Back on track

After yesterday's letter, it looks like D and I are back on track. She recognizes how close we came to the edge, and she is sanguine rather than sullen. Willing to discuss ideas about how to see each other next without being dogmatic about how we do it, nor wounded at it not happening yesterday. It's all good.

Looking back and looking forward, part 2

When I sent D my e-mail Saturday evening, she replied immediately. But then it took me a couple of days to get back to her.

And, truth to tell, I wasn't quite sure if she had understood what I was saying. Here was her reply to me:

Dearest Hosea,

Thank you for writing. It’s hard to answer such a bleak note, so perhaps I will just let it stand as a warning. I’m not sure how to ‘answer’ it at all. The comparisons to Wife are painful and on one level, perhaps also fundamentally untrue.

Let’s see if I can sift this a bit and illustrate what I mean, because I want to acknowledge some of what you said. It is true that I can ‘hear black’ when you mean white, but the larger contention is not something I accept, and that’s my inability to change, my inability to finally understand. You are wrong about that. You give up far too easily, you back away and I’m left with nothing but confusion and frustration. Where exactly did I go wrong? How can I get him to explain what he thinks again, in terms I might understand? And is it possible that my views, however wrong, are perhaps a legitimate misunderstanding caused by confusion at these particular points? ... [T]he point about change is vital. If I can’t change and see your viewpoint, I am not worth your time, energy or financial resources.

Let me try and provide a tiny snapshot of myself to show you what I mean.... [She then described steadily coaching one of her students to become a better driver.] Sure, I’m a teacher; that’s what I do. But you have the same responsibility towards me ...; you have to break it down for me instead of saying, “I know you don’t understand. It’s not your fault. You can’t understand me.” You have to believe I can master the subject and try again. Stop me and insist that I listen more closely (none of us listen very well; I’m convinced that the reason God does not make himself visible and instead demands that we ‘hear the word of the Lord’ is because no real understanding is possible without repeated attempts to hear). Hosea, without that belief and effort,you are condemned to loneliness far deeper than my empty house and bed and my small, dying community that offers precious few opportunities for real friendship. I own the loneliness, but honestly, the comments you make in the first paragraph of your letter may apply to yourself more than they apply to me. And that’s a new insight.

I agree that taking a break from discussing how to pay for possible holidays is a good idea; you are right to say that sometimes, new understanding resolves what looked like an impasse. My school schedule is easily explained; .... [Then she listed her breaks for the rest of the year.]

Hosea, I do not expect you to be all things to me. We share a suspicion of marriage as an institution and I, like you, prefer to occasionally sail my own ship solo. But that doesn’t mean denying the possibility of understanding, or accepting that our love is very difficult beyond what is true about life in general; it tends to drive you to your knees and frustrate your best attempts to control either your outward circumstances or your inner life. I think you have to have a little more faith in both yourself and me. Very smart people are often very lonely people, and you are no exception.... It does no good to call for more bitterness and rancor; just the opposite is needed if anything worthwhile is going to be accomplished. I would urge you to bring back one of those topics you have declared ‘off the table’ (home ownership is a fine topic) and let me hear your views again. I can’t think of a better gift on these long winter nights…like the ‘littlest angel’, who gave the Christ child his humble box of treasures collected as a child, a stone from the river, a robin’s egg, a butterfly preserved…you might bring me your ideas and let me consider them again. I’m not saying I will always agree, but I know that discussion is far better than polemic or isolation and at its core, far more humane and loving. The Christmas story reminds us that precisely the earthly gifts we present to each other are the most valuable because God created and embraced them, and includes our communication. The efforts we make to understand, forgive and acknowledge each other are far more valuable than…visits and time together, because without the former, the last is just physical presence, and that’s not truly what we want.

Can we try again?

You have all my love, forever and always.
D

I was glad that her letter was so sweet ... that she didn't just get madder for my continuing to delay the job of setting up another visit. But I wasn't quite sure what to say next. Should I just drop the current topic and pick up some older one we had discarded? If I went back to discuss the corner we had just painted ourselves into, could I say anything without it degenerating into whiny accusations? I wasn't sure. So in and around my other duties Sunday and Monday, I mulled this for a while. We exchanged a couple of short notes, each of us making sure the other hadn't fallen off the face of the earth. But they were clearly placeholders.

Then finally today, while I should have been doing something useful or productive at work, I managed slowly to piece together the following letter, as a next step.

