Getting what you want, part 2

It took me several days -- into the middle of this week, before I was able to write out a reply to Wife's e-mail about her frustration when Son 1 doesn't take steps -- what seem to her obvious steps -- to get what he wants in life.  But in the end, here is what I wrote her:

I’ve wanted to reply to this e-mail of yours for a few days now (you sent it on Saturday) but I haven’t had the time. You bring up some really important points about the boys’ futures, and what it takes for them to prepare themselves for those futures. But I also find that I see the same points just a little differently than you do, in ways that may be important.

First, there are some important places where we agree. I totally agree that the boys shouldn’t graduate college saddled with debt, although I think there are more opportunities to locate college funding than high school funding. (Scholarships, ROTC [at least for Son 1], and so forth.) I totally agree that Son 1’s social skills are off the charts, and what a blessing. And I totally agree that the competition for the service academies is ferocious.

Where I see things differently is a bit more subtle. If you’ll permit me, I think I can summarize the main thread of your argument below something like this:

1. Son 1 wants to be a fighter pilot for the Marines or the Air Force, and he wants to get there by going to Annapolis or Colorado Springs.
2. Competition for those programs is very tough. The service academies take only the best of the best, and only the best of the best OF THEM get to be fighter pilots.
3. In order to make it into these programs, Son 1 needs better grades than he has right now. That means he has to buckle down and study far more diligently than he has till now.
4. Hogwarts can give him what he needs academically to get where he wants to go, but they can’t spoon-feed it to him. He has to go get it.
5. If he doesn’t do the extra studying and take the personal steps to squeeze every last drop out of the academic program at Hogwarts, he won’t make it to the goal he wants to reach. And that means he will have wasted the opportunity he has right now, which would be very frustrating. And sad.

Is that about right?

My opinion is very close to agreeing, but not quite. To break it down, …

• I totally agree with (1) and (2).
• I mostly agree with (3) and (4).
• And while I agree with the first part of (5), I totally disagree with the conclusion.

Let me flesh this out a bit.

I think the core difference between how you see these things and how I see them is wrapped up inside this question: how bad is it when you don’t attain your heart’s desire? If you fail to reach the thing you have held all your life as a guiding goal, what then? You use words like “very disappointed”, “very unhappy”, and “thwarted”. OK, I understand that. But the reason I see it differently is that from my perspective nearly all of adult life consists of not getting what you want. Maybe that’s cynical, but I don’t think so. I think that’s just how it turns out for most people most of the time. We all want this or that or whatever, and we set out to get it, and somewhere along the line we get derailed off track and wind up with something else instead. And this happens over and over. And the really critical part is that notwithstanding that we hardly ever get what we want, life is still good anyway. It is still better to be alive than dead. It is still better to wake up each morning with a new day in front of you, despite the fact that your new day looks totally unlike any day you ever planned or imagined for yourself. And so you get up, dust yourself off, and try again.

So what do the boys need to get out of high school? Well sure, other things being equal it would be nice if they got the tools they needed to compete successfully for the things they want. Other things being equal it would be nice if Son 1 got high-enough math grades to get him into Annapolis, and then high-enough scores in whatever else he has to do to get him into the fighter program. But the way I look at it, it’s probably not going to happen … and what’s more it probably would never happen even if he started scoring perfectly in math. My guess is that the number of spaces in the fighter pilot program is so small that even if Son 1 suddenly revolutionized his whole approach to his studies and worked his little fingers off, even if he came out tops in everything from here on out … even then he might not make it because they will end up with a pool of the guys who are perfect at everything, and they’ll start going down the list to pick out fighter pilots, -- and they’ll fill their recruitment quotas somewhere in the middle of the S’s. Fred Smith will get in, and Max Sutcliffe won’t because they’ll be full up. Son 1’s last name is Tanatu and that starts with T, and so he’ll miss the cut. It could end up being that arbitrary, because there are so few slots available and so many guys who are really, really good who want to do it.

That being the case – or rather, that being at least a strong possibility – I think what Son 1 will need most of all in life is a thick skin. He’ll need the ability to pick himself up from failures, or from just not getting what he wanted even if it was through no fault of his own, and come back the next day with a smile on his face. And the only way to do that is to exercise, not his intellect but his character. The work needed to develop that ability to bounce back is not academic exercise but moral exercise.

This is one of the benefits that I see in boarding schools – not all boarding schools (I was never too sure about Beaxbatons*!), but at least Hogwarts and Durmstrang. You have pointed out that there are classes at the local public high school which are just as challenging as any classes the boys are likely to take at Hogwarts and Durmstrang, and of course you are absolutely right. Looked at academically, our local public high school really is a first-rate school. But what I don’t see there, or in any public school, is a conscious, deliberate program of moral development designed to educate a student’s character. And yet, adolescence is the time when it is most important to focus on character. Little kids have to learn the basics of getting along with others: sharing politely, saying Please and Thank You, using the bathroom correctly. In college the focus is resolutely intellectual, or it had better be. But it is in those middle years that the student’s spirit is malleable; it is then, above all other ages, when the spirit can be bent into the shape it will have for the rest of life. And so it is then when it is most critical for the adults around a student to set up circumstances that will call out the student’s best responses from a moral perspective … to train the student’s character to be the best it can be. Of course if the boys were living at home we would do the best we could. That’s what most parents do. If the boys were going to the local public school, that school would leave that stuff to us. But speaking only for myself, I fear I am a real amateur at that sort of thing and it is too important for me to be willing to botch the job. Which I would probably do, just through inadvertence.

Hogwarts and Durmstrang, though, have each one given a lot of thought to exactly this topic. They have come up with somewhat different answers, but I trust both schools to do a good job here. It’s not that I think any single one of the teachers there is so much wiser or more mature than we are; but I think that the institutions have built up a kind of institutional memory about how to educate adolescents, which helps them make the right choices more often than not when it comes to questions of character development.

This isn’t the only advantage I see to these schools, but it is a big one. And because of this, I think that their educations at Hogwarts and Durmstrang (respectively) will be valuable even if neither boy ever achieves his heart’s desire. I think the educations they are going to get in high school will stick with them through all the ups and downs of life. And therefore I think that those educations will absolutely not be wasted, no matter how the boys turn out.


* I have used the name "Beauxbatons" to stand for a third boarding school that both boys applied to and neither one got accepted by. I don't know why. Son 1's theory is that Beauxbatons is a school for rich kids (plus a few scholarship cases they can feel self-righteous about) and we just didn't have enough money. Maybe, or maybe not. I don't really know. What I do know is that as a school it may have a more impressive reputation than either Hogwarts or Durmstrang, but I was never persuaded that they paid as much attention to their students' moral development. So I wasn't terribly sad that neither boy got accepted there.

Getting what you want, part 1

The day after Wife's tantrum, by coincidence, we got an e-mail from Son 1's advisor at Hogwarts giving us an update on the year so far.  He mentioned a couple of classes where Son 1 is having trouble, partly because he's not taking good notes or going in afterwards for extra help.  Son 1's advisor said it's too early in the year for him to be worried, and in any event he had already talked to Son 1 about being more diligent.  But Wife and I started to talk about it, largely through e-mail while I was at work during the day.

She wrote me:

I hope Son 1 gets a stronger grip on his classes, but in fact this is completely in character with how he's done the past two years.... He didn't do well the last two years, either, for primarily the same reasons -- he didn't take notes, had nothing to study from, didn't appear to study for tests, and didn't understand math or science.

