She said, "You threw me a lifeline by calling just now -- really you did." So even if it's just that she knows we'll always talk by phone on Friday afternoons (or whatever), that will give her something to look forward to when it gets bad ... and it will give her some frame of reference outside the workplace itself. If she can't look forward to marrying me, OK fine. (And for any number of reasons, I think it is highly unlikely that we will ever marry.) If she can't look forward to seeing me regularly and often, that sucks but she can cope with it. But just to have something ....

And as I hung up the phone a few minutes later, I thought, "Well maybe we can work this out then." There's no way I'm going to commit to something big like marriage or even permanent cohabitation on such-and-such schedule. But a weekly phone call? Yeah, I oughta be able to handle that ....

So it's progress.

Calling the paramedics, 2

Fortunately, life is a series of anticlimaxes.

After Wife had been in the Emengency Room under observation for three hours -- during which time she was alternately unconscious or incoherent -- she roused herself and was able to explain that her collapse was merely the result of a sleeping pill she had taken. She takes them every night, which is why the symptoms looked so familiar to me. I can't think why that explanation didn't occur to me last night.

So my parents took her back to their house where she slept the rest of the night. And I guess all's well that ends well, although when I contemplate how big the bill will be for that utterly pointless hospital visit, I thank heaven for medical insurance. (sigh)

She may stay over another night and come back Thursday.

Calling the paramedics

Yesterday afternoon, Wife drove the two-and-a-half hours out to see my parents and take care of some business in their town. She expects to be gone for a day, maybe two. (The details are part of a whole other story, that maybe I will get around to.) Anyway, she called in late afternoon to say she had gotten there just fine. So far, so good.

Later that evening -- quite late, in fact -- I was sitting at my desk composing the previous post ("Off the rails") when my father called. He said Wife had collapsed without warning while he was talking to her and picking up from dinner, and he had been unable to rouse her.

So he called the paramedics.

I asked him to describe her symptoms, and honestly it sounded like the same behavior I have seen around here a lot. (See, for example, this story here.) I told him as much, and suggested that the paramedics were probably overkill.

My dad put the chief paramedic on the phone, and I'm afraid I didn't impress him. He said simply that once they are called, they are responsible. Since Wife didn't look OK to him, my opinion didn't count for much.

So they brought in a stretcher and drove her away to the hospital.

My father says he'll keep me informed. Gosh, never a dull moment, huh?

Off the rails

The last few days -- ever since the weekend, it seems -- D's e-mails have been getting shorter and shorter. This usually happens when she is upset about something, and often I respond by trying to dig it out of her right away. For some reason I just haven't felt up to it this week, so I have replied in kind ... shorter and shorter. I was hoping that she would decide this wasn't going anywhere, tell me what was on her mind, and then we could discuss it and get back to normal. When that didn't seem to get anywhere -- and as of this morning it hadn't -- I decided maybe I should say something. I wanted to tell her that we had entered a self-feeding cycle, that I was answering her silences with more silence, and that maybe this wasn't sustainable. And I wanted it to sound like caring, not carping. I wanted it to sound gentle, not critical. So I spent the day at work composing a poem:

Exchange

My love, she speaks me wisdom,
thought with keen-eyed clarity.
My love, she sings me verses
of immortal poetry.
Her kiss bursts into passion
and the flames to heaven leap.
But then she slips to silence,
and cries herself to sleep.

Her wisdom finds me grateful –
such a mind with such a heart!
Her songs I meet with rhyming,
my small baby steps at art.
From her passion I take fire,
as to burn myself away.
But toward her silence I get sullen,
and I cruelly silent stay.

Only I never got a chance to send it. When I got home and logged into my e-mail -- after feeding the boys dinner and getting them to bed -- I found the following note from D:

We are pretty seriously 'off the rails', and have been ever since you blasted me for anxiously inquiring about you when the mail system went down. [That would have been the event that I described here, but which I must confess to having understood in very, very different terms.] During the last couple of weeks, I have been badly managed by you; almost everything you have said seems to have made things worse, and I glumly realize the same may be true for my responses. I hate fighting with you because you are far more skilled than I, and because I fear prompting some response that would truly hurt me and make things worse. I also realize that my nagging doubts have been around since last year, and we need to figure out a better way of dealing with difficult issues than we have right now. I think it might be worthwhile to clear the air before we travel [we have been making plans for a tenth date]; we have very little time together and I'd like it to be loving.

I realize that you might prefer to communicate by e-mail, but that option is off the table; dialog is necessary. I'm sorry to be inflexible here, but an e-mail is not a letter, and what we need is genuine understanding, not an explanation.

Do take care; I have some grueling hours ahead for the next several days as .... [Here she explained some stuff that is going on at work.] My thoughts are always with you, as is my love.

