It's complicated

The other thing my friend asked me after the lecture Sunday afternoon is how the relationship with Debbie is going.  He and his wife knew Debbie and her ex-husband years ago, when their daughters were taking violin lessons together, or something like that.  Anyway he knows us both and thinks it’s a great match.

 

The only thing is, I didn’t know what to tell him.  It’s complicated.  Actually, it’s been a complicated month.

 

Christmas seemed OK.  You remember that I had custody of the boys through the afternoon of December 24, that we stayed with my parents, and that we had a virtual Christmas there on the 22nd.  The next day, Debbie stopped by to visit.  She brought presents for my parents and the boys (books all around).  We had some coffee and cake and then ordered out for dinner.  The boys felt a little awkward around her, or so it seemed, but otherwise it went fine.

 

On Christmas Eve I delivered the boys to Wife’s place.  Debbie’s mother had invited me for Christmas Day, so I drove there next, arriving late for supper but in time to follow Debbie to her hotel nearby where we tucked ourselves all snug in the bed and watched for visions of sugarplums.  Christmas morning we opened presents at Debbie’s mother’s house, along with Debbie’s daughter and her husband, plus other assorted family.  We ate too much dinner, then ate too much dessert, then ate too much again.  As they say, Christmas comes but once a year. 

 

The last Sunday of the year, Debbie and I entered a week-long silent retreat held a few miles away by a noted Buddhist teacher who does this sort of thing.  If you had asked me a year ago whether I would expect to spend (part of) the Christmas season in a week-long, silent, Buddhist meditation retreat, I would have looked at you funny or asked what you had been smoking.  But Debbie was full of good things to say about this teacher, and other people that I have met (in the almost-a-year that I have been meditating) have told me they’ve found a lot of value in silent retreats.  Besides, Debbie paid the registration fee so how could I say No?

 

It was interesting, and I’ll probably do it again some day.  But by the end of the retreat I found the long silence had made me more sensitive than usual and therefore touchier.  As we drove back to civilization, Debbie and I found we weren’t connecting quite right.  We talked for a while after getting to her apartment, before I drove on to mine, but somehow couldn’t click.  There had been no sex during the retreat, and now we weren’t synchronized enough for it.  (Though honestly, I think fucking might have put us back on track.)

 

We talked over the next couple of weeks – saw each other, took in a couple of movies, e-mailed as usual – but still it seemed a little off.  Then in mid-January we took a four-day weekend that we had planned a couple of months ago, to visit several of my relatives in another state.

 

The drive there was difficult and we seemed to spend too much time misunderstanding each other.  The visit itself was great fun.  Debbie connected with my relatives on many different levels at once, so it was easy and natural and pleasant.  I wondered if maybe we were finally getting back to where we belonged.

 

Then the night before we left to come home, Debbie told me she wanted to go back to being “just good friends” … like we were the first month or two, when we got together for meals but not sex.

 

What’s this about?  I have no idea, and so far we haven’t taken the time for her to explain it.  What she said is that she feels funny knowing that I am still married, and that she has come to the conclusion that the relationship “won’t work” for her unless she knows I am on a definite path towards a divorce, towards being “free”.

 

But free for what?  To marry her instead?  Ain’t gonna happen.  I’ve been resolute in saying that I can’t see the long-term future one way or another, but I’ve also said that it’s clear to me in the short term (all the future I can see) I don’t want to be married again.  Nor quasi-married.

 

And divorce?  I thought I’d been pretty clear about that too.  I made a deal with Wife that if we could stay out of Court then I’d settle for separation instead of divorce, so that she can keep my medical insurance.  She has kept her part of the deal, so I have to keep mine.  Does Debbie want me to welsh on it?  Really?  Because the way I treat Wife should be an indicator how I’ll treat her if things ever go south between us.

 

Besides, depriving Wife of medical insurance – I mean, gratuitously depriving her of medical insurance – would be pointlessly cruel.  Is that what Debbie wants?  Again, really?  I would have thought that seeing me be needlessly cruel would be a motive for her to run the other direction.  Because the way I treat Wife … oh right, I already said that.

 

Anyway, it ain’t gonna happen.  If Wife keeps her part of the deal, I’ll keep mine … for both those reasons.  Debbie must not be thinking, or must have forgotten.

 

Or else she remembers perfectly, and that’s her point.  Maybe what she really meant is not, “I want you to divorce Wife so you can marry me,” but rather, “I want to dump you but in a way that doesn’t crush your ego, so I’m going to ask for conditions that I know you’ll never agree to. That way it looks like it’s your choice to end it, and I’m off the hook without having to say bluntly that I wanted out.”

 

On the whole I don’t think Debbie is devious enough for that.  She forgets other simple things, so I’m willing to believe she’s just spacey and inattentive.

 

On the other hand, the whole point of mindfulness meditation is supposed to be that it makes you more attentive, and she’s practiced it steadily for fifteen years.  Maybe she is really every bit as attentive as she needs to be.  Maybe she just wants out.

 

I’m puzzled, and it’s complicated.