I know you argue ardently that Hogwarts will prepare him best for wherever he goes next, but I really truly question whether that's true if he can't even handle Hogwarts successfully and with a good faith effort: e.g. getting extra help. He tells me he's just overwhelmed. Has it occurred to you that either Son 1 really doesn't care enough about being at Hogwarts on an academic level to try very hard, or that maybe Hogwarts is genuinely TOO HARD for Son 1 and that he really DOESN'T belong there? In which case, is insisting that he go there a genuine gift?

I know we differ on this, but I am really concerned that it's unfair and unkind to expect this of Son 1, however much you disagree and denigrate me for thinking it. The AP programs at [our local public high school] are also very demanding, and it isn't clear to me that he'd be getting better grades in them, either, or even that we'd continue to live in this area that long [after the divorce]. But I have to wonder.

When are we supposed to know whether Son 1 is "doing better"? Apparently he never did last year. What reason do we have to think he will now?

I wrote back:

That's why I asked his advisor specifically whether Son 1 is doing better or worse than last year.... 

Also, going to Hogwarts makes a big difference for those students who aren't academic superstars, too. Many of my classmates weren't academic superstars -- the kids who got B's and C's -- and I'll bet you most of them are making more money than I am. [If I never explained this before, I went to Hogwarts when I was in high school. And yes, my academic record was a little nuts ... possibly more impressive than anything I have done since, which is kind of pathetic.]  There is no doubt in my mind Hogwarts was good for them too. If the school were "TOO HARD" for Son 1, he'd be failing and they'd kick him out. Up till now, that hasn't been the case. Of course we don't know about this year yet.

One of my big worries about moving him to the local public high school is that he would resent the change and just check out completely. You and I both know that Son 1 is totally capable of doing things that are absolutely not in his own best interest if he starts feeling stubborn. He did it when he was three, and I'll bet he can be just as stubborn now at 16 .... Just a thought.

She answered:

I totally agree with you that Son 1 would mightily resent having to lose his senior year at Hogwarts, and I really, truly don't want to do that to him. Yes, he can be remarkably stubborn, and you're right that he might well say "fuck you" and check out. I will do anything within reason to see to it that BOTH boys can stay in their schools. It isn't fair to Son 2 to promise him the same as Son 1, let him start at Durmstrang, and then pull it out from under him, either.

I'm sure it's true that many of your "B" classmates succeeded in life. I read an article somewhere that said that the "A" students in high school and college actually make less money over the course of their lives than the "B" students do. Not than the "C" students do, however. Yes, the "A" students did have more choice of more selective colleges. But 10 years after college graduation, unless someone's goal was to get into the best possible graduate school (or law school, med school, etc., where GPA made all the difference), WHERE someone had gone to college and what his/her GPA was had become virtually unimportant. At that point, it's really all about performance. And many "A" students are academically superior, but socially inferior, while in reality, social skills make more difference on the job than academic acumen. From that point of view, of course, Son 1 excels beyond expectatons. [It's true. His social skills are really good, better than either of ours.]

Where his choice of high school, and, in fact his GPA and standardized test scores will make a huge difference, is in his ability to get into a college of his choice -- specifically somewhere that will help him to attain his goal of being a military pilot. And in that regard, they're critical. That's why I said that I just don't think he can get into Annapolis, and that makes me very sad because I know that's what he really wants. Yes, I really DO love Son 1. And I would very much hate to see him disappointed. But when I see him doing things that limit his chances to meet a goal that is so important to him, I get frustrated. His not taking notes in math class is an example. I know he's overworked this year: I totally get that. But in class, he certainly has the ability to take notes, and if he isn't, I don't understand why. If he isn't seeking extra help -- and you'll notice that his advisor said that they may make that mandatory for him if his grades don't come up (which I back completely), then again, I don't think he's helping himself to achieve his own, much-wanted goals, as much as he could be. And I don't understand why. He really, really, when I've talked to him, doesn't seem to take seriously the connection between doing things like that and getting what he wants in the long run. That's probably typical of an adolescent. But he's had a lot of adult help understanding it from you, me, and his academic advisors at Hogwarts.... 
All I'm suggesting with Son 1 is that he may NOT get into a military academy. As you point out, he may be able to go to another good college with a good ROTC program, so that he graduates an officer. That may or may not lead to a career as a fighter pilot, which is why Son 1 wants to be in the military. He doesn't want to be a platoon commander, an administrator, or an airline mechanic. He doesn't even want to fly helicopters. He wants to fly fighters. And he may simply not get that. Few people do, even if they're VERY good, even in the cockpit. If not, I hope he can get something else he's happy with. For example, I believe that, if he had the money for the training, he could become a commercial pilot. A friend of mine who works as a stewardess tells me that almost all of them come out of flying for the military, but a few train privately, go to work for short-run commercial companies like UPS, then work their way into flying for major airlines. But Son 1 has already made it clear that he doesn't want to do that. It would be boring for him, and he craves the excitement of being on-deck of an aircraft carrier. I'm not sure how he can make that happen.  For his sake, I hope he can, because I fear his being very disappointed if he can't. That's what I was trying to express to you last night, and I don't think you got it. I'm afraid that, if he doesn't take his studies seriously enough while at Hogwarts, his ultimate goal will be out of his reach, and that will make him very unhappy, and I really, really don't want to see his life's goal thwarted.

So if I'm mad at him for not applying himself as much as he could, that is why. It's not that I think that he shouldn't be allowed to go to Hogwarts if he's going to get an occasional "B" -- it's that he has a fantastic opportunity in Hogwarts, and it hurts me, for his sake, if he wastes it. And yes, that comes out as anger, probably because I would have LOVED to have had that kind of opportunity, and it was not even potentially possible, and I would have applied myself completely, as I did in college. Son 1 and Son 2 have it, and I don't think they understand how lucky they are to have it, or what it costs us personally to give it to them. I'm not asking for gratitude: I'm asking for them to make the most of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Is it worth it? I'd really like to say yes. I think it's very important. And no, I certainly wouldn't have spent the money on shoes! -- that was a low blow. I might have spent it on keeping the house above water by doing desperately needed maintenance, and certainly would've been willing to put it into their college funds. I am simply not nearly as convinced as you are that they will be able to go to good colleges if we have no assets. And I would hate to see them saddle themselves with many years of loans so that they can go to good colleges. Many students do that now, and have to put off marriage and children, much less home ownership, because of it. There are lots of articles on the subject. I don't want that future for my children. THAT is my motivation, and I don't believe it reflects a lack of love of them on my part. Quite the opposite.

I think this letter put a far better face on what she was trying to say than any of her ranting the night before.  (It's one reason I prefer e-mail for this kind of conversation. Cowardice is another reason.)  The last two paragraphs there are particularly important because the real root issue becomes clear there.  But this has already become very long, so I will save my reply for the next post.

Hating Durmstrang ... and the boys too??

Last weekend (or a little earlier -- maybe 8 or 9 days ago at this point), Wife had a tantrum in which she decided that she hates Durmstrang.  I suspect deep down this is because she sees Durmstrang as having taken Son 2 away from her; but it is also because the values of the school are so different from hers that she knows she herself would be miserable there. 