Dearest D,

You are right that I give up easily, far too easily. Partly that comes from an intense aversion to conflict. (Shyness? I've always called it cowardice.) Partly I can get skittish around outbursts of intense emotion, at any rate negative emotion. (And yes, I realize that must sound very ironic coming from someone whose outbursts are as noisy as mine.)

But I would never, ever patronize you by saying "You can't understand." Notwithstanding anything I might have said in my earlier letter, you are emphatically not Wife. Of course you can understand. You don't always, and sometimes when I feel particularly skittish or depressed I can despair of finding a way to make you understand. But it has nothing to do with incapacity.

When that happens, though, you tell me to try again. Keep at it, walk around it from a different direction, but don't give up. You say that several times in your letter below, and of course you shouldn't have to say it at all. I should know by now that hanging in there -- not giving up -- is the only thing to do.

So maybe it would be useful for me to give you some of the background behind my letter of Saturday evening -- the one you called so bleak, and that you answered so sweetly [above]. My thought is that it could explain how I got to where I was when I wrote it, and maybe from there we could both understand what was going on a little better.

I had better pause for a moment first, though, and say that this story doesn't show either of us in the best light. Please understand -- please, I am imploring you here -- that nothing I write is meant as criticism or blame. If there is blame to go around, honestly I think the majority of it is mine for not handling the situation in a more proactive or productive way. So I mean the account to be purely diagnostic. I didn't write it before for fear of how it would sound, and only your reassurances below that understanding is the critical thing have persuaded me to write it now. Remember that I love you.

With that said, let me back up to Friday morning. I had gotten an idea Thursday night of a place we might go; and Friday morning (once I got to the office) I set to work online making reservations. I secured the vacation time from my boss, booked the hotel, ... and came within one minute and two mouse clicks of committing myself to a little under a thousand dollars worth of non-refundable travel plans for dates that I had not cleared with you. Fortunately I stopped long enough to read the fine print, and that slowed me down enough to stop and think about what I was doing. I thought ... got up from my chair and walked around my office ... walked down the hall for a cup of coffee ... and thought some more. Finally I came back to my chair and exited the website without giving them my credit card information. I went back and cancelled the hotel reservations (those were refundable) and then tried to take a long look at myself.

Why was I doing it? To prove something, of course. To prove that you were wrong when you wrote that "there are two worries that need to be put on the table. One is my concern that for a myriad of reasons, you prefer to live with Wife.... [And the other is that to] see me without your work paying for much of our expenses changes the equation." But that's crazy, isn't it? Was it really going to "prove" anything positive to you for me to do something so remarkably foolhardy ... especially when you were still adamantly insisting that you would never fly anywhere on tickets I paid for? Was it going to make it better that I hadn't confirmed the dates with you? Really? Wouldn't that just "prove" that I needed my head examined? And -- come to that -- why did I think I needed to "prove" something anyway?

A lot of questions.

So I spent the next two days -- that's Friday and Saturday -- staring at those questions from several different angles. And the longer I looked at it, the wider the scope became, because I was trying to figure out how I had gotten so close to a precipice of such craziness. Pretty soon the question had changed: it was no longer just when to plan a visit or how to pay for it, but whether to see you again at all. Ever. That sounds just as extreme, even just as crazy, as those surprise reservations I was making; but I was shaken by things, and so I started calling everything into question. That's where I was when you wrote me that you were "irritated, but waiting" and "frustrated by what [you saw] as foot-dragging and dithering" while you were "asked to bear most of the burden of separation and silence." [I didn't bother quoting or excerpting this letter. It was part of a sequence of letters that I passed over through brief allusion in the first paragraphs of this post.] Normally -- even a couple of days before -- a letter that sharpish would have wounded me deeply; but by the time I read it I was already so far out in the wilderness that the darts sailed clean past me.

In the end, of course, I came back to myself. Yes, I wanted to see you again. No, I wasn't going to let myself fall off the precipice, in either direction. And that's about the time I wrote my letter Saturday evening. I tried to say very little about the wilderness my mind had been wandering through, but I think some hint of it slipped through in my remark that my attention kept "sliding back to the big picture." I don't know if that was enough for you to understand how far my thoughts had gone ... that I had actually entertained the notion of breaking it all off.

But how did I get there?

I guess the first thing that I see when I try to look at the situation objectively is the feverish volatility of my own emotional reactions. Not that any of this volatility was visible on the outside; on the outside I am sure that I was quiet, placid, ... maybe a little more thoughtful and removed than normal, but nothing else. But inside I was careening from one extreme to another. Incidentally, I think that this may be part of why I withdraw sometimes (perhaps not always): namely, that I have learned to silence my outside when my inside is agitated, until I calm down and come back to myself. I suppose I fear that if I reported regularly on everything that was going on inside, it could sound pretty alarming -- especially since the extremes probably aren't where I will end up when I am done.
What was the trigger, that I was over-reacting to? Plainly it was the discussion of planning a visit; but I think there were several distinct factors in that discussion, each of which contributed its own kick.