OK, I'm probably being spoiled and petty, but after that I really didn't feel like sending her my poem. In fact, I didn't feel like much of anything except maybe hiding in a corner somewhere. A couple hours ago, I wrote back as follows.

Wow.

I don't know what to say. I know we are off the rails, and I spent the day composing something that I was going to send this evening about just that. But it is pretty obviously wrongheaded and out of place.

I suppose you are right that anywhere is better than here, so we should move somewhere else. But after being pummelled and bruised as badly as I was by reading your invitation immediately below, I'm not sure I have the heart or courage for the main event. Cowardly, I know, but that's always been one of my faults.

I understand from what you say that you are going to be really busy for a while. I am not going to be available afternoons for a couple of days. So I don't know when we can talk. Nor, honestly, can I imagine saying anything. I am at this point far too afraid of getting hit to stick my neck out.

I'd better sign off now. I hope you feel better soon.

As I say, that was only a couple of hours ago, so I have no idea what will come of it. What is it with me and high-maintenance women, anyway? Is it time for a drink yet?

Thoughts on housework and depression

[Looking through my old posts, I found one that I started back in April of 2009, on housework (of all things!). It was very nearly finished. By that I mean that it ends in mid-sentence, and I no longer remember (now, almost a year later) quite how I was going to finish the thought. But on the other hand, I think that even in its fragmentary state it describes most of a whole thought. Anyway, I think it also has some tangential bearing on Sunday's post; and so, out of a kind of antiquarian interest, I offer it here with only the most minimal tidying up.]


A few days ago I posted about a conversation Wife and I had had which touched on topics of depression and housework. I really saw it as a post about Wife's depression, with echoes back to the previous post about Kathleen Norris (the reference to acedia) and with foreshadowing to the next post about D's divorce (the reference to our love being as reliable as gravity).

The comments, though, focussed a lot more attention on the question of housework than I had originally imagined it would get. I hasten to add that the readers who commented -- Kyra and O -- are two of the best readers a blogger could ever want; and their remarks were the kind of comments that make it worth blogging in the first place: personal, thoughtful, and challenging. And yet I couldn't (and can't) escape the feeling that our attention is caught by somewhat different things. The upshot is that instead of hiding a reply in the comments, I want to talk for a couple of minutes about housework.

Kyra talks about the repetitive nature of housework. O adds to this that housework is not a way to live a complete life. And at that level, I would completely agree with both of them. One hundred percent.

If we part company at all -- and I'm actually not sure whether we do -- it would be over the question whether being tied to the repetitive round of housework makes one intrinsically unfree. Certainly some people have said unequivocally that it does: that housework is servitude. I cannot quite tell whether Kyra and O agree, but there are moments where it sounds like they might.

But I don't think it has to mean that at all. I think there is no necessary connection: just because one's hands are doing something repetitive does not mean that one's mind or soul is in chains. If Zen monks can achieve enlightenment by sitting still and staring at a wall, surely I can think about politics or religion or blogging or sex while doing the dishes. This is why I quoted Lovelace in my earlier post:

Stone Walls do not a Prison make,
Nor Iron bars a Cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage;
If I have freedom in my Love,
And in my soul am free;
Angels alone that soar above,
Enjoy such Liberty.

I sometimes think I am constitutionally incapable of making a theoretical argument without giving an example, and I'm about to give one now. I have alluded in the past to a period several years ago when I was unemployed for nineteen months. This was after Wife had gone out on Disability because of her various illnesses (mostly the lupus), so we didn't have a second income when I lost mine. It was not a good time, and I spent nearly full time each day job-hunting.

At the same time, since my schedule was now flexible -- and since my initial layoff coincided with a very bad spell in Wife's health -- I took over most or all of the housework. Admittedly some of it just never got done. But the daily and weekly basics -- driving the boys to and from school, shopping for food, cooking meals, washing the dishes and the laundry -- all these found their way onto my list of responsibilities. And I didn't mind doing them. In some ways, I kind of enjoyed them. They were a break, after all, from writing cover letters and cold-calling employers (like that ever worked!) and checking the newspaper ads and all the hundred other tasks involved in looking for work. What is more, I never had to stop thinking about whatever else I was doing just because I needed to tackle the dishes or the laundry. (In fact, while trying to figure out what to say in this post, I got up and did the dishes from tonight's dinner.) I have often said that I wouldn't mind doing the housework today if Wife were well enough to work and I were the one on Disability. (I would certainly get more blogging done!) The only reason I ask her to do it is that I'm the one with the paying job these days and therefore don't have the time to do it all myself. Also, exactly like Kyra, I feel that it is not unfair to ask everybody in the household to pitch in according to his or her ability.

My only point to Wife, therefore, is that it is her own thinking which makes the difference ................................................

[The manuscript ends abruptly here.]

Does conversation matter? part 2

A year ago, I posed this question about conversation mostly rhetorically, quoting Friedrich Nietzsche's opinion and lamenting how little Wife and I ever talked any more.