I had better back up and explain that Durmstrang very much emphasizes the simple life, and perhaps ends up taking it to an extreme. The good side is that graduates, by the time they are done, have had four years learning self-reliance, independence, and a measure of detachment from the crazier parts of popular culture along with a normal high school curriculum. When I think of the place in those terms, it doesn't take much for me to get all Thoreau-and-Emerson about it; I even think of it rather fitting into the mold of the ancient philosophical schools (e.g., the Stoics or Epicureans), although I realize that sounds a bit far-fetched for a high school. But in any event it is a very different way of life from the frantic and compulsive accumulation of things that is so desperately, graspingly, pathetically central to Wife's whole worldview. I suppose it was only a matter of time before she snapped. (In particular, she has started to compare it to those schools for truant or rebellious youth advertised in the back pages of Sunset Magazine.) 

What set her off was a letter from Durmstrang welcoming us (as new parents) to the school year, cheerfully talking about some upcoming events, and reminding us not to send the kids things that don’t really work there: sugary snacks, soda or caffeinated drinks, plastic water bottles. Wife was livid.  “I can’t even send him CARE packages! They have ruled out every single thing I could imagine sending him, which means they are deliberately isolating me by cutting off all possible contact with MY son!” Nor did she appreciate, or approve of, the remark that introduced the next to last paragraph: “[Our founder] said that Durmstrang is a simple life school where ‘one learns to get on without.’”

The answers to this outburst were all pretty obvious (at least to me) and for the most part I left them unsaid. 

• Gosh, is your imagination so limited that you can't think of anything else to send him? Books, music, even home-baked goodies that aren't icky sweet ... none of these occurred to you?
• How clever of you to have figured out that they put these restrictions in place -- not to benefit the students or to align the parents with the school's mission -- but specifically to isolate you personally from your son!
• And what exactly is wrong with learning to get on without? Sure, maybe it's nice not to have to get on without, but if you at least know how then you are more capable, more flexible, able to deal with a wider variety of situations when life throws unpredictable shit at you. And this is bad ... how?

No, I didn't say any of that.  I did try to soften the picture by suggesting that Son 2 was happy there -- by pointing out, in fact, that Son 2 had enough chances to view the place before accepting their offer (and is perceptive enough in general) that he probably knew exactly what he was getting into, that he went there eagerly and with his eyes open, and that the very few and very brief communications we have gotten from him since suggest he is perfectly content.  Isn't that a good sign? Wife’s reply, though, was to say bitterly “Well I guess he and I weren’t as close as I always thought we were” and then to damn him for it. 

I was actually shocked. Honestly it sounded like she was talking about bitter enemies whom she deeply hated, despised, and resented; not the two boys whom she says she loves so much that they are the most important parts of her life.  She blasted Son 2 for "rejecting all of her values"; she excoriated Son 1 (who is going to a different school, remember) for not being a scholar, for taking a relaxed attitude towards his studies, for being strong and physical and athletic ... I almost expected her to call him a "dumb jock".  (He's not at all dumb, mind you, but that's the kind of mood she was in.)  And she blasted them both for -- in her eyes -- expecting a "free ride" in life.  Huh??  Where did that come from?  Hey Babe, is this all because we are spending money on their tuition instead of buying you some fancy clothes or more shoes?  [No, I didn't say it.]  But you've heard all about her tantrums before, so I don't need to go on.  Suffice it to say that everything was hateful to her.  Everything was caricatured in the worst possible colors.  She hasn't been this bad in a long time; maybe it's the stress of the impending divorce.

Interestingly, it’s also not the first time I have heard this kind of hatred for one’s children.  Wife's mother said much the same kinds of things about Wife being wrenched away from her – or rather "betraying" her -- by going to college.  (Wife was the first in her family to do so.)  It probably goes without saying that Wife hates being compared to her mother.  She has made it a point of pride and self-definition for years not to be the same kind of parent her mother was.  But I remember listening to her mother's tirades just before our wedding, when she would howl at me because nobody else was nice enough to sit still and listen to her.  And it was all the same stuff.  I wonder if I should tell Wife that, or just let it go?

To be strictly fair, of course this isn't her only view.  When she is in a better frame of mind, of course she still loves the boys as well as she can love anyone.  But it made for a long evening that night ....

Porchia's "Voices"

Just for a little change of pace.

I recently ran across a reference to an Argentinian poet named Antonio Porchia.  I say "poet" because that's what everybody calls him in all the references I've found, but his "poems" were typically one sentence long.  Maybe two.  I'd be more inclined to call them "aphorisms" except he hated the term.  (Not sure why.)  Maybe "proverbs".  Or else -- the term he himself used (and the name of the book where they are collected) -- "voices".

Some of them are very evocative.  Some of them could easily replace the motto on my masthead ("Talks loud. Laughs louder. Thinks silently.")  Some of them I don't begin to understand.  But I picked up a volume of them, and have it on my desk at work.  And when I'm bored of the stuff I'm supposed to be doing, I pick it up and nibble, ... just a bit.
__________

Las pequeñeces son lo eterno, y lo demás, todo lo demás, lo breve, lo muy breve.

The little things are what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity.

Trátame como debes tratarme, no como merezco ser tratado.

Treat me as you should treat me, not as I should be treated.

Sé que no tienes nada. Por ello tepido todo. Para que tengas todo.

I know that you have nothing. That is why I ask you for everything. So that you will have everything.

Se vive con la esperanza de llegar a ser un recuerdo.

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.

Han dejado de engañarte, no de quererte. Y te parece que han dejado de quererte.

They have stopped deceiving you, not loving you. And it seems to you that they have stopped loving you.

Lo pagado con nuestra vida nunca es caro.

What we pay for with our lives never costs too much.

Qué te he dado, lo sé. Qué has recibido, no lo sé.

I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.

En una alma llena cabe todo y en una alma vacía no cabe nada. ¡Quién comprende!

A full heart has room for everything and an empty heart has room for nothing. Who understands?

"Why don't you move out now?" (this evening, part 2)

This story starts here.

I fled the room, as I wrote, but Wife wasn't having any.  She was determined that I was going to hear what she had to say.  I tried sticking my fingers in my ears, but she just shouted over them, "I'll have you know that I change the sheets every time I 'use the bed' in the middle of the day!"

Did I ask this?

I was rattled ... not because she fucked one of her dismal string of boyfriends today but because she was hollering at me.  You could say, "Sure, Hosea, but you had your fingers in your ears. What did you expect?"  But to me it is every bit as aggressive for her to be "defending herself" or "clearing her name" or whatever she chooses to call it this time, even if she does it in a quiet and modulated tone of voice.  It's the content that grates on me so badly, not the decibel level.  So I left the house and walked around the block before making dinner.

Happily we talked about other things over dinner.  She started talking about her conversations with a mortgage banker, interminably (or so it seemed).  But then a few minutes later she started talking about this psychologist who is trying to address her migraines through biofeedback ... even more interminably.  And then the conversation meandered around to something else where she felt the need to "defend herself" and I stopped her.

"You really can't keep doing that, or I'll have to leave the house again. Honestly, when you start talking like that I feel like you are making a stick out of your words and hitting me with it. Really it's better if you just talk about something else."

"I'm sorry you feel like that, Hosea. I don't understand what I can be saying to make you feel like I'm hitting you. (And geez, I'm only defending myself in the first place!)"

"That's it. I'm out of here. I'll be back."

Slam.