• In the first place, our discussions on this topic have always been pointed and difficult, so I had a certain amount of pre-existing apprehension right from the beginning.
• The longer the discussion went on, the sharper and bitterer your voice sounded to me (I do not say this is what you were trying for), and this (perceived) sharpness and bitterness agitated that part of me that is scared of conflict.
• Your letter of Thursday evening, November 4 (that's the "two worries on the table" letter) made me think that you believe two things about me which are fundamentally at odds with the rosy, flattering image I like to cherish about myself: to wit, (1) that my love for you is shallow or fickle or unreliable or meaningless; and (2) that I am a cheapskate. That you could harbor such worries made me feel strongly that I needed to make some chivalric, gallant, extravagant, even desperate gesture -- a "grand geste" -- to dispel your doubts once and for all, forever.
• You didn't seem able to hear anything I said. OK, perhaps at the beginning I should have expected that you would respond to my extreme proposal (to pay all your [travel] expenses [to see me] forever) with another extreme proposal (total financial separation); that much is only natural. But then when I offered a compromise (let's do it this way for a couple of trips and then maybe forget it in the future), you refused to budge. When I said explicitly that dogmatic adherence to principles would torpedo us, you stuck to your guns. And when I said that the one thing above all else I wanted to avoid was having to talk about money, you suggested an approach which would ensure that we had to discuss every penny. I began to feel that one of us was speaking Chinese, and my frustration at not being heard made me -- again -- ever more desperate.
• As a garnish to all this -- it's a tiny thing compared to the rest, but it struck me disproportionately so I have to mention it -- you went on to say that your earlier acceptance of my frequent flyer miles was done with "trepidation." (This was in your letter of Friday morning, November 12.) And of course maybe it was; I can't read your heart. But I would never have guessed it from the tone of our e-mails and phone calls, back in January 2009 after our first two "dates." We discussed my frequent flyer miles quite a lot back then, and the tone as I read it was something I would have called ... well maybe I shouldn't go quite as far as to say "sharpish and demanding," but you were certainly prepared to tell me that you supposed I must not want you to use my miles if I hadn't already gotten off my duff and planned something, so probably I was saving them for some heart-warming trip with Wife and the boys. And by now you know that that kind of sullen sulk hits me like a slap in the face. (You might not have known it back then. Come to think of it, those e-mails sounded a lot like our more recent conversations ....)
• On top of this all, of course I knew that any sharpishness in your tone grew directly out of missing me, that it was all an expression of loneliness. And I didn't want you to feel sad or miserable. I didn't want to be the cause of such an ache. So on top of all the external stimuli, I did also feel guilty at somehow not holding up my part of the bargain ... at leaving you in the lurch.
• Then this last feeling, call it "sympathy" or "pity" or whatever you like, nurtured a growing feeling of obligation. And I think a sense of obligation is somehow poisonous to an affair. Of course, we can't help but build up webs of mutual obligation with those we love -- and that's true for all kinds of love. But when I realized that the experience was starting to feel like marriage -- and that there may have been some connection between that feeling and my willingness to engage in recklessly irrational spending just to make a point -- well, that's part of when I began to step back and re-evaluate the whole thing: "If this is just going to turn into another marriage, who needs it ...?"

Those are the elements I can tease apart. They all overlap and bleed into each other, of course. There may be more, that I haven't put my finger on.

Please remember that I don't say any of this by way of blame. I repeat that if there is blame to be allocated, the lion's share is mine: I know how alone you are, I know that it is hard to have anything to hang onto when there isn't a date in the future, and I know that nobody deals with indeterminacy very well. Knowing all of that up front, I should either have scheduled something right away or else said clearly, "Look, I don't know when it will be but not for a while." And I didn't. That you got frustrated with this situation should surprise nobody.

Are there lessons we can learn for next time? I look at all the points above, and I can think of only two. One of them is that I need to remember -- for my own sake -- just how skittish and volatile my own emotions can be. (I assume you already know this better than you want to.) The other is that I need to find some kind of flag I can wave when it feels to me like you haven't heard me, or like you are answering something different from what I said, or something like that. If there are particular words I can use or ways to go about it, that would help. Maybe it would be enough for me just to say "Please slow down because I feel like you haven't heard me." I am sure that the times I most need to say it are the times I will be least willing to, because I'll already feel skittish or depressed, because I'll already be backing away into a wilderness. This is where courage comes in, and trust. I recognize that I need to exercise both those virtues more than I have. I'll try harder next time.

