I think I'm learning something: Never, ever, tell you readers out there (if any) that I've stopped drinking; because the act of telling you so guarantees that I will fall off the wagon that very evening!
I've been in a foul mood all day. Part of it is the other stressors that I talked about in my post earlier today: the job hunting (combined with ambivalence for even getting a job in the first place), and Wife's contemptible stunt of wheedling a place to live out of Son 1 because she's afraid that the alimony I pay her might be interrupted (if I am jobless long enough).
But part of it is my phone call this morning with Marie. While I was cursing at the walls and failing to accomplish anything useful all day, I also found myself making up lists of things to yell about:
Item: The only two people whose spending I have ever tried to control before this were Wife (who spent like a drunken sailor) and D (who berated me for failing to follow through on an alleged promise that I still think I never made, to pay for one of her plane tickets). But now it's come up with Marie. In an email back in March she wrote:
I am realizing I owe you an apology.
I have been affected all along by knowing that I don't have the income to support indefinitely a jet-setting relationship. And I've felt you were uncaring when that's what you seemed to want, when you seemed blithely to assume that we could just happily jog along the way we started.
When I had deliberately hidden from you that I couldn't really afford this.
I don't know when the right time to have had this conversation would have been, but I'm pretty sure five years in isn't it.
I hid pertinent information from you, and then, worse, I have been blaming you for acting in ignorance of that information.
As a rhetorical device, it's clever that she phrased it as an "apology." It sounds like she's claiming to be in the wrong. But surely this belongs on a list of historically magnificent passive-aggressive apologies. If you can read this and walk away thinking that she's really admitting to being in the wrong, you have a blessedly thicker skin than I do.
We emailed about it in March. No resolution. We talked on the phone. No resolution. I agreed to visit her in May, which I did. But that was a distraction, not a resolution. Then a few days ago she told me she had gotten a bonus at work, and how about if she spent it on a plane ticket to come see me?
And I told her No. Not on your nickel. If you are going to come see me, somebody else (like me, for example) has to pay for it.
And that's what we talked about this morning. She was offended at the idea that I should pay for her flight. I told her that now I knew it was a problem, there was no way I was going to allow her to keep paying for her own flights because I know for a fact it will come back to bite me. That some time five or ten years from now she'll be saying, "But Hosea, you knew that paying for these visits was hard for me. And yet you've allowed us to go blithely on as if we didn't have to change a thing. As if my finances didn't matter. As if I didn't matter." (Incidentally, did you pick up on the word "allowed" in that speech? After Wife and D, I have come to expect that any unsatisfactory arrangement will be retroactively ascribed to me as if I had the authority to change it. Better, therefore, to step up and change it now … by being so controlling. Marie has up till now not remarked on the choice of word.) We agreed that she will come to visit me some time soon, and I'll pay for the ticket -- even if only just this once. In other words, another distraction. No resolution.
Wow. That was a lot of background, wasn't it? The point of all the explanation was simply this: when I start micromanaging somebody else's spending, it's a sign that I do not feel safe in the relationship. It is therefore a danger sign for the relationship itself.
Item: Part of why I don't feel safe in the relationship is that Marie broods silently. She overthinks things heavily, and then follows the counsel of her inmost heart without ever communicating to the outside world. So, for example, she told me today that it hurt her feelings deeply that once I knew I was going to be laid off, I didn't consider moving to be near her. But I did consider it, I objected. I thought we talked about that. Apparently not, or at any rate not in her world. (I can't swear in a court of law that I discussed it with her; but gosh, I kind of thought I had.) The point, though, is that those discussions were back in February or March. This is the last day of June, and it's the first I heard of it.
In the same way, I confirmed with my mother back then that if I never found another job I could move in with her. Marie says she offered that I could move in with her too, and I ignored the offer. OK, I'm not sure I remember her offering, but maybe. But again, that was February or March. This is June 30. What else is she hiding in her breast that I don't know about yet?
Hard to feel secure when I don't know what's coming.
Item: So -- about those offers to move in with her. Some time after we got involved, Marie explained that she had always wanted to be Mrs. Tanatu and she figured now was her big chance. When I explained that this was impossible because I am still legally married -- and in fact that there's no way I will ever marry again, even if Wife drops dead or is abducted by space aliens -- it did not go over well. But that discussion was more than four years ago. Surely she has had time to get over it?
Maybe not.
The thing is that I don't think I'll ever want to live with Marie, unless I've gotten old and feeble and need someone to look after me. It just feels like too much work, like the relationship comes with too much baggage for that. I love the literary side of the relationship, when we can trade poems back and forth. And the sex is fine too. But I'd have to be paying attention all the time. And the extent to which she needs me is just wearing.
Item: Speaking of that last point …. Over and over, Marie is distressed about things that come down to "It feels like I love you more than you love me." And I'm sure that's absolutely true. I haven't said so, because it's a hell of a thing to tell someone. But Marie seems to be still head-over-heels in love with me, suffering from that kind of self-forgetting romantic love that needs the other person 24-7, that is so captivating and delightful -- the kind of love everyone should enjoy at least once. And I don't think I have that in me any more. After Wife and D, I don't think I can trust anyone that far ever again. I'm happy with the time that I spend with Marie, but I don't think I'll ever again put my eggs in someone else's basket. That's why I'll never marry again.
And what this really means is that Marie isn't getting her needs met either. The relationship isn't right or fair for her either.
Have I just talked myself into breaking up with her?
I don't know. I'd better sleep on it. Maybe I'll get one more drink as a nightcap.
Bloody hell.
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