I came back in just a couple of minutes, while Wife was putting her dishes in the dishwasher.  I started to put the food away and she headed towards the bedroom.  (The washing machine was still humming in the background.)  Then she turned and said, very calmly, ...

"You know, the divorce is going to take a long time. There are a lot of things we have to figure out, and then even once we've got them all figured out and the forms drawn up it will take the Court a long time to process those forms. So why don't you just move out now? It's obvious that I really grate on you, and you'd be happier. I can't complain about you. These days you have been unfailingly polite. But I still care about you and I can see that you are really suffering by being around me. So maybe you want to rent a studio apartment or something else, just to have a place to live while we go through all the details -- even if in the end it turns out that you are going to own the house instead of me and so you move back in. I think you'd be happier."

I mumbled that I would think about it.  Of course in many ways she is right: it has gotten to the point that I feel almost allergic to her.  In the back of my head I wonder if she has some ulterior motive ... if there is something she can steal or sabotage over weeks that she can't do while I'm at work during the day.  And of course it would cost more: I assume that she'd still want my help with the mortgage and the other household bills, if we hadn't yet come to a final agreement on how to disposition all the stuff.

But in some ways it is very tempting ....

Ewww, gross .... (this evening, part 1)

So I come home from work tonight.  Wife is at the computer and I'm about to make dinner when she says, "Can you give me just twenty minutes in the kitchen? I know I've had all day but I haven't had a chance to clean it up yet. It'll only take me twenty minutes and then you can go ahead and cook."

Sure, hell, why not?  So I let her go do stuff in the kitchen.  I poke at my e-mail but there isn't much.  And I wander aimlessly into the bedroom.  The covers of the bed are tossed every which way in a complete jumble.  Usually she at least has the bed made when I get home, so I assume she really hasn't had any time all day.  I wonder ... hello, what's this?  Ewww, gross ... it's somebody's butt-stain* on my side of the bed, right about where somebody's butt would be if he were lying in bed with his head on the pillow.  And it sure as hell wasn't there this morning.

I really couldn't care less whom she's fucking, but I don't want to have to sleep on the sofa.  So I wait till she's done in the kitchen and then ask her, "I don't want to know whose this is, but could you ask him to be more careful next time? And can you do something about it before bedtime?"

She tenses up and says, "Yes, I saw it there and I knew all about it -- and I was going to change the sheets this evening anyway!  And just for the record ...."

I flee the room quickly.  Any sentence that follows the words "just for the record" is a sentence I don't want to hear.  But she does change the sheets, and puts the smeared ones in the washing machine.  Good thing.


* As if he really hadn't wiped quite well enough and it had just rubbed off in the course of tossing about.

"The Grief Cycle of Divorce"

Counselor lent Wife a book he thinks we should both read before we tell the boys about the divorce.  It's called The truth about children and divorce: Dealing with the emotions so you and your children can thrive, by Robert E. Emery.  I started it today and a lot of what he says makes sense: a lot of it is about adopting a businesslike attitude towards your ex so that your children don't become a dumping ground for your negative emotions.

But to set the stage, right at the beginning he says that divorce involves grieving: even if you are sick of each other, you are both losing something that was a big part of your lives up till now.  And so yes, grief is part of the package.

He also says that the "grief cycle of divorce" is a little different from the famous "Five stages of grief" when somebody dies.  Specifically, he says it involves cycling in rotation from love to anger, from anger to sadness, and from sadness back to love.

Cycling through love, anger, and sadness?  Shit, that sounds like a summary of my whole marriage.  It got me to thinking that in some ways our entire marriage -- or at least most of it (and it's 28 years old at this point) -- has been one long divorce.  Or it looks that way from my side.  Every time Wife took a new lover, every time she spent outrageously on something pointless, every time ... hell, I can't make a list.  Every time she did something crazy, it was like one more twist of the knife, or one more rip in the fabric.  And every time, I would plunge into crazy anger, followed by deep listless sadness, followed finally by a new (if battered and rueful) level of love.  Maybe that's why now I can be so calm about it all ... because I have already spent decades grieving the loss of the marriage, and so now I can focus on the mundane business of burying it.

"The only family I have"

Wife has something new to worry about: Why hasn't anybody in my family contacted her by e-mail or phone to talk about our impending divorce?  This evening over dinner she finally asked me if, in the e-mail I sent out telling the family, I had requested that they not talk to her?

Certainly not, nothing of the kind.  I asked that they not tell the boys until we did, but that's all.

Well then, she wondered, how much have I heard back?  She added a rueful comment to the effect that I was probably carrying on a long conversation with everyone in the family about how rotten she is.

I told her I have heard very little back, not much more than "We got your e-mail."  (And from Brother and his girlfriend I have not heard even that much.)  In reality I've gotten a little more than that (such as this note from my aunt), but really not much.  But I also thought there's not much value in telling her that I think it is crazy for her to expect sympathy from my family.  Whose side does she think they are going to be on?

But apparently what she is hoping for is that she will still be welcomed in my parents' home as part of the family, that she can still expect to come and sleep over for a couple of nights at Christmastime, ... really, that nothing will have changed in how people see her or treat her.  And she actually got a little choked up this evening in saying, "For thirty years your family has been the only family I have; so I guess if I'm going to be kicked out of it now, I'd like to know."

Her timeline is a bit off -- we were still visiting her sister's house at Christmastime when the boys were toddlers, to say nothing of the twelve years we were married before either boy was born.  But it is true that she has had almost no contact with the rest of her family in the last decade, at any rate.  I have to ask, though, why is that?  No, I've been in no hurry to visit her family because on the whole I don't have anything to say to them; but I've generally acquiesced when she made plans to visit.  I wasn't the one who encouraged her to jump in the middle of a big, ugly argument between her sister and that sister's oldest daughter (Wife's niece), with the result that Wife's sister (and all her children) stopped speaking to Wife.  And with each passing year, as the boys spent more time with my parents and less time with Wife's relatives, it became easier and easier to keep spending holidays that way again and again.  If Wife has almost no contact with her own family, it's because she hasn't troubled to make it happen, and because a lot of them don't want to see her.  Not much I can do about either of those.

Nor is it like she has really ingratiated herself with my family.  Her fights with my father are legendary ... so much so that the boys just roll their eyes at any mention of the two of them and look for the first opportunity to be somewhere else whenever she and my dad are in the same room.  My mother finds Wife's constant complaining so oppressive that she has to flee to another room rather than endure it.  I'm not so sure about Brother and his girlfriend ... of all the family they seem the most solicitous toward her.  But I don't know how far that is genuine affection, and how far it is my brother's principled desire to be kind to everyone.

Does she really not understand how uncomfortable she makes the people around her?  No, I think she really does not understand.

But this means that she must also not understand how far she has been tolerated by my family specifically for my sake.  Maybe it's just because she can't see herself, or maybe people didn't do things that way in her family.  But she has expressed bafflement many times at the way that members of my family instinctively side with each other in any dispute regardless of "the facts of the case."  And I, for my part, can't understand how she would ever expect anything else.  Isn't that what families do? 

Hell, I don't know.  Maybe hers didn't.