You end your letter by talking about our efforts to understand, forgive, and acknowledge each other, even going so far as to call them more important than ... time spent together. (I thought your use of ellipsis was very tasteful, by the way. smile) Thank you. I'm grateful you did. I hope what I have written here helps with the understanding. Somehow I can't think of this letter as the kind of "gift" you had in mind "for these long winter nights" ... some gift, huh? But maybe, even if it is hardly the kind of gift you thank Santa for, ... maybe it can help.

As for forgiveness, ... well on my side I am no longer mad, no longer upset, no longer raving in the wilderness. I no longer think about the situation in terms of accusation or blame. I hope that counts for something. Acknowledgement? Gosh, we are who we are. I can see how this flare-up grew directly out of us being who we are. In that sense, looking back on it, we shouldn't think it a surprise. But we can learn from it and do better next time.

As ever, we can always hope.

I love you, and we will see each other again. Please forgive me for not being stronger or trusting better: I'm working on it. And never give up, never despair, even if it all takes time. The best things always do.

All my love, unto ages of ages,
Hosea

I have no idea how she'll take this. But I do think I have to remember how mercurial my own emotions can be, and to factor that in as part of understanding our relationship together. Too often I think I present myself here as the consummate detached observer. But maybe it isn't quite so.

Point of clarification

I got a private e-mail earlier today from a reader who suggested that maybe I haven't been very clear with D about what I see in the future. For a long time that was true, though I think that I have cleared some of that up recently. But the things that I write to her don't always end up here (and vice versa) so I thought it might be useful to let you know what I have told her about what I see in my future:

• Once I divorce Wife, I do not expect to marry again. Anyone.
• Nor do I expect to live with anyone else in an all-but-the-ceremony equivalent of marriage.
• But I do expect that I will want to continue to see her -- this means in intervals, visits -- on indefinitely into the future.
• What I have not told her: These visits can't be very long at a stretch. Last summer we had our eleventh date, where we were together for an uninterrupted week and a half, and it was too long. Her sheer, non-stop energy and intensity had worn me out by the end of it.

As for the marriage:

• I plan to start dissolving the marriage after Son 2 enters high school. That should be in about two years. My reason for waiting is that Son 2 will probably be in boarding school like Son 1 (possibly not the same school), and so both boys will be out of the house by then. I know the boys have a strong sentimental attachment to the house and the neighborhood, which is why I want to wait till they are already in a new environment.
• The discovery of that e-mail from Friend caused me to re-evaluate seriously whether I should accelerate this process. But a little reflection persuaded me that divorce can't stop e-mail.
• Also, the consensus seems to be that in this state courts almost always split custody pretty close to 50-50. My lawyer is willing to take whatever approach I want, but even she admitted in an unguarded moment that 50-50 custody is pretty much the norm. So I doubt I would be able to prevent whatever influences they are going to pick up from Wife anyway. Both boys seem to have developed pretty good compartmentalization skills.
• So I think that leaves me back with the "two years from now" plan.

I think those are the highlights of my thinking, in a nutshell. I may not have spelled out all the implications of that second set of bullets, but I know I have gone over them at a high level. D knows about my Two-Year Plan, for instance.

Just as a point of clarity ....

Looking back and looking forward

I mentioned a week ago that D and I had started snipping at each other over the question when and how to schedule our next visit. From there the conversation got more difficult, as we focussed on the question how to pay for it. I was going to include selections from the e-mails back and forth as they got progressively more heated, all as a follow-on to this post about money. But somehow time got away from me. I would like to tell you that I was the soul of reason in all this, and she was the one who was being flagrantly irrational. Maybe I still will. But. less tendentiously, I should say that I insisted (still stinging from her remarks here about fearing I am a cheapskate) that I would not accept any arrangement except that I pay for everything. She seemed to feel that this made her a "bought woman" somehow, and insisted that she would not accept anything except a rigid accounting of what was hers and mine, down to the penny. Obviously this conversation was going nowhere.

As this discussion was chugging along going nowhere, I got Janeway's feedback on this post, and it set me thinking. Janeway pointed out that, after all, I am attracted to high-maintenance women in the first place, so what am I complaining about? What should I expect? And if "high-maintenance" is what I am looking for, then why the hell am I not "maintaining"? If I know that D panics easily, why am I not doing everything in my power to reassure her, and chalking it up to the cost of the relationship?