Now, a year late, the New York Times finally weighs in on the same topic.

[Beaming with smug self-satisfaction ....]

"Nothing I do is ever good enough"

I have a number of posts that have been building up for a while, mostly collecting (in first-draft form) in my e-mail with D. I’m going to try to get them published soon, so I don’t have to keep remembering to go back to them. But that means that some of them will be out of sequence, as far as any strict chronology is concerned.

One concerns a conversation I had with Wife about two weeks ago, on friendship. We were sitting around one evening – she was unaccountably still awake, and I was waiting up to retrieve Son 1 from a birthday party in a couple of hours. And somehow the conversation wound back around to the question what went wrong between us.

I should add that in some respects, the whole conversation was probably a waste of time for both of us. I think at this point it is highly unlikely that she will ever understand anything that I might want to say about friendship, so in a cynical mood I might question why I bothered to try. On the whole I have been getting better about declining to explain myself, after so many years of trying desperately to be understood and then smashing into the very same brick wall. But staying on the wagon is difficult.

I suppose one small good sign is that I refused to let myself get invested in the outcome. And many, many times, when she would reply to something I had said with "I don't understand what you mean," I answered only, "I know." Sometimes, when she would get particularly anxious that I was "blaming" her for the ruination of our marriage (and this anxiety expresses itself for her as hostility) I would amplify that answer into something longer: "I know you don't understand, because you just can't see what I am trying to talk about. It's not your fault, there's no blame attached -- you just can't see it. So you had no choice all along but to act as you did. It's more a case of tragic inevitability than of injustice and blame." That probably overstates the truth considerably, but the consequence was that it de-fanged her normal response to any criticism, which is to perceive it as an attack by an enemy (rather than, say, a constructive suggestion from a friend) and therefore to counterattack. At one point she actually asked -- softly rather than harshly -- "Are you saying that I have never understood what friendship is?" I replied that to say so was to take my remarks and expand them far beyond anything I had actually said; I added that such an expansion looked to me like a prelude to her taking offense and getting mad. She quickly followed up by saying, "No, no, I mean it. If I have never understood what friendship is, then that is pretty serious and I need to listen to what you are saying." About that time I had to go fetch Son 1 from the birthday party he was at, so I couldn't really carry the ball any farther than that. But to have got her to that point without provoking a screaming fit might be something.

As for what I said (or wanted to say), ... well none of it is really that remarkable and I have said the same thing before plenty of times. I took my starting point from Wife's giving me a status update on the laundry, and we moved from there to her deeply-held belief that what it took to make our marriage a happy one was to do things for me (and for me to do them for her). And so she exerted a lot of effort trying to figure out which things she had to do to make me happy. Of course I have to add that the consequence of thinking this way, though she never seems to have seen it, is that she became obsessed with tasks, chores, duties, and obligations ... which means that (quite naturally) she started to resent it. That's not surprising -- anybody would resent an unremitting diet of chores and obligations. But as a result, over the years she projected all that sense of obligation onto me and began resenting me.

I should add in passing that her mother did exactly the same thing. Wife’s mother was persuaded that nobody could ever like her for herself; so she had to do things for people. On the one hand this made her very busy and productive, and people always thanked her for making their wedding cakes, their wedding dresses, etc. On the other hand, she never got close to any of them because the work always stood in the way between them. In the end, out of the hundreds of people she had done things for over the years, two or three stopped in to see her while she was dying. And she left the world feeling used and largely unloved. But if people used her for what she could do for them -- and failed to get any closer to become real friends -- that was because she invited the first and avoided the second.

So I understand completely where Wife learned this behavior. It's just a hell of a way to live. It is also a behavior so deeply ingrained that I have been absolutely unable to get her to see it. Every time I have tried -- and the attempts have been countless over the years -- my aim has gone astray. Part of that is certainly my own inability to articulate what I mean; but part of it is also, I think, a result of the fact that this behavior is so deeply embedded in Wife's being that it is literally impossible for her to imagine any alternative. It has become (for her) a fact of nature. To suggest to her that she not feel such a sense of obligation about things invites only the response, "But then I won't get them all done, and then you'll be mad at me for not getting them done." And nothing I have ever been able to say has shaken her faith in this fundamental axiom. So, as I said to her that night, I have to conclude that the alternative is something she is literally unable to see, and therefore I can hardly blame her for failing to adopt it.

But the alternative is (to my mind) the only way to achieve any kind of healthy marriage -- insofar as it focusses not on what things you do but on who you are and how you relate to each other. It means caring for each other and the relationship first, not by doing things but by truly seeing each other. And this is hard work.

