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.