As I say, I started thinkng about this. Am I attracted to high-maintenance women? That certainly seems to be my track record. On the other hand, bending over backwards to calm, stroke, reassure, and "maintain" while chalking all that up to the cost of the relationship is what I've done for a quarter century with Wife. It's getting old.

The thing is that I am attracted to these women, but that doesn't mean I actually enjoy them in the long term very well. In other words, my dick is excited by them (and my hormones, pheromones, etc) but the rest of me finds them tiring after a while. In other words, my dick has no goddamned sense. I suppose I am not the first man on earth to make that complaint. But this means that the real question in all this -- the real question -- is whether I want to continue the affair with D at all. Is it worth the headaches? The details about "When is our next trip?" or "Who picks up the tab?" are only secondary.

So I spent a couple of days thinking about that, and not replying much to D. She read my silence, and got ever more irritated and demanding on the subject. Finally tonight (Saturday) I went for a long walk after dinner to figure out what I wanted to say. When I came back and sat down at the keyboard, I still didn't know if I was going to say Stay or Go. But I just started typing. What came out ended up more conciliatory (or perhaps just more spineless) than I had expected it would be. I'm not at all sure it was the right decision, or the right thing to say. But here is what I wrote:

Dearest D,

Sometimes it is hard for me to remember just how lonely you are, and just how much pain that causes you. I'm sorry. But I have been thinking about it a lot the last couple of days, and I think that your loneliness must cause you a kind of chronic pain that cuts every bit as deeply, and hurts every bit as cruelly, as the pain Wife feels from any of her illnesses. In some ways it is easy to forget that you bear such a burden, because the surface differences are so great. But it must ache evilly all the same.

At the same time, I have also come to understand over the last several months that I can't cure it, or at any rate not alone. I can offer relief in bursts, in interludes; but that's not the same as a long-term cure. And for all your overly kind words, I'm not a god. I'm not even Aesculapius. (wan smile) I'm just a guy, ... with too much education and not enough sense. If there is a man in the world who can chase away your loneliness all by himself, he is a stronger and fuller and better man than I am. He's not me. Of course we all need more than a single other person in our lives. We all need a full community, and that's often hard to come by. Paradoxically there are far more people around than during the Stone Age, and yet we are each of us close to fewer people than we would have been then. Or so I guess.

That's not to sell short how wonderful our visits are when they happen. The reading to each other, the theater, the long walks, the even longer talks ... it's all the stuff of blissful memories. And of course the love-making is always divine.

But our love has also been very difficult, and I think that's been true for both of us. You are still banging your head against a wall trying to deal with the same weaknesses of mine that caused you such headaches two years ago, and they still frustrate you just as much. For my part, I find that even though our conversations are wonderful, there are ever more topics that are off-limits, because (as in our recent discussion of home-ownership) I say "white" and you hear "black" and I have learned over the long years that impasses like that don't go away no matter how many times you try ... so I just change the subject and talk about something else. I think you have had just as much trouble with my failing to understand you sometimes. In short, one way or another we are still playing out the very same fights we fought two years ago. I know that pattern, and it disturbs me.

The upshot is that it has been fairly difficult for me to focus on the narrow question of how we pay for our visits or when we schedule them, because my mind keeps sliding back to the big picture. It's not that I can't make up a cover story and pay my own airfare -- if you remember our visit just a year ago, in November of 2009, that's exactly what I did then. (If you pause a minute, you'll recall that I didn't go to the office because in fact -- except for a couple of meals and a trip to the movies to see "Precious" -- we never got out of bed.) I can do all that. But it's not easy for me (the story, I mean, not the money). It takes some deliberation. And when we have been fighting like we have recently, it is hard to get motivated.

So what's the bottom line? In the short run, I don't expect to stay mad. I never do. And our visits are always splendid. So I'm sure that in a little while I'll be able to look forward more eagerly than I can right now. If you still have any desire to see me after this, and if you haven't found someone better in the meantime, it might be helpful if you could send me your holiday calendar covering the time between now and the end of the school year. Having that information in advance would make it easier for me to plan around the times that you will actually be free.... We still have not settled the question how to pay for these trips, and I have to confess I don't much like either of the plans you have proposed. But I think it is better if we forget it now and figure it out later. I am a strong believer in dropping questions when the parties cannot agree, because in a few weeks they might forget what the disagreement was about in the first place and be able to start over more cheerfully and more creatively. That sounds dumb until you try it, but you'd be surprised how often it results in an agreement that both parties are well-pleased with.

