"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 ....