It is also important -- and this is another distinction that Wife has never understood -- that to say I think husband and wife should approach each other from the perspective of relating does not mean that none of the chores get done. Of course they get done, right enough -- only out of freedom and not out of obligation. At the end of the day the laundry is clean and folded, the dishes are washed, the shelves are dusted, and the floor is mopped -- but not because Somebody Else makes you. No, it's all done because the husband and wife -- who are (in this model) also friends and companions -- want to do it. It’s not that they are working down a checklist thinking, "If only I can hit 95% on this checklist, then the other one will love me." It’s because each loves the other and knows love in return -- and gosh, it is just so much nicer to live in a clean house than a dirty one. It's nicer for both of them. So out of a personal desire for cleanliness, and out of an equally strong desire to delight each other, they get (between them) just as much done as some other household where the couple labors gloomily in the shadow of a huge sense of obligation.

This is what I have never been able to get her to see, and that night was no exception. For her, either the work had to get done or it didn't; and if it did, then for it not to be done would make me "unhappy." The idea of doing it in a spirit of freedom and delight wasn't even on the table as a possibility: only work or play, where "work" meant gloom and obligation and resentment, while "play" meant irresponsibility. And with those as the only allowable options, nothing I could say about the importance of true friendship or true marriage made the slightest difference.

To make things worse, the fact that I didn't see things according to this model in the first place frustrated Wife no end. It meant, after all, that no thing she ever did was the right thing to win my love and approval ... which was instantly re-worded in her mind as "Nothing I do is ever good enough." From here came all the complaints that I am impossible to please, that I am a cruel and unrelenting task-master, etc etc etc. And so she got (over the years) more and more frustrated trying to find the one magic thing she could do for me to make it all OK; and more and more anxious when she couldn't find it; and all the time more and more bitter and resentful that she did "everything she could" and "nothing was ever good enough."

To me, the difference between the two approaches is obvious; but I have no idea how to explain it to somebody who can't see it.

Somewhere along the line I tried to introduce the distinction between Mary and Martha, suggesting that Mary really did have it right: the important thing is not the thousand tasks that have to get done, but the relatedness, pure and simple. Tellingly, Wife said, "I've never understood that story. I mean, when dinner time rolls around they are all going to be hungry; and if there is no dinner to be had, they are all going to be pretty unhappy. So it seems to me that Martha has the right idea, and I have never understood Jesus saying that she was wrong and Mary was right." I forget what I said, but inwardly I just sighed. I keep hoping that sometime before she dies she will see it, and will strike her forehead saying, "What was I thinking?" But if that ever comes about, it will be God's work and certainly not mine.

Beating up on the victim? part 2

The feedback on my last post was uniformly comforting, and I thank you all. Of course it is completely true that D was being high-maintenance in fretting over not hearing from me, and it's also true that I lost my temper when I shouldn't have. What interested me specifically, though -- from an analytical or diagnostic perspective -- was the concrete event when I lash out at someone who is already in pain, because her pain is flooding my circuits and making it impossible for me to function rationally. Quite apart from the question who was right or justified in doing what, I wanted to look more closely at how I feel -- how I experience it -- when that happens, because it helps explain one of my more bizarre (not to say disagreeable) behaviors.

Not long after all this blew up, I wrote back to D, apologizing for losing my temper but also trying to explain what had happened on the inside ... how I felt that impelled me to act as I did. I didn't write in exactly the same words that I used in my post, but the overall meaning was the same.


She wrote back to me as follows:

Your letter was very insightful; I have read it three times and I understand you a good deal better now. I also appreciate why I was so baffled, no, stunned at your response.... I think I can keep some of what you wrote in mind when we run into emotional issues again. I hope so. I have already learned to watch you very closely and to calibrate your emotional response, for you suffer all the maladies of the hyper sensitive person. Your sensitivity is what makes you so marvelous to be around, because there is so much life and feeling, but it can also go awry. Such monitoring is very difficult over long distances, and I will provoke similar reactions in the future despite my best efforts. Sigh* ....

I may be on the right track when I recognize that my own insecurities are my worst enemy; not just because they are self-absorbed and distort my view of myself, but because they prevent me from observing others carefully and responding with sensitivity and awareness. Every time we get to one of these places, I have been freshly reminded that the one attribute needed is a certain emotional stability. There are times with you when I literally tell myself to think about the situation without taking offense or devising justifications for my own position in order to observe without judgment and attempt to understand. That's very difficult for me, but it is vital to do. Again, it's much easier in person than by mail....

You do not have to worry about my devotion and love for you; they endure and grow.... Call it a gift if you like; I think it was fated to be. Whatever you make of it, it is yours.

So at least the relationship itself was unshaken. That's good to know. There are times my temper can overtake me so far that I worry about that. And in fact, much of the permanent wedge of distrust between Wife and me grew out of the many of the times I cried out (or lashed out) in agony in exactly this way ... for exactly these reasons. The knowledge, a split-second after I lashed out, that I had just made things permanently worse made me feel all the more trapped and anguished, of course. It contributed to the dark despair I felt about my marriage for many years. It is enormously encouraging to know that D is not so passive, so clay-like as Wife -- or in other words, that she is able to forgive.