I do love you, D. For both our sakes, I wish that made things a lot easier than it does. But it's still true, all the same.

Hosea

I guess in the morning I'll find out what she says in return.

Headache

I woke up with a headache this morning, but I think I have diagnosed the cause. I'm pretty sure it was all the fault of that third glass of brandy last night, after dinner. I assume naturally that the bottle of cider and half bottle of wine with dinner were blameless, as well as the first two glasses of brandy afterwards. But I had a pretty good notion even as I was pouring the third one that it was probably a bad idea.

Not that I have ever been dissuaded from doing something merely because I could tell it was a bad idea, obviously.

Proving my love?

The conversations with D have been deteriorating. A few hours after she sent me the one I quoted in my earlier post -- before I had had a chance to reply -- she sent a follow-on note that was still light and elegant:

Dearest Hosea,

Home--at last, and I'll say a rueful good night to you. I have had time, through all my classes, to think about not seeing you for many weeks or months and it is hard to be very cheerful. Part of me just wants to step back and leave you alone for a while; I know I can't change a great deal, because the hold-up isn't really on my end. But that seems dreary and ever so undesirable, so I only very reluctantly consider that possibility. I thought you might call...no, you didn't. And you haven't and won't for a while. And I'm not 'allowed' to call you. I can get pretty depressed about this situation without trying very hard.

So what's really going on in my head? I guess there are two worries that need to be put on the table. One is my concern that for a myriad of reasons, you prefer to live with Wife and can see no clear way to another sort of life or love apart from her for a long time. This whole issue is truly complex; she is ill, needs your help. Wife is the children's mother and you want to preserve the family unit. You dislike change and the prospect of upheaval, both emotional and physical. I'm not the person you hoped for and it's easier to stay with Wife than to have to tell me the truth. And on, and so forth...lots of insecurity, doubts, and all kinds of unattractive demons at play.

The second concern is financial. I have been told for years by Wife that you are cheap, and that you refuse to spend money on much outside the children's needs. Occasionally, I've run into that reluctance. To see me without your work paying for much of our expenses changes the equation. There are dozens of reasons why seeing me is financially imprudent and unwise. I understand that and yet...those reasons cannot help but make me feel insecure. You did not want to discuss money matters and I agreed because I had little choice, but they won't go away. So now what?

I miss you. I could talk about my classes, my colleagues, my students. I could discuss your gnostic beliefs and ask whether you really want to embrace that philosophical option even though you deny doing so. I could ask you about the election results or follow your work schedule. But instead I listen to Mozart's Requiem again and again; I take it out of my little home stereo and play it on the way to school, unable to let go of its affirmation of life. I pray that my desire for you will be granted and you will not walk away. I can always hope....

I do love you, passionately, and always, in all that I do and all that I am.

D

It sounds lovely. And yet, ... is it just me? Somehow when I read this it all looks like window-dressing designed to soften and prettify a core message which reads, As long as we haven't scheduled another visit sometime soon, I have to believe that "you prefer to live with Wife" and it's not worth it to you to see me unless it's free -- i.e., "without your work paying for much of our expenses." In other words, you don't love me. Because if you really loved me, you'd already have made arrangements to see me again by by now. So there!

I don't know, probably I'm over-reading here. But I can't get over the feeling that this sounds like some teenaged boy back in the Fifties telling his girlfriend, "Betty, you say you love me, but you've got to prove it!" When what he means is he wants her to put out. (Obviously the last thing I need to fear from D is a reluctance to put out, but it's an analogy.)

Anyway, the result is that I am feeling a little ... I don't know, ... irritable. Do I want to see her? Of course. Am I perishing from her absence like I would from an absence of oxygen ... seemingly like she is perishing from mine? No, not really. I'm fine with spending my own money to go see her, although at this point I'll be damned if I'm going to let her buy her own ticket; if we are going to meet in some third location, I'll buy both of them or we won't go. And that means I have to be a little cautious where I pick, because the cost of two tickets can add up. And I also resent the emotional manipulation: obviously you must love Wife more than you love me, or you'd have already made plans; obviously you're a cheapskate because you haven't already bought your tickets. No other explanation is possible.

Of course, in a conversation like this, explanation is useless. I've already talked through all these issues with her; that she has circled back to the same tired old insecurities means that she doesn't believe me. All that talk is just talk. OK, that's a fair opinion to hold. But if that's her opinion, the only way I'll ever change her mind is by deeds. So I may as well just shut the fuck up until I either (a) figure out a good place/time for us to meet and buy both our tickets, or else (b) tell her it ain't gonna happen any time soon and have done.