In any event, I have told her I can't speak for my parents -- which is true.  I have told her that I haven't heard much back from anyone either -- which is nearly true.  And I have told her that nobody has said a word about whether she will be welcome in my parents' house at Christmas, because Christmas is more than three months away and none of us ever plans that far ahead.  And that is pretty much true at a literal level.  Nobody has discussed the question with me.  Now I can't imagine her actually being welcome there for more than a few awkward hours at a time on special occasions few and far between, but strictly speaking that is just an opinion and I haven't voiced it.  I haven't seen any profit to anybody in spelling that out right now, because all it would do is make her more miserable.  And I suppose I might be wrong.  But I don't think so.

When all this business is over, I think Wife is going to be very lonely.  She will have her friends, except that she tends to drive away friends over time except for a select few.  She may get in touch with the one remaining non-alienated branch of her family, many of whom live out of state but a few of whom live only a couple of hours from here.  Maybe Brother and his girlfriend will take pity on her.  She'll see the boys rarely and the rest of my family even more rarely.  But I think that leaves a lot of hours when she will be alone. 

It's sad.  What is even sadder is that in very large part this is something she has done to herself.  Will she ever understand that?  Anything's possible, but that's not the number where I'm putting my bet ....

"Like a nightmare"

Every conversation with Wife these days takes way longer than it needs to. I asked her today for some numbers on bills she had paid so that I could reimburse my share of them, and we must have talked for ... I don't know, three hours? ... before she collected them.  So many changes rung on "What's going to happen ...?" and "If you said this why did you do that ...?" and "It's totally not fair that ...."  I wanted to say, "The reason I did all those things is that I'm an asshole and you will be well rid of me."  Hell, might even be true ....

But she made one comment in that whole barrel-full that stuck with me.  Almost as a side-comment to something else, Wife said, ...

"This whole last week has been like that nightmare where something is chasing you and you can't move your feet."

For all her hostile talk in Lawyer's office, she may be petrified.  Lawyer did say she thinks Wife will try to maintain the status quo ....  Maybe it's not even on purpose, but just from not being able to make herself do anything else.

Wife panics over money. Regularly.

Wife seems to have a lot of trouble with the financial planning aspect of the divorce.  I suppose this is no surprise ... part of why I am leaving her is that she has no sense of financial reality.  But the other night she was complaining that I had offered her far too little money to live on (that being the exact amount that our state's standard formula calculated).  So I asked her to make a counter-proposal, and we could negotiate it.  "How much do you need?"

"Well, I don't know that because I don't have all the figures."

Silly me, at this point I think she's talking about figures like what I earn and what we pay for the mortgage, so I say, "Gosh, I'm pretty sure that's all in there. Go through it with a pencil in hand, and if you find something missing just jot it down and I'l get the number for you."

"But I can't do that because I don't have all the information I need."

Ummm, ... what?  Didn't I just answer that?  "Right, but that's why I say to jot down whatever it is you don't have and I'll get it; meanwhile you can replace those with X and Y in your calculation and just say that whatever you need is so much a week plus X and Y. But you have to start somewhere. Don't make a huge project out of it. I'm just looking for a rough draft. You should be able to sketch it out in a day or two. If you are spending longer than that then you are going into more detail than you need for a first draft."

"But I can't do that because I don't know what I'm going to need!!!"

At this point she was getting pretty upset, and I was completely clueless why.

"Huh?"

"Well, the house needs all this work and there's absolutely no way I can save up enough money to have it done on what you are offering me. So I have to get quotes on all of that. And I have no idea how much it will cost to hire a gardener, so I have to get quotes on that. And getting quotes on all these things is going to take months! There's no way I can do all that in the 48 hour deadline you are giving me! And what if I have to rush through it so much in those 48 hours that forget one little thing that I really need? I can't come back to you later and ask for more -- you'll just smirk and say I should have thought of that before. And so whatever happens I'll end up losing the house and all of my possessions and I'll be homeless!"

Wow. 

I don't remember quite what I said.  I'm sure it was ineffectual -- something on the order of, "Look, just get started and I'm sure you can get most of it. It can't be that hard."  But I started thinking about what she had said.

I have to admit the part that struck me first was the gardener.  We don't have a gardener now ... so why does she think that she "needs" a gardener?  All I can figure is that she means she won't have me to mow the lawn any more.  Or maybe she means that the garden is all overgrown and the yard is a wreck and she "can't" do any of it herself because of her illnesses and allergies and trick knee, and so "of course" she "needs" a gardener to bring it into minimally-acceptable shape, that being better shape than any of it is in right now.

Except that spousal support is meant only to maintain your existing standard of living, not improve it.  If your current standard of living sucks, spousal support won't change that.

The second thing that struck me was the intensity of the panic.  She is clearly feeling enormous fear, and therefore feels compelled to know that every possibility is covered and accounted for.  But when does any of us ever get that?  Isn't life inherently uncertain?  Isn't the future always unknown?  It is, but that kind of uncertainty has always been "unacceptable" to Wife.  It's part of why she is never able to trust anything or anyone, and therefore (out of a desire to protect herself against the betrayal she "knows" is coming) behaves in ways that make her untrustworthy.  That's another reason I am leaving.

She cannot distinguish between needs and wants -- I mean that not in a frivolous way, as if I were merely trying to say that she indulges herself too much, but really deep down.  She does not have the intellectual tools, whatever they are, to make that distinction.  And I think that somehow she really has no idea how to get started.  She has no idea what she needs or how much it costs.

She also can't listen, because her fear is so great that she is always interrupting.  "No, I can't do this because ...."  "No, that's impossible because ...."  "I'm completely trapped because ...."  Some of this might even be true, but I can't tell.  There is so much of it that I tune it all out completely.  I can't listen to it, can't digest it, therefore can't evaluate it or try to help her disentangle reality from fantasy.  In the back of my mind I think I used to try to do that, but whenever the issue touched one of her deep fears -- and money is a very, very deep fear for her -- it never worked.  She could never hear me.  She could never bring herself to let go of the fear long enough to see that there was a world beyond it.  That's another reason I am leaving.

One side of me thinks that divorce is going to bring an end to the craziness I have lived with for so long, at least as far as I am concerned because I will be out of here.  But I'm also starting to suspect that it will bring to the surface every last scrap of craziness that I have been avoiding for so long.  That one last bonfire is going to be a big one.

But sex makes you smarter

So after posting the plausible (but somewhat depressing) article immediately below, I had to search for some compensating result.  Fortunately Google is a great tool, and it didn't take me long to find it:

http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2011/10/17/just-do-it-having-sex-can-make-you-smarter.html

In case you were wondering ....

Listening to complainers is bad for your brain?

I was just doing some random browsing in the Internet and stumbled across this article.

http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/listening-to-complainers-is-bad-for-your-brain.html?nav=next

Apparently listening to people complain all the time actually breaks down the hippocampus, making one stupider.  It's good to know (albeit a little late for some of us).  Maybe we can start handling complaints like some people handle second-hand smoke ...?

Of course, as soon as I publish this post I will lose all my readers, none of whom want to be made stupider by following all my complaints.  (sigh) ....

;-)  

And now for Wife's perspective ....

I know what she has been telling me ("You don't believe this but I still love you").  I know what Lawyer picked up from her ("She really wants to preserve the staus quo.")  But this evening, as in the past (from time to time), Wife was sloppy about not logging out of her e-mail.  So what is she telling her friends?

Well, a fair bit of it is about what a monster I am.  A typical paragraph starts off like this: "I took it as a body blow that Hosea chose to tell me he's divorcing me the day after Son 2 left, when I was still very much grieving over being an empty nester. I also think that he is telling me that he only wants what is best for me, but is not dealing at all fairly with me...."