It is also helpful to realize that D understands her own insecurities, and how much of a problem they can become.

But I didn't want to write back about her insecurities; I thought that would come across as a little too pointed. Instead I replied by looking again at this question of my own sensitivity:

I'm glad you found my earlier letter useful.... The critical part, the stuff I had to find some way to communicate, was the part about how I feel the pain and anxiety in these situations [i.e., when someone else is feeling a kind of pain that cannot be calmed or healed] in a visceral, tactile kind of way -- such that when the anguish gets intense enough I lose all ability to reason and begin thrashing about like a trapped animal.... If "hyper sensitive person" is the right terminology to describe that syndrome, then so be it; I am glad at least that it has a name. Because I think that this syndrome, this phenomenon, this event is at the heart of a lot of the things that have been said about my personality over the years.

• Hosea has a quick temper.


• Hosea turns on a dime.


• Hosea is always yelling.


• Hosea blows up over the most trivial little things.


• Hosea cannot stand being tickled.


• Hosea is likely to get violent -- unintentionally and purely out of reflex -- if you sneak up behind him unannounced to give him a hug.


• Hosea is cruel because he waits till I am down and broken and then kicks me and berates me for it. (This last is in Wife's voice, of course.)


• Hosea is a loner.


• Hosea needs a lot of solitude.


• Hosea's way of dealing with difficult emotional problems is to go for long, quiet walks by himself in order to sort things out.


• Hosea was expelled from kindergarten because he wouldn't join in the activities with the others and just wanted to sit quietly in the corner petting the cat.


• Hosea has to have his way over every little thing -- like what music is playing in the background, or whether somebody is humming or drumming his fingers, or whether things are on the floor that he thinks ought to be picked up, or whether somebody has turned a book face down while open so that the spine is being bent out of shape, or whether we are going to be on time for whatever event we are going to, or ..., or ... or ....

And while any one of these accusations can be delivered in such a way that it becomes a grotesque exaggeration and has nothing to do with reality, nonetheless it is also true that every single one of these statements has something true about it, or some toehold in reality, in the sense that every single one of them grew out of some event which really happened. But I think that hyper-sensitivity can explain all of them; because hyper-sensitivity explains why trivial things can become a rock in my shoe that won't go away, and why sometimes I have just been pushed so far that it is beyond the point of physical or mental endurance for me ... even though others don't notice that anything is wrong.

I'm not fussy about terminology. If it turns out that "hyper-sensitive" is the wrong word to describe this constellation of characteristics, I don't mind using another term instead. But the phenomenon -- that it happens to me, that it has happened as long as I have conscious memories, and that it is therefore possibly part of how I am built -- that part it is important to understand.

And so in the end, the whole event passed into history as one of those times that we have learned more about each other ... a far better resolution than the way my fights with Wife ever ended. D wrote back to me:

Your letter makes me very thoughtful; I have heard several of the claims, but some of the incidents cause me to feel great compassion for you. To be expelled from kindergarten seems pretty extreme....

I know much of what Wife calls your 'controlling' behavior has to do with your hyper sensitivity. I've also discovered that I need to be very aware of the environment around us in order to prevent you from being overwhelmed. On the other hand, you also put up with far more disorder than I could ever deal with, and there is no way I would tolerate some of the comments Wife and the boys make about the meals you fix or your appearance; they make me see red. I have long known that I too have acute emotional sensitivities. My early knowledge of [various calamities in her own childhood] made me aware that such sensitivity could be profoundly disorienting. I think you'll agree that such sensitivity is very much a mixed blessing, for despite all the intensity it brings, this hyper sensitivity will also shorten our lives. The real challenge is how to live with it graciously.

Interesting; I guess realizing how much you are affected by both physical and emotional sensitivity, I would recommend that you always keep one cat around. [D is allergic to cats and often teases me about the fact that we have two of them.] They are genuinely useful in reducing the symptoms of emotional overload; psychologists have long understood that cats have soothing properties. I suspect that allergy shots for me would be far cheaper in the long run than getting rid of the cats.

Good to know.

__________

P. S.: Good heavens, I just thought of something as I was writing this post. I have already written something about this strange sensitivity of mine, and how it disorients and confuses me. At the time I wasn't talking about lashing out at anyone, but I'm sure it is the same syndrome just viewed in a different light or under different circumstances. I'm thinking of the story I posted a year and a half ago, here.

Beating up on the victim?

Does anybody else do this?

My e-mails with D over the last weekend have reminded me of one of my truly disagreeable habits -- one that makes almost no sense when I try to put it in words, but which is absolutely normal for me. I wonder if I am the only one.