I didn't quite put it that way, but this is how I wrote back:

Dearest D,

Freedom? Wow. I certainly hadn't thought about any of this with respect to that kind of context. That is a pretty monumental re-framing of the discussion. I may have to think about that for a bit. [Of course I was thinking about some of the thoughts I had here.]

You don't say it in so many words, but when I read your letter this morning I was sure I felt a subtext which ran more or less, "Don't bother writing back until you have booked a ticket or have clearly decided to tell me No." I hope that's not what you have in mind, because I haven't bought a ticket yet. I explained to Wife over dinner tonight that I have been thinking about taking a vacation somewhere, like she just did by going to visit her sister ... somewhere that could be just a vacation without my having to go to the office while I was there. She asked, "Where?" and I told her quite honestly that I hadn't figured that out yet. She suggested Greece.

[There followed two paragraphs about work that I’ll skip.]

In other news, Son 2 has set himself to learning Tom Lehrer's song, "The Elements." That would make him only the second person I know personally -- besides myself, I mean -- who has memorized the whole thing. At present he is somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 the way there, but he has only been working on it a couple of days.

Meanwhile I should go back to consulting a map. I hope you didn't stop reading at the point where I said I hadn't bought a ticket yet. Of course I will let you know right away when I do.


You have all my love, reading or not, now and ever,
Hosea

As you know by now, that's really terse by my standards, and she replied in kind. Attentive readers will also notice that her salutation changes from "Dearest" to "Dear": she does that whenever she is pissed at me.

Dear Hosea,

I didn't mean to imply that you should stop writing until you bought a ticket, but I do think the end of your business trips (at least for the foreseeable future) means you will have to decide whether it is worth seeing me when you have to spend the time and money to do so. I have no idea what your decision will be.

Songs about the elements? Okay....not sure how to respond. I should go and write vocabulary quizzes.

Take care, be well.

All my love, or friendship, or whatever seems possible. There's a great deal of both, and the cost should be supportable for both of us.
D

And so we stagger and sputter our way down to tonight.

Dear D,

The more I think about it, the more I think I really can't write anything serious or substantive (or call) until the travel question is definitively settled one way or another. Here's how I see it: this question -- for all the reasons that you have so gently and sensitively spelled out -- is really the foremost one that we have to discuss right now. I think it will get in the way of trying to talk about anything else. What's more, it's not really something that can be answered in words, can it? I mean, the whole question is whether all these words that I have lavished on you over the years really count for anything; so the only possible way to back them up is with deeds, not just more words.

So I have to beg you to excuse the absence of a longer letter, just for the moment. I'm confident that soon our correspondence will resume its normal volume and frequency.

I really would like to know the dates of your Christmas break, however. I'm trying to compare a couple of ideas.
All my love, Hosea

And finally, ...

Dearest Hosea,

Thank you for writing. I'm not happy about not hearing from you; I sometimes think that we often mis-cue on these issues; I don't always understand your family responsibilities and commitments, and you don't always understand how alone I am. It's not easy. I realize you don't mean to punish me, but it feels like that. Or just more silence and loneliness. That said, I'm not depressed and I've been quite productive.

My vacation begins on the xx of December, ends on xx of January, although I can easily make that the next day by missing the faculty meeting.

Please tell me what you are thinking, and reconsider establishing phone communication.

All my love, ever and always,
D

Some glimmer in that last one -- we're back to "Dearest," for starters. But it's hard for me to put aside being grumpy. That reference to my "family responsibilities" grates. She is always invoking my "family responsibilities" to explain things that are totally unrelated to them. In this case those "responsibilities" have nothing to do with why I am not writing. I'm not writing because I feel cornered, because I am torn between my longing for a grand geste that will make her put aside these nagging insecurities once for all, and my resentment at feeling shoved into such a position in the first place.

Probably I really am being pusillanimous and cheap and frightened of change. But I know she's got one thing wrong, at least. That part about how kind and caring I am towards Wife, ... that at least I can disprove. I'm far more callous than that these days.

Good to know, huh?

What does freedom have to do with it?

Last night I wrote to D that I won't be taking the business trip we had planned to use for our next meeting. I added that I had not figured out a plan what to do next.

She wrote back to me as follows:

Dearest Hosea,

I had already figured it out.