But then, after the harangue, comes this little gem:

"[Anyway the upshot is he is planning to move out.] Honestly, that is a great relief to me. I can't help but be stressed by the uncertainty, but the sooner he leaves, the happier I'll be."

Glad to hear it.

Win-win.

"Just checking in"

Lawyer called me at work this afternoon -- "just checking in after our meeting on Monday" -- and we talked for half an hour.  I can't remember the whole conversation, but here are some bits and bobs as I remember them.

__________


"How was the drive home?"

"By turns she was angry, weepy, and very cold."

"You know, I met her in the restroom after you two left my office and we talked for a minute. She apologized for how hostile she had been in my office but said that this whole thing had really taken her by surprise."

"Yes, and I think underlying it all she is very deeply afraid."

__________


"You know, part of what I sensed from her when I met her is that she has a lot of anger at the world bottled up inside."

__________


"Has she made any moves toward getting a lawyer yet?"

"Not that I know of, but of course it's only been a day."

"Do you think she will?"

"I hope she will!"

"Well of course she should. I can't pretend to be impartial."

"It's not just that. You know, a lot of people say 'I'm gonna get a lawyer' like it's a threat (no offense). But I look forward to her getting a lawyer because he'll be focussed on dealing with reality. I think a lot of the things she wants are inconsistent with each other, and others are totally unobtainable. But a lawyer will approach the whole thing with no personal sentiment involved, and will figure out what can be done in the real world. Her lawyer can get on the phone with you and the two of you will have no emotional baggage in the way of working out the best deal for her and me. And she needs somebody who can tell her, 'This is what you can get, but you can't get that' ... I mean, somebody that is on her side, somebody besides you or me."

"I agree."

__________


"Tell me about the house. You said you wanted her to have the house, but she said it needs all these repairs. What's that about?"

"Well I think she overstated it. Yes, there is a lot of maintenance we have kind of deferred; but it's not falling down around our ears. [And I listed some of it.]"

"And it sounded to me like she was saying she's not interested in the house unless all that is fixed. Do you think that's right?"

"I think she's of two minds, and this is one of the places where she is inconsistent. In your office she was trying to be financially shrewd, and was saying that a house with all these needed repairs isn't much of an investment. But suppose you turn around and suggest she move out -- then my God, you'd think the world was coming to an end. She's also convinced she can't move out, because she has all this furniture and all this junk she has inherited from her parents and grandparents and great-aunts and so on, and it completely immobilizes her. So she doesn't want the house in the shape it's in, and she also doesn't want to leave."

"I see."

"I was thinking about it last night and realized there are basically three possibilities. Case One is that by some miracle she can afford the house and the repairs all by herself. Case Two is where she can afford the house by herself but not the repairs. And Case Three is where she can't afford anything. Now Cases One and Three are easy: in One she stays and in Three she leaves. But what about Two? Part of her -- the part that was talking in your office -- wants to say that in Case Two she leaves. But I guarantee that emotionally she can't bring herself to do that, which means really she wants to stay and for somebody else to pay for it all. So what can we do in that case? Well, I figure part of my job is to help her to see that just because she can't afford something today doesn't mean she'll never afford it. I could imagine that we end up with a divorce settlement that says something like, 'The following repairs are so critical that Hosea has to pony up and pay for them right away: list, list, list. And for the rest, we'll add on X dollars to the agreed support number for her to squirrel away in a savings account so that she can save up to do the rest later.' I wouldn't be opposed to something like that. We'd have to negotiate the details."

__________


"She also said something about the boys. Your plan gave you 77% custody and her 23%. But she said the boys would want the split to be 50-50. Do you think that's true?"

"I have no idea. Maybe yes, maybe no."

"So the fact that she said it ...."

"Tells us only that that is what she wants to believe. But there have been plenty of times in the past when we have been arguing and she has tried to score points by telling me, 'The boys both agree with me!' Then when I have followed up and asked them, they've asked, 'What??' "

"I see."

"Maybe they'd like 50-50 because they think it's fair, and because our fights with each other aren't their fights. Maybe they'd choose to be with her all the time because they think she needs someone to look after her."

"You make it sound like they parent her."

"They do. They also tune her out more easily than they do me, so they might like that aspect of it. Or they might choose to spend more time with me because they are tired of dealing with her. I really don't know ... it could be any of those. We'd have to ask them."

"How old are they?"

"Fourteen and sixteen."

"So they are old enough that the Court will care about their opinion."

__________


"You remember she asked me why you wanted so much custody, and I just alluded that you'd said she had some health issues."

"Right."

"Do you really think she doesn't understand?"

"She is totally oblivious to any of the other reasons I think she shouldn't have custody."  [Like this and this, for starters.]

"That's what I thought."

__________


"Hosea, there's one other thing I picked up by talking with her. She really wants to keep the status quo."

"Yes and no. When I talk to her about our marriage, she'll insist that she wants to stay with me and then she'll spend half an hour listing things she hates about me. I try to tell her she'll be happier without me, too. But I think she is terrified of change and of the unknown."

"Right, that's what I see. And that means she is going to delay this process as long as possible. You need to keep an eye on it, Hosea, and be prepared to move it along, or else a year from now you'll be right where you are today."

"That's good advice and I hadn't thought of it. Thank you."

Exhausted

Dear God, but I am tired.

I took a day off from work yesterday so that Wife and I could visit Lawyer.  Wife was by turns raging, weeping, and cold.  All the way there, during the meeting, all the way back, and for the rest of the day.  At one point she told Lawyer I had been calculatingly cruel for dropping the news of a divorce on her "the day after I lost my youngest son!"  I interjected a quick explanation that this didn't mean he had died, which it sounds like, but just that we had delivered him happy and enthusiastic to boarding school.  But that's how she sees the whole thing.  I'll spare you the rest, and honestly I probably couldn't bring myself to remember or type it all anyway.

Drove home.  I did some yard work, went to the gym and exercised, picked up some groceries, came home and made dinner.  Wife lit into me again over dinner.  I tried to propose a moratorium on discussing this stuff over dinner or in the evenings, but failed.  Wife asked a lot of questions about Why? and How long have you been planning this?  I did my best not to answer them, because they are questions that will provoke more tears and recriminations, not questions that move us forward; I kept asking her to focus on What terms do I want? What terms can I live with?  I only lost my temper and yelled once -- a first in months -- when I was trying to urge her to think about what she can do, and she cut me off to tell me all about what she can't do and how all scenarios for the future are impossible.

By the end of the evening I was bone-weary.  This morning at the office I am vacuous and unfocussed.  My arms ache, which I chalk up to overdoing it at the gym.  But the fact that I can't think clearly?  That I know I shouldn't trust myself to make important decisions or do anything more than routine tasks?  It's not a hangover: I drank some last night but not that damned much and there's no headache.  It can't be the exercise, ... can it?

I think it's just that the weight of the whole business is starting to settle on me, and that the effort to stay cool and calm and businesslike when I'm with Wife has been more of a strain than I realized.

I'm really, really tired.

"How would you feel???"

For the last two days, Wife has been furious at me that I did some advance work with Lawyer, getting advice and drafting a plan.  She feels betrayed, blindsided that I would "go around behind her back" like that.  (The irony here is so thick it's hard to wade through, but I don't think she sees it at all.)  And so she has not let up asking pointed, insinuating questions, each one in essence a chip on her shoulder that she is just daring me to knock off.  And I keep trying to pull her back to reality:

• This plan is only a draft, not a done deal.
• Lawyer is only an advisor, not a judge; her office is not a courtroom. 
• Therefore Wife can't be compelled by any of this. If she says No, then No.