This habit, this behavior, can take a lot of different forms. With Wife, it became one of those boilerplate fights that we used to have. It disturbs me to see the same pattern starting to emerge with D, and yet I don't catch that it is happening until too late. In outline, it went something like this. [Almost none of this is literal reporting in the sense of being a quote from our e-mails back and forth. Rather, I am inventing dialogue in order to explain a type of interaction.]

Something was wrong this weekend with the server that handles my e-mail. Incoming mail was processed just fine. Outgoing mail was stopped completely. I have no idea why. The result was that I wrote three different messages to D over the course of Saturday, but she never got any of them. And Sunday morning I woke up to a message from her that said, rather hurt, "Gosh, you never e-mailed me at all yesterday. I hope you were having a good time and just got busy. It would have been nice to hear just a word or two, though."

Seeing this, I immediately replied, "I did too e-mail you -- three times, in fact. What are you talking about? You're the one who never answered me."

Of course, that didn't go through either, and a couple hours later she wrote me again asking, "Have I done something to make you mad?" Somewhat irritably, but trying to take my cue from her letter, I replied, "Nothing except assume that I haven't written you when I've been writing you all along."

And an hour or so after that she posted a third time, saying, "Maybe you just can't write me at all this weekend." At this I lost my temper and wrote back words to the effect of, "Damn it, I did too write you! Maybe the problem is with the crappy e-mail system not delivering the damned messages, but it's not that I am fucking ignoring you! Will you stop being so damned sullen and hurt, and consider that maybe -- just maybe -- I'm not bloody at fault in this?"

That too got stuck in non-delivery mode, and then ... hours later ... all the messages came unstuck at once and all landed in D's inbox in a heap (and not even in order). And of course D was shocked at how savagely I had attacked her. She said she couldn't even bring herself to write to me today, beyond letting me know that the mails had all arrived. But for heaven's sake, what was that all about?

It's a fair question, because logically my behavior makes no sense at all. Surely if I had had even half a brain, I would have figured out right away -- on reading her very first e-mail -- that there was a problem. Right? Because obviously she wouldn't have written that first e-mail the way she did if she had been getting my letters from the previous day. Armed with that knowledge, you would expect that I'd cut her some slack when I got her second and third letters, since -- again obviously -- I should have been able to tell that from her perspective nothing was arriving. How was she to know I had written? And so I should have been, if anything, ever more solicitous because obviously she was really suffering from a prolonged silence with no explanation. (And let's not even get into the fact that -- again, if I had had half a brain -- I could have used another e-mail account, or even telephoned.)

In other words, logically almost any other response (besides the one I actually chose) would have made more sense. And yet, in the heat of the moment, not one of those responses ever occurred to me. All I could feel was the sorrow and disappointment that dripped from her letters, and the seeming blame that this was somehow something I could control and was doing on purpose, ... and it maddened me to the point that I was thrashing about irrationally like a wild animal, looking to strike back at whoever it was that was inflicting this pain on me. It became, in fact all about me. And any awareness that she too might be worried or depressed or insecure or just unhappy, any awareness that maybe I should have some sensitivity towards how she felt in all this (especially since I say I love her) -- all this went straight out the window.

I have done this many tmes before, generally with Wife. If anything it was more common with Wife, because we spent lots of time together and because she clings to her griefs and resentments rather than letting them go. So it is very hard to console Wife over anything; she will keep being sad long after you have run out of things to say. And it drove me bananas. Confronted with a total inability to make Wife feel any better, confronted therefore with the prospect of having simply to live with the pain she was feeling (over any of a hundred possible problems) and of being totally unable to alleviate it -- confronted with all this, I would turn on her. Why did she have to be so damned hard to console? Why did she have to hold onto her suffering like it was a precious possession? And why -- if she was going to hold onto it -- couldn't she suffer in silence rather than inflicting it on me too? What the hell was wrong with her, anyway? Why couldn't she just snap out of it and be happy? Huh???

I hope I don't have to explain that these rants of mine never worked, in the sense that they never achieved what I wanted. They never cheered Wife up, naturally enough. What happened instead is that she decided that I am cruel, and that I enjoy seeing her suffer. Why else, after all, would I kick her so viciously when she is already down? It makes no sense.

And it did no good for me to insist that I don't think of myself as cruel.

But if it is not cruelty, then what is it? What name can I possibly give to this complex of emotional reactions that makes me lash out at a suffering loved one, precisely because she is suffering? Isn't that crazy? How do I fit that into a coherent narrative about myself without making the narrative into either "Hosea is cruel" or "Hosea is a nutcase"? Is there a way? Or are those the only two feasible options?

Heck, maybe it's both at once.

But does anybody else do this?

John and Iris, or, Why did I start blogging?

