Lessons learned

Yesterday I posted some fragments of a journal that I kept very briefly back in 1987, and I paged through a lot more of it figuring out what to post.  When I decided to drag it out, I remembered it as mostly an itemization of the things Wife did that made me so frustrated; and I figured it would be interesting to see how many of them continued into more recent times.  What I found is that I spent a lot more time talking about myself (too bad blogging technology hadn't been invented yet!) and trying to sort through my own thoughts and feelings.  But this meant I had an opportunity to compare how I thought then to how I think now.  Have I learned anything?  Do I do anything different?  Or has the time just been one long dreary round of repetition, a maze where I never find the cheese?

I think I see a few things I've learned.  There may be more.  And of course there are probably things I should have learned but haven't ... but that's a different post.  So, in no particular order, here's a list:

• Back then I tried to guess what Wife meant and what she wanted by listening to her tone of voice and interpolating ... reading between the lines.  Now I'm more likely to ask.
• Back then I tried to give the answer I thought she wanted to hear, which of course made it important to read between the lines so I could figure out what she wanted but wasn't saying.  Now I'm less likely to do that and more likely to give a straight-up answer.
• Back then I would not -- seemingly could not! -- talk openly about sensitive emotional issues.  Or sex.  All I could do was hint at what I meant in elegant, roundabout ways.  It's no surprise that the other person (typically Wife) never understood what I meant.  I've gotten better about this, but not what I would call good.  That is to say, I'm blunt enough with you, and that's a benefit because it gives me practice saying what I mean so that I can say it to other people ... people I talk to in person.  But a few days ago I looked back at some e-mails I exchanged with Debbie back in September -- maybe half a year ago -- where she was bringing up some of the very same issues she brought up when she broke it off.  And my replies had the same brittle elegance about them.  I got to the point after a while, but I should have rewritten them before hitting "Send" to take out the first few paragraphs and go straight to the meat of the subject.  And in four years with D, I never told her most of what I thought about the things she did and said.
• Back then I tried to solve Wife's problems, rather than letting her solve them herself.  I am a lot better at this now.  I realize that I have enough trouble solving my own problems [wan smile] that the last thing I need is to take on others as well.
• Back then I was tied up in knots from not knowing what I wanted in even simple, mundane situations.  Wife used to needle me by saying, "Chocolate or vanilla, Hosea, pick one."  I look at the very same dilemmas now, or ones just like them, and I think "How is it even possible not to know what you want here? How is it possible not to know what you like and value?"  To me nowadays, making those kinds of decisions seems a lot easier ... something like breathing.  The explanation is that back then I was afraid of what I wanted.  Part of the reason I dithered for so many years about Wife's infidelities is that one part of me wanted her to be a free-loving free spirit, because I felt my own life to be too pinched, narrow, and constrained.  I wanted her to be a breath of fresh air.  But at the same time I knew from experience (She started fucking Boyfriend 1 a scant two years after we were married.) that dealing with the emotional turbulence of an affair was painful, and I knew I was too shy and fearful to reciprocate by finding a girlfriend of my own.  (I had been married twenty-four years before I started the affair with D.)  Anyway, the point is that I knew what I wanted but I was afraid of getting it, and afraid even of admitting it to myself.  So I took refuge in telling myself that these situations were "complicated" (they weren't) and in hiding behind a wall of words.
            There's one irony in my bringing up the whole question of not knowing what I want ... namely that in career-planning I still have the same basic problem.  I believe the root cause to be different, however.  I believe that in the case of career-planning the issue is that I can identify things I like doing and things I don't like doing, but I can't figure out how to piece together a dream job that's any different from the lackluster job I have now.  Also I figure that if I were actually to change careers, it would mean making a lot less money, which in turn means I should wait another six years until Son 2 is out of college.  And by then I'll be 59 years old.  Hmmm.  Maybe the problem is partly a lack of courage, but I'm going to keep telling myself it's a lack of imagination.  You remember that line I quoted recently from the movie The Big Chill?  "Rationalizations are more important than sex ...." 
• Back then I spent a lot of energy worrying about Who I Was.  You know ... my identity, my Self, my True Will, my destiny ... all that happy horseshit.  I wrote, several times, of working hard to kill off my Old Self (the Identity I had developed growing up, and deployed all through college and graduate school); and I fretted over what New Self would take his place.  This is related to the point I just made above, about wanting Wife precisely because she was so different from me, so that by being married to her I could be forced to change instead of settling into a rut.  I don't spend my energy on that kind of worry any more, or not much.  I suppose I haven't completely gotten over it -- I'm thinking of deeply embarrassing posts like this two-part one here and here.  But I think these days that's the exception and not the rule.  At least consciously I think I'm more likely to say that it's not very helpful to think about my Identity or Destiny, ... maybe it's more practical just to think about the choices I happen to make today, and later on the choices I happen to make tomorrow.  (Compare the argument here.)  In my more metaphysical moods, I can even argue that the Self or the Identity don't exist at all.  But I sure did worry about this sort of thing years ago.
• Back then I thought it really mattered what perfect strangers thought about me.  I had forgotten all about it, but apparently Wife had talked about going to Pagan Spirit Gathering some time around then, and had suggested I come with her.  (You remember that back then she was Wiccan, right?)  And it seems I had a huge amount of anxiety about this.  Part of it was related to the free-love atmosphere of the place: it had been at an earlier Pagan Spirit gathering that she met Boyfriend 1.  But part of it was wrapped around mental pictures of myself there, feeling that I had to explain to everyone that I wasn't really a Pagan but I was there because my wife was, and at the same time realizing perfectly well how really dorky that would have sounded.  And honestly, in real life, who the hell could possibly have cared?  Last year I joined Debbie on at least three Buddhist retreats without ever once feeling I had to explain to anybody that I'm not a Buddhist.  (And in reality I'm not sure I can tell whether I'm a Buddhist or not.)  So maybe I've made a little progress on that front.         

Time to sign off.  Maybe I'll think of more later.