Really...it's pretty much up to you to decide to see me. This is a big country and there are many options. It means taking a number of steps you are reluctant to take, and I can't help you take them. I can take the same steps, but you already know that I am willing to schedule the time and pay my share of the bill, which now would include a hotel and car. I can hope you will take the risk, but I'm frankly not sure you will. Franzen's bleak view of freedom (his characters all have affairs that end unhappily) may be yours as well. The narrator says at one point, "the personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality as prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage." I understand that freedom can be a curse rather than a blessing, and I'm asking not that you see me to be free from all of your commitments to Wife and the boys, but that you might view seeing me as freedom for something more worthwhile and significant. Otherwise, you are left to mend your relationship with Wife to some degree and forge a fragile treaty with your unhappiness, unable to see anything more promising to give your life meaning.That's a wilderness, Hosea. I understand that blank freedom and irresponsibility breaks a certain emptiness, but I also believe that Franzen's view of freedom in a post-religious age is not the only option; that we might be able to glimpse another, more expansive way to live.

I see this possibility clearly in the recent letter and phone call received from my daughter [Brittany] in Istanbul. By far the most rewarding parts of the trip have been the time spent in Bulgaria and Romania; she sees a society, fast disappearing, that is truly pre-modern in many ways. Brittany is so fascinated and impressed that she plans to return to both countries as early as this summer to visit the mountains and valleys that will be gone forever once highways and modern 'conveniences' destroy so much of the old forests and way of life. Bulgaria only has seven million people-only seven million-- spread thinly over a huge territory. Brittany says that she traveled, often on foot or with others as a rider, through miles and miles of pristine wilderness totally untouched by human civilization. She says she has never seen anything as beautiful; I know I haven't and I'd so like to do so. Her adventures sound remarkable; a bit scary, but she and her boyfriend seem to be good traveling companions. Brittany doesn't mind being lost and her boyfriend seems to believe that everything will work out without spending money to be rescued from inconvenience or frustration. I understand from my husband that they both took out 400 dollars a few weeks ago and they haven't gone through it yet. They pay for nothing except food purchased at local markets; everything else is offered to them by others. I'm not suggesting that you and I meet somewhere without any bed and board arrangements, but I certainly think we might explore some area of our country without spending a fortune. What appeals to you?

This is a turning point, dearest one. I have to hold on to the passion I hear in your voice and experience in your arms. I can't believe that you will just walk away, back into gray reality. Am I right? Only time will tell, but we need to see each other. You have not called, I have not written, and this won't do. I vote that you grab a metaphorical motorcycle, and ride on muddy roads four or five hours to remind yourself of why you might want to travel outside your narrow, if gilded, community. There is so much more, so very much more...

All my love,
D

I read this, and I am left not knowing which way is up. Freedom? I certainly wasn't thinking of the whole thing in terms of freedom. Honestly I'm not sure I know what to do with freedom. I have sometimes said, a little cynically, that freedom may be overrated. The people I have known over the years with the most free time on their hands and the fewest obligations don't often look to be the happiest.

Then when I hear myself saying this, I blanch to realize how much I sound like Wife, fleeing into the tyranny of obligation because anything else is so scary. Have I been doing the same thing? Yeah.

I wish I hadn't just realized that. It puts a cloud on my whole day. Shit.

When is our next date?

Ever since our last date, D has been asking me when the next one will be. She has not been terribly subtle about it. Up till now I've been telling her probably late November, because I was expecting to have to take a business trip near Thanksgiving that would have made a convenient opportunity. But no actual date was set, and no tickets were bought. She has been fretting and moping.

Yesterday I discovered I really won't have to take that trip after all. There is no particular reason I can see that I'll have to travel for work until maybe January. But I have not figured out what to tell D yet. I mean, I suppose I could just make up some reason to leave town anyway, and we have a short vacation together. But I'm not near as good at making shit up on the spur of the moment as D is. Or I could tell her it's going to be a while longer before we see each other. But then I'll have to deal with her depression and anxiety.

Sometimes I think this is why I need to stay out of romantic involvements at all -- I start thinking it is up to me to manage her emotional life, to take care of things so she won't be upset. To make things better for her, out of sympathy or pity. [We have a whole discussion about pity -- with respect to Wife -- that I keep meaning to post. I'll get around to it some day. But meanwhile ...] Then I end up feeling manipulated, and I get grumpy and bitter. Not a good pattern.

It's not that I don't want to see her. Of course I want to see her. But it's not such a big deal for me if it's this month or next month. When it happens, that's nice. When it doesn't, oh well. It will later. She doesn't have that same equanimity. It seems, sometimes, like she depends on me to keep herself on track, like I'm her whole world. But I don't want to be her whole world.

Maybe she just needs to find a guy closer to home ....