Last night I watched the movie Iris, about Dame Iris Murdoch and her descent into dementia at the end of her life. Murdoch had a fine and lively mind; she wrote some 26 novels, five books of philosophy, and assorted plays and other pieces. Her libido was equally energetic and wide-ranging; while she was married to John Bayley for forty-three years (until her death), she had a long string of lovers, men and women alike, for many years.

The movie focuses mostly on the end of her life and her battle with Alzheimer's disease, but there are flashbacks to the early years when John Bayley met her and courted her. And as the courtship progresses, we see his understanding of her go through several stages. At first he is simply intrigued by her peculiar and interesting insights; then he is progressively more fascinated by the complexity he discovers in her; and finally -- when he learns about her tangled personal life and remarkable promiscuity -- he comes to some kind of terms with who she is, and ends up marrying her. Of course, he is a little shocked at first -- shocked and somewhat hurt that she is fucking other men (and women) at the same time she is romancing him. But in the end he seems to accept that this is inevitable for a woman like Iris; that the same energy which drives her creative intellect also drives her strong physical lusts and her hunger for personal relationship.

What I find so interesting -- and not at all a surprise -- is how much of myself I see in John Bayley. I don't mean that any one of my relationships is quite like his with Iris. Wife doesn't have the inellectual productivity of Murdoch, and D seems shy about her past lovers. (She also keeps insisting that there is no-one today besides me; this fact, if it is true, is enough right there to spoil any comparison with Murdoch.) What I mean, rather, is that I find it easy to understand what I take to be his point of view -- that for some people, at any rate, sexual fidelity is kind of beside the point. On the one hand they find it difficult or impossible; but on the other hand there are things about them at a fundamental level which both explain their promiscuity and make it all worth while. I think in a way my willingness to see things like this may be related to my tendency to be attracted to high-maintenance women. In any event -- what may be a critical point -- I know I would have understood this exactly the same way long before I started my own affair with D.

In many ways, this is what I told myself for many years about my marriage to Wife. Of course, this was back when Wife had a lot more creative energy than she does now, so that I had something to put on the other side of the balance scale. But I remember having conversations with myself very much like the ones John Bayley must have had with himself, talking the subject over and coming to the conclusion that yes, it was worth it. In the same way, if I were ever (purely hypothetically) to discover that D has someone else to keep her warm at night besides me -- someone perhaps a lot closer geographically -- I would naturally be disturbed by her many statements to the contrary; but I would not be the least bit astonished. D is a woman who has developed eroticism into a whole philosophy of life, for heaven's sake. How could I possibly be shocked if it turned out, remarkably enough, that she really believed it?

Only, ... I was musing this way after the movie, not paying too much attention to my thoughts since they all seemed fairly familiar, ... when suddenly I realized that this line of thought totally erases my whole motive for starting this blog in the first place! Way back in my very first post, I wrote: "After nigh on a quarter century, I still find myself confused by my marriage .... [because] during that time, my wife has had five affairs ...." And yet, if everything that I remembered after watching Iris were true, the affairs themselves shouldn't have been the crux of the problem.

And in retrospect, perhaps they weren't. Perhaps the real problems between Wife and me were all these other things that have come bubbling to the surface in the ensuing two years of posts: the incessant lying, the denigration, the emotional betrayals, the self-centered obsessions, ... every single one of the dozens of little rocks in my shoes over the years. Maybe those were the real problem all along. Of course, it is hard to pin those down. Even now, when I started writing this paragraph, I wasn't quite sure what to include in that list two sentences ago and what to skip. Fucking other people is a lot more dramatic, and so it is a lot easier to complain about. But today I have started thinking that if Wife had been fucking other people -- even more than she really did -- but if at the same time she had been clear and honest with me, if she had been kind and loving in a reliable way, if she had been able to see past herself to understand how her words and deeds made others feel ... well, in that case maybe the fucking wouldn't have been such a big deal.

Of course if things had worked out like that, then we (you and I) would never have known each other either, so I have to admit there have been side-benefits to the way things actually happened. But it is an interesting thought all the same ....

Painting and pineapple, 3

Ms. Inconspicuous asked to see a copy of the painting in question, so here it is ... by popular demand ....

Painting and pineapple, 2

Some time Saturday -- after a lot more carping from her -- I finally asked Wife if she truly dislikes the painting. Why make such a fuss over my trying to make the house more beautiful? Does she think it is ugly?

No, not at all. She said she actually likes the painting itself. Her gripes are twofold.

1. She resents that I can somehow afford to buy art when she can't afford to make her own bills. She has been saying this for months, but I can't understand it. Her Social Security brings in about 1/5 of our household income; I charge her 1/5 of our household expenses. If she is running chronically over every month, then I should be also, ... but I'm not. The only other possibility that makes any sense is that her private expenses are too high, but she has yet to sit down and tally them up to see where her money really goes. So she doesn't really know how she is spending, but is convinced that she has no personal expenses and is still running chronically short. (If I ask her, "What do you mean 'no personal expenses'? What about ...?" she always replies, "Well, except for that. But that was just once.")
   