But then Wife will change tack so that instead of complaining that I am railroading her, she complains about all the money she thinks I have spent.  (I have not given her a sum because it is none of her damned business.)  Why didn't we spend that money on fixing up the house, instead of me personally spending what she insists on calling "common money" doing something so "blatantly hostile" as retaining an attorney?

I remind her that we signed an agreement three years ago splitting our incomes and expenses (but not our assets).  She insists that agreement cannot be enforced in our state, and that she is entitled to anything I earn.  (When she watches herself she limits that to half of what I earn, but she isn't always that careful.)

And so on.  And on.  And on.  Yelling, angry, aggrieved.

Of course, I have realized that what is really behind this is that she is deeply scared.  She doesn't deal with change well -- she even accused me of cruelty because I "deliberately" chose to hit her with this while she was still "grieving" at the fact that we took Son 2 up to Durmstrang so he's no longer living at home -- and she has no trust in anybody.  So as far as she knows, I am conspiring with the Prince of Darkness to have him devour her immortal soul, all for the sport of watching.  When I tell her that she should relax and wait till she looks at the plan because I'm trying to be fair and willing to be generous (except not on custody), she stares at me incomprehendingly as if I were speaking Chinese.

And this evening as I was clearning the dinner dishes she came back for what must have been the dozenth time to screeching at me, "How would you feel if I were the one who had gone to see an attorney behind your back without telling you a word about it, and if I had drawn up a plan for exactly how our divorce was going to be carried out, and then if I told you to come along to my attorney so I could spell it all out for you exactly how it was going to be?  How would you feel???"

I feared it was a risk to answer honestly, but she had been harping on this same point just a bit too long.  So I said, "How would I feel? I don't know. From what I hear, that's exactly what you did do back when I was unemployed and totally defenseless [This was back in 2004, and I tell the essence of that story here.] ... all except the part about dragging me along to the office to hear the news. I guess you decided at the last minute not to go through with it. But you did all the rest. And how did I feel about it? Not so good."

And she fell silent as abruptly as if she had been turned off with a switch.  She stayed silent for the rest of the meal.  So it must have been true.

It's good she didn't ask me how I knew, because I found out by reading her e-mail to Lead Tenor.  Way back in 2004 when it happened, I told her I knew and claimed that one of her friends had called me behind her back because she (this mythical friend) thought Wife was being unkind and unfair to me; but at the time all she did was to deny it staunchly and demand to know which friend had "betrayed" her by "making up" such a story.  And we never got a bill from any attorney, so in the end I figured that either she paid cash or else maybe she was just bragging to Lead Tenor to make herself look worldly and daring.  But this time she didn't deny anything, she didn't argue, she didn't fight ... she just shut up.  So yes, it was probably all true after all.  I figure tomorrow she will tell me that the story is total hogwash, and I'll tell her that if it took her that long to deny it, ... well, ... I can't take the denial very seriously.

I wonder if she'll stop complaining about my unfairness now?  If she'll realize that what goes around, comes around?  If she'll see that she doesn't have a scrap of moral high ground to stand on?  Naaah, probably not.  That would be too much to hope for.  But the silence was refreshing, even if it won't last forever.
__________

P.S.: That plan she wrote, way back when?  It was a gem.  I won't quote it all here, but most of the draconian measures were financial: that the house be put into her name alone, that our bank accounts be put in her name alone (even though I was earning the income), ... stuff like that.  And in one of her e-mails to Lead Tenor she said explicitly that she planned to use access to the boys as a level to extort my signature to this abomination: basically she assumed she would get full custody (they were a lot younger then, so she was leaning heavily on the "motherhood" angle), and she could threaten to prevent me from ever seeing them if I didn't play ball.  Honestly, what I'm offering her is more generous than that ....

A reply ... so soon!

About the time I sat down at the computer to type my last entry, I found a reply from my aunt, to the letter I had sent out earlier in the afternoon.

Hi Hosea,

Thanks for sharing this with us. I am both sad and happy for you at the same time. I have known Wife for all these years and I have always known that there was a problem. I believe in principle that relationship problems are usually a 50-50 split in responsibility, with an extreme case being 60-40. Seems to me that the responsibility for problems in your case is about 85 Wife and 15 Hosea. I am glad for you that you are going to be able to move on and find whatever lies ahead. Please let me know if there is anything we can do to help you or the boys.

Just FYI - we have moved to ... [new address]. 

Please keep in touch.

May peace be with you,


Auntie

And so it starts

The first day with no children at home ... or rather, the first day after both children have moved out (if only to boarding school).  I slept in, then checked my e-mail. Wife slept in, then got some coffee and the newspaper.  As she was reading the front page, I checked my horoscope which read:

Take charge of the situation. You can relieve tensions at home by acting as the mediator or offering sage advice. Show compassion; save wounded feelings by overlooking faults. Stand by your decisions.

Stand by your decisions.  Well yes, I've gone far enough down the road this point that I was planning to anyway.  And no, I don't normally take my daily advice from the horoscope in the newspaper.  But I couldn't help noticing that it seemed ... relevant.


Wife had wanted to talk with me about some things I was doing that bothered her.  A couple weeks ago, she had gotten mad and started yelling at me about one of them (I think I sighed and rolled my eyes in a really dismissive way -- you would have gotten mad at me too), and I asked her please not to go into it right then and there, in front of the boys.  (Or at least Son 2 ... Son 1 might have already gone back to school at that point.) 

She shouted back, "You always say that! You always want to talk about it later, but then Later never comes! So if you don't want to talk about it right now, buddy, then when is it gonna be? Give me a date!" 

I looked at the calendar and told her, "Saturday, September 8, at 9:00 in the morning. Is it a date? Can it wait till then?"

She was a little nonplussed that I gave her an exact date and time instead of just brushing her off, but she accepted it.  And so this morning, when she had read the paper until about 9:30, I asked her, "I think you wanted to talk with me about something?"

She started by expressing concern for me, that my depression isn't being adequately managed, that she thinks I'm drinking too much, and that a happy man wouldn't drink the way I do.  (I don't get drunk around others -- indeed, it's been a while since I have truly gotten drunk -- and I don't let it interfere with my work. I also think I have cut back from where I was six months ago, or so. But she is probably right that I would drink less if I were less anxious.)  Then she moved from there to some of the behaviors she objected to: the eye-rolling, the visible disdain, ... also that when she is crazy or temperemental I will grasp her hand at the wrist to get her attention and not let go until I can get her to calm down and listen.  She talked about all this for a while, and for a few minutes I even answered her at the same level.

Then I backed up and said, "You know, you're right. All this sounds pretty unpleasant, and you shouldn't have to live with it. Maybe we should just pack it in and go our separate ways."

And from that point we talked for more or less the next nine hours straight.  Don't worry, I won't give you a transcript here.

Wife was pretty upset: by turns weepy, reflective, and furious.  I did my best to keep an even keel, and to remind her how unhappy she has been with me for so long.  Surely this will be a good move for her too, ... right?  She wept and asked what she could possibly have done different; she shouted that I should dare to "go behind her back" to see a lawyer and jot down some notes about a possible settlement.  Then later she would admit that yes, in many ways her life would improve without me too.  And after that it was back to weeping and shouting.