2. She notes that in order to hang up the painting, I had to take down a pencil drawing of her when she was age three, that we had had hanging in the bedroom for several years. So maybe buying this picture was all just a sneaky way to justify taking down the drawing of her. That I rehung the drawing in the living room is apparently immaterial, because "Nobody can see it where you put it." OK, so go move it somewhere else ....

Whatever. Anyway, just to follow up.

Painting and pineapple

Thursday over lunchtime, I bought a painting.

Let me back up. Last weekend, the local newspaper ran an article that a new art gallery had opened downtown. The place specializes in student art, which means none of it is very expensive. This sounded interesting, so I announced that I was going to take a look. I also took the shopping list with me, for afterwards.

When I got back home several hours later, Wife asked me about the gallery with genuine puzzlement. "In all those years, I never had the slightest idea you would be interested in something like that." (Gosh, I'm really not sure what to say in reply. Could this have something to do with not being very observant?) Then she asked, "Are you planning to buy any art?"

I hadn't decided. There were a number of pictures that caught my eye, in particular three good-sized paintings of flowers. I don't mean paintings of a bunch of flowers in a vase; I mean individual blooms on the model of Georgia OKeefe, although clearly the painter is someone else and has her own style. They weren't cheap, but I was thinking about them.

But then the second thing Wife asked is, "Why didn't you get any more canned fruit? It was on the shopping list."

It would have been easy to say I forgot or didn't notice, but I told her the truth instead: "I didn't take that seriously, because we've already got so much canned pineapple stockpiled in the garage. Why on earth would we need more?"

"Yes, but I want some variety when I have fruit for breakfast. And you can't tell me it's going to spoil, because it is canned. So the money won't go to waste if you buy more now." She was very smug at this point, as if she had succeeded in proving something that boxed me into a corner.

I don't remember exactly what I said in reply -- it was something about it nonetheless being silly to buy more when you still have lots -- but I was having trouble taking her objection seriously.

She meant it, though -- she really wanted more canned fruit in the house. And a couple of days later she came back to the topic, complaining about how miserably stingy I am over canned fruit, even though I had the nerve to be contemplating buying original art.

Then Thursday I went back downtown over my lunch hour and bought one of them, a striking orange Geoffrey's iris, done in oil against a dark background. I had to squeeze the boys into the back seat when I drove them home that afternoon, and explained that it was so the painting wouldn't get damaged. Son 1 texted Wife that we were on the way home and that I had bought a painting, and she texted back rather pissily about how I thought fruit was a "cash-flow issue" but I was willing to squander money on art. But of course, she added, "It's all his money, isn't it?" (Even in the abbreviated text, the pouting voice came through loud and clear.)

Wife didn't fight with me that night -- she spent the whole evening in bed saying she had a headache -- but I fully expect it some time. She's going to demand that I explain why I'm not willing to buy her more canned fruit, and yet am willing to buy a painting. I also know that there is no way she will ever understand the reason, so I will have to find something to say to make her drop it. But I do have a reason, so I'll tell you instead.

It goes like this:

In the first place, this is a silly argument, because beautiful art and canned fruit are absolutely incommensurable. Art adds joy to your life every single day you look at it; canned fruit doesn't add much even when you are eating it, and then it's gone. Indeed, from a certain perspective you could almost say that the painting costs less than the food, if you amortize the cost over the number of days that you will see it; that's a bit of a stretch as arguments go, but it's no more absurd than many of the arguments Wife makes.

Art is fundamentally more important than food, and just as important. Granting that food nourishes the body, art nourishes the spirit. I concede that food can be prepared artistically, and I would be willing to sit still to listen to that argument if Wife were to make it. But we are talking about bulk purchases of generic canned fruit here -- surely as ugly and disspiriting a way to acquire and consume food as any known to man. Trying to convince me that I am doing something wrong because I forego what is ugly for the sake of what is beautiful is a little peculiar, at best.

Besides all this, the fact is that if we were talking about anybody else I probably would have picked up the blasted fruit without thinking about it. What irritates me about this request from Wife is that I know it is driven by her compulsion to stockpile and hoard. If you remember the cleaning project back in the beginning of 2009, you will know how bad this is. (The story starts here and continues for 7 more installments.) Even now, we can't even walk through our garage because of the stacks of stuff she has acquired that she can't bring herself to get rid of. She routinely buys and stores things that she will never, ever use -- "just in case." And I have gotten to the point that I am fed up. I have aided and abetted this sickness for far too long. The only thing that has stopped it since July is that we have divided our money and she can no longer afford to spend that way. And so I have no desire ever to go there again. So long as I am living with Wife, I would rather buy too little and have to go out to the store on the spur of the moment for the odd loaf of bread, rather than to continue to stockpile.

And the painting really is beautiful ....