I didn't go into any of the details of my plan, because I want to review it all of a piece in Lawyer's office rather than niggling it to death here at home.  I did drop some hints, however, most notably that I would like her to be able to keep the house.  She said that would be impossible; I admitted it would require a lot of creativity but I wouldn't accept calling it impossible until that had been proven.  At one point she calmed down enough to say that naturally she thought I was fooling myself if I really believed she could qualify for a loan in her own name to refinance the place, but that if it were really possible that would ease about 90% (her number) of her fear and unhappiness over the divorce because she is afraid of being homeless and she is afraid of having to get rid of all her junk.  So we'll see.

Long ago we established a tradition of eating some kind of fun food Saturday night and then watching a movie.  So I went out to get us some burgers.  We had "Hugo" from Netflix.  She shouted at me over most of dinner and then I coaxed her into giving it a rest so we could watch the movie.  She loved the movie, by the way, and was a lot more subdued afterwards.  She went to bed soon after, and here I am typing this.

Just before I went out to get the burgers, I sent the following e-mail to my family: my parents, Brother and his girlfriend, and my aunt and uncle.  (I have another aunt but she lives in another state and I don't see her much.)  I had drafted most of it last night ... indeed, you will recognize the first paragraph ... and just made minor edits this afternoon to soften the rought corners.

Hello everybody,

Yesterday we drove Son 2 up to Durmstrang and moved him in. It was a beautiful day, and Son 2 was in very high spirits. Moving him in was pretty easy, because he packed very minimalistically; besides, the school isn't actually all that far away, so it should be easy enough to get something to him if it turns out he is missing anything. (His roommate brought a lot more stuff, and I had to wonder when he was going to use it all. But who knows?) Afterwards the Head of School talked to us for a while about what we should expect from the school (both as parents and for the kids), there was a large barbecue for everyone, and then the parents all had to leave. Wife was pretty tired, since she hadn't had a chance to rest all day, and went to bed soon after we got home.

This morning I asked Wife for a divorce. This is probably not a surprise because it has been years since the two of us have gotten along at all well, and I assume the fact has been pretty clear to everyone. Ironically, the one area we have (more or less) agreed on over the years has been child-rearing -- I say "ironically" because I gather that even couples who stick together can't always say the same. But at this point a lot of that task has been taken over at a day-to-day level by Hogwarts and Durmstrang. Naturally we both hope still to have a role to play in the boys's lives for years to come, but I think there is less need now for those roles to play out on a common stage under a common roof. And so, since there is really no serious prospect that Wife and I will suddenly start getting along a lot better again, maybe it is time for us both to move on to the next phase of our lives.

We both want to handle the mechanics as quietly and amicably as possible. As a first step, we have an appointment Monday to visit an attorney whose advice I have sought out, to go over a draft parenting and financial plan. Doubtless there will be many points we will have to discuss and refine. But we have to start somewhere.

I WOULD LIKE TO ASK TWO HUGE FAVORS OF ALL OF YOU:

1. We haven't told the boys yet. I hope to wait till we can tell them in person, which will likely be around the first week in October. PLEASE do not discuss it with them until we have had a chance to talk to them first. (Of course if they raise the subject with you, then you know that somehow they have already heard, and so of course in that case it is perfectly fair to talk to them. But please don't be the one to leak it to them.)

2. I have no idea if she will, but it is very possible that Wife might contact any one of you looking for advice or just someone to talk to. By all means it's a free country; if she wants to talk to you and you want to talk to her, clearly that's between you and her. But please understand something important: many times in the past, Wife has had a hard time understanding me when I am talking about something emotionally heavy ... like our relationship. Time and again I have had friends or relatives come to me asking, "Did you really say X to her?" and it's nowhere near what I was really trying to say. Honestly I think this communication problem is a large part of why we can't get along: I want to say one thing, she hears something totally different, and we clash over it. When I put it like that it sounds like something that should be easy to fix, but we have both tried to improve the communication for years -- decades -- and it hasn't gotten better. I don't know why not. Anyway, the only point is this: if Wife comes to you and tells you I said X or Y or Z, it's fine if you want to offer advice or counsel or comfort. But PLEASE do not conclude that what she tells you is what I was really TRYING or MEANING to say without asking me first. The percentage of times that she has really heard what I was trying to get at is a lot smaller than you would ever think possible. I don't know why. I wish I did. Maybe if I'd been able to figure it out years ago, things could have been different. It's sad.

Anyway, we'll keep you all posted on how things progress. I'm sorry if we have disappointed you, and I know we have disappointed ourselves. We both wanted this to end up in a better place; but step by step, over thousands of days, we have somehow managed to end up here instead. My hope now is to make the next steps as fair and as painless as possible for everyone.


With sorrow for the past, hope for the future, and love for you all,
Hosea

Son 2 moves into Durmstrang

Today we drove Son 2 up to Durmstrang and moved him in. It was a beautiful day, and Son 2 was in very high spirits. Moving him in was pretty easy, because he packed very minimalistically; besides, the school isn't actually all that far away, so it should be easy enough to get something to him if it turns out he is missing anything. (His roommate brought a lot more stuff, and I had to wonder when he was going to use it all.) Afterwards the Head of School talked to all the new parents for a while about what we should expect from the school (both as parents and for the kids); there was a large barbecue for everyone; and then the parents all had to leave. Wife was pretty tired, since she hadn't had a chance to rest all day, and went to bed soon after we got home.

Son 2 was happy and excited.  Ever since he started to give any serious thought to high school, this is where he has wanted to go.  The school is located in a very rural setting, unlike Hogwarts (Son 1's high school) which is considerably more urban.  When Son 2 first visited this place he had a short interview with the Head of School who asked him if he liked the place.  When Son 2 answered an emphatic Yes! the Head further asked, "So, are you a country boy then?"  Son 2 answered, "No, I'm a city boy. But I come alive whenever I come out to the country."  (I swear I have never talked to him about John Eldredge.)  This was the same time that I alluded to briefly in another post, when the Head asked him whether his parents were sending him to boarding school to get rid of him and Son 2 shot back, "No, I want to escape."  So today here he was -- finally moving in -- and he was thrilled.  He also had to stop and check periodically that he wasn't dreaming: "I've known for a long time that I would be going to boarding school, and even that I'd be going to Durmstrang ... but it's finally happening! Here I am!"

Wife was happy because Son 2 was so happy, but she did sometimes allow herself to gaze thoughtfully into space and what life would be like with neither boy at home.  And then tonight, after sleeping for three hours or so, she woke up sobbing.

"I'm going to miss him so much, and it is going to be so lonely around here! If you spend the weekend paying bills and shopping and never talk to me, the weekends are going to be really long. And then you'll go to work during the week, so your days aren't going to change at all, and I'll be left completely alone all the time!"

I didn't mention that things are going to change for me too, because I don't want to start the conversation about divorce while it is late at night and she's already crying.  That can wait till tomorrow (which has been my plan all along).  So I just told her that this shouldn't be a problem ... just an opportunity for her to start to do new things and not to have to spend all of every day being a Mom.  Then I repeated the same thing in different words a few times, and after a while she settled down and went back to sleep.  I'm getting tired and I'm about to do the same.  But I guess tomorrow is likely to be